By M. Stickann

I remember feeling vital and alive. Like I was never going to die. I would go out for days and sleep would be an afterthought. I was indestructible. I was twenty four years old and if I didn't drink too much and pretended to be nice on any particular Friday night I wasn't going home alone. I didn't think about family, a support structure or any nonsense like that. My objective was to have fun, because that was what life was all about.

Things have changed.

I sit here in this diner waiting and drinking black coffee and staring out the window at the traffic heading east and west, north and south. My transient mother is coming soon. She will be sure to grasp my hand tightly and tell me how much better things are going to get. She will rattle on and on and I won't pay much attention. Then she will order blueberry pancakes, smile and stick me with the bill. Poof, then she'll be gone. I won't see her for months, maybe even a year. And the meeting will have been like all the others. Inconsequential. Like pumping your gas. Like turning your shower on.

It has always been like this. The impeccably dressed ghost mother. My father would refer to her as Claire and my little brother called her 'Indian' because of her singular and unusual make up design for her face. I called her Mom, because I was the one of the trio Berenz that needed comfort. She was the woman in our lives, sporadically at best, but in our lives. So Mom was the warm, worn blanket I needed.

I am now thirty four years old and my life isn't how I imagined it would be. I am struggling and angry. Today my transient mother offers me a distraction and a vague sense of family. I anticipate the lemony spring smell of her expensive perfume. Her dark blue lipstick and the powdery appearance of her cheeks. Pearls and large, dangling earrings. Hair just so, sprayed immovable. All the characteristics I took for granted before, thought I hadn't even noticed, now were more vivid then ever. Anything to relive Douglas Berenz. Anything to envision Mark Berenz. Anything. I'd cut off an arm for one more minute with those men. But it's not to be.

In walks mother, no surprises. My waitress refills my white coffee cup as she averts my gaze. Her own problems I suppose. Dishes clank in the background and a general soft murmur has set in for the morning push. Smiles, eggs, bacon, dollar bills, change, small talk, politics, sports, family, death. What else is there?

"Hello Chad," my mother says. And so it begins.

We talk of my father first. The Hero. The Bread Winner. His hairy forearms stick out in my mind as my mother drones on and on. I remember his wristwatch with the black leather band. It had black numbers. I remember his cologne, which was Old Spice aftershave and Marlboro cigarette smoke. I remember his tough guy smirk and how he'd always say 'Get ready to wash dishes' when we went to places like this, pretending not to have enough money for the bill. I remember talking about baseball like it was religion. Ernie Banks was God and Billy Williams was Jesus and Ron Santo was the Holy Spirit I guess. My hold on religion now is at its most tenuous. How do I believe in a God that has stolen my two best friends? I'd sooner punch that son of a bitch than shake his hand. If there was a God right now I'd have a father to buy me breakfast and tell me what damn time it is.

A thin, athletic looking kid with dirty blonde hair walks by and at a quick glance it could be Mark Berenz, my baby brother, my blood; my closest friend and my worst enemy. At second glance it's not him and I turn back to my cup of coffee, letting the hazelnut aroma crawl up my nose. I notice one nubile waitress in particular, ten years younger than me if she's a day. I watch her move deliberately, balanced and confident. I watch her smile and stack plates and move with purpose. I watch her blink and see the machinations of her brain behind the facade. I can hear her son crying at daycare. I can hear the bill collectors leaving messages on her answering machine at home. I can see her car coughing for breath and dying on the interstate. I can see her curling up in the corner of a mop closet in this dump, crying her eyes out. She smiles and pours coffee and moves out of sight.

"How are your pancakes Mom?" I ask. She starts in about how Mark used to love her pancakes. He didn't really, but that's what this transient mother in front of me believes. Why steal that memory right now? Her whole life is revisionist history and I intend to perpetuate it as much as possible. When this woman, this transient mother in front of me eating free pancakes and talking about nothing dies, and she will die, let her have these fake memories. These doctored photographs in the photo album of her brain, that's fine. If all these illusions are as intoxicating to her as they seem, let her get drunk. Let her get stinking drunk.

Mark Berenz was handsome, smart, funny, crazy, energetic, loving, supportive, friendly, chivalrous, attentive, wild, imaginative, strong, honest and daring. He was beyond description. He made me happy and he made me think and he made me proud. If there was a building on fire a mile away and ten kids were known to be in it, choking on smoke and dying, he would run the mile there in less than six minutes, run through the nearest door shoulder first and descend a thousand steps with five kids on each arm and a stray cat on his head. Mark was miraculous like that. He brought only good to this world and the best curveball you've ever seen short of Wrigley Field. And your God took him from me too. Snatched him at his apex; as he reached for the top of the mountain, my brother, my friend, God most assuredly sent him tumbling down. "What other explanation is there," I asked my mother. "What?! Tell me damn it," I said.

"I won't do this," the transient mother said.

"Why not?" I asked.

There was a line forming at the door. Accountants, secretaries, construction workers, janitors, administrators, out of work actors and actresses, students and retired people. Waitresses zigged and zagged and smiled and frowned, poured coffee and dropped forks on the dirty floor. The couple behind me talked about their failing finances. The old people across from me held hands and drank decaf. A gentleman at the coffee counter read the paper. He was balding and lonely. His glasses were a bit crooked and his day didn't look good. Sales calls and handshakes, he thought. Another day of biting his tongue bloody and making a concerted effort to be disingenuous. Another day for a dollar. His wife was missing. His children had forgotten him. His credit card was almost maxed out. He was thinking about buying a Playboy magazine on the way home from work, maybe a pornographic video. "Nah," he thought, this dying salesman at the counter across from me. He would simply fall asleep on the couch, again, the evening news to sing him a lullaby.

My father shoveled coal into a furnace at a steel mill, a one hour car drive from our home. My mother wore an apron and a smile and pretended until I was eight years old. Then the play was over. Denouement. No curtain call, no encore, no nothing. Breakfasts, lunches and dinners ceased to be exciting for her. She needed Danielle Steele, not Dr. Seuss. She traded in baseball and baking for traveling with strangers and gifts from idiots. Mark was five years old and it did not matter to him. Comfort came in my father's embrace, in his deep, gravelly voice and his reassurances, both real and imagined. Strength. Resolve. A brick wall to break your fall. My father. He could win a war by himself, feed Ethiopia and knock in 180 runs in a single season. Bigger than life. Bigger than your friend God. More real than your pal Jesus.

The nubile waitress, the salesman and the old couple are gone. They've been replaced by two nuns across from me, a prostitute and her pimp behind me and a three hundred pound woman with her infant son at the counter. The nuns eat in silence, an air of dignity around them that I refuse to acknowledge out loud. The prostitute is beaten, physically and emotionally, as her pimp listens to his headphones, be bopping back and forth with his expensive sunglasses on, while it begins to rain outside. His bouncing back and forth annoys me and rocks the booth I'm in with my transient mother, but I refuse to make a scene today. The rage of ten lunatics breathes inside me, but I remain calm. I turn to make eye contact with the call girl and we do just that and it's long, knowing. I try to convey to her in some lame attempt at telepathy that there is a better life for her out there, of this I'm certain. She smiles with tobacco stained teeth, cheap lipstick making her look like a clown. She gestures to the nuns, as if to say 'is that the better life you're talking about'?

The overweight woman feeds her overweight infant son from a stack of pancakes fourteen inches high. And she's happy and her son is happy and there is no disguising that. They are enjoying themselves and I take notice. She wipes his fat little chin and he wipes his mom's. She thanks the waitress behind the counter twice for refilling her coffee. She calls her 'sweety'. All the while this little fat boy stares up at his mother as if the confluence of the planets, stars and galaxies rests in her eyes. I can't take my eyes off the little fat boy who is completely and totally in love with his mother, as the syrup falls from his cheeks. His mom dips a white paper napkin in a cup of ice water and cleans his face.

"God didn't take your father and brother Chad," my transient mother said.

"Ya, well let me ask you something," I began, determined. "What has God done for you? What has he taught you?"

Silence. The diner stopped. The waitresses stopped pouring and smiling and frowning. The fat mom stopped eating and feeding. The cooks in the back wiped the sweat from their brows and listened, stinking in dirty white t-shirts. The nuns paused, the prostitute sighed and the pimp turned off his head phones and stopped bobbing back and forth. The clerk at the counter quietly shut the cash register drawer. I set my white coffee cup down on its saucer and listened.

"Jesus," she said, more exasperation than proclamation. "I don't know what you want me to say. Ok, ok, you know what God has done for me? He's pointed out to me all the things I've done wrong and he hasn't judged me for them. He's made it abundantly clear that I wasn't a good mother and I guess he wants me to feel the pain of that everyday, so I take steps to improve my life as I get older. He wants me to help others now, he wants me to help you. I guess he forgot about me for a while and consequently I forgot about you and your brother and your father. But the love was always there and that is why I kept coming back, that is why I couldn't stay away. God is with me now and he insists I be with you. My heart aches too, everyday. But I wake up and I thank him, that's right I thank God, for the time I had with Mark and your father. The moments are scattered and poignant and beautiful. God is the reason I'm here with you now. God is the reason I won't turn my back on you ever again."

"How do you know that?" I asked.

"I just do," she said.

At that the nuns finished their breakfast, resolute and satisfied. The fat mom put her fat son into a thick yellow raincoat and bundled him up securely and kissed his clean, chunky face. The pimp left abruptly, soft spoken expletives in his wake. The prostitute loosened, stretched her legs out underneath her table, leaned back and put her hands behind her head. I overheard her tell the waitress it was going to be a good day.

My father and brother and I were, and are, one. They've been dead ten years and my life has steadily declined since. I am not a carouser anymore. Women turn their backs on me in grocery stores and banks and that's ok I guess. I am not carefree anymore. Every dollar earned and spent worries me. I see people that remind me of people I used to know and the past haunts me like a black hell. Every burly man in a flannel shirt with a receding hairline and a sure gait is my father. Witty, coal underneath his fingernails, bull strong. Every pitcher with a curveball worth a damn is Mark, my little brother. Man he was cool. He was also proof that even Superman is vulnerable when he's involved in a truck accident. Poof, gone. No more Superman. No more curveballs. No more Douglas Berenz, the best father the steel mill ever met. And with them went me, Chad Berenz, the fun drunk, the pedestrian nobody who loved baseball, pretty girls and sarcastic remarks. Chad Berenz, the glue between the two best men this damn diner has ever seen. My Dad loved this place. Steak and eggs of course, always steak and eggs. Mark would eat more from my plate and Dad's plate than his, because he knew we didn't care. We loved him.

In a moment, my transient mother is gone, her perfume left behind. I'm caught up in her words and her face and my realities. How I will always struggle in every way, shape and form. How ghosts will always be a major part of my existence.

God wanders through my brain too. What his intentions are and what I did wrong. As I grasp the table with both hands and squeeze, restraining the damn memories, I notice the fat mom has come back to leave a tip for her waitress. It's more than it should be.

Our eyes meet and we smile at one another. Then she grabs her son's little, chubby hand and they're gone. Inadvertently, I reach out for my father's hand and it isn't there.