purer than his own.
“Marty!” she says with surprise and a quick warm smile, opening her
arms to him.
Touched by her instant acceptance, he crosses the threshold, into her
embrace, and holds fast to her as if to let go would be to drown.
“Honey, what is it? What’s wrong?” she asks.
Only then does he realize that he is sobbing. He is so moved by her
love, so grateful to have found a place where he belongs and is welcome,
that he cannot control his emotions.
He presses his face into her white hair, which smells faintly of
shampoo. She seems so warm, warmer than other people, and he wonders if
that is how a mother always feels.
She calls to his father, “Jim! Jim, come here quick!”
He tries to speak, tries to tell her that he loves her, but his voice
breaks before he can form a single word.
Then his father appears in the hallway, hurrying toward them.
Distorting tears can’t prevent his recognition of his dad. They
resemble each other to a greater extent than do he and his mother.
“Marty, son, what’s happened?”
He trades one embrace for the other, inexpressibly thankful for his
father’s open arms, lonely no more, living now in a world under glass,
appreciated and loved, loved.
“Where’s Paige?” his mother asks, looking through the open door into
the snow-filled day. “Where are the girls?”
“We were having lunch at the diner,” his father says, “and Janey
Torreson said you were on the news, something about you shot someone but
maybe it’s a hoax. Didn’t make any sense.”
He is still choked with emotion, unable to reply.
His father says, “We tried to call you as soon as we walked in the door,
but we got the answering machine, so I left a message.”
Again his mother asks about Paige, Charlotte, Emily.
He must gain control of himself because the false father might arrive at
any minute. “Mom, Dad, we’re in bad trouble,” he tells them.
“You’ve got to help us, please, my God, you’ve got to help.”
His mother closes the door on the cold December air, and they lead him
into the living room, one on each side of him, surrounding him with
their love, touching him, their faces filled with concern and
compassion. He is home. He is finally home.
He does not remember the living room any more than he remembers his
mother, his father, or the snows of his youth. The pegged-oak floor is
more than half covered by a Persian-style carpet in shades of peach and
green. The furniture is upholstered in a teal fabric, and visible wood
is a dark red-brown cherry. On the mantel, flanked by a pair of vases
on which are depicted Chinese temple scenes, a clock ticks solemnly.
As she leads him to the sofa, his mother says, “Honey, whose jacket are
you wearing?”
“Mine,” he says.
“But that’s the new style varsity jacket.”
“Are Paige and the kids all right?” Dad asks.
“Yes, they’re okay, they haven’t been hurt,” he says.
Fingering the jacket, his mother says, “The school only adopted this
style two years ago.”
“It’s mine,” he repeats. He takes off the baseball cap before she can
notice that it is slightly too large for him.
On one wall is an arrangement of photographs of him, Paige, Charlotte,
and Emily at different ages. He averts his eyes from that gallery, for
it affects him too deeply and threatens to wring more tears from him.
He must recover and maintain control of his emotions in order to convey
the essentials of this complex and mysterious situation to his parents.
The three of them have little time to devise a plan of action before the
imposter arrives.
His mother sits beside him on the sofa. She holds his right hand in
both of hers, squeezing gently, encouragingly.
j – To his left, his father perches on the edge of an armchair, leaning
. forward, attentive, frowning with worry.
He has so much to tell them and does not know where to begin.
He hesitates. For a moment he is afraid he’ll never find the right
first word, fall mute, oppressed by a psychological block even worse