He could make out strange shapes in the fuzzy blackness: the old pipe radiator looking melted to the wall, shifting drapes, the clutter of books and trinkets and papers. His right hand was trembling again, fluttering ever so slightly. The doctors couldn’t tell if anything was wrong or not. But he could tell. He held his hand to his head and felt the blood pumping through his palms. It was warm.
He could hear his mother coughing in the room below. She didn’t look right anymore. Her eyes were wide and afraid and her hair was tossed and her body was lumpy and large. Her feet turned out from the heels she had worn these long years. She didn’t look right. She always sat at the dinner table now, where she could see the TV, and where she could see Pat. She fretted. Her eyes fretted at him quietly, great and wide as they were. He was afraid of her now. He was afraid he would see her die. Would she moan and whimper and suffer away? Would she pass out and lay on the kitchen carpet? He was afraid of that.
His father chided her. She fretted and he chided. His Dad had wrinkled, small eyes and a big nose and red cheeks. He wore the old derby hats and used a cane. When he came back from fiddling in the garage, from whatever he did there, he would sit on the couch in the living room and chide. He would chide and she would fret and Pat would lay on the couch and listen to them.
“Rose! Come over here.”
His mother never left the dinner table.
“Rose come up here!”
Pat would yell down the stairs. “Ma!”
“Pat?”
“Ma, Dad’s calling you!”
“Yes?”
“Come over here!” And so on.
They were watching the Whammy game show and it made Pat nervous to watch it. To him, everyone got Whammied and there was no way around it. His mom had said he should go on and try for something big, but Pat was sure he’d get a Whammy. Everyone always did.
In the dark, in the crinkly dimness, Pat would sometimes see things. Shapes and maybe letters. It made his chest tight and he would ball his fluttering hand up over his heart and close his eyes and still he could see them. It made him afraid enough to cry. The wetness on his face as his eyes opened and shut.
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