Let the Northern Lights Erase Your Name Read Online Free PDF Page B

wanted to tell a story if she wasn’t there to hear it.
    “Do you ever miss Finland?” I heard Fern ask.� I strained my ears.�
    “I miss the solitude,” my mother said.� “But you’ve always been so social.”�
    “You have to be social when there are people around.”�
    I made an effort to stare at the TV. I was afraid if I looked � in my mother’s direction, I might catch her gesturing toward Jeremy and me.
    After an hour, I took Jeremy to the bathroom in case he needed to go. While sitting him down, I noticed all the wax that had accumulated in his left ear. I searched through Fern’s medicine cabinet and Q-tipped out the buildup with such determina-tion that Jeremy started to scream.

    The outburst cut our visit short. My mother interpreted it as a sign Jeremy didn’t like Fern’s house, and I didn’t disabuse her of this idea.
    “I really like Fern,” my mother said, once we were in the car. “I think she and I are going to be good friends again.”
    I knew better than to believe her fondness for Fern would last. The year before, she had said the same thing about Clara, and Irene, and Sandy, Christina, Sandy (a different one), Judy, and Patty. For at least a month, each of these women had my mother’s full devotion. They were sent cards if they’d had a hard day, were given flowers if something had gone right at work. But she would then switch affections. She would simply stop taking their calls, and I’d be left answering the phone. My mother would stand in the hallway or beside me, instructing me to say she wasn’t home. She signaled this with a sharp movement of her hand across her neck.
    Dad apologized to people on her behalf when she’d said something uncouth; he collected her friends when she tossed them off. Maybe he knew it wouldn’t be long before she shunned him as well. But Dad was a handsome man, and his friendships with the discarded women didn’t sit well with their husbands. One of the women—Christina—gave me a note to pass along to him. I read it first. She had written, “If only you hadn’t complimented my blouse in his presence . . .”

4.
    When we returned home from Fern’s that afternoon, the neighbor’s cat, Taft, was sitting on our porch. He was making his rounds earlier than usual. My mother searched in vain for milk. “Damn,” she said.
    In recent months, my mother had started talking to Taft. Every night after dinner, the cat would come to our porch and meow for my mother’s attention and milk.
    Dad was allergic to cats, to dogs, and my mother didn’t hesi-tate to show her annoyance at his condition. I thought her visits with the cat would stop as the weather changed, but no. When fall approached, she would pull a blanket over her shoulders before heading out to the porch; come winter, she put on a parka.
    She would sit outside for hours, talking to Taft. As it grew later, she’d stick her head inside the house and call up to me: “Did you finish your homework?” or “Did you brush your teeth?” I often lied in hopes she would come upstairs and rep-rimand me.
    The second-floor bathroom was above the porch, and I would lean my head out, trying to hear what she was saying. I would catch a word or two, but usually she was whispering.
    I complained to Dad one night. “She’s talking to the damned cat again,” I said. I was swearing to show I was mad; I was sure he would scold me.
    “What do you say we kill it?” he said.
    In the second before he started laughing, I saw that he was dead serious, his eyes dark as a gun.

5.
    At five p.m. on December 16, my mother called me into her study. I waited until she said my name twice, so I didn’t appear too eager.
    She was sitting at her desk, a set of salt and pepper shakers before her. She had evidently poured out the contents of both onto her desk and was drawing patterns in the seasoning with her forefinger. I took a step back, wishing that this time I hadn’t responded when summoned.
    “Do you