“Aw, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to wake you up. I guess I shoulda called later. I didn’t mean to wake you up.”

“Listen,” I say. “What do you want?” There’s no need to be nice to her anymore. I’m through with her, I don’t want her to start calling over here and bothering my mother when I’m not home. I don’t even want her calling over here. My mother asks too many questions as it is. Any man twenty-eight years old ought to be able to come and go without his mother asking him where he’s going every time.

“I just wanted to talk,” she says, and she says that in a pleading voice. “Can you talk?” Suddenly she sounds cheerful and sober.

“I don’t know,” I say. “I mean, I don’t see much point in it. I don’t even know what you want. I don’t think you know what you want.” I can’t see my cigarettes. “Hold on,” I say. “I’ve got to find a cigarette.”

I don’t wait for her to answer. I go into the living room and get my pack and my lighter. I light one and look out the window at the passing cars, the uncut grass. My mother watches from behind her eyeglasses where she sits with the Bible of God cupped in her lap. She says nothing, but I see the fear she has. After a while I go back and pick up the telephone again. “All right,” I say, making the weariness in my voice plain.

It’s kind of hard, not having a car. I have to be careful to get with somebody who has wheels. I have to make sure of that early on. I don’t mind paying for a room if the woman doesn’t mind us going in her car. It complicates things, makes them more difficult. But I can’t take them home, not while I’m living with my mother. She wouldn’t allow it. I know what would happen if I tried it. I’ve imagined it before, and it isn’t nice. It’s awful. Doors jerked open and covers grabbed.

“Listen,” she says. “I know I acted terrible last night. It was just his truck over there that did it. You got to understand, Gary, we been married ten years. You just don’t throw ten years away without thinking about it.”