Pangs of Love

D uring the next match she is uncharacteristically subdued. The fight has left her, On the screen two masked wrestlers beat up Bubby Arnold clones. Nothing issues from her, no encouragement, no outrage, no hope. I've robbed my mother of her pleasure, of her flimsy faith in Americans, in America, and in me. And I don't have the words for I am sorry, or fine sentences that would resurrect her faith and put things back in order. I'm the pebble in her shoe, the stone in her kidney. Now I see that she's Montezuma from Jamie's story: she would hold on to the slimmest hope, while I, as I have just done, would rush in and pull the plug on her.

At the next commercial time-out she turns to me and says, "Ah-Vee-ah, all the men in this house have good jobs, they have money, why don't they have women? Why is your brother that way? What does he tell you? I don't understand." She speaks somberly, with difficulty, as she had when she described the raids.

Her eyes, I see, are filled with tears. I know that she cries easily and often since my father's death. I've heard her in her room late at night.

I put my hand on her back, as round as a turtle's, but hot and meaty. "I don't know," I tell-her, and for the first time I am stunned by my deception of her. "I don't know why there's no women here."

Bagel comes to the bedroom announcing coffee and des- sert. He turns off the set. I can read his mind. He doesn't want his friends to know he dropped from the womb of one who loves something as low as wrestling. "Come eat pie," he says.

"Pie. Who made them?" she asks.

"I did, who else? I stayed up last night baking pies for you. Come on. "

"Yours I won't eat," she says. "I want to taste your girlfriend's baking. "

"You crazy? I don't have a girlfriend," he says. "She's driving me crazy!" he exclaims, then leaves the bedroom, and we follow. "Ca-lay-zee. Who's ca-lay-zee? You hammerhead. Hug your dead cat the rest of your life. How fragrant is that?"

"Forget it, Ma," I say. I touch her shoulder, but she flicks me off

"Ah-Ma," she says. "How can I be your mother if no- body listens to what I say?"