Stay Up With Me by Tom Barbash

I felt myself tense.
    â€œWe need to do things like this,’’ she said, as though it was just something to do.
    I looked away from her to the water, black as ink. I am thirty-one now, with my own children, and live across the country from my mother and Norman. We see each other only occasionally, but even in a year when we did not speak at all I never felt so far from her as I did right then.
    I waited for her hand to drop, then I howled, a long high moan that made my chest burn. I closed my eyes and let the sound carry into the damp night air. I howled for a long while there, her next to me, silent, listening, my ears and throat ringing.

Somebody’s Son
    T hey are both at the door when we walk up, the old lady in a hand-knit green pullover, the man in a gray cardigan that bleeds gray onto his undershirt. He looks just-risen from bed. His voice is hoarse, and he holds his wife’s arm as they make their way out to the front stoop. They look us over.
    Eddie and I both have gum boots on, jeans, flannel shirts, and down vests. Upstate clothes. Eddie had them first and I followed, not deliberately—item by item—so it snuck up on me that I’d done it. Now here I am looking quite a bit like Eddie.
    Eddie introduces us as new in town. True enough. Stopping by just to meet our neighbors, which is a stretch.
    â€œQuite a layout here. What do you have, a hundred fifty, two hundred acres?” Eddie looks around as though searching for a boundary fence, though he already knows the dimensions of this place.
    â€œThree hundred eleven,” she says. “All the woods there behind the creek and the hollow there, to the river. Right up to the Oswegatchie there.”
    â€œBeautiful river,” Eddie says, like he’s complimenting her on a watercolor she’s made or a turkey she’s cooked. “Nice little town too. Pine. Nice place.”
    The old lady tilts her head meditatively. “I guess it is.”
    â€œBit cold out here,” Eddie says. “You mind if we come inside a moment or two?”
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    Once inside Eddie finagles us tea and biscuits, and he starts playing therapist, nodding his head as the woman, Mrs. Berner, tells us about disasters in her life. She says the land has become a nightmare since her husband’s stroke two years back.
    Eddie plays slow to agree.
    â€œBut you’ve got a real farm,” he says. “That’s the way to live, straight from the earth.”
    â€œIt’s too big for us. We haven’t been able to do a thing out there for years. It’s a waste,” she says. “And it’s not like we have a pension rolling in. We’ve got no income.”
    He’s managed to get her to talk him into his pitch.
    â€œYou ever thought of selling the place, getting some smaller spot in town?” I ask.
    Eddie shoots me a look: slow down. He’s training me so I can close this sale later on my own. He sips his tea, then places the cup on the table next to him so he can use his hands to paint the picture.
    â€œWhat Randall means is that the two of you deserve to be living better,” Eddie says. “Lord sakes, you’ve earned it. What kind of life would you want if you could have anything you’ve dreamed of?”
    â€œI’d say we’ve had . . . what we wanted,” the old man says, and he looks so pathetic it breaks my heart.
    â€œThink big,” Eddie says. “Think of what you’d want if money were no object. I mean for me, I’d think of a new car, a speedboat, maybe a cruise to South America. You ever been to South America?”
    The man lets out a sepulchral cough. Then he holds the handkerchief over his mouth and spits.
    Eddie switches the conversation, to hunting and fishing, and finding no traction there asks Mrs. Berner about her children.
    â€œOh, they’re in California now,” she says.
    â€œThink about visiting them,” Eddie says. “It’s a