“He’s inside his house, looking at us inside our house.”
“He doesn’t have the power to do that,” Dad says. “It’s not physically possible.”
“There may be machinery involved.”
Dad sets down his fork—the equivalent, for Dad, of rising to his feet and clearing his throat. “I feel like I’m losing you, Noreen,” he says. “Things aren’t getting done. The laundry is in a massive pile. I don’t have any socks.”
At the mention of laundry and socks, Mom’s wandering attention visibly engages, so Dad pushes on and the rest of us join in: My pale green hoodie isn’t in my closet and Molly’s hand puppets have holes in the tops and Mom hasn’t called the Seattle Seahawks to see if they’ll sign Brian’s jersey and return it if she includes a preposted envelope and our burger buns weren’t toasted and she hasn’t bought chocolate chips to make blondies for Molly’s Girl Scout party and she’s missed two vet appointments and now Fizzy hasn’t been spayed and it seems like she might be in heat and we’re missing a lightbulb in the downstairs bathroom and there aren’t any double-A batteries for the Wii remotes and the Ping-Pong table is sagging and wasn’t she going to get the lawn guy to take a look at those yellow patches, and wasn’t she going to figure out where those three screws Molly found on the kitchen floor originally came from? And the kitchen counters are supposed to be resealed every six months—has that happened? Because they’re staining more easily when we spill dark liquids on them like coffee or berry juice, and we’re all out of cheese and low on kitty litter and the sewing basket is getting kind of full and the wood glue she used to help Brian make that ramp for science class hasn’t held, they should have used nails like he told her in the first place and could they repair it with real nails tonight?
Mom sits up straight in her chair, her eyes dilated. “Yes,” she says. “We can.”
* * *
“It’s two years since she threw out that lovely husband of hers,” Mom says when the invitation arrives. “That’s something to celebrate?”
“You have no idea whether she threw him out,” Dad says. “Maybe he stormed out. Maybe she’s having this party to reward herself after two rough years.”
“Believe me, he was pushed out. And that so-called brother of hers is behind it.”
“You are not a credible source.”
But a day or two later, Dad is the one who returns to the topic while Mom is reorganizing the kitchen cupboards and I’m doing homework on the computer in the study.
“Noreen, in light of all that has transpired,” he says, “I think it is essential that we go.”
“Go?”
“To Stephanie’s party.”
“I should go?” Mom asks.
“That is what I mean by ‘we.’？”
“Bruce, can’t you see that this is a trap?”
“It concerns me when you speak in that way.”
“You should be concerned!”
“It concerns me not only because it is delusional, but because we tend to project our own states of mind onto other people. So the fact that you believe our neighbors may be plotting against you suggests that you may be plotting against them.”
“Electrifying our fence will only hurt them if they touch it,” Mom says.
“You are not electrifying our fence.”
“Not yet—I need to read a little more about electrostatic energy,” Mom says. “But I’ve bought all the materials.”
Dad shuts his eyes—the equivalent, for Dad, of burying his face in his hands.