My Son Told Me Not to Come for Christmas but Two Days Later My Phone Would Not Stop Ringing

how many times I had said something similar to myself, in different words, across sixty months of first-of-the-month transfers.

“She said the thing about the peasant routine to you on the phone,” he said. “I didn’t know she called me.”

“She did.”

“The photograph,” he said. “Mom’s photograph. Behind the vase. I didn’t put it there.”

“I know,” I said. “But continue reading …