Everything's Eventual

   "I know." I kissed her on the corner of the mouth again. "I'm going, Ma, but I'll be back tomorrow."

   "Don't . . . hitchhike . . . dangerous."

   "I won't. I'll catch a ride in with Mrs. McCurdy. You get some sleep."

   "Sleep . . . all I do," she said. "I was at work, unloading the dishwasher. I came over all headachy. Fell down. Woke up . . . here." She looked up at me. "Was a stroke. Doctor says . . . not too bad."

   "You're fine," I said. I got up, then took her hand. The skin was fine, as smooth as watered silk. An old person's hand.

   "I dreamed we were at that amusement park in New Hampshire," she said.

   I looked down at her, feeling my skin go cold all over. "Did you?"

   "Ayuh. Waiting in line for the one that goes . . . way up high. Do you remember that one?"

"The Bullet," I said. "I remember it, Ma."

"You were afraid and I shouted. Shouted at you."

"No, Ma, you—"

   Her hand squeezed down on mine and the corners of her mouth deepened into near-dimples. It was a ghost of her old impatient expression.

   "Yes," she said. "Shouted and swatted you. Back . . . of the neck, wasn't it?"

   "Probably, yeah," I said, giving up. "That's mostly where you gave it to me."

   "Shouldn't have," she said. "It was hot and I was tired, but still . . . shouldn't have. Wanted to tell you I was sorry."

   My eyes started leaking again. "It's all right, Ma. That was a long time ago."

   "You never got your ride," she whispered.

   "I did, though," I said. "In the end I did."

   She smiled up at me. She looked small and weak, miles from the angry, sweaty, muscular woman who had yelled at me when we finally got to the head of the line, yelled and then whacked me across the nape of the neck. She must have seen something on someone's face—one of the other people waiting to ride the Bullet— because I remember her saying What are you looking at, beautiful? as she led me away by the hand, me snivelling under the hot summer sun, rubbing the back of my neck . . . only it didn't really hurt, she hadn't swatted me that hard; mostly what I remember was being grateful to get away from that high, twirling construction with the capsules at either end, that revolving scream machine.

   "Mr. Parker, it really is time to go," the nurse said.

   I raised my mother's hand and kissed the knuckles. "I'll see you tomorrow," I said. "I love you, Ma."

   "Love you, too. Alan . . . sorry for all the times I swatted you. That was no way to be."

   But it had been; it had been her way to be. I didn't know how to tell her I knew that, accepted it. It was part of our family secret, something whispered along the nerve-endings.

"I'll see you tomorrow, Ma. Okay?"

   She didn't answer. Her eyes had rolled shut again, and this time the lids didn't come back up. Her chest rose and fell slowly and regularly. I backed away from the bed, never taking my eyes off her.

   In the hall I said to the nurse, "Is she going to be all right? Really all right?"

   "No one can say that for sure, Mr. Parker. She's Dr. Nunnally's patient. He's very good. He'll be on the floor tomorrow afternoon and you can ask him—"

   "Tell me what you think."

   "I think she's going to be fine," the nurse said, leading me back down the hall toward the elevator lobby. "Her vital signs are strong, and all the residual effects suggest a very light stroke." She frowned a little. "She's going to have to make some changes, of course. In her diet . . . her lifestyle . . ."

   "Her smoking, you mean."

   "Oh yes. That has to go." She said it as if my mother quitting her lifetime habit would be no more difficult than moving a vase from a table in the living room to one in the hall. I pushed the button for the elevators, and the door of the car I'd ridden up in opened at once. Things clearly slowed down a lot at CMMC once visiting hours were over.

   "Thanks for everything," I said.

   "Not at all. I'm sorry I scared you. What I said was incredibly stupid."

   "Not at all," I said, although I agreed with her. "Don't mention it."

   I got into the elevator and pushed for the lobby. The nurse raised her hand and twiddled her fingers. I twiddled my own in return, and then the door slid between us. The car started down. I looked at the fingernail marks on the backs of my hands and thought that I was an awful creature, the lowest of the low. Even if it had only been a dream, I was the lowest of the goddam low. Take her, I'd said. She was my mother but I had said it just the same: Take my Ma, don't take me. She had raised me, worked overtime for me, waited in line with me under the hot summer sun in a dusty little New Hampshire amuse ment park, and in the end I had hardly hesitated. Take her, don't take me. Chickenshit, chickenshit, you fucking chickenshit.

   When the elevator door opened I stepped out, took the lid off the litter-basket, and there it was, lying in someone's almost-empty paper coffee cup: I RODE THE BULLET AT THRILL VILLAGE, LACONIA.