It is evident in the small things—little oversights and oddities that have begun happening since I arrived, like the shampoo. Like when I wake to the refrigerator light because she has left it open. Or the clients she forgets about because she is shopping or stops for coffee or gets engrossed in a conversation with a saxophone player on Royal Street. Or the third time she ordered pizza delivery but didn’t have any cash. There are other things too. Bigger things. Twice she has brought a stranger home, men with hard eyes and lean throats, who seem as if they have no intention of leaving. I called Gary on the first. I called the police on the second. And one night I woke to an open front door and found her wandering the courtyard.

“What are you doing?” I whisper-yelled down the stairs as I rushed to her side.

She had her earbuds in, but I could still hear the candy rock sounds of “We Own the Night” several paces back because she was playing it so loud.

I wrapped a hand around her arm and tugged. “Mom, it’s too late for this. It’s four a.m. Come inside.”

She grabbed my free hand in hers and started dancing with me.

This is Mary’s version of high-functioning. Some would simply see it as carefree. Or absentminded. But I see it for what it is: tendrils of disease breaking through the medicinal crust, trying to gain any kind of ground. Like invasive vines that must be hacked back again and again, that keep rising no matter how many times you pour gasoline on their roots. Even with the best doctors and the best meds and the best circumstances, I cannot ever forget that my mother is bipolar. And I cannot let her forget it. Or it will overtake her—us—completely.

XX.

DANIEL TAKES ME TO THE MOVIES AND THE AQUARIUM and his favorite places to eat, most of which are actually outside of the Quarter. He even takes me to the Museum of Death. My vision dances over the skeletons and coffins and memento mori in a kind of fit, afraid to land anywhere too long. I pause in front of a shrunken head, feeling as if all the eyes in the room are following me. The skeletons in my dream are a whisper at my back, and then they are gone. And just as quickly, we are bursting out onto Dauphine Street, the afternoon sun melting the chills that were riding my spine and pushing the familiar mirage back into the recessed corners of my mind.