My parents came close to selling the place when they divorced in 1992, but Mom dug her heels in, wanting to stay. Dad begrudgingly relented. Less than two years later both were in serious relationships with other people. Mom was going to marry Larry, who had spent his adult life as a tech for National Grid on the natural-gas side. He helped Mom pay my father $5,000 (which represented their original down payment) so the house would be solely in her name. Larry was a good person, even if he thought I was a hopelessly slacking lounge-about, which, fine, wasn’t true (not counting my bands, while in Providence I generally worked sixty-hour weeks that weren’t really weeks and more like a string theory of unrelenting days), but there were and are worse things to be. Larry treated Mom well. Tragically, five months before their scheduled wedding day, he died of a sudden heart attack at a work site. With the one-two punch of divorce and the United Shoe Plant closing, my father found (or re-found) religion. He somehow finagled Catholic back channels to officially, in the beady, weaselly eyes of the Church, annul his marriage to Mom. Her agreeing to the annulment, more than the ceremonial five grand (not that that wasn’t a significant amount of money, particularly in the mid-’90s), was ultimately what got Mom the house for keeps. While Mom hasn’t been a practicing Catholic for decades, the annulment remained a sore spot. Dad married a bouncing electron of a woman named Gretchen. She was a good person, even if she thought I was a hopelessly slacking lounge-about and, worse, a heathen, which, fine, because in the case of the latter, I was. She treated Dad well. She had some money squirreled away from her prior marriage to a real-estate developer, and in ’98 they moved to a Christian gated community (not sure how it works, and I don’t want to know) near Boca Raton, Florida. The two of them opened a hair salon called Curl Up and Dye. They’ve since opened two more salons on the southeast coast of Florida. Around the holidays (including their own birthdays and anniversary) they sent me über-religious cards with checks for $25, a photo of them tanned and on the beach, and neon yellow and pink adverts/coupons for their salons.

Mom stubbed out her cigarette on the top stair and groaned as she stood. She had just turned seventy, had recently allowed her short brown hair to go fully gray, and was generally in good shape aside from her arthritic knees. She asked if I needed any help carrying in my equipment.

I shook off the question and said, “I’m going to tell the landlord you’re smoking on the stairs again. She’ll throw you out on your ass.”

Mom didn’t address my why-are-you-still-smoking passive-aggressive jab. “You’re home early. Must’ve been a good show.”