Ross stood in the door of Harrington’s and saw his mother. There. At the booth in the corner by a window. She was staring out at the parking lot. She looked as Ross remembered her but thinner, a hell of a lot thinner. He noticed a slight tremor in her hands, wondered what that was about. He refused to dwell on it, refused to feel bad for her. When was the last time he’d seen her? Long time but she had never left him. Every day he felt her next to him, her unwashed voice of booze and cigarettes in his ears at night. Baby, she whispered, my baby. Ross stared at the floor and tried to steady his breathing. His heart thumped against his chest and he began to feel nauseous.

Last week, Ross found her on Facebook. No posts. No nothing but a blurred photo of her wan face and lank, straw blonde hair. Look at her, he told his NA sponsor. They were seated at a table in a coffee shop. A waitress took their order. Ross asked for green tea; his sponsor requested coffee, black. Thank you, the waitress said. Ross stopped drinking coffee after he had caught himself consuming five, six cups a morning for an easy speed rush. When he felt stressed, he donated plasma for the contact high of a needle entering his vein. His sponsor told him to stop it. What you’re doing will lead you back to the real thing, he warned Ross.

Ross’s mother hadn’t sounded surprised when he called her from the halfway house a Los Angeles superior court judge had referred him to. How are you, baby? Her sandpaper voice rising from some lower depths. Don’t call me that, he told her. Don’t you ever call me that again. What should I call you? Trying to sound smooth, flirtatious. Ross, he said. I have a fucking name, remember? She got quiet after that. I needed to see you, Ross said. Why? she wanted to know, after all this time? Because, he said. I quit drinking and I’m not doing dope but I still got no money. Not asking for your money, Ross told her. I need to see you. Where? she said. You call it, he told her. He hated to allow her that much power but he knew he would stand a better chance of her showing up if she chose the spot. Harrington’s, she said. He laughed. Just like her to say she had quit drinking and then suggest they meet in a bar. Not drinking, huh? he said. I’m a functioning alcoholic now, she said. That’s quitting to me. I’m a functioning alcoholic, too, he said, and a heroin addict. Six months clean and sober.

His sponsor opposed the idea of them meeting but Ross insisted. I’m going to see her, he said. I’m fourth-stepping her. I can’t do anything until she owns up for what she did to me. No, you’re not fourth-stepping nothing, his sponsor said. The fourth step in NA is for you to make amends to those you hurt because of your addictions. Your mother isn’t making amends. She’s not coming to you is she? You’re going to her. She’s not owning up to you. Forget her. You have plenty of work to do on yourself. Ross shook his head. I’m thirty-three years old. I can’t do anything until she owns up for what she did, he said again.

He continued watching her from the door,  conscious of the sweat gathering under his arms. Three men sat at the bar hunched over their glasses. The bartender spoke to one of them. A mirror caught the movement of his shoulders as he poured a drink. His mother continued looking out the window. Move, Ross told himself. He stepped forward onto the green linoleum floor, felt the softness of it beneath his boots, the wood under it probably rotted. He took a shop class when he was locked up and learned a little carpentry. Not much but enough to know floors. And bullshit. He knows bullshit, the stink of it, real good.  Like this one dude,  a guy he joined for a smoke after an NA meeting. I was in California Institution for Men, the guy said. Bullshit, Ross thought. No one who has been inside calls a prison by its full name. Each one has an abbreviation. It’s CIM, bitch. Ross hates little wanna-be tough-guy-recovering-junkie bullshit. He flicked his cigarette so it landed in the dude’s hair. Started a little brush fire. Jesus! the guy screamed. What’s your fucking problem? You, Ross said. I’ll be at this meeting tomorrow. I don’t want to see you here again. He didn’t.

Ross passed the bar and reached his mother’s booth and stood over her. He refused to speak until she looked at him. It took what seemed a long time for her to turn away from the window. Her eyes flitted from his face to his shoulders. The half-moon, baggy skin under her eyes like hammocks. She wore a patterned shirt with snap buttons and a watch too big for her wrist. Frail now, Ross thought. Missing teeth. She couldn’t hurt him.He remembered her as big and scary. He would hear her come into his room early in the morning. Still dark out, the starless sky paralyzed in darkness. He’d stop breathing. He listened to the silence hoping that by holding his breath she would disappear into the emptiness of his not breathing. Sometimes he almost fell back to sleep. Then he’d feel her pull the sheet off of his body. Baby, she said, her hand rubbing his chest. He stiffened, eyes squeezed shut. Her hand working down to his stomach. His breath came back. Fast. Frantic. My baby, she whispered.

I saw you get off the bus and come into the parking lot, she said.

She sat back and motioned with one hand for him to take a seat.

I don’t need your permission, he said.

He slid into the booth, the plastic covers on the seat sticking to his pants.

Why’re we here? she said.

Don’t touch me.

I haven’t moved. I’ve missed you. I’ve wondered about you.

I think about what you did to me every day.

What I did?

I want you to take responsibility for it, he said.

What are you talking about? I haven’t seen you in years.

He leaned forward.

It was years before this, he said. Touching me.

She didn’t speak. She sank back into the booth opening and closing her mouth like a fish but uttering no words. She looked out the window and then toward the bar and back again to the window like someone unable to rid herself of a disturbing thought.

I got nothing to say to that, she said finally. I haven’t seen you in I don’t know how long and you come at me with something I don’t even know what you’re talking about. How about starting over and saying it’s nice to see me?

Because I’m not a liar. You’d be dead in prison for what you did but I don’t want you dead. I just need you to admit what you did.

I did a lot of things. I was a drunk and a meth head, she said. I’m better now. Not perfect but better. You know what it’s like.

I do but I never wanted to touch a child.

And your daddy? You going to just lay all this on me?

Daddy left. I don’t even remember him but I remember you. I lived with you.

He abandoned us. He wasn’t perfect.

He married you so I guess not but he didn’t touch me. You did every kind of drug but smoked your own shit but that doesn’t excuse you.

She bit her upper lip and stared past him. Her hands shook and she folded them into fists and tucked them under her arms. After a moment, she took a cigarette from her breast pocket and put it in her mouth but didn’t light it.

You never touched a child? she said, the cigarette bouncing at the corner of her mouth as she spoke. Then why did that judge turn your boy over to your auntie?

That has nothing to do with this.

It’s got everything to do with all this touching you’re talking about.

I didn’t touch him.

Beating’s touching. You were fucked up just like I was and we both done fucked up things to our own. Me to you, you to him.

I’m nothing like you.

You were like yourself and your daddy’s sister got your boy.

I’d been arrested for possession and their mother was no longer in the picture.

He got took from you and then you got busted in that order. His momma had nothing to do with that.

God dammit, this isn’t about me!

Spitting out the cigarette, she got up and walked to the bar. She stood sideways against a stool and waited for the bartender, smirking with a cunning awareness at how she’d gotten into Ross’s head, and while not alleviating herself of her own horrors, had turned his attention to his own and allowed her to float in a curious suspension beyond their mutual self-loathing.

Ross remembered those sweaty nights he would get sick and leave desperate messages for his dealer. His four-year old son crying in the other room. The noise of his small boy hysterics chiseling into Ross’s nerves. Shut up! He grabbed him, squeezed his arm until his skin bulged against his hand. Shut up! Fighting against nausea. Shaking him. Shut up! Shut up! Shut up! Taking that belt with the cowboy buckle. Shut up! The boy shrieked when he struck him. Again. Again. Again. Stopped hitting him when his dealer called. After he scored Ross returned to the apartment high. His son hadn’t moved. Still on the couch whimpering. Shitted himself. Ross stumbled, found a bowl and filled it with warm water and soap, cleaned him with a washcloth slopping water over everything. Muttering apologies. Fighting against nodding out. Chin against his chest, saliva pooling on his lower lip. Feeling far off as if he was watching himself through clouds. Vaguely understanding he’d beaten his son and hating himself from a distance.

We carry our share of burdens, his mother said.

What? the bartender asked.

Two more, she said.

Since he had been at the halfway house Ross had thought of calling his aunt to ask about his son but he was afraid she wouldn’t speak to him. His sponsor suggested he write her a letter. He tried but didn’t get far. His thoughts backed up in his brain and he couldn’t get the words out and his poor penmanship embarrassed him. His sponsor gave him a recorder.  Say what you want to say into this, he said, and then we’ll transcribe it together and put it in a letter. Ross sat in his room on the edge of his bed and spoke into the recorder but he didn’t recognize his voice when he played it back. It sounded hollow in the emptiness of his room with no feeling or connection to him.

His mother returned to the booth carrying two bottles of beer. She set them on the table and sat down. She pushed one toward him. He shoved it back and she caught it before it tipped over. Ross began to cry. His shoulders shuddered and he forced himself to stop. His mother watched with a remote curiosity.  Brushing tears from his eyes, Ross stood and rubbed the back of his jacket sleeve against his nose. He would not look at her.

I love my son.

I never stopped loving you, she said.

She reached for his hand. He jerked it away and walked toward the door. The linoleum made crackling sounds beneath his shoes. One man at the bar shifted on his stool. You leaving? he said, but Ross didn’t look to see if he was speaking to him or someone else.. When he stepped outside, Ross hurried to the bus shelter and sat on a bench. Crows took up the wires of a telephone pole and tilted their heads watching him. He wanted to run, to shed his clothes like a snake sheds skin and flee. He clamped his hands over his ears and rocked back and forth. When he saw the bus coming, he stood confused for a moment by the reflection of clouds rolling across its windshield. He waited for it to stop,  got on and took it to the plasma center on San Julian Street where he made his way through the homeless people out front and signed in. A nurse led him to a chair and told him to sit. He said nothing to her and she said nothing more to him. She held his left arm and rubbed alcohol over a vein and inserted a needle attached to tubing connected to a collection bag. For a moment Ross soared, all tension and memory released from his body. That little bump. That little prick tease of a contact high, and then it was gone, a lingering, yearning desire. Thirty minutes later the nurse withdrew the needle and put a bandaid over the puncture. Ross stopped at the front desk to collect his payment. Stepping outside, he took out his phone and dialed a number he hoped still worked. Hello, a familiar voice answered. Ross felt calm, lifted,  as if the decision to call his dealer was its own kind of high.

He met him at a boarded-up house in MacArthur Park with only one dim light on inside. The dank interior smelled of rot and mildew. Ross followed him into the kitchen. Wires hung from a hole in the ceiling. A man and two women sat in chairs at a table and looked at him, raising their heads with slow deliberation as if they were struggling against a great weight. Ross handed the dealer his cash and the dealer gave him a small baggie of white powdered heroin and a piece of frayed twine and a syringe. Ross mixed the heroin with water the dealer poured into a cup from a plastic jug on the counter. He sat at the table and tied off his left arm and gripped one end of the twine in his teeth, pulling it tight, while he held the syringe in his free hand above the same vein the nurse had used. His sponsor would tell him how he had screwed up the fourth step and let his anger get in the way of his reason and all of the other happy horse shit he needed to work through, and then he felt a surge of warmth wash over him. He slid down, his body melting into the chair. This is love, he said to the hazy faces around him before he closed his eyes and no longer thought of them or anyone else.