He said: it’s my room. Just like this entire house. I’m the man of the house.
He said: my brother came over and we wanted to watch football.
I did not respond.
I went to the basement door.
The basement in our house was a finished basement in the functional sense, a space that had flooring and walls, but which was not what anyone would call a bedroom in any meaningful sense.
There was no window.
There was no bathroom.
There was a laundry area and the furnace and storage.
And in the middle of it, on an air mattress on the floor, my mother.
She was asleep.
Her medications were on the floor beside the air mattress, the bottles that I had arranged carefully on the bedside table upstairs.
