It was just Mom and Nicky then. Dad had left them alone to find something called “oil.” Nick figured that it was something he had lost during the war. Mom said Dad was a “bastid” to leave them, but she mixed her words sometimes and he thought she meant “basket.” A basket was a bad thing. She always made Nick promise not to be a basket when he grew up. Dad was a wildcatter and all wildcatters were baskets, Mom said.

The worst wildcatters came from Texas. Dad had come from Texas and Mom met him in San Diego. That was during the war when Dad was a “C.B.,” whatever that was. Then Mom and Dad got divorced because Dad was a basket. That was what divorce meant: when a dad goes away.

One night Mom left him with Gramps and Gran. She went out with Uncle Stan. Nick remembered that Mom and Uncle Stan were laughing and their breath smelled funny, like Billy. In the morning he woke to find Gran sitting on his bed. Her eyes were puffy and red and she hugged him close. He didn’t like being held and tried to wriggle out of her grasp, but she held him tightly.

“Oh my poor baby,” Gran cried and Nick’s heart beat wildly, like the wings of a trapped bird. He’d never seen Gran act this way before. He wrinkled his nose. Gran didn’t smell like Mom. She smelled old. She told him there had been an “accident” and he was afraid she was going to punish him. Sometimes he had an accident at night and woke up with the bed wet and smelling of “pee-pee” and Mom would get mad at him.

She told him that Mom was dead. Uncle Stan too. She said dead meant that Mom had gone away to be with Jesus in heaven. He asked Gran when Mom was coming back and she just shook her head and hugged him again. She asked him if he understood and he said yes. Mom had gone away. That’s what grown-ups did: they went away.

When he went down for breakfast, he looked around for Mom, just in case she might’ve come back. He looked all over the house, but he couldn’t find her. The next day, they dressed him in a suit and tie and took him to the funeral home. They said Mom was in a box by the altar, but Gran wouldn’t let him look. She said that it wasn’t really Mom in the coffin. Mom was in heaven.