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remember hearing him say, when hewas recalling the let’s-have-the-children-looked-at conversation with a friend of his, “You already got my wife, I’ll be damned if you think I’m gonna give you my fucking kids.” Dad didn’t call any of the doctors Lovey; he called them all a bunch of screaming assholes.
    No, Dad wasn’t going to send me into treatment. Hell, it pissed him off enough when I had to go to the hospital just to get stitches. In that regard, I knew I was safe.
    But asshole or not, Lovey was a doctor. He wore the white coat and name tag and had that chilly white voice we were so used to hearing. All swoop-y with pretend caring. He was clearly a medical authority, a grown-up, so I believed him.
    I was going to be just like her. And everyone said so.

    The next time that Mom got sent to Sadville was the summer my brother John and I seriously considered killing her. I was eleven and all summer the universe conspired to take my childhood and give it to that little blonde. She was so greedy, mewling for our love and attention, taking it, then turning around and telling anyone in earshot that we hated her. Dad had pretty much washed his hands of the whole thing, and nobody blamed him. He worked so hard only to give every penny to this or that institution or pharmacy, each promising to bring his wife, life, and sunshine back. All it seemed to do, though, was embolden all the stupid doctors to make more and more ridiculous diagnoses and write dopier prescriptions, some that would make my mom weave and wobble in her body like a cartoon chicken on a unicycle. Each doctor acted as though they had all the answers, and every single one was wrong. It was as if they were all horny to find more stuff wrong with her, and keep her sick and medicated.
    After many sad and frustrating years of that, Dad checked out. He worked all school year, teaching history and coaching, then in 1980, took a summer job as a lifeguard at a water park near Little Boar’s Head, or Boarsie, a town near Rye, New Hampshire. He and his dog Tilly could live all summer at the beach and have a nice, ninety-odd miles between himself and reality. Henry was off at awesome American camp. John and I stayed home, smoked pot, and grew thick calluses all over our hearts. John had his license now, and that meant we had Mom duty.
    Mom duty basically involved us going to the hospital, bringing her a carton of Kool Milds, chocolate-covered cherries, and clean underpants.
    â€œSomething’s gotta give,” we would say every time we left. “She’s gotta go.” We weren’t complete bastards, but Mom clearly wanted out, so why not give her a hand? We were mostly kidding when we joked about putting a hit on her or going through the phone book to find Mafia-sounding names. Callous humor was the only thing that made the crazy tolerable. Whenever we’d hear an ambulance siren blaring by we’d say, “There goes Mom.” when someone asked what our parents did for a living we’d say, “Our dad works but our mom is broken.”

    It was a long, hot summer with varying degrees of horrible after each hospital visit. There was always some new drama with one of her new pyromaniac rapist friends, or Dr. Lovey would be changing her medication and she would be a complete mess. She would rattle her pink plastic pill dispenser, like a doll’s ice cube tray, embossed with M T W T F S S for the days of the week, and say, “Lovey istaking me off all my meds. I’m better now that we know what’s wrong! See? No more pills! I’m only taking this one for voices, this one for shaking, this one for sleepy-sleepy-nye-nye and this one . . .”
    One of the last times I saw my mom in that hospital was a blazing late-August afternoon. John and I pulled up to Sadville, armed to the teeth with her smokes, clean underpants, and loads of sarcasm. The air was smudged with humidity, wavering a couple feet