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ALL THESE YEARS later it seems incredible to me that after helping me get settled at the
university she drove back to Phoenix on her own. Not that it was terribly dicult. We
could see the I-10 freeway ramp from the restaurant where we ate that last dinner
together. She’d get on the interstate and not get o until she came to the Indian School
Road exit, and she’d stay on that until she reached her apartment. It was late August, so
it was still light out when she left. It would be dark by the time she got to Phoenix, but
the trac wouldn’t be bad. Of course if the Gray Death broke down in the desert she’d
be all alone, and even if she could nd a pay phone, what possible good would it do to
call me? I don’t think I worried about any of that. I’d badly underestimated her, as well
as our escape vehicle in recent weeks, and they’d both taught me not to. They’d make it
fine.
Indeed, as I walked back to campus along busy Speedway Boulevard, I had a profound
sense that my mother’s life and my own had just diverged, probably for good. I’d be
with her for Thanksgiving, and again over the Christmas holidays between semesters.
But I’d seen my father before leaving Gloversville, and he’d oered to pay my union
dues while I was away at school. That way, if I wanted to come home for the summer, I
could get a well-paid construction job, and I’d already decided to do just that. Eighteen
was legal drinking age in New York, and he’d begun to show more interest in me since
my birthday. By next summer my grandparents would have rented the upstairs at on
Helwig Street, but they had a spare bedroom and would be happy to see me. I could
paint the house on weekends to save them some money. I already missed both of them
terribly, and for the rst time felt the full guilt of having abandoned them. Somehow I’d
try to set this right.
My mother didn’t factor into any of these plans. Hey, she had the new life she’d
wanted for so long. She had people her own age and a nice apartment and parties on
weekends and nobody looking over her shoulder, second-guessing her every decision and
criticizing her for having a little fun. If the Death didn’t die and she got a couple raises,
her new ends might just meet. Why shouldn’t things work out for her? After all, Phoenix
seemed to be the city of fresh starts, of rising from the ashes. There were lots of single
men around. And with me nally out of her way, there’d be opportunities for the kind of
romance I knew she craved, maybe even marriage, though I doubted she had much
interest in that. She just wanted to dress up and go dancing or out to dinner someplace
nice now and then. There was no longer any reason she shouldn’t have her wish. Back in
Gloversville, her mantra had always been that we’d be just ne as long as we had each
other, but that pact—unsustainable between a mother who would grow old and a son
who’d eventually marry and have children of his own—could now be honorably
dissolved by both parties. That’s what our long journey across America, all those scary
on- and off-ramps, had been about. As she herself had put it, “Ricko-Mio, we did it.”
And if we’d done it, it stood to reason that it must be finished, right?