She walks over to the television now and presses the power button to see what happens, and lo and behold, one of the morning talk shows comes on. This delights her for a second because something has survived from the cable line Von split himself and ran down the wall in the groove of the wood paneling. “We can sit down here and neck all night,” he said, laughing.
“You are a silly man,” she said.
She lets the television play, even though she notices the dust on the screen, and is distressed by Luke’s drum set and two guitars over in the corner. She glares at them. She asked him time and again to get rid of them. He hadn’t touched them in so long （thankfully, because the noise would vibrate the whole house, and the cymbals that he clanged every so often would jar her teeth）。 But how many times did she ask, “Can we relocate these things?” and he’d just laugh her off and say, “Mom, one day I’m going to surprise you, and I’ll have a whole band down here singing your name.”
“I would throttle you,” she said. “Now take out a classified ad. I will be glad to foot the bill, dear.”
The drum set with its big bass drum and its extending appendages of other drums looks like some kind of sea monster. She is disgusted that it’s here, still alive, and Luke is not.
Why did Luke leave it behind when he moved out? She should have hired Wally, the big guy Von used to have blacktop the driveway and haul cement bags, to load up the drum set years ago. She should have had him bring it right over to Luke’s apartment and leave it in the hallway. Now she’s stuck with it. Did he know that seeing it would torture her later? Did he care? Did Luke ever care what he did and what effect it had?
If Von had lived longer, if she had told him to cut it out with the smoking years and years ago, she thinks he could have helped Luke. Wouldn’t he have said, No more, kid. You gotta straighten this monkey business out? Wouldn’t he have given him the toughness he needed, grabbing his arm, telling him, if it had gotten that bad, that he was taking him to rehab? Or maybe Von would have said, Rehab? I’ll show you rehab, and would have dealt with Luke by taking away his keys and making him move home. You want to act like a baby, well then babies live with Mom and Pop.
Von was the strongest person she’d ever met. So unafraid of any circumstance. He never seemed nervous. He could laugh while being shot at if he were ever shot at; once, he said during the Cold War, “If any Russians come here, they better be ready to get kicked back a few continents.” She loved that toughness, she misses that toughness. She stares at the drum set and wants to break it into pieces.
A commercial for Drano is murmuring on the television now, and she stops for a minute to watch the cartoon dramatization of the liquid dissolving a clog in the drain. Then she walks over to the drum set and sees the drumsticks where Luke last left them. The sun comes through the high windows over in the corner, and it makes the cymbal disk glimmer. There is a music stand, and two guitars propped next to a speaker with a frayed cord. She wants to drag it all away but is surprised how connected the drum set is.
In a second, without really thinking, she picks up one of his drumsticks and hits the cymbal quickly, a noise like someone just told a joke on Johnny Carson. She puts the drumstick back with the other one and stares out the window.
The washing machine is droning, making that nice wet swishing sound, and she looks back at the long basement. What did they envision for finishing it? Maybe sectioning off the washer and dryer. Maybe adding some cabinets, a stove, and a fridge. She remembers thinking they could put a large table in front of the fireplace for holidays. No mess upstairs. And then Mary Jane could have that group of girls sleep down here during her slumber parties, and Luke and those Meddleson brothers he liked to skateboard with could watch their movies and play their video games, dropping popcorn and slurping that Kool-Aid she hated. She imagined opening the door and standing on the top step, listening to the pleasant noise of the young, the girls recounting who said and did what, and the boys giggling and telling each other to shut up.
She wonders now why they let the basement idea vanish.
It seems to her that Mary Jane and Luke were fourteen and ten at one point, and then in seconds, Mary Jane was graduating college. Luke was dating Ginger, and doing his concerts, but still living at home. Sometimes Ginger would come over for dinner, always helping Darcy clear the table, always telling her a good story about her college classes or something her parents had said. Luke had so much respect for Ginger, and Darcy hoped in a way that made her stomach knot that Luke could stay with her forever. Whatever his faults, Ginger softened them. And he made Ginger laugh, and oh, did she look at him like he was a prince. Almost as if Ginger saw something in Luke that Darcy forgot about.