A Wolf at the Table: A Memoir of My Father by Augusten Burroughs Page A

the stone wall and imagining running my fingers across it, could almost experience what it would feel like to the touch. And I simply had to see if I was right, if it felt the way I thought it would feel. It was like this with the ceiling.
    My mother grabbed the telephone and carried it over to the bed. She made a pile of pillows behind her back, lit a cigarette, and settled in.
    I turned on the television and my mother automatically made a motion with her hand, lower the volume.
    She called her friend Gayle and spoke in a weary, fatigued whisper. “I took Augusten and left the house.” She pulled on her cigarette and blew the smoke above the mouthpiece of the phone. “Yes, exactly,” she said. “That’s what I was worried about. So we’re fine now. We’re here and I’ll phone the doctor in the morning. Hopefully he can work on John.”
    It was hard to focus on the television and not eavesdrop on what my mother was saying. I began worrying about Ernie. Would my father just give him his regular food, or would he remember to give him treats? He had been the one who’d first given Ernie some carrots, so I wasn’t too worried.
    My mother didn’t stay on the phone for long. She hung up and told me, “I have some dimes if you want to run down to the vending machine for a snack.”
    The vivid paisley print of my mother’s hand-sewn cotton dress nearly throbbed in the drab room, which was lit only by a single lamp, its shade yellowed and stained. Now, being alone with her again, on the run, unsafe, I felt as though everything I knew was folding in on itself. My stomach faithfully cramped. “I wish we’d brought a hot water bottle,” I mumbled.
    “Oh, is your stomach bothering you again?” she said, and just the way she said it soothed me.
    “Yes,” I answered.
    She pulled me close and placed her warm hand on my stomach. “Shhhh,” she said, gently kissing my forehead. “It’s okay.” And even though I knew that it wasn’t, I let it be.
    She smelled like metal.
    I wanted to sleep.
    We slept.
    In the morning, my mother called my school and told them I would be out for a few days.
    We breakfasted on eggs over easy and dry white toast at a diner. The parking lot was filled with tractor trailers.
    My mother smoked and pushed her plate away untouched.
    “Did you sleep, Mom?”
    “A little.”
    “You look so tired. Are you okay?” Her cheeks appeared hollow and gaunt, and her eyes, bloodshot, had a haunted look that I didn’t like at all.
    Almost under her breath she said, “Finish your eggs, at least the white part.”
    I looked at the sprig of parsley on my plate and wondered if Ernie would eat it. I wanted to fold it into a napkin and bring it home for him. But when would we be home again?
    By the evening of the second night my mother had seen her psychiatrist and spoken to my father on the phone. I’d remained close to her side, except at the doctor’s office, where I waited for her in the reception room.
    “We’ll go home tomorrow,” she told me.
    “Can we go tonight?”
    “No. Tomorrow.”
    Finally I asked her, “What happened?”
    She looked thoughtfully at me and then seemed to decide something. “Your father has been drinking very heavily lately, and the other night when we were having that fight he wrapped his hands around my neck. I managed to kick him in the knee and free myself.”
    I just watched her.
    “So I didn’t think we should stay in the house anymore. I was worried that he was dangerous. Your father needed some time to settle down,” she told me.
    I held the word in my mouth before letting it out. “Dangerous.” What was this unspeakable danger, which had the quality of a dream evaporating just after waking? A name, but no shape. What was it about him that made me wary even when he wasn’t drunk? And whatever it was, did I have it within me, too?
    She stared into my eyes and her face held an expression as articulate as the words:  you know .
    I could always read my mother