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  She wishes she hadn't asked about Sammi's job. Another reminder of Mark's stalled life. "Well, tell her I said hello." Something metal clanks near the receiver. "Mark?"

  "I'm here," he says.

  One more time, then give it up. "What about the birth certificate?"

  "Yeah. The weekend's coming up. Better get it to them now before it all falls through."

  And he's gone. And here she is, humped against a bulging sky, pushing with all her Mama-Bear might to keep it from falling. Poking her fingers into the gap in the drawer, she grasps the wedged folder and hauls. REHAB tears away with such a rush that the drawer flies forward and almost lands her on her rear. The opened drawer is so heavy it tips the whole cabinet. It's packed solid, each section, each folder with its Magic Marker label: BENEFITS: MEDICARE, MEDICAID, SOCIAL SECURITY, SSI. What has she got his birth certificate under? She shuffles back to IMPORTANT DOCUMENTS: a sixth-grade report card, his correspondence high school diploma, a photocopy of an expired license. No birth certificate. Surely this is where she would have filed it and it isn't there. How can that be? She would never have sent the original without replacing it. She looks in front of the folder, behind it. Every other goddamned record, but not the one she needs to get Mark filed away. She'll have to go through the whole friggin' drawer. Maybe once she gets the chili to simmering. Of course it has to get faxed before five minutes ago. That's how it always is: dire. Urgent.

  She pulls out a few of the other drawers for counter-balance. There is no drawer for Aaron. There never was. Her few anxious rushes at him had always been met with, Stay out. I'm okay. Just the one box of drawings and song lyrics and notebooks in the studio closet. Upstairs with her will, one thin folder marked with his name: his death certificate. What can ever counterweight that?

  Slowly she eases Mark's drawer all the way forward. Most of what's in here, beyond the Benefits chunk, and maybe that too, could be under R for RESCUES. She thumbs through the section marked SCHOOLS. That's where his shot chart is. She leafs through, sheet by sheet, knowing that the marbled paper, with its small footprint, inked in the lower corner, will jump out at her when she gets to it. ONANGO VALLEY: Mark's transfer from Danford Central to her school, fifteen miles away. Ninth grade. LAWRENCE: sending him to live with Lee's cousin to go to high school in Massachusetts. AMERICAN SCHOOL so he could get a high school diploma after he dropped out, with Aaron doing most of his algebra correspondence lessons for, she found out later, a bag of pot. ANTIOCH, the superwoman energy she exerted in putting that together. No birth certificate in any of these.

  Maybe she could just crack up and go merrily, merrily down that stream. She begins lifting out the folders, one section at a time: MONEY WIRES, KEY WEST, then AUSTIN, then PORTLAND, in each of these the lists of hotline numbers and mobile rescue units, then a bunch of files so far back they're hard to pull forward. Each stack gets placed in careful piles along the edge of the large door that forms the top of her drawing table-desk, so that the piles don't all sprawl together.

  She hugs the first big bunch in her arms, checks to be sure Luke is nowhere in her path and makes it to the long counter beside the sink without dropping anything. When she lets go, the pile topples over. The purple, yellow, green labels bury themselves in the slide, her ordered headings no longer accessible. She turns the meat on again as Luke do-si-dos back and forth, his nose raised in keen interest. "I'm not free to dance at this time," she tells him. 12:00. She's got to get the currently nonexistent birth certificate materialized and faxed by two at the latest so Lindsey Clarke has time to send it to Lazarus House. Marna's due around one. The chili's got to start simmering now.

  She places the cutting board on the table since it's the only clear surface left and scoops the mushrooms from the colander. Chops, chops. Then wipes her hands on the legs of her jeans. While she stirs the mushroom crescents into the meat, she begins to leaf through the first folder in the section marked APARTMENTS. Plus there's the salad to make, the garlic to mince for the bread, this mess to clear away. Shit. Her fingers leave greasy smears. CATHOLIC CHARITIES: the single-room-occupancy housing with counseling that he moved into his first time back from treatment. CHESTNUT: the place his intensive case manager had to have the police open up when Mark couldn't come to the door. MAIN: the one-room studio that had no windows and was at least ninety degrees the day she helped him move in. The futons they've dragged up and then down, the leases broken, the security lost. But no pale tan document with his baby foot stepping almost off the edge.

  She opens four cans of stewed tomatoes and dumps them into the roaster, then liberal doses of salt, sugar, chili powder, Tabasco, pepper. Her mother's secret: keep seasoning each layer. Okay, she'll systematically go through the whole lot if necessary. The birth certificate is in one of the files. She'd put her life on that. She may have to press Marna into duty. Do a lot of marsupial mantras. Here she is once more, patching together another mission, opening her pouch. Dear Kanga-god, I swear this is my last major bailout.

  1:00. The chili is thickening. Down an inch from the top. She opens three cans of kidney beans, drains them and then carefully folds them in. Tastes. More chili powder, more Tabasco. Now to be really right it should simmer for a few hours. She and Marna can munch celery. No birth certificate in the benefits folders or the money wires, any of the dozens of folders she's gone through. Only one more stack to go. And goddammit she knows any moment it's going to be there. Maybe Marna will be a bit late so she can find it and then get rid of all this incriminating rescue evidence, stuff all the folders back in the drawer.

  She returns with the last batch: RECORDING COURSE, DRUM STUDIO, ADDITION PLANS, CARS. She starts going through the ESCORT folder. Why in heaven's name does she still have insurance papers for a car long gone to the crusher? As soon as Mark's settled, she going to dispose of everything but the few records that are critical. Like the birth certificate. She winces when she gets to the TEMPO folder. That and the recording studio course: the two actions that still cause her to screw up her face, that she still thinks about in terms of "How could I have been that stupid?"

  Luke barks, barks and bounces against the door. Through the window she sees Marna heading up the walk in a long yellow slicker, her bush of red hair blazing. Marna: here comes the sun. She opens the door and waves. Might as well come clean.

  Marna hugs her, bends down from what she refers to as her lofty view, then squats to take hold of Luke, to kiss the knob on the top of his head with a big smack. "What a hunk of masculine charm you've gotten to be," she tells him when he gives her his paw. Marna peels out of the slicker and hangs it on the back of the door. She pulls a bulky plastic bag from one of the pockets. "Brought us a little something. Next best thing to a bottle of Kahlua. Got to stick it in your freezer." Halfway there she stops and looks around. "Mother of God, Del, are you all right?" She spreads one arm wide to note the clutter. The stovetop littered with open cans, the counter covered with folders, the sink full of dishes. The salad-makings on a chair. "I am impressed with such uncharacteristic disarray."

  "I thought you might be."

  "What's going on?"

  "Mark may be going to that place I told you about on the phone—Lazarus House. He needs a copy of his birth certificate before his social worker leaves for the weekend. I told him I'd send it to him…"—she glances at the clock—"now."

  Marna throws back her fiery head and laughs. "Sorry, but it's just so, you know, how the dance goes."

  "I can't find it. I know it's here"—she points to the remaining folders—"but I've misfiled it. I've been, paper by paper, through everything but these."

  "What can I do?"

  "Go through the last stack while I deal with this." She swings her hand toward the mess. "Then I can make a quick run to fax a copy from Sidney. Got to get it there by two."

  "These?" Marna picks up a folder.

  "The certificate's tan, State of New York arced across the top and…" She turns the water on full. "…and in the right cor
ner, there's his footprint. His heel, his baby toes."

  Marna's eyes widen. "You're kidding. In case he got kidnapped. In case he got accidentally switched." Then she grins. "All along maybe you got the wrong kid."

  "Oh, he's Lee's double. He's our child all right."

  Marna shoves part of the stack her way. "Forget lunch. Let's both go through the folders."

  "Please. You do the folders. I don't even want to see that stuff right now. Just let me get this mess cleaned up."

  Marna leans over the counter, steps out of her clogs. "Should I begin with the one marked Tempo? God, I remember that."

  "I'd forgotten I'd told you about the Tempo. Yeah, start there. You can put the finished ones…" She searches for a clear surface.

  Marna's so much better at drawing the line. If her son had asked her for the title to the Tempo, Marna would have said, When you finish paying me for the car. But when Mark asked, she gave it to him, to show she trusted him, to treat him like a man. Two days later he sold an eight-thousand-dollar car for seven hundred at some chop shop in New York. She wraps the buttered loaf in foil. "Marna, why do I allow myself to get pulled in? Rescue after rescue?"

  Marna stops going through the files and leans her way. "Surely some of it has to do with Aaron." Marna looks at her to see how she takes that in.

  Aaron almost never asked. The few times he did that didn't feel like the right thing to do, she said No. Like the time he asked her to co-sign on his truck. I don't think that's a good idea, she told him. And look at what happened to Aaron.

  "Oh, Del, how can you not be afraid for Mark if you don't help?" Marna places her hand on her heart as if she's about to say the pledge. "Every time Jason asks for something, like now, Can he tell the judge he's going to stay with me until he's put together six months of recovery, I always feel like Helen Keller at the water pump. I'm dragging a word up from the depths of my guts: Nnnnnnoooo. And afterwards, for days I feel like shit. What kind of mother am I that I won't let him come home?"

  Del lets the spoon sink into the chili and disappear. "That's it. With Mark—I can't get the Nnnoooo out."

  Marna opens the folder again. "I can't let him come home. I just can't do that to myself—carry around in the trunk of my car everything that might be stolen, take my VCR to work every day—I can't and I'm not going to. That gets me through." Marna throws up both hands. "I hate to tell you this, but there's nothing in Drum Studio either. That's the last folder."

  Del leans against the refrigerator and breathes. "All right, just let me figure out what I need to do next." She fishes around in the chili for the wooden handle, then turns to watch Marna sink down on the rug and settle herself in the lotus position, watches her bend forward to touch her forehead on the floor.

  Luke lifts his paw and places it on Marna's back while she intones, "Ommmmmm." Then in the same voice, she chants, "Luke, you are the dominant doooooog."

  Del drops the spoon back into the simmering pot and cackles. Whatever had been weighting down her chest, lifts. "Marna." She washes her hands and pulls her address book from her purse. "How's this: Mark, I haven't been able to find your birth certificate. As soon as I do, I'll fax it to your social worker. Goodbye."

  "Yes," Marna says, rising back up. "I'm going to transfer the folders to the couch so I can start on the salad."

  Del dials the number and clears her throat, goes over her speech while it rings and rings. "Del. Wait." Marna takes hold of her elbow and leads her to the counter. "It just fell out when I pushed the files aside."

  A tiny footprint in the corner. Five small toes.

  Del surveys the room. Eight quart jars of chili sit up against the window, cooling to go in the refrigerator. The dishes are done and the fire's settled into a steady glow of heat. Marna has stacked the folders in rows along one end of the couch and is now stretched out on the rug, propped on a stack of pillows, her toes resting against Luke's backside, her bowl of ice cream balanced on her belly. Probably Mark's birth certificate, all his records have arrived at Lazarus House by now. She turns the dimmer switch so the room fades into shadow, then settles with her own bowl into the rocker by the stove. "Is that enough light?"

  Marna answers in a husky whisper, "Don't need to see to taste."

  For a while they eat in silence.

  "Chunks of German chocolate," Marna says.

  Del presses the cold against the roof of her mouth and lets it slowly dissolve. "Crunched Heath Bars."

  Marna smiles. "Coffee fudge ripples."

  "A hint of Amaretto."

  "Chocolate-covered almonds."

  "Pecans and something I can't quite name," she tells Marna, huffing her breath to her nose to see if she can catch the scent.

  Marna sits up and licks her lips. "Have you ever tasted anything…"

  "More yummy?" Del sucks on the last chocolate chunk she's been saving and scrapes her spoon along the bottom to gather the last little bit, then runs her tongue around the edge of the bowl. "Want another scoop?"

  Marna looks at the ceiling as if she's conferring with higher powers. "No, I'm good." She slips her toes under Luke. His eyes open a slit and then droop. He moans and Marna sings in her blues contralto, "Here we are, the three of us. Jason under wraps."

  Del slides in with her own line, "Mark safe."

  Then Marna croons, "Nick, on hold."

  Under Marna's held note, Del adds, "And Richard, far away."

  Marna smiles again. "Just the three of us, and we are…," then she looks over at Del and waits.

  "Full," Del says. "Right down to our toes."

  Marna sets her bowl aside and stretches out flat, curls her long legs up to her chest and then rolls back and forth. "I sometimes think how much Richard and I are alike: both of us longing for more. You and Nick, on little islands, making occasional trips to the mainland for supplies."

  There's that warning flutter beneath her ribs. "Is that how it feels?"

  "Sometimes." Marna is now cradling her foot in the crook of the opposite arm. "I'm there on Nick's mainland list. Sometimes up with the staples, sometimes under extras. Likely he's going to come ashore, but never quite knowing when."

  She leans toward Marna, wanting to see her face. "Are we talking a sack of flour versus a chunk of chocolate?"

  Marna stills. "I'm talking Yes, rather than Maybe."

  She doesn't answer Marna right away. "I don't know if extra's quite the way I'd put it, but a lot of the time I have to be out in my own little boat, most of what I need right on board."

  Marna's eyes widen. "But what if you paddle by, knock-knock, and there's nobody home?"

  "You think that's what's going on with Richard? That he resents being treated like a … chocolate chunk?"

  Marna squints at her. "Maybe that's some of it. Richard and I, two motherless lambs, wanting to get a guaranteed place to nestle—no matter what we do."

  She'd like to get up and rinse the bowls, dry them, put the spoons in next to the forks. Marna waits, her head tipped to one side. "No matter what, Marna? Why does Richard feel he has the right to be angry about me not driving him to the airport?"

  Marna closes her eyes, rests her hands palms up on her lotus-knees. Mama Buddha.

  "Marna, it's my fear. Not up to Richard to say what I should do with it."

  Sitting above Marna in the rocking chair, now all Del can see is the bright ring of her bowed head. Then her quiet answer, "Extraordinary measures for Mark, but not for him."

  "Jesus Christ. Richard is not my…"

  Marna looks at her, a sad look. "Motherless lambs."

  "All right, maybe they are cries in the night … sometimes I can, but sometimes … I can't." Her hands are freezing. She stretches them toward the stove and fans her fingers. "Richard needs for me to range between Okay and Good. When I skid toward Poor, he gets anxious. Sometimes I think if he didn't blame the rotten potato left undetected in the bottom of the bag on me, if he didn't see that as a sure sign of my lack of interest in our relationship, I could
live with him. Maybe if you lived with Nick, you might find it's more than you want."

  "Oh, I know. Probably I'd still baaaaaa. But now that Mark's going to be settled, maybe Richard will feel like there's more room for him to snuggle in."

  Del reaches over and picks up Marna's bowl, sets it on top of her own. "Maybe there will be."

  Marna sits up and gives her a searching look. "But here's the thing. Why is it that the island people don't get together—paddle over when the wind's right. Why don't the mainlanders pair up?"

  She takes the dishes to the sink and sets them quietly in. "That's the puzzle. The piece looks like it would go right in there, but it doesn't quite fit."

  Marna has sunk into Down-Facing Dog, but she goes right on talking. "Maybe it's so the gene pool doesn't get green stuff scumming the top because there's not enough turmoil."

  Marna rises and squeezes Del's shoulder, then she drifts to the CDs arranged around a little plastic tower. She pulls one out. "Rain Dogs. Hummm, I love Tom Waits. But look at him all nestled up on some mama's breast. Tom's a mainlander for sure." She places the CD in the tray. "We'd never get together. Not enough of a mismatch." She sings along, swings around the living room with her eyes shut, her voice buried under Tom Waits's gravel tones. Then she pulls off a woolly sock, shifts and slides off the other. "Got to be barefoot for Tom."

  While Del glides each of the jars into the fridge, she dances too. How she loves to dance. Those Friday nights when she first knew Richard, when she waited at the Plymouth Mill House, hoping that he might be able to get away, that she'd look up and see him across the dance floor, smiling. Back when Aaron and Mark were just kids who were going to grow up and bring their children over for Thanksgiving. She loves to slow dance with Richard. The best of all slow dancers. You become water and he takes you wherever he wants to go. She misses Richard. His warm hands, his smell. She circles around the couch. Only the stacks of folders to return to the file drawers and then everything will be back in place. She lifts the first pile and starts toward her studio. Dodges as Marna whirls by. Tom Waits growls into a new song.