This was back in the art-gallery days, and Roy’s mother had been sick too, dying of cancer at the same time that Joan’s mother was dying of cancer. Different kinds, different hospitals, and Roy and Joan sprawled morosely in their chairs at work all day, comparing notes. Sometimes they closed the gallery and went to the movies, where they would sit in the darkness and hold hands. One day Joan started crying and couldn’t stop; another day it was Roy. Once, they blew everything off to go down the street and drink until they were beside themselves. They staggered to a local hotel and tried to get a room but were refused. Neither could figure out why—they shouted at the desk clerk, a young black woman who shook her head and walked away, then came around from behind the desk and escorted them by the elbows out the revolving door. They climbed into Joan’s little car and drove up and down the empty pedestrian mall, honking and veering around the benches and stone planters. That’s all that happened, though it became one of Joan’s most vivid memories: the dark, beery neighborhood bar, the beautiful old restored hotel, the kindness of the desk clerk, the late-night interior of the Volkswagen. A few weeks later, Joan came home from the hospital after her mother’s death, sat down on the sofa, and stared straight ahead for a long time, waiting for something.

Whatever she was waiting for never came, but Roy did. They sat in silence, eating the doughnuts Roy had brought with him and drinking the coffee that Joan made. At some point Roy said, “I guess my mom won.”

The first time had been a game—Pilgrim digging at the base of the stump with Spock positioned behind him, jumping up and biting at the loose dirt as it was flung into the air. Suddenly, the dirt took shape and the shape was a mole and Spock caught it, and dropped it. A flat lozenge of fur with no face and little flesh paddles for feet. Pilgrim turned it over with his nose, stepped on it, and bit it.

Done.

His mother had been fed up with him before he was even born, according to the legend, pounding on her own stomach wherever he kicked, Whac-A-Mole-style. He remembered exactly nothing of her except a looming sense of dread and an expanse of cool gray. Apparently he crawled overtop of one of her magazines and tore the pages and she rolled it up and whipped him with it until he ended up living elsewhere.

I moved out when I was one, he used to tell people.