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Bill was far and away my favorite of my mom’ s boyfriends. She met him when I was ten, just after a bout with a grumpy alcoholic whose name I don’ t remember. Bill lived in a little white house that he owned in a bad part of town, with a rusted back gate and a tiny yard. He was the first boyfriend to stay in the room for more than an initial five minutes when I came to visit her, and even showed me pictures of his son, who was fighting in Afghanistan. He had real furniture, with blankets my mom had crocheted laid on every couch and chair, but more than anything, I loved the way he sat so calmly with his arm around her, getting up to get us glasses of water so she would not have to leave me.
Typically, my foster mom would lead the conversation, because my mom and I were so awkward, stumbling over sentences, trying so hard to find something to say. I loved her, but love was not enough to span all the gaps she had left— in time, affection, my knowledge of her as a person. Her fluffy white cat named Sisqo that Bill let in the screen door from the scrawny yard was the first clue I had that she listened to any music other than oldies, and the green fuzzy sweater she gave me for my birthday was a testament to her lack of knowledge of my boyish tastes. Bill stepped neatly into those gaps, with his calm circle-lensed glasses and his white linen pants, asking me about school and books, telling me about his son.
He took my mom bowling and didn’ t keep liquor in the house. She got a job while she was with him as part of her adult education. She worked in a nursing home filling water glasses during lunch service, and each time she called me, she had a story to tell me about what the crazy old people said, or how much the old men loved her company. For the first time in my life, she was sober, thriving, alive. Bill told me a story of how during their first argument, he raised his hands in expression, and she flinched as though he was going to hit her.“ The argument stopped,” he explained, as my mom laid a hand on his knee, smiling at me.“ I couldn’ t believe that she thought I would hit her, and we needed to talk about it.”
They were together for years, which to my mom might have been eons. I’ ll never know how it ended, because my mom was suddenly slurring her words every phone call. She quit working and got a shitty two-room apartment over a pizza joint in center city, with walls painted a creamy orange. She started dating the man in the next apartment, a silver-haired guy named Sal, who showed me pictures of his estranged daughters on our first meeting, each wallet-sized school
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