The smoke was coming from the parsonage itself. Sitting on the front porch, on the firewood box, in a bulky coat, was—his mother? He was tempted to continue up the driveway, slip inside, go straight to bed. But he saw that his father had been right: he hadn’t considered his mother’s feelings when he wrote to the draft board. Worse yet, he saw that he needed to tell her, right now, what he’d done. Better that she hear it from him than from the old man.
He retraced his steps down the driveway. By the time he reached the porch, her cigarette had vanished and she was on her feet.
“Sweetie,” she said. “There you are.”
He leaned down and received a smoky kiss. He knew she’d smoked as a teenager, but that was thirty years ago.
“Yes,” she said, “I was having a cigarette. You caught me.”
“Actually—can I bum one?”
She laughed. “This is getting ridiculous.”
He didn’t know what she meant, but a laugh was better than a lecture. “I’m going to quit,” he said. “Tomorrow. But—just one?”
“The things I didn’t know.” She shook her head and reached into her pocket. “Filter? Nonfilter?”
The quicker to light up, he took a cigarette from the pack that was already open. Filterless Lucky Strikes. In the Arctic air, the smoke was abstract and nearly flavorless. He fastened his eyes on the white street, to make himself an abstraction, and told his mother about the letter and the reason he’d sent it.
Only when he’d finished did he turn to see how she was taking the news. In her hands was a coffee cup with cigarette ends in it. As if awakened by his silence, she looked down at the cup. It seemed to surprise her. She handed it to him and said, “I’m going inside.”
He didn’t know what exactly he’d expected, but he’d expected more than no response at all. He extinguished his Lucky and followed her into the house. His bags were at the bottom of the stairs, where he’d dropped them. The Christmas tree was dark.
In the kitchen, his mother had crouched by a seldom-opened cabinet.
“Mom, are you all right?”
She stood up with a bottle of J&B scotch. “Why do you ask? Is there a bottle of liquor in my hand? Oh, why, yes, there is.” She laughed and upended the bottle over a glass. Barely a finger of scotch came out. She drank it off. “What do you want me to say? That I’m happy my son wants to fight in that war?”
“I’m not going to be morally half-assed about it.”
She lowered her chin and fixed him with a dubious look, inviting him to amend what he’d said. When he didn’t, she crouched again by the cabinet.
“I can’t deal with this,” she said. “Not tonight. If you want me to worry about you every hour of the next two years, it’s your decision. It would have been nice to have a little warning, but—it’s your decision.”
Bottles clanked as she examined their discolored labels.
“This will devastate your father,” she added. “I imagine you know that.”
“Yeah, I saw him at church. He’s pretty mad.”
“He’s at the church?”
Mrs. Cottrell and her beckoning finger were still fresh in Clem’s mind, and he didn’t owe the old man anything. The question was whether to spare his mother’s feelings.
“He was with a parishioner,” he said carefully. “We had to dig her car out.”
“Let me guess. Frances Cottrell.”
It was dizzying to hear the name from his mother. He wondered if she was smoking and drinking because she knew all about Mrs. Cottrell. Knew more, perhaps, than he did.
“Do you want something?” she said. “Food? A drink? There’s still some bourbon here. Some ancient vermouth.”
“I might have a sandwich.”
She stood up with a bottle and squinted at the dram remaining in it. “Why does this happen? Why is it that, when a person finally really needs a drink, every damn bottle is empty? It can’t be random. If it were random, some of the bottles would be full.”
Something was definitely not right with her.
“Actually, no,” she said. “I suspect it’s your brother.” She poured the dram into her glass. “It’s sort of heartbreaking when you think about it. He keeps going back and taking a little more, but he can’t leave an empty bottle. How much can he take without making it officially empty? I don’t know whether to laugh or cry.”
The state she was in was too much for Clem to process. In the relative warmth of the house, now that he’d told his parents what he’d done, his exhaustion was overwhelming. He sat down at the kitchen table and rested his head on his arms. He thought he might fall asleep instantly, but he’d passed that point. The exhaustion was so painful that it kept him awake. He heard his mother pouring herself a third drink, opening the refrigerator, handling utensils. He heard her setting a plate on the table.