I relatched the lock, apologizing to Mercy in my head, making doomed promises, as though there were any other kind. I listened and did not hear her weight shifting on the stairs. I knocked on my own basement door and said, “Mercy? Are you still there? If you’re gonna stay on the stairs, should I leave out a plate of peanut butter cookies and put on the Ramones?” I meant it as a joke, one of the most desperate kind.

Outside the house, the metal bulkhead doors gonged closed. I pivoted to the open window on my right. Mercy dusted off her jacket as she walked down the driveway. I yelled after her, but she didn’t stop. She turned and disappeared onto Echo Avenue. I waited for her Datsun to putter by, but it didn’t.

Alone again. I turned off the stereo and the television. The house was quiet. I trudged upstairs to my bedroom and then back downstairs. I walked laps around the first floor, increasing my pace until I was out of breath, and while my back ached, the soreness wasn’t wholly unpleasant. After the exercise, I was hungry for what felt like the first time in memory, and I made two English muffins, slathered each in peanut butter, and chased them with a full glass of whole milk.

Instead of resuming what would become a daily routine/workout of walking around the house, I returned to the basement door and opened it. The stairwell light was on. A box of Frosted Flakes totemed on the stairs, like a giant Easter Island statue head, one tread below the dining room floor and my feet. A Polaroid photo was jammed underneath the cardboard folds of the cereal box top. The picture hadn’t fully developed, yet within the gray square of film I could make out my body’s outline, haloed by the basement door frame. The angle of the photo was from the same sunken vantage as the cereal box, as though Tony the Tiger had snapped the pic.

Mom came home from work and found me in the rocking chair, staring at the Polaroid.

She asked what I was holding. I gave it to her without explanation.

“What is it? What am I looking at?” She held the photo close to her face, briefly, before banishing it away at arm’s length.

I say, “It’s me. Standing at the top of the basement stairs.”

“I don’t see it.”

“Well, I don’t know what to tell you. It’s me.”

“I guess I can see it. A little. Why is everything gray and washed out?”

“The photo never fully developed.”

“Was it a mistake or is it supposed to be one of those artsy photos?” Mom acknowledged her pun with a faltering, unsure smile. Like son like mother.