Her dread intensified. "Mom? Is something wrong with the TV?"
Still no response. She threaded a bulb into the hanging lamp over the dining room table. The room looked normal. She climbed onto a chair to replace the bulb in the kitchen ceiling lamp.
The light revealed a cluttered mess. She peeked in the empty refrigerator, sniffed the milk. It had turned to cheese. She would load the dishwasher and set it running before she left. Maybe do some grocery shopping, but that would leave her no money to travel with.
She headed for the stairs, and gazed, tight-lipped, at the new pile of untouched mail below the mail slot.
There was still a bulb in the wall sconce on the stairs, thank goodness. She started to climb, passing photos of herself and Cindy, her grandparents, and her parents' wedding portraits. The four of them, skiing together in Banff on that vacation they had taken five years ago.
She knocked on the door to the master bedroom. "Mom?" Her voice sounded like a frightened child's.
"Honey? Is that you?" Her mother's voice was froggy and thick.
Her relief was so intense, tears sprang into her eyes. She opened the door. Her mother was sitting on the bed, blinking in the light from the stairs. The room smelled stale.
"Mom? I'm turning the light on," she warned.
Barbara Riggs gazed up at her daughter, her eyes dazed and reddened. Her usually meticulous bed was wildly disarranged, half of the mattress showing. A terrycloth bathrobe was draped over the television. "Mom? Are you OK?"
The shadows under her mother's eyes looked like bruises. "Sure. Just resting, sweetie." She turned her gaze away, as if looking her daughter in the eye were an activity too effortful to sustain.
"Why is the bathrobe over the TV?" Erin asked.
Her mother's neck sank into her hunched shoulders like a turtle retracting into its shell. "It was looking at me," she muttered.
Those five words scared Erin more than anything else had that day, which was saying a hell of a lot. "Mom? What do you mean?"
Barbara shook her head and pushed herself up off the bed with visible effort. "Nothing, honey. Let's go have a cup of tea."
"Your milk's gone bad," Erin said. "You hate it without milk."
"So I'll just have to cope, won't I?"
Erin flinched at her mother's sharp tone. Barbara's eyes softened. "I'm sorry, sweetie. It's not you. You're an angel. It's just… everything. You know?"
"I know," Erin said quietly. "It's OK. Let me make up this bed."
She tucked and straightened the bed, but when she grabbed the bathrobe to pull it off the TV, her mother lunged to stop her. "No!"
Erin let go of it, but the robe was already sliding onto the floor with a plop. "What is it?" she asked. "What is it with the TV?"
Her mother wrapped her arms around her middle. "It's just that I've, ah… I've been seeing things."
Erin waited for more, but Mom just shook her head, her eyes bleak and staring. "What things?" Erin prompted.
"When I turn on the TV," her mother said.
"Most people do," Erin observed. "That's what it's for."
"Do not be snotty with me, young lady," Barbara snapped.
Erin took a deep breath and tried again. "What do you see, Mom?"
Barbara sank back down on the bed. "I see your dad, and that woman," she said dully. "In those videos. Every channel. Both TVs."
Erin sat down heavily on the bed. "Oh," she whispered. "I see."
"No. You don't. You can't." Barbara's voice trembled. She wiped her puffy eyes, and groped for the bedside box of Kleenex. "The first time, I thought it was a dream. But then it started happening more often. Now it's all the time. Every time I touch the thing. Today it turned itself on. I swear, I didn't even touch it today, and it turned itself on."
Erin had to try several times before she could choreograph her voice into being low and soothing. "That's not possible, Mom."
"I know it's not," her mother snapped. "Believe me, I know. And I know that it… that it isn't a good sign. That I'm seeing things."
Their eyes met, and Erin glimpsed the depths of her mother's terror. The yawning fear of losing her grip on reality itself.
She reached for the controls on the TV.
"No!" her mother cried out. "Honey, please. Don't—"
"Let me show you, Mom," she insisted. "It'll be perfectly normal."
An old Star Trek episode filled the room. She changed channels, to a rerun of M.A.S.H. And again, to the evening news. She changed that channel quickly, in case news of Novak's escape should be announced. That was all Mom needed to hear tonight. She left it on a perky commercial for floor wax. "See? Nothing wrong with the TV."
Her mother's brow furrowed into a knot of perplexity. A chorus line of dancing cartoon mops high-kicked their way across a gleaming cartoon floor. "I don't understand," she whispered.
"Nothing to understand." Erin tried to sound cheerful. It felt forced and hollow. She flipped off the TV "Come on downstairs, Mom."
Barbara followed her, with slow, shuffling steps. "I don't know whether to be relieved, or even more frightened that it was normal."
"I vote for relieved," Erin said. "In fact, I vote that we celebrate. Get dressed, and we can go out to the Safeway. Your fridge is empty."
"Oh, that's OK, honey. I'll do it myself, tomorrow."
"Promise?"
Barbara patted her daughter's anxious face. "Of course I will."
A teabag dangled inside the teapot, fluffy with mold. "How long has it been since you ate, Mom?" Erin demanded.
Barbara made a vague gesture. "I had some crackers a while ago."
"You have to eat." Erin rummaged through the clutter for the dish soap. "Did you know about Cindy's scholarship?"
Barbara winced. "Yes," she murmured. "They called me."
"And?" Erin scrubbed the teapot with soapy water, and waited.
No reply was forthcoming. She looked over her shoulder, frowning. "Mom? What's happening? Tell me."
"What do you want me to say, hon? The conditions are clear. The scholarship is only valid if Cindy keeps up a 3.0 average. It was 2.1 last semester. Her midterms this semester were a disaster. There's no money for tuition if she loses that scholarship."
Erin stared at her in blank dismay. "Cindy can't just quit school."
Barbara's shoulders lifted, and dropped.
Erin stood there, frozen. Her soapy hands dripped onto the floor.
Mom looked so defeated. Now would be the moment to pull a rabbit out of a hat, but there was no money for tuition at a private college. Not even fees from her new client could solve a problem of that size. The CDs were cashed in. The new mortgage had gone to pay for Dad's defense.
Erin wiped her hands on her jeans. She groped for something positive to say as she gazed at her mother. The impulse sagged and faded into silence. Barbara Riggs had always been so well dressed and perfectly made up. Now her face was puffy, her eyes dull, her unwashed hair snarled into a crooked halo.
Suddenly the messy kitchen was too depressing to endure. "Let's go into the living room, Mom."
Barbara flinched. "I don't want to look at the—"
"There's nothing wrong with the TV. Once I hook it back up, I'll show you that it's as normal as the one upstairs. There's no space on this table for me to open your mail. Come on, let's go."
Erin scooped up the mail on her way in, trying not to notice her mother's stumbling, shambling gait behind her. She flipped on the lamp in the living room. Something was odd. She hadn't noticed it before, distracted as she'd been by the disheveled state of the TV. "Why is the clock turned to the wall? And Grandmother Riggs's mirror?"
Her mother's blank, startled gaze lit on the stained wooden backing of the antique mirror. The wire that held it to the hook barely cleared the ornate gilded frame. Her eyes widened. "I never touched it."