the sofa with an arm around Mom and a pint bottle in his hand. He
laughed. "This crazy-ass mother of yours, can't live with her, can't live
without her. And damned if she doesn't feel the same about me."
All of us kids had our own lives by then. I was in college, Lori had
become an illustrator at a comic-book company, Maureen lived with
Lori and went to high school, and Brian, who had wanted to be a cop ever
since he'd had to call a policeman to our house in Phoenix to break up a
fight between Mom and Dad, had become a warehouse foreman and was
serving on the auxiliary force until he was old enough to take the police
department's entrance exam. Mom suggested we all celebrate Christmas
at Lori's apartment. I bought Mom an antique silver cross, but finding a
gift for Dad was harder; he always said he never needed anything. Since
it looked like it was going to be another hard winter, and since Dad wore
nothing but his bomber jacket in even the coldest weather, I decided to
get him some warm clothes. At an army-surplus store, I bought flannel
shirts, thermal underwear, thick wool socks, the kind of blue work pants
that auto mechanics wear, and a new pair of steel-toed boots.
Lori decorated her apartment with colored lights and pine boughs and
paper angels; Brian made eggnog; and to demonstrate that he was on his
best behavior, Dad went to great lengths to make sure there was no
alcohol in it before he accepted a glass. Mom passed around their
presents, each wrapped in newspaper and tied with butcher's twine. Lori
got a cracked lamp that might have been a Tiffany; Maureen, an antique
porcelain doll that had lost most of her hair; Brian, a nineteenth-century
book of poetry, missing the cover and the first few pages. My present
was an orange crewneck sweater, slightly stained but made, Mom
pointed out, of genuine Shetland wool.
When I passed Dad my stack of carefully wrapped boxes, he protested
that he needed and wanted nothing. "Go ahead," I said. "Open them."
I watched as he carefully removed the wrapping. He lifted the lids and