She finally stops. Her gulps of air become gasps. Her roar becomes a hush. She stands spent before me, her hair a mess around her face. She wipes at her nose with one hand. “But she took you from me in the end. And you took her. And I had no one.”

I gape. Like fish. Like an openmouthed baby doll. Like the dead.

“That’s the punch line,” she finishes. “But I’m all laughed out.”

After a moment, my mother grabs her purse and keys. She kicks the lid off the plastic bin next to her, the one full of the greeting cards Moony sent. “Here, take a look at these. There are pictures in some.”

I pretend I’ve not already seen them and pick one or two off the top, turning them over in my hands. “Where are you going?”

“Out.”

“Let me drive you,” Gary says, shaking me from the stupor that has allowed me to forget he was even in the room.

“I need to be alone,” she tells him without looking back.

XXVIII.

I DROP THE CARDS BACK INTO THE BIN WHEN SHE IS gone. Kick it. Slide the lid back on. Her shopping bags litter the floor, along with all the crap from her room. I start to gather them, then set them down again. Fuck it.

Gary looks at me and picks up my mother’s unfinished beer. “Not interested, huh?”

“I’ve seen it,” I confess.

He nods, taking a swig. “I guess we better clean this place up before she gets back.”

I am not keen on cleaning up another one of my mother’s messes, but I figure I should give the chip on my shoulder a rest. “I’ll do it. You can go home.”

“You all right?” he asks now, bending some to look me in the face.

“I think.” The more I learn about my family, the less I want to know. And yet, there are still things nagging at my soul. I pick up the newspaper article where she let it drop. “Did you know?” I ask him on a whim. “About that stuff she said today?”

He hangs his head. “Some of it.”

I sniffle, feeling like the person outside of an inside joke. This stranger, this man who did not know Moony and until a couple of months ago did not know me, knew things about us all that I didn’t.

“Things slip out when she drinks,” he says matter-of-factly.

“What about this?” I ask him, holding up the newspaper clipping. “She ever show you this?”

“Nah,” he says.

I stare at the picture of Madora Charles a moment longer before gingerly refolding it. “You know what this means?” I tell him. “It runs in our family.”

“What does?” he asks.