Page 47 - www.composition1.com

I've just come back to my apartment building after visiting my parents' home, a nice big fancy
house that they left for me some odd-numbered miles down the road. I go to that area once every
few months because it's where I spent my childhood. Everyone probably longs for their childhood
in their adulthood for reasons I shouldn't have to mention. Down the road a few blocks from the
house is the church we all used to go to. My mother, my father, my brother and I.

I didn't know it back then, but my father didn't believe in God. Or Satan for that matter. Most
people who don't believe in one don't believe the other. He never said he didn't believe in him, but
I know he didn't; I know he went to church simply because it was the one thing my mother ever
asked him to do.

He was a good liar, he had everyone fooled. He had several different masks so that you couldn't
associate his face with his character or his role.

After my mother committed suicide we stopped going to church. My father and I, I mean. My
brother was no longer around. I'm not even sure if the church-going people would want us to keep
attending service, considering the good book says suicide is a sin.

Some even-numbered years later my father developed cancer and it killed him. Maybe it wasn't the
cancer, maybe it was because he was so angry that he wouldn't be able to continue his quest for
knowledge. Up until even now I question whether knowledge is a good thing or a bad thing
because the gaining of knowledge by humankind is a double-edged sword. It can be what saves us
or what destroys us. Someone said that an individual's gaining of knowledge either brings them
closer to humankind or it causes more and more of an isolation from it.

I open the front door to the apartment building and I see Lynne checking her mail. She looks at me
and smiles, and takes out all of her mail. I say hello and we both begin to walk towards the stairs.
She asks me if I want some junk mail and tosses me some of her mail. It's junk mail. I read the
name who it was to be delivered to, "Lynnette Parker." I guess she didn't take Silvio's last name.

On our way to our apartments Lynne tells me that there was an old woman here looking for me
earlier. Joe's mom. Lynne gives me one more piece of paper with a name and an address on it, but
no phone number. It appears as if Joe's mom, Kathleen, wants me to visit her. I thought I was out of
the whole Joe thing once she came back.

I put down both the junk mail and the piece of paper that Lynne got from Kathleen on the table and
I sit down on my couch and I think about what she would want. And then the phone rings. That
damn ringing sound. I pick it up before it makes me go deaf and I hear a lady on the other end. Joe's
mom, Kathleen.

We end up talking about Joe's condition, and about how the doctors say even if he does wake up,
they are not sure if he will be "normal." In other words, they are not sure if he has suffered any
brain damage. She also gets me to agree to come visit her on the upcoming Wednesday even
though she lives on the far side of town.