Everything Must Go
2001Five-fifteen p.m. Henry pushes open the door, drops his keys on the front hall table. “Mom?”
He turns into the living room, shut up and dark, the curtain drawn against the brightness of the fall day. His shrunken mother is on the couch balancing a highball in one hand, a cigarette burning out in the other, in clothes that once fit properly but now swallow her up. Her thinning brown hair is flecked with gray and hanging loose from a swirl of a bun.
“David?” she asks, not yet pulling her stare from the television set.
“No, Mom. It’s me,” he says, “Henry.”
She looks over and sees that yes, it is Henry. He can see the disappointment in her eyes,glazed over from the glow of the TV.
He takes the cigarette from her, stubs it out in the overflowing ashtray on the coffee table and makes a mental note to clean up all t ... read full excerpt from Everything Must Go ebook
