Litbreak Magazine

My mother’s name was Emily Berrigan and she was a writer of fiction who aspired to be a best-selling author. She spent most of her days up at her desk in my parents’ bedroom, drinking black coffee, smoking Kents and typing with a physical ferocity that rocked her Smith-Corona, something she kept impatiently correcting by squaring the machine in front of her. She was from California—San Diego—and brought with her to our quiet Detroit neighborhood her considered opinion that the world was a much larger and more sophisticated place than that imagined by those who lived around us. She was in her middle 30s, at the time I’m writing about, black-haired and small-boned, beautiful in a dark, honest, intense way, one of those people whose personalities seem apparent in the carving of their face.

I was staying the weekend at Sans Souci  to celebrate my recent graduation. I promised my parents that I would spend time with them and Graham said I should. He had been intending to go on a trip with Colin, so this gave him an opportunity. He needed a break as the intense study was getting to him, although he only had two more years left. We were already planning our future together. Tonight Frankie would be playing in the Harp Bar and I was sorry Graham would miss it, as he had never heard my brother perform.