lk about him right now.

His parents' flaw -- whatever it was -- was too subtle to detect without the
scifi helmet. They never knew for sure what it was. Many of the bats were in the
same belfry: part of the bugouts' arrogant compassion held that a couple never
knew which one of them was defective, so his family never knew if it was his
nervous, shy mother, or his loud, opinionated father who had doomed them to the
quarantine.

His father told him, in an impromptu ceremony before he slid his keycard into
the lock on their new apt in the belfry: "Chet, whatever they say, there's
nothing wrong with us. They have no right to put us here." He knelt to look the
skinny ten-year-old right in the eye. "Don't worry, kiddo. It's not for long --
we'll get this thing sorted out yet." Then, in a rare moment of tenderness, one
that stood out in Chet's memory as the last of such, his father gathered him in
his arms, lifted him off his feet in a fierce hug. After a moment, his mother
joined the hug, and Chet's face was buried in the spot where both of their
shoulders met, smelling their smells. They still smelled like his parents then,
like his old house on the Beaches, and for a moment, he knew his father was
right, that this couldn't possibly last.

A tear rolled down his mother's cheek and dripped in his ear. He shook his
shaggy hair like a dog and his parents laughed, and his father wiped away his
mother's tear and they went into the apt, grinning and holding hands.

Of course, they never left the belfry after that.

#

I can't remember what the last thing my mother said to me was. Do I remember her
tucking me in and saying, "Good night, sleep tight, don't let the bedbugs bite,"
or was that something I saw on a vid? Was it a nervous command to wipe my shoes
on the way in the door? Was her voice soft and sad, as it sometimes is in my
memories, or was it brittle and angry, the way she often seemed after she
stopped talking, as she banged around the tiny, two-room apt?

I can't remember.

My mother fell away from speech like a half-converted parishioner falling away
from the faith: she stopped visiting the temple of verbiage in dribs and drabs,
first missing the regular sermons -- the daily niceties of Good morning and Good
night and Be careful, Chet -- then neglecting the major holidays, the Watch
out!s and the Ouch!s and the answers to direct questions.

My father and I never spoke of it, and I didn't mention it to the other