But he’d scowl and spit and leave and as soon as he was gone, she’d sit down heavily on the floor and giggle. A sound as infectious as hysterical.

Sometimes she’d get up again. Sometimes she couldn’t stop. One time she looked right at me, a troubled expression on her face, and asked, “What is happening to me?” As if some outside force possessed her. Perhaps it did.

No point asking our father. He would just become empty again. Of opinions. Of an inner life.

In the end, laughter led to tears, and we knew the signs. We always made sure to be absent by then. Because we couldn’t fix that, either. The stories turned morose and sullen. The talking animals murderous. The moral obscure.

And also in the end, just like my mother, I had no idea what had been going on back at the farm. I just knew she wasn’t there anymore.

But as I drove, I thought of her funny stories. I tried to conjure her up whole and like a mother should be. Like a shield against what I knew I was going to find back on the farm.

Hold on to that. Discard the rest. Even though it didn’t really work that way.

[89]

“Family exists to betray” Silvina had written in her journal. “Family doesn’t know another way.”

Still raining when I reached the little side road in the valley leading to the farm. Sometime in the past twenty years it had been paved. I didn’t like that. Didn’t like the erasure of memory. I’d already wound down through change, from the heights. Ghastly, modernist cubes, almost all glass. Trying to pretend they were part of the landscape.

Large lots. Rich people’s summer homes. They’d been rare, back in the day. Now the entire ridgeline looked like a tech bro campus. If oddly still. Silent. I could already tell they’d cut off the creek water to put in wastewater ponds and other “improvements.” All that was left was a beautiful waterfall down a rock face that dribbled off into nothing.

My sense of being remote faded. The farm was in commute territory. I felt defeated. But maybe it was just because I’d driven for twelve hours.

The next surprise: the family name still on the mailbox. Where the side road split off from the paved main road. Except the side road, too, had been paved, and a low white wooden fence ran alongside. Cheery.