My mother's name was Isabella.

"Sun's out, you're out," was Mother's favorite phrase. What that meant was that during the summer months, after morning chores and general horseplay, the children were to remain outside until the calls for lunch and dinner. We were stationed rather close to the house, either in our own expansive backyard or in the neighbors', playing in the wading pool, or acting out scenes from movies on the old stone back porch, the dogwood tree's outstretched arms tickling the tops of our heads as we took turns dying off the side of the stoop.

Mother was stern, but with a laugh, at least during the Younger Years, this according to Sissy. I was the last child, and Mother's laughter had either been used up during the previous childhoods of my siblings, or perhaps Mother had ceased to find her world amusing. Her gaze would float across the breakfast nook, never landing on anything, a little like a thirsty bird too parched to recognize a reflection for a puddle of standing water. Mother would ask little questions, and in those queries, reveal enough information to let you know she was paying attention somewhat to her brood's current events. Sissy said once, "One Cindy was enough. But he wanted boys." Being the second of two boys, the judgment meant little to me, but I feared I was as unwanted as Mother's egg breakfast, cooked and formally presented before her each morning, only to be sliced and arranged in a series of opposite angles by Mother's nervous, stuttering fork.

Mother was born in England, outside of London proper, and had met Father during the war. Father was stationed not far from her hometown and frequently made his way to the Cock and Bull Tavern for after duty dinner and alcohol. During one of Father and his army buddies' sojourns to their favorite bar ("You wouldn't understand half the jokes we made," my father used to say to us, winking, "but we knew the best and prettiest ladies preferred the Cock and Bull!"), Father made the impetuous decision to stop along the row leading to the tavern to tease the pups and kittens and monkey kept caged in the pet store. Mother was buying food for her flatmate's illegally kept ferret. Father caught site of the uniform ("I didn't know it was a nurse's uniform," Father would say to us, "but it was a damn good thing! Shame about the monkey.") and preceded to goad and tickle the animals, showing off, making up a song about stealing away my mother-to-be as he did it ("Gotta get on that train, gotta get me on that plane!"), his baritone voice, gilded from years of Catholic choir practice, merging with his easy smile, matinee star charm, and stilted sideburns. When the monkey bit off the tip of his ring finger, Father finished a verse with a flourish and watched as the blood sprayed the litter of kittens in the next cage. Mother, who was in fact a registered nurse, and despite being pretty, was not headed to the Cock and Bull (the tavern's reputation made it impossible for proper young ladies to patronize, but Mother gazed wistfully after the diminishing sounds of the juke or the band as its doors swallowed another soul to its rhythmic hell; at least that's what we told ourselves, as Mother arranged her eggs into geometric proofs at the breakfast nook), yanked the scarf from her carefully coiffed head and bound Father's finger, all the while making sure her eyes never left his, even as the color in his face slid away; "Down the drain," Father would tell us. As stunned shoppers and Father's army buddies stood stock still, their mouths all giant "O's", and Father's eyes wide as they could be, Mother popped open the latch on the monkey's cage with her free hand. Without breaking gaze with the man she would marry in less than 33 days, the man with whom she would conceive five children, Mother spoke directly to the shop owner standing askance in a dirty shit-covered apron, still holding the ferret food out toward my mother in a stained fish and chips bag.

"The monkey is choking on the finger. Perhaps you should help save the monkey."

The shop owner lowered the bag of ferret food and peered inside the cage. Father opened his mouth to introduce himself, and the monkey fell over on his side, my father's finger firmly lodged in his unfortunately narrow esophagus.

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