A pale blonde light eked its way from beneath a sallow silk shade. The twenty-five watt bulb seemed to serve no other purpose than to support the shade and illuminate a whisky trail of cigarette smoke from the glass ashtray on the nightstand, which stood sentinel between the two twin beds. Edna sits on her bed; her head propped unnaturally by a flattened goose down pillow. Her legs stretch out like two rigid poles beneath a wrinkled chenille robe on the worn bedspread while her ankles are criss-crossed like some ancient yellow dog’s paws. One flip-floppy slipper has fallen to the floor beside her twin bed while its mate remains on its left foot. She puffs her cigarette and blows out a cloud of smoke.

"The bulbs will need to be planted this weekend."

Ted brushes a raven’s wing of hair from his forehead and impatiently refolds the newspaper section, commuter-train style.

" Cold water flat. Two bedrooms, ice box, and gas stove, second floor in the rear."

He sits on his bed sideways, legs over the edge, knees poking ceilingward. His blue striped polyester tie is loosened, shirt-top button somewhere lost, and his shirt-cuffs are rolled up to his elbows. An unlit Lucky Strike is tucked neatly behind his left ear.

Edna pulls a crumpled hankie from her robe pocket and blows a somewhat reddened nose. She sniffs once or twice perhaps for emphasis, "I think perhaps we’ll need to do some mulching before it rains."

"Hmmmmm, Mother, hand me a pencil?"

Edna lights up another cigarette after stubbing out the one half-smoked in the ashtray, "Perhaps 200-250 bulbs will be sufficient."

"Sounds like you want to keep me busy for a year with your damn gardening."

"It’s not like I’m asking you for something you can’t give me – there is no one else."

"Stop, I heard that story about Dad before. Just hand me a pencil."

"You know where the pencils are," she snaps back as she reaches over to the nightstand between the two beds, "right where I always keep them."

Ted hacks and clears his throat, "Three rooms, kitchen, living room and bedroom; first floor, new paint, 12 Ford Street."

"Look, here is that red pencil you had in grammar school. You were such a bright student."

"Oh, this looks good, 737-4923……the pencil, please."

Edna hands her son the red pencil and says, "I don’t see why you have to move. Everything you need is right here with me." She stands and crosses the aisle between the twins to smooth out his faded yellow matching spread.

"I think I need my own place. I’m past 25. Uncle Sam could have taken me."

"But, Ted, even Uncle Sam won’t separate a mother from her only son." She leans over to brush that errant lock from his forehead.

He patiently sits still and finally replies, " Tell me exactly where you want the bulbs."

Edna stubs out yet another Lucky Strike, "Want a cigarette? How about if I make you something to eat or a drink?" She reaches in the lower drawer on the bedside stand and takes out a bottle of whiskey.

As she cradles the bottle, he replies, "OK, I can do the bulbs this Sunday and the mulching on Saturday." She puts the bottle down and reaches for two fresh cigarettes, even though one is smoldering in the ashtray. There is a blue haze enveloping them, the whiskey and the lamp. The whiskey gleams brighter than the 25-watt bulb. Edna puts both cigarettes in her mouth at once and lights them with one match. She hands him one. "Here."

Ted inhales deeply and sighs, " I need to go out and make a few phone calls."

"Now? But I want to have a drink with you. It’s cocktail time." She playfully tugs on his tie. He strokes her head, smoothing her curls absently.

Their bedroom was rather small with one venetianned window that overlooked the parking lot. The blinds were drawn, as usual.

"Ok." He sits not moving. He'd do just about anything for Edna.

It must have been when he was six when several important truths were revealed to him. One of these truths was God's gospel, words that his father spit into his face. As so often happens, the facts surround you, smotheringly close, like thin silk gauze wrapped around a woman's face - to keep the dust from her eyes and the dirt from her mouth. Facts that once-removed relatives, neighbors and even sly strangers knew. Everyone who saw the boy and the man agreed that when Ted was six and his father was twenty-six you'd swear they were twins - "the doppelgangers." That was the birthday his father wrenched off the training wheels to bring him down to earth. That was the year they stopped swinging on the back-porch swing at sunset, and his father never kissed his skinned knuckles when he fell. That was the last year that the doppelgangers were photoposed by the back porch door on the last evening of summer. That was the year he started public school, and the year the war started, and the for-ever-more, he was just the ghostly double of his father. Because there was the War. Ted knew about the War. He knew about it from Edna. He knew about it from the letter from his Dad.

So after that winter, and other winters that followed, Ted could only search tarnished silvered mirrors to suffer his phantom double, the War had kept his Dad to punish him.

"Son, I'd swear we were twins." His father had the same blue eyes and cowlicked errant lock of hair that hesitated over his forehead. He reached down to his crotch and adjusted himself, like he wore some ancient codpiece, then grabbed Ted and swung him over his shoulder and jogged out to the two-wheeler. The boy laughed out loud. He felt good, like before, like he used to feel when he didn't have the responsibility of a two-wheeler.

"Just me and you, Dad!" His summer laugh echoed on the cracked sidewalk and then was swallowed by the Labor Day nightfall. His father rode him on the handlebars wiggling; it felt just like the one time before when he was first learning how to ride - scary. Scary, like not being safe any more. But even though he was with his dad, his laughter didn't sound so much like fun any more. His dad's skivvies were peeking out around the waist, like the scent of a small secret. The riding wind poked at their eyes.

"I wanna stop!"

"Be a man." His father peddled faster as they careened down Merchant Hill.

"I want my mommy. Stop," he wailed.

When they reached the bottom of the hill, Ted didn't recognize the man on the bike with him, his phantom double was just a stranger, his hair thinned, his face jaw slackened, and he was wearing a skirt of tasses and tuille, leather Roman Chariot driver. The hinged-armor plate was just dull steel above the thigh. Ted shut his eyes, squeezed tight. Then it was just his father, it was just his father who was breathing hard, but reaching up to that t-shirt cuff to snag a Lucky from the cellophane pack. Took a deep drag on the cigarette. Blew the smoke like a night train. A slow steady stream down towards hell.

"She'll steal your family jewels, if you let her."

"Who?"

"Yer damn mother."

Ted wished he could shut his ears tight like he could shut his eyes.

The first letter arrived at noon on October 10, 1953, but it had been postmarked FPO July 7,1950. Ted was home from school that day with the sniffles. He was missing the fifth grade Spelling Bee Quarterfinals that day, but Edna thought it best he stay home to rest. She was visiting friends, white-gloved, like she did every Wednesday from 11a.m. until 3 p.m. The doorbell rang. Ted was so surprised he jumped off the couch to answer the door in his p-jammies. The postman gave him the letter saying it was from his Dad in Korea and that it must have gotten lost somehow.

Ted could hardly read the foreign words, but he held the piece of paper like it was precious gold. This particular piece of paper would be folded, unfolded, and refolded so many times that it would feel like ancient parchment. Ted kept it protected by wrapping it in a piece wax paper hidden under his mattress between reads.

Tears started streaming down Ted's face mingling with the snot running from his nose

"Why did ya have to go, daddy?"

"Who is in there with you?" Edna called from the kitchen.

"No one."

Edna walked into the living room. Ted had never even heard her come home.

"Why is that front door open?" she marched across the room to close and lock the door as Ted stuffed the letter and envelop under the couch cushion that was his sick bed for the afternoon. He whipped his nose with his pajama sleeve.

"Get a Kleenex, Teddy!" He handed her the box of blue Kleenex brand tissue, and she took out a few.

"Let me wipe your nose, you poor little thing."

Ted just stood there while Edna wiped his nose, dried the tears from his cheeks and then lit a Lucky with her silver lighter.

The other truth, he learned when he was ten years old, was that women had a unique intimate relationship with their bedclothes. Garter belts, for example, what did they really mean? Slithering satin fasteners with alligator mouths clinging onto leggy hose. Her silk stocking were roses swirled on a chenille bedspread - sheers: pinks, violets, raspberries, creams, taupes, tans and nudes. Merry widows shimmy-shiny on the bedpost on Sunday mornings or at midnight dishabille.

When he was ten, Ted went to the library to investigate this mystery and discovered National Geographic magazines, with its treasure of naked bare-breasted women from the Sudan or Papua, New Guinea. He had no friends to ask. No Bill nor Frank, no Tuxon boys from the next block who worked in their father's Garage and Repair Shop. His Dad would never tell him anything any more. No one to learn the secrets from. No one to whisper the truths into his ears, but his mother, Edna. She made him call her that, Edna, not mom, nor mommy nor mother.

She walked the carpeted floors and wooden floors with equal swish, her silk stockinged feet whispering. Never the staccato clip-clop of high heeled shoes, nor the bump of leather brogans. His father was gone. There were no other men in the house. The War had rescued his father, or his father had embraced the War, Ted didn't know that truth, only knew his father was gone and the War had something to do with it. He did know that Edna was angry about it, because of the times when his father's name came up, and she looked at Ted and she said with belligerent lip, "Just like him."

"No, I 'm not!" he learned to say.

"Yer just like your father."

" Edna, I'm not," he'd whimper over and over again while kissing her coiled fingers until they relaxed.

"Nice, soft little boy lips."

He'd know her temper was over, and then he could hug her. Her creamy ivory slip rubbed soft on his check. Sometimes she wore a golden kimono with embroidered dragons or a silver dressing gown with ostrich cuffs and collar that tickled his nose. He loved her bedclothes almost as much as he loved Edna.

The summer of 1956 was one for the record books. Two nights in August were the hottest anyone ever remembered, even the old timers agreed. Clarence Birdseye died leaving a legacy of frozen peas and green beans. Grace Kelly of Philadelphia married Prince Ranier III of Monaco and by Labor Day, Mickey Mantle of the New York Yankees was guaranteed to be the American League's Most Valuable Player. He led in home runs, runs batted in, and runs scored. And Ted got some trouble.

It was acceptable in 1956 to fight with your fists or by wrestling. However, if someone tried pulling hair or scratching with their fingernails, they would be ostracized for "fighting dirty." Almost no one fought dirty, because it was an act of cowardice. But none of that really mattered to Ted, because on those dog days of summer, when eggs could have fried on the new tarred road, when Chevys roared with Be Bop a Lula and crooned the Great Pretender, and when the neighborhood kids were running through the sprinklers and buying and eating Good Humor, he was alone in Edna's house. It was because of the fight. Because he was a baby, a chicken, a coward, a kid who never was taught how to fight proper like a man. He couldn't face his friends any more, if he even had friends any more. So he was punishing himself. Exile. Now he could only daydream about flying paper airplanes in the baseball outfield or playing tag on the pile of boards in the stock. The shades were drawn.

And on those warm firefly evenings, when a crescent moon cut the black night sky, and Dads held their best daughters on their laps on the porch swing, Ted was inside in a darkened house almost alone watching Highway Patrol or Dragnet. He had top keep the volume low because Edna had a meegram and was resting her eyes and sipping her ice tea. And that's when Ted dreamed about playing vigilantes, wearing paper bag masks and scaring the young children. That's all he could scare because now everyone knew he was a just chicken, a baby, a Mama's boy.

"Turn the TV down."

"Yes, Edna." Ted sometimes said "yes, mama" in a soft voice just to himself.

"Still too loud!"

"She will flood your face with kisses," he sang across the living room to her shadow on the hallway wall. It was curvy and warm almost pink cast by the red lampshade in the bedroom.

'"Cause you smell so darn delicious!" Edna would giggle back as she and her shadow waltzed into the room. Her shadow got wiggly and littler by TV light. Her slip was soft satin and shined in the flickering light. Her perfume invaded the room, creamy petal-soft gardenias and filled all the corners and orifices.

"Burma-Shave Lotion," they would both sing in unison. He felt wanted and loved in that moment. Edna took another sip and closed her eyes and summer-sighed. Her ice tea glass was almost empty, ice cubes like tiny glass beads. She set it down on the coffee table next to Ted and went to the kitchen to find her silver cigarette lighter.

"Thirsty, Sugar?" she called to him. "It's ok to finish us my ice tea, little bourbon never hurt a boy. Ted drank the rest of the bourbon ice tea. It made him a little woozy right away.

"Damn!"

"Need some help?" Ted jumped up to help his mama find some matches in the darkened kitchen.

The silver lighter was missing again.

"Thanks, Teddy" she stroked his sweaty neck absent-mindedly and he lit her Lucky. Thirteen year-olds knew how to light matches.

"Grass needs mowing."

"I kin do it!"

"Tomorrow, not tonight, silly boy!" she slurred a little. "It's bedtime."

It was way past midnight when Ted woke up. He had fallen asleep on the living room floor. The TV screen was just static. The volume turned way down. He was having a wet-dream, and he ached. He could hear his mother's soft snoring from the bedroom as he took off his T-shirt and jeans. His legs stumbled numb, still half-asleep, and he went to pee. From the bathroom Ted could see Edna lying in bed one arm curled up with her fist near her cheek. One leg was in the moonlight; like marble, it was still and white and so smooth.

"Can let you down - Quicker than a strapless gown - Burma-Shave." He walked into the bedroom and climbed in next to her, not touching, just wearing his white jockey shorts with his thirteen-year old flagpole poking straight ahead.