But maybe that was it, he thought, as he rose from the air mattress and traipsed quietly downstairs.  Maybe it was just that he was an alcoholic, and then alcoholics are great at lying to themselves.  And wasn't all this then the biggest lie, as his life had been the biggest lie, for quite a long time, ever since coming out of teenage childhood really.  There were bad influences in the town, ill-chosen friends...  Then there were the lies of money, and jobs.  He could not even see it himself, so immersed in it.  And now, the final lie, the biggest lie, from the one who'd caused so much stress in his life...

It was eleven thirty, the start of SNL, but he did not want to enter the room where the television was, and there were dishes from dinner to do, chicken with mushrooms, fresh thyme, the sauce not thick enough when he served it to get mom off to bed, but with good flavors from following the age old treatment of things.  The frozen squash, orange pumpkin in color, and the spinach from the other saute pan, worked.  No need for rice, though that would have tasted good.

Past midnight, and after folding the laundry of one load, his socks, underwear, tee shirts, work pants, towels, he moved the cold delicate wash of his mom's pink and lavenders into the dryer, and the cat did not even hear him, perhaps because of the humidifier upstairs outside the bedrooms on the landing.  And then with these thoughts in his mind, and the tree pollen, he went down to the car, and down to get gas at the Fast Trak past the high school down by the McDonald's and the empty Friendly's.   When he pulled up under the  brightly-lit toll booth like gas pumps he found that the screens on all the pumps said, in blue, closed.  He did not want to have to keep his mother waiting, another thing for her to get grumpy at him, too hot, too cold, too much sun, nothing to read, while he filled the old Toyota's replaced gas tank, so he went east into town to Fifth, to the usual Stewart Shop, and the shop itself was still lit within, some kids had just come out, and the woman, the manager was mopping up and he felt for her.  When he put the credit card into the machine, the card was frozen, stuck, so he had to go to the window, as she had just turned the lights out, and mime, and she politely came to the door, and he apologized.  She came out to check and pressed the same buttons he had, still nothing, so she told him she'd go back in and hit the breaker and he apologized again, and she was perfectly kind, not a problem.  The lights went off above him and then the card came out and he waved to her and drove back.

At least the dishes were done.  At least mom was still sleeping.  

He was broke.  There wasn't any way to get around that.  If he went back to work, his mother would be left, and it wouldn't last anyway.  If he stayed up there, he would do little more than continue to live the greatest of all his self-lies.  

One big laughable goddamn lie, chased back with red wine and ice cubes, and late nights, and friends who did not do much to help you but wanted to you to be part of their own lies.

And for having to deal with his mother advancing into senile repetition, confused thoughts and speech, the tedium of it, for the lies her life was, and how she too when all alone would get into the wine, enough occasionally to be a bit of a scene, everything here would be blamed on him, the gift he received for bearing the brunt of it all, talking her down, in off the ledge of her drama.

His own apartment, back in the city far to the south, was enough of a lie, but her's seemed worse, and there wasn't much he could do about it, all the piles, every once in a while putting things into a pile and then into a garbage bag, or out into the recycling bin, staying up late in order to quietly do chores and avoid her madness.  "Some people like me," she would say, when she caught him cringing at her approach.

And even coming to realize all this after the typical venture to closed convenience shop gas pumps in vain, the old car seeming to drink a lot more gasoline than it had before the new catalytic converter had been put in, even to think about his alcoholism, he needed a glass of Beaujolais to write it down in a way he could think about it, and try not to be overwhelmed by his life of sin and prodigal ways.   There had been a lot of kids out he'd seen, groups of girls walking back to the dorms, off campus housing party houses on porches and backyards, and he remembered himself thinking it was that simple.

Then once you've started again, then you cannot go back, you need another fill in your tumbler of the Beaujolais on the rocks, maybe topped off with a splash of soda to fill the void in you and in your stomach.  At two in the morning you're getting hungry again.  Granted, you've put in some energy, the laundry, then straightening out around mom's chair, books and newspapers thrown together in piles, horrible, what a way to treat a book leaving it laying around like that, stuffing into the leaves a flyer from a non profit to save the parks, the animals, but you can't tell her anything like this, it's your job as a 56 year old grown man to do this all alone in the night.  Some way to end up.

You straightened out the suitcase, open, underwear, socks, finding a pair of shorts suitable for hot days and exercise and yoga poses.  Something of a pretense, just something to do to keep your mind off of things.

Shit, this is serious now.  No wonder...

You find other examples of self-destructive artists, creative types, to give you some solace in the night.  That was one of the problems, the creative urges.  That's what got you into trouble, that and boredom.  Pretending you could fictionalize your own innate understanding of Hank Williams or Shane MacGowan and think you were accomplishing something, sure.

There is brilliance and poetry and laughter and science in all of that, but nothing to bring home, nothing to pay the bills with.

He thought about getting in the car again.  But somehow felt so stultified where he was, and at four in the morning, what...  what?  Maybe take a walk.  The cat's out now.  Try and run, make a run for it, at the fences, get away, get away from her shoes and boots, her wearing the same clothes for a week, her glomming onto you, looking out as you're away in the yard talking to a rational family member, and when up close she'll, because she talks to herself out loud, say, I'm glad to be away from him, he brings me down with his defeatist attitude....  Yes, the world is a cruel place.  And only because Jesus drank the wine and all the monotheistic people and the others do I do it.  It would seem safe, wouldn't it?  But then wine and alkool, the devil, have only been around maybe 5000 of our 60,000 years, so that's not a big percentage, and who knows what DNA one is carrying around within.

Even the pseudophed makes you crazy after the third day of it.

Never mind how it all started.  Never mind about that.

There is no satisfactory answer to any of this.  So you keep on, looking over at the bottle on your right.  You sip.  It tastes good.  Still.

But still, the terror, that nothing could now fix away from him.

Poor old Ted, what will come of him now, after his long journey, leaving him with no skill.

Can she help me now?  Can anyone help me...  and I'm helping her out.