Page 6 of Twice
“Where did you go?”
His voice sounded wobbly.
“Mom was sleeping so I went out.”
“You went out?” He bit his knuckles. “You wentout?”
I remember him glaring, as if that were the cruelest thing I could have said. I didn’t understand. What had I done? It was only when I saw a doctor exit the bedroom that I had the sense something terrible had just happened, and that, in playing Superman on a soccer field, I’d missed it.
?
My mother died while I was trying to fly. A pulmonary embolism. From what they told me, she went quickly and “didn’t suffer,” but since no one was there, I’m not sure how they knew. I remember sitting on my mattress that night, sobbing, gagging on my breath, then sobbing again. Down the hall, I heard my father turn up the radio, really loud, then make a terrible howling noise, like a bear with its paw caught in a trap.
Before I went to sleep, I threw my red cape out the bedroom window. I watched the wind blow it across the dirt. I returned to bed wishing the day had never happened, hating Africa, hating Superman, hating myself, and missing my mother in every molecule of hot air being moved around the room by a plastic fan. I slapped my body repeatedly, whispering the words “stupid, stupid.” It began to storm outside and I fell asleep to the sound of rain.
?
When I awoke the next morning, the red cape was somehow draped around me again. My eyes were blurry. I heard my father’s heavy feet enter the room.
“What are you doing?”
“Nothing.”
“Go sit with your mother.”
“What?”
“Go sit with your mother.”
I swallowed.
“How?”
“What do you mean how? Go sit with her. I’m going to get her medicine.”
I know this sounds impossible, Boss. I can only tell you that it happened, and that I went along with it, the way you go along with a dream, even to someplace you don’t want to go. I reached my mother’s room. The door was open. When I finally looked inside, she was sleeping under the netting, just like the day before.
Had I been older, I might have run off screaming. But as an eight-year-old boy, I just wanted to be with her, no matter how impossible it seemed. So I stood there, frozen, until my mother’s eyes opened and she saw me hovering, and she smiled and hoarsely whispered, “Well, hello, Superman.”
I must have recoiled, because it registered on her face.
“Alfie? What’s wrong?”
I couldn’t answer. My breath came in puffs.
“Alfie? Tell me.”
“Mom...?” I whispered.
“Oh, no.” Her expression changed. “Alfie? Have you been here before?”
“Uh-huh.”
“And the last time, did something bad happen?”
“Yes.”
“Did I die?”
