Ectopia by Martin Goodman Page A

side and curls himself ready for sleep. I lick my tongue across his throat in goodbye.
    Â 
    Mom’s lodged on the sofa when I get home. Karen’s worked on her already, brushed her hair and tied it back in a red ribbon. Mom’s eyes are open and they blink, as she sweats. Those are the signs of life in the woman.
    Dad shouts at me when I step into the room.
    - Been peddling your ass? he says – Your mother’s last night in the family home and you spend it fagging around those streets of yours. She’s been here all night. Sitting up. Waiting. Worrying herself sick. Did you give her a thought? Just one thought of your mother while you were parting those cheeks of yours? Like hell you did. Come to bed, Alison, I told her, he’s not worth it. Would she budge? Would she hell. Look at her. See what you’ve done, Steven.
    He stares right into Mom’s eyes.
    - Look Alison, he says, pointing a finger across the room at me – He’s home. You can snap out of it now.
    Karen comes through from the kitchen with a plateful of toast.
    - Dad’s lying, she says – Mom’s not waiting for you Steven. No-one is. None of us gives a shit what you get up to. It’s you she hates, Dad. It’s you who’s throwing her out of home. Isn’t that right, Mom? You didn’t go to bed because you can’t bear to spend another minute with this creep of a husband of yours?
    She leans forward and looks close into Mom’s eyes the way Dad’s just done.
    - That’s right, Karen says – I can read Mom through her eyes like a book. She despises you for what you’ve done to her.
    - Keep on like this, Karen, Dad says - and I’ll have statesquad haul you both off in the same van.
    He steps close so Karen flinches, but all he does is swipe two slices of toast from her plate.
    Paul breaks away from his monitor in the corner for a slice of his own and takes it back to his console.
    I take some too. Mom says it’s not the same without the proper butter you got from cows but the smell of toast like the smell of fried onions is one thing can’t have changed much.
    Dad swallows his mouthful before speaking – he’s got a hangup about manners. He waves his remaining toast at a picture of Mom in a frame above the fireplace. He must have put it up in the night. It’s a printout of the one by the sea, the one where she looks like Karen.
    - Funny thing, he says – when your mother was young she ate like a horse and looked like that. A great body. Not skinny but firm. Now she scarce eats a thing. It’s like every breath she takes just gathers inside her and balloons her up.
    He turns to Mom.
    - Perhaps they’ll deflate you, love, he says – Deflate you and send you back home.
    No-one thinks to offer her toast. Eyes open, mouth shut, she sits and waits.
    Three of us chewing, Mom staring.
    It’s a shame there’s no photo. We’ll never do better for a family show of togetherness.
    Â 
    Mom’s allowed to take one bag with her. One small bag, personal items, no change of clothes. They have her size and will drape her with something new.
    Karen’s done the packing. She opens the bag so we can check it out.
    A mirror and brush, both made out of pale yellow plastic, shaped like seashells.
    A white mug from six years ago, with a picture of us three kids in fuzzy dots on its side.
    A jar of odd buttons.
    A small biscuit tin with a bird’s nest inside.
    Five pale lengths of ribbon, yellow blue pink lilac green, plus a white and a red one.
    A dog-eared paperback called Women Might Fly.
    A small china dish with a pattern of red roses.
    A silver brooch of a flying seagull.
    A pair of wraparound sunglasses.
    A plastic bottle of rosewater.
    A framed picture of dried flowers.
    A hologram globe of tropical fish.
    - We’re sending your mother to be cared for, Dad says – not tossing out the garbage. You’ve packed nothing but crap.
    -