Chapter 9: Continue

At two in the morning my mother carried me down the stairs.

She did not turn on the lights.

A strip of yellow showed under the study door at the end of the hall.

She stopped there and listened.

Paper moved on the other side.

She pushed the door open with her shoulder.

My father sat at the big desk with his reading glasses on and a black binder open in front of him.

A second binder lay closed beside it, and a third, and a long shelf of them behind his chair, each with a year on the spine.

He shut the binder.

He did it quickly.

"Paula. You should be in bed."

"What is that?"

"Work."

"It's two in the morning." She walked in with the urn against her chest. "Show me."

"It's company paperwork. It would only upset you."

"I said show me."

She had never used that voice on him in thirty years.

He took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes.

Then he slid the binder across the desk.

My mother set the urn on the blotter. She sat down in the chair across from him and opened it.

I read over her shoulder, because I had nowhere else to go.

Each page was a report.

Each had a date at the top, a few typed lines, and photographs clipped beneath them.

I followed each page as she turned it.

A thin boy of nine knelt on the tile outside a hospital door, with his forehead on the floor.

The report said: Subject continues to believe mother is hospitalized. Begging staff for her medication.

A boy of twelve hauled a trash bag across a scrapyard.

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