The Risk Pool

launched into the whole thing again, F. William Peterson took me aside.
    “Your mother is sedated,” he said, placing his pale, almost hairless hand on my shoulder. “You know what that means?”
    I nodded, growing increasingly apprehensive about whatever the man thought I needed to be prepared for. “You saw her?”
    He shook his head. “I’m sure though. She’s had what’s called a nervous collapse. I doubt she’ll be the person you recognize. And they’ll probably only let you stay a few minutes.” He paused briefly. “Your father won’t be permitted in at all.”
    Something about the way he said this gave me the idea that he himself had seen to it.
    “They’ll probably take her to Albany this afternoon. There’s nobody here that knows much about stuff like this. Not many people around here are smart enough to have a nervous breakdown.”
    He half smiled at his own observation and ran his pale fingers through the few tenacious strands of blond hair on top of his head. “You ready?”
    My father had his back to us and didn’t notice when we turned the corner by the elevator. The second floor looked deserted. There weren’t even any nurses in the corridors. Each room we passed was the same dull shade of green. Some of the occupants of the beds made small insignificant mounds beneath the sheets, while others sat upright, their mottled backs to the open door, as if contemplating flight through the transparent curtained windows. I didn’t see anybody who looked like he could pass a pop quiz on what day of the week it was.
    There were two beds in the room that contained my mother, but she was alone there, the other bed tightly made, its blanket and crisp white sheet tucked between mattress and metal frame. She lay on her back in the bed near the window, her thin wrists restrained by leather straps attached to the rails of the bed, though she appeared unaware of this hindrance. Her eyes had the same faraway look they once had when she thought about Tucson, Arizona, or San Diego, California. We went around to the other side of the bed, F. William Peterson hanging back several paces so that I alone would come between her and the white window. Whoever had put on her hospital gown hadn’t done much of a job, because part of her right breast was exposed, along with her rib cage, now clearly defined. F. William Peterson may have noticed too, because he retreated to the middle of the room.
    My mother did not appear to see me at first, but then her eyes began to focus and something like a smile of recognition formed. “Sam?” she said. “Sam?”
    Suddenly I was choking back tears and my throat was as thick as it had been that afternoon I’d eaten Oreos with Claude. “It’s me,” I said. “Ned.”
    Her smile changed, first becoming perplexed, then troubled, then inexpressibly sad, as if she’d been informed of my death. Her own tears welled up, but before they could be shed, she lost herfocus. A bird had landed on the window ledge behind me and pecked at the glass with its tough beak before flying off with her attention into the white sky.
    That night, after my father got in the convertible and drove off, I let myself back into Rose’s and took the elevator down into Klein’s Department Store and filled a paper bag with the most expensive items I could find in the dark. I stayed there a full hour, shopping carefully, angrily. And when I was finished, I took it all over to our house on Third Avenue. F. William Peterson had arranged for the house to be locked up and I had no key so I climbed the maple tree up to the roof, then lowered myself onto my bedroom window dormer. The storm windows had not been put on, nor would they be that winter. Neither the screen nor inner window offered resistance.
    Once inside, I went back downstairs, unlocked the rear door and fetched what I had stolen. There was a pewter ashtray inscribed with something in Latin for the coffee table, along with a fancy cut-glass nut dish. On her dresser I placed the ornate jewelry box. The other stuff I scattered after removing the price tags and flushing them down the toilet. I mentally totaled what I had taken, and it came close to three hundred dollars, but I was neither satisfied nor ashamed. Until that night, I’d stolen only insignificant items: a cheap, imitation-leather wallet, a package of undershorts and socks, an athletic supporter for gym class (these were kept in a special place behind the counter in the sporting goods