My beautiful grown-up daughters, she said.
* * *
To our relief, there was no question of our moving back into the old apartment; our mother hated it now. I can’t listen to traffic all day, she said, and I feel the dirt in my lungs.
She moved to a smaller place: a one-bedroom where highway sounds were more muted. She bought a big pullout couch and said, You two can share it when you want to stay over.
We had no wish to stay over, and our mother seemed to know this. Sorrow hung about her.
What’s the matter, Mama? Why are you sad?
Who says I am?
We can tell.
I’m not sad, I’m just adjusting. To being back.
How long will it take?
I don’t know. I’ve never done it before.
Solitude eked from the single coffee cup and plate and fork in the drying rack by her sink. One wineglass with a dark red ring. One plant with spiky leaves. A bird feeder leaned on the windowsill, but the tree turned out to be too far away for her to hang it.
Tell us about the tribe, we said, fingering the plant, whose spiky leaves were unexpectedly soft. How did you talk to them?
Through signs at first, and gradually, with language.
Were they nice?
I’m not sure what that means.
Were they nice to you.
Yes.
Why don’t you like talking about them?
It’s like trying to make myself heard from the bottom of a well.
Who has the energy to deal with a small sad woman at the bottom of a well? We sizzled with impatience we couldn’t hide, in part because our mother knew us too well. But also because of the strange new way she watched our movements, our glances—even （it seemed, at times） our thoughts. She had always been observant, but now her watchfulness was exaggerated to the point of aberration, like a distended limb. She was the opposite of our father, who feinted and bragged erratically, even lied outright, yet was legible and easily controlled.
* * *
Three or four months after our mother’s return, a skin formed over her sadness and new zeal seized her. She’d begun working on her book. The apartment was awash in her notes. She opened the couch into a bed to make space for more materials, ran strings across the living room, and clipped pages to them with clothespins. There were long mathematical equations; clearly, this was a book no one would read. Our mother had gone mad.
After a year she began to travel, presenting bits of her work in progress at academic conferences. Before leaving, she always called us at our father’s house, where we’d chosen to live rather than decamp to student housing at USC, where we were in college.
Hi, Mom! we’d cry with a violent brightness we’d adopted in the hope of slapping away her solitary sorrow—though it had only seemed to deepen it. Now she used that same bright tone with us.
Getting on a plane, girls!
Where to?
Ann Arbor!
Say hello to the snow!
Will do! Love you both!
We love you, too, Mama.
There was an echo under all that brightness, a cavity left by the deep entwinement that once had sustained us. We were nothing like our mother, it turned out. We were our father’s creatures. We loved his music empire and the characters who populated it; we’d made an office next to his and geared our college coursework toward recording industry expertise. We loved the messy tragedy of his life, the loose ends and failed children; the enemies and sports cars and outbursts and midnight inspirations; his obtrusiveness even as he swam his morning laps, snorting in breath and, when he emerged, flinging water from his head like a dog. He couldn’t function without us; would not undertake a major decision without our help. It was deeper than love, it was need. All our lives, we had needed our mother; now our father needed us.