I know now that she was beside herself with grief, that she had slipped into some other groove, some other reality. But I felt betrayed. I will be honest with you. I cried more for my mother’s betrayal than I ever cried for my brother’s death. It wasn’t clear if guilt or hope was prompting her theories, her hypotheses, which varied depending on the time of day, on the day of the month, on moods that orbited a moon of her own. Though her inconsistency was precisely her weakness, the fact that she refused my account embittered me.
