My name is Charles Anson. I moved in with my mother in her apartment after my father died. At first I hated the idea of living with her at the age of thirty-seven, but soon I got used to it and thought of her home as my home. I have to admit my life was easier than when I had my own place. My mother had a cook and a housekeeper, so I no longer had to buy my own food, cook it, or do any housecleaning, which I was never very good at anyway. My mother didn't give birth to me until her mid-forties, so to me she seemed old before her time. She had developed a bad heart in the years after my father's death and told me she was happy to have me there with her—I was her only family that counted, she said—even though we argued quite a lot at times about my drinking habits and the late hours I sometimes kept. My mother had a bad temper, which my father could have told you about if he had still been alive. I remember when I was little and heard them fighting late at night. It wasn't unusual to hear glass breaking or wood splintering. When my father got enough of being goaded, he would end up breaking something. In the morning when I asked about whatever it was that got broken, my mother would laugh and say my father had a little accident while sleepwalking. I knew it wasn't the truth, but it was a good way to gloss over an ugly situation. I went to work every day, and when I came home my mother was there, dinner on the table, and all was well. After dinner, I would usually step out if I felt like it, and I see now that my mother was a little jealous that I didn't spend all my time with her when I wasn't working. She watched movies on television and she was always happy to have me watch with her, but it wasn't my idea of a good time. I could only take so many Bette Davis or Joan Crawford movies. Most of the time when I came home from a night on the town, sometimes at one or two in the morning, my mother would have all the lights on in the place and the TV on, but she would have retired to her room. She said this made her feel safer when she was alone. I would turn everything off, starting with the TV, make my way to bed, sleep for about four hours, get up, and begin my day all over again, as so many of us working stiffs do. My mother had told me I didn't even need to work, that she had plenty of money for us both to live on, but I couldn't see myself hanging around all day with just her to talk to and having to ask her for money anytime I wanted to go out and have a few drinks. On weekends I always tried to spend either Saturday or Sunday with my mother, just the two of us. She liked to go for a drive and I would very often take her to the cemetery where my father was and take her to a hamburger place for lunch. If it was a Sunday, we would try to take in a museum or a concert. If we ever went to a movie, she always said she preferred seeing movies on TV, and when I told her most people who liked movies wanted to see them at the theatre and not on TV, she only shook her head as if she didn't understand. All in all, my life was agreeable. I didn't spend most of the money I made so I was able to invest. The market was doing well, so I did well. I didn't miss the things I didn't have that other people had, like a marriage and children. I had learned early in life that not everybody in the world is the same and I found it out more and more as I got older. My mother went on for years with her bad heart, but she came to a point where she couldn't go on any longer. She looked pale and drawn all the time and spent most of her time lying down. She stopped fixing herself up and having her hair done up. Most days she didn't even bother to get dressed. She went to the hospital for a few days and when she came home she swore she would never go back, no matter what. She wanted to be in the privacy of her own home and not have a bunch of strangers around her at the end. I hired a nurse to be with her during the day when I was at work and another at night. They just did their work quietly and effectively and didn't bother me. I paid them when the time came and left them to do whatever needed to be done. I decided to quit my job in early summer. I didn't need to work, as I said before, and all the time I was away I worried that the end would come for my mother and I wouldn't be there when she needed me. I dismissed both nurses and told them I would take over. My mother moved into one of the guest bedrooms—she didn't want to mess up her own room where all her treasures were—and became entirely bedridden. Her doctor sympathized with her desire to be at home and gave me lots of pills to give her. He told me I didn't have to hold back in administering her medicine and nobody would ever know the difference. I understood what he meant without it being explained. We kept her heavily sedated, and I knew she wasn't in any pain.