“If you fold the paper like this it’s easier to cut the pieces small. Now cut—just watch now!—like this in strips, you see? And then hold it right over this bag and cut the rest like I’m doing. You have to press harder because pictures are heavier than regular paper. Look at the colors, Edward. Look at all of them. It’s going to be beautiful. Go ahead, you try.”

It was a gloomy, rainy day I remember; I couldn’t have been more than five. We were cutting confetti, Mom had said, to cheer ourselves up. She’d been sad for a long time, but I was too young to recognize the dull ache that dwelt dormant beneath her skin, springing to the surface in surprise tears during moments of solitude. I only knew that she held me tight at the mention of my father, fingers in my hair, telling me we’d be just fine. I had stopped expecting him home, almost forgotten except for in fleeting moments when other fathers appeared on the periphery of the playground.

“Look there at my belly—that bump? That’s you. You were there, too. Everyone knew of course, but nobody said anything. Not in my family.”

She was happy in pictures: bright and blonde and bubbly, just a bit of a belly, my father bashful beside her, beatific at the altar amongst the carnations and choirboys, hand in hand, eye to eye, soft focus, faces framed by rafter shadows. The photograph flaked at the scrape of her fingernails as she loosened it (scratch, crunch, crackle) from the diagonals of glue across the page before folding it—first in half and then again—slicing decisively down each crease with sewing scissors almost to the edge, stopping short so as to have a handle when she cut the opposite way, pieces falling like fleshy snowflakes into the paper bag at her feet. The last bit lengthwise between her fingers, she showed me to cut carefully—sparing myself from the blades of my blue safety scissors—up to the very tip.

I grabbed one for myself, pudgy fingers digging at the plastic sheeting with bitten nails. Mom was posed as if for a painting, lips pursed, hands midair as Annie held the veil just above her head, white mesh surrounding her like a cloud. Annie, the broken-hearted bridesmaid, prettier than my mother, but rumpled, all wrinkled satin and falling curls, girlish in a way my mother could no longer be. I’ve seen the picture again, of course, my grandmother’s copy, framed above the piano evoking a time in which everyone was sweeter and kinder, innocent and thin, but without my father, the way it had always been. The two of them were so young then, round and ripe and ready, but not for everything. Not for me. I snipped at it, hesitant at first, worried about my mother’s face and her hands, but I was old enough, mischievous enough to enjoy it; every time I closed the scissors I giggled and soon it was in scraps at my feet.

“In this one,” she pointed, “I had just finished being sick in the bathroom. That’s why my face is red. I wasn’t sure if it was your fault or my nerves.”

She was nervous now, scared of her own shadow. I didn't like to see her so lost, so shaky, so I took it upon myself to be responsible, though at the time I wasn't quite sure what it meant. I still held hands to cross the street, but with Mom I led, looking both ways, gently tugging her to safety. I tucked her in at night telling stories I thought she'd like, cuddled on the couch. She couldn't sleep in her bed anymore. Once she fell asleep, it was up to me to turn off the lights and lock the door before I lifted her arm with both hands and hid beneath it till morning. I’m not sure she slept the nights I stayed with my grandparents. I didn't like to leave her, but my grandmother insisted on taking me one night a week, so mom could “get her head together.” I didn't know what that meant for her; for me it was ice cream and maybe the movies. Grandma would take me out on her errands in the afternoons, leaving Mom to herself. At the grocery store and the bank, she would talk to me about my father.

“You don't know your Daddy very well, do you?” I shook my head, staring out into the distance, the cellophane wrapped cookies, bright cracker boxes, jars of jam. It was a loaded question. “That’s because he’s gone all the time.”

I didn’t like to talk in front of her. She wanted me to say “yes” instead of “yeah” and “no” instead of “uh-uh”. I was expected to be proper, so I chose seen and not heard over effort, spending my visits nibbling my way through the house, leaving crumbs conspiratorially, like a bold little mouse. The most I ever said was when Pop Pop and I were left to our own devices. We watched television and he would explain everything. I only needed ask one question, “Why’s he doing that?” and I’d get a lesson in physics, finance, human history. Pop Pop was a lot more interesting than Grandma gave him credit for, or even Mom knew. It was because to him, quiet was a gift, and like me, he hated to be corrected. Around their house, I was a different kind of child, sullen, silent, indecisive. No one saw how I took care of my mother, how I soothed her to sleep on the sofa, how I made dinner. We’d been eating peanut butter for weeks. I wouldn’t have told them, even if they’d asked. I knew, though not so clearly as I do now, that talking about Mom, or anything, could break the secret trust we shared, that bound us together like the blood in our veins. I’d heard enough bedtime stories to know of Knights and Saints and Saviors, giving of themselves in order to save another. There was no dragon, no damnation, so I offered my silence. I didn't have a king or a god, only a mother.

“He's not very nice, is he? Making your mother cry like that.”

I’d learned a trick at the doctor’s office the last time I had my eyes checked. If I stared long enough into the aisle of plastic wrappers and relaxed my eyes, all the colors would shift together. If I focused on the far end of the store, the colors would creep into sides of my eyes, so when I shook my head, “No,” nice and slow, it was a kaleidoscope under fluorescent lights, dancing and repositioning with each turn of my vertebrae. I wanted to sink into the sparkle, the patterns, the warm buzz of the supermarket, to float on artificial light and machine sound like a cloud all the way to the ceiling. I wanted to touch the tiles, to sneak through them and climb from the building. I wanted to fly. But I just shook my head along to Grandma's questions and pointed when she asked, “What do you want, Edward?” She couldn't make it come true.

I preferred to be with my mother. When Grandma dropped me home that morning, I grew an inch walking in the door, found my voice, and settled in like I owned the place. Mom wasn't so tired today. She was willing to play.

“Weddings are supposed to be exciting, but it's all just sitting and standing.” She pulled pictures from the album to show me: pews and pews full of people sitting, standing, laughing, clapping. Grandma grim at the edge of the altar, Pop Pop leaning blankly into the aisle. Photographs surrounded us, floating lopsided to the ground, preparing themselves for their final fall. I grabbed at them, catching two at a time and hacked away, leaving the edges rough and torn, messy and worn. They fell fat into the bag.

“You're getting good at this.” Mom smiled, well, halfway at least, and lit a cigarette. She didn't use to smoke, but since my father'd been gone this time, she'd taken it up. Marlboros just like his, sputtering and spitting her way through them, barely inhaling, taking only the first few drags and then letting it burn through like incense, filling the house with lazy smoke. She flicked the lighter a few times for effect and I watched the flame rise and fall, mesmerized. I saw it reflected in her eyes. She took a picture from the pile, and held it in front of her at an odd distance, as though trying to discern for herself what it could have meant. She and my father stood side-by-side again, outside this time, arms linked, shyly smiling. Mom brought the lighter closer to the paper, and closer, and closer. I watched the tongue of fire lick the edge of the paper, a little tentative, a little gently as it sizzled its way toward her fingers. Her face melted first, crumbling into the bag in the acrid haze. I held in a cough so as not to ruin the silence. She blew on the fire, wanting it to spread. I was scared, but I didn't say so. It was the first time in months I'd seen my mother so determined. I sank closer to the floor, so I would only have to stop and roll to safety if things got out of control. It lit up her face, bringing out all the hollows and angles. She looked like a mad ghost. The flames were closing in on her fingertips, climbing, climbing, and then she dropped it into the ashtray, leaving it to burn.

“The confetti's more fun, I think.” She sat herself beside me and resumed her scissor strokes in silence. She was calm now, as if setting fire to herself was all she needed. There were so many pictures to go. I just wanted to throw them. I didn't ask, though, because I knew that cutting them was as important as tossing them away.

The smell of my father smoldering in the ashtray was making my stomach ache, my eyes twitch, my hairs rise, my skin prick. I felt sick, but didn’t say so. Mom started feeding every other photo to the fire, filling the green glass with noxious gas. I was dizzy, but she’d never been so steely-eyed, so focused as when she watched herself, her old self, burn from the middle out. As the flames spread across the paper and the smoke swelled around us like clouds, she seemed stronger, like all the softness had been wrung from her, like her skin had shrunk against her bones. Her face was hollow, but held a strange spark, one I’ve only seen since in pictures of virgins on volcano edges: preternaturally still, lit from below, tears dried, hands untied, with sad eyes and winsome mouth, windblown, waiting to be pushed. It wasn’t bravery, but obligation, an uneasy steadiness in the sacrifice.

My mother wasn’t ready to start a different life. She was supposed to go to college, become something. She’d been smart enough, she was sure, good enough, but she got into a bind with me, with Dad, and now all there was was this rickety little house, this sticky little boy, this itchy couch, dented table, these empty nights and nervous days. She had paused her youth for my childhood, and it was dawning on her that it wasn’t something she could get back. Oh, she could go to college, she could make a life and work for herself, but I would always be there as a reminder of her mistakes, of what she couldn’t be or do. She told me later that she regretted everything about my father except me, that I was her boy, the most important thing in the world to her forever. I believe her, but it’s bittersweet.

“Your uncles were drunk, and they started a conga line. See?” When I didn’t understand, she hummed, “Do do do do do do. You know?” I nodded.

“Do do do do do do.”

It seemed to take all day for us to finish, wading through snapshots and professional photos, of my mother being twirled by her father, my father hunched in the corner with a cigarette and a grin, of great aunts and uncles, ex-friends, cakes and plates and platters piled high. We’d been tidy about it, but the room was full of smoke and ash and scraps, still, a womb of wallow, a den of sadness; we’d filled the living room with filth and mourning. Within a week, we’d be gone to my grandparents’ house, my mother in the spare bedroom, me in her old room, still filled with ruffles and my inheritance of stuffed animals, with my grandmother watching over us like a hawk over prey, protective, but cautious, each word toward my mother tinged with disappointment that I wouldn’t understand for years. We would have a different life, ill-fitting but functional. For now, though, we had our broken hearts in our broken house holding my father’s broken promises.

The rain outside had stopped, but the air was still heavy with the possibility of precipitation. I had my yellow raincoat on, unbuttoned. I can almost see it now, a little flash of sunshine energy in our puddled backyard holding tightly to a paper bag, while my mother, wan and pale and underdressed, followed behind with a bag of her own.

“Here?” I asked.

“Here,” she said. I reached into my bag and threw, slowly, watching it catch in the humidity and float softly through the heady air. My mother pulled her handful out quickly, throwing it skyward over me so that it rained upon my slicker, sticking softly to the sleeves, hanging onto my eyelashes like snow. I pushed my hood back, laughing, reaching and tossing. My mother was barely watching. She was hurling her scraps to the sky with skinny-armed force, wet-eyed but grinning as it fell around her. It wasn’t hers anymore. It was being committed to the ground. The confetti fell like leaves, catching on the wind and traveling, though not far, just across the yard, not even reaching the street. I ran under the shower of paper, dancing in the puddles and piles after we’d run out, grinding the bits into the mud with my sneakers, grabbing my mother’s hand, pulling her through the yard. I was still in charge, and when the rain started again, I held her there, lifting my face to the sky. I wanted to be cleaned of it, for her to be. I wanted her to be like the grass, to grow greener because of the rain. We stood there, hands together, faces tilted skyward, even after I was cold and she was shivering. Maybe it was the rain, but I swore I saw tears rolling down her cheeks as she surveyed the damage, the mess in the yard, the shards of her past spread out flat in the mud. I could have stood there indefinitely—I would have stayed—but when I saw her sadness, that the confetti had been a distraction rather than healing, I knew it was time to go inside. We had to clean up, move on, get out. This was not like a knee scrape; it was a virus, drifting through our veins, bursting forth in sickness and disappearing just the same, dead but carrying on for as long as our bodies would allow.