Free A Wolf at the Table: A Memoir of My Father by Augusten Burroughs

kept in the front patch pocket of her dress and said, “Okay, you go stand over there at the edge of the woods,” and pointed to the very rear boundary of the yard.
    I jogged back there, swatting bugs away from my head. I turned around to face her. “Okay,” I shouted. The glove felt funny on my hand, heavy.
    She brought her cigarette to her lips. “Are you ready?”
    “Yeah,” I called back, waiting.
    She tossed the ball to me, underhand. Even though I ran, I missed it because it only landed a few feet in front of her.
    “Sorry,” she called. “I’ll throw it better the next time.” My mother had become expert at speaking around the cigarette in her mouth, squinting her eyes against the smoke.
    I handed her the ball and then ran back to my spot at the edge of the yard. I slammed my fist into the glove, because I’d seen players do this, and shouted, “Okay, I’m ready again.”
    My mother threw the ball again and this time it landed off to the side and rolled into the woods.
    It was no use. She didn’t know how to play baseball any more than I did. My mother could open a book of matches and remove one and light it using only her toes, but she could not throw a ball.
    I picked it up off the ground, wiped away a damp leaf, and then walked back to her. “I don’t want to play catch,” I said. “We don’t have to, it’s okay.”
    “I’m not very good, am I?” she asked, gently tucking a curl out of my face. “Well, maybe your dad can come out after work and play with you for a while.”
    “He won’t do that,” I said, and the anger in my voice surprised me. In a more casual voice I added, “He never wants to do anything with me.”
    I wanted my mother to hug me and say,  That’s just not true,  but instead she said, “Well,  I  want to do things with you.”
    She headed back indoors and I left the glove outside on a rock so that the rain could weather it. I wanted it to at least look like the other boys’ gloves, soft and well used. I certainly couldn’t bring such a pristine glove to school; I might as well show up in a dress. So I left it on a rock and after a week, dye had leached onto the stone beneath it.
    The glove had dried stiff. I’d ruined it.
    My mother felt sorry for me. She drove me to the Mountain Farms Mall, where we parked in front of JC Penney. As always, I couldn’t resist staring at the tooth imprints on the dashboard of our drab Dodge Aspen wagon. When my parents had brought the Aspen home for the first time, I’d sat in the passenger seat, admiring the new car. Then, because I could not stop myself, I leaned forward and bit into the soft dashboard. The material flexed beneath my bite and when I pulled away, I saw my tooth marks had remained in the dash. Even at the time I’d wondered what had compelled me to bite the dashboard like that. But now, a year older, I groaned inwardly whenever I saw the bite, which was every time I got in the car. It was like a tattoo of my immaturity. Plus, my father had been furious when he saw the damage, screaming, “Jesus Christ, son, what possessed you? Why would you do such a thing?” He couldn’t think of a punishment appropriate to the crime, so there had been none. My own mortification had been enough.
    “Ready?” my mother said. We climbed out of the car and walked into the mall.
    The pet store was, of course, my favorite. Although I visited it each time we went to the mall, I’d only once been allowed to bring something back from it: hermit crabs. The crabs had been fascinating pets, as I invented a rich inner life for them, naming them Gladys, Marshall, Stuart, Gabrielle, and Charlotte. Despite my best efforts, they all died, leaving me with their shells, which my mother, to my horror, wanted to mix with the bowl of decorative seashells in her office. “When Cream dies, will you hang her hide on your wall?” I asked.
    We were here today for a guinea pig. My parents wouldn’t let me get another dog, but at least my