The Morels by Christopher Hacker

those who might be considering a late show. This rarely worked. Either a manager would catch us or someone with a Moviefone ticket purchased ahead of time would foil our plans, but tonight it worked, and I found myself back home by nine fifteen. My mother was up watching television, and I sat with her awhile. This activity had gotten to be tricky, as I had to fake a sense of continued enthusiasm for every bit of my day that I chose to relate.
    My mother wasn’t fooled, of course. “I spoke with Ann today.”
    “My ex-girlfriend?”
    “Brody. Down the hall?”
    “Right.”
    “Her daughter’s looking to take up the piano. I told her that you might be interested.”
    “In what? Giving lessons?”
    “I didn’t say you would, I just said you might be interested. I thought it could be a nice opportunity for you.”
    I was still momentarily stuck on my mistaken impression that my mother had been talking to my ex-girlfriend about me and what that conversation might have been like. There was a lot they agreed on, namely that I couldn’t be trusted to make career decisions and that I needed to shave more often.
    Seeming to read my mind, my mother said with a sidelong glance, “I don’t know about this in-between look you’ve got going. Either grow a beard or don’t, but this just makes you look like you forgot to shave.”
    “I did forget to shave.” I pointed the remote at the television and notched up the volume on an episode of
Law & Order
. I could sense her continuing to watch me as I pretended to watch the screen.
    During the commercial she said, “Give it some thought. It would be some steady pocket money for you and a way for you to reconnect a little with your music, which might not be the worst thing in the world.”
    “Mother dearest,” I said, turning to her and taking her hand. “I love you and have nothing but gratitude for the twenty-odd years you’ve sheltered me—”
    “Uh-oh.”
    “—but I think the time has finally come for me to move out.”
    “Again.”
    “For good this time.”
    “Any place you find, you know, is going to want first and last. Even a sublet.”
    “I’ll figure it out.”
    I stood, gathered my mother’s dirty plates from the coffee table, and went into the kitchen. I rinsed the dishes and set each on the rubberized-wire drying rack. “Bring the box of cookies on your way back,” my mother called. “They’re on the windowsill!”
    Back in my room, I got into my pajamas, a gift from An way back when. I used to sleep naked, but she claimed the oil and sweat I secreted required her to launder the sheets too often. Anliked things clean. I would find my pajamas washed and folded every few days on my pillow. They were falling apart now from so many washings, the waistband losing its elastic, threadbare, the cuffs coming unhemmed. I could sleep naked nowadays if I wanted to, but I’d come to see it her way.
    My mother stopped in later to return the book I’d lent her.
    “What’d you think?”
    She turned it over in her hands. “This was that boy you knew from Morningside Conservatory? What a terrible thing, doing that onstage. So destructive. I don’t know. What did I think? It’s hard, knowing nothing else about him but this book and that performance, to avoid trying to link them somehow.”
    “What do you mean?”
    She took a seat on the piano bench, leaned her elbow on the closed lid. “It feels very personal.”
    “It’s not a book of poems, Mom.”
    “Still, there’s a rawness about the material. As though he were still working through it. That guidance counselor.
You’ve got to deal with this thing or it will eat you alive
. Dire pronouncements. It’s like the author’s giving himself this advice.”
    I adjusted the pillows on my bed, leaned back. “I liked it. It’s creepy, in the way Beckett is creepy. And I think he’s kind of fascinating. Totally intense.”
    “What do Suri and Dave make of him?”
    “Oil and water.”
    “Ha. I’d suspect