It is ten-thirty on a Friday night and you can't sleep.  Instead, you are sorting your nineteen-year-old son's dirty laundry into piles of darks and whites because you want him to bring clean clothes when he goes back to college two days from now.  Just as you're half-way through the laundry basket, your husband clomps down the stairs and informs you the aforementioned son has been in an accident.

               "Accident?" you squeak.  "What do you mean-accident?" Your son-who also happens to be the only child you and your husband of twenty-four years were able to produce-is supposed to be at a party at some girl's house with his friend Mitch.

               "Nobody's hurt," your husband says, still standing on the steps, his head bent forward to avoid scraping it on the sloping ceiling.  "Mitch's car hydroplaned and swerved into a tree; both boys got some bruises, and the police were involved.  We need to drive over and meet Paul at the hospital."

               The laundry basket thumps off the dryer when you knock it with your elbow as you turn to face him.  Clothes spill haphazardly across the floor.  "Hospital?"

               Your husband sighs.  "Paul's all right Helen.  They're both all right. Paul called me on his cell phone a few minutes ago."

               You've never liked your son's friend, Mitch.  He's rich (and spoiled, you think).  A couple of years ago when the boys were seniors at St. Luke's Academy, the after-prom party was at Mitch's house, naturally, because his house was the biggest.  You were a chaperone, wandering through the halls of his mansion, envious of all the antique furniture, oil paintings, and oriental carpets. There was even an indoor swimming pool and a separate game room with a pool table and foosball table.  This was an all-night party because three years earlier a boy and his date drove home drunk from the prom and ended up in a fatal car wreck.  The school's idea was to keep the kids under someone's roof all night and their parents could come and pick them up in the morning.  The boys weren't supposed to drink, take drugs or have sex-hence the chaperones-but if they did, at least they wouldn't end up dead because they were driving impaired. 

               That night of the prom, you climbed the thickly carpeted wide stairway to the second floor hallway of Mitch's home.  You pushed open the door to the first bedroom, shooing out a boy and his giggling date and confiscating their bottle of vodka.  In the second bedroom you found Mitch in bed with a girl under the covers.  "Get out," you said to them.  "You know the rules."

               Mitch rose up on one elbow and said, "Mrs. Higgins, this is my house.  I can do whatever I want in my own home."  You were so thoroughly intimidated by the glare in his eyes and the commanding tone of his voice that you backed out of the doorway, closing the door, even though you knew the rules were supposed to apply equally to everybody.

               As your Volvo sedan accelerates through the humid August night toward the hospital, the streets steamy from recent rain, your husband says to you, "I just thought I should tell you, Paul said the police found a half full bottle of bourbon, a baggie of marijuana and some rolling papers in the glove box of Mitch's car, so the kids will be facing some minor criminal charges. Paul says Mitch passed a sobriety test, though."

               "You know I never liked Mitch," you say.  

               He shrugs his broad shoulders.  "We don't know who was responsible for the marijuana and bourbon being there."

               "Yes, we do," you say.  "Paul is a good boy.  He wouldn't be involved in anything like that."  It has always bothered you that Mitch and Paul get together whenever they're both home from college.  You've told Paul you think Mitch is spoiled.  Even though he's a big handsome hunk who used to be your son's best buddy on the St. Luke's lacrosse team, he's thoroughly spoiled. Paul, of course, ignores your insights.

               At the hospital, you go to the Family Waiting Room, where Paul told your husband he would be waiting.  Mitch's parents have already come for him.  Paul's doctor wants to speak to you and your husband before releasing him, just to explain the bandages on his right arm where the doctor had to remove glass shards and the large bruise on his chest where the deploying air bag struck him.  Paul has a black eye and a sheepish grin, but no broken bones, thankfully. He comes toward you, shaking his blond hair out of his eyes, and you hug him gingerly, but he still says, "Careful, Mom." 

               On the way home he sits in the passenger seat next to his father and the two of them have a conversation as if you weren't back there in the back seat, straining to hear every word over the sound of a ballgame on the radio.

               "Dad," Paul begins and pauses.  "Well, you know Mitch is applying to law schools this fall?"

               "Yes," your husband says cautiously.

               "Mitch and I are going to say the pot and bourbon are mine, so Mitch won't have a record.  If one of us doesn't claim that stuff, they're just going to charge both of us and Mitch has more to lose."

               "Won't having a record affect you?"

               "Mitch promised me a job with his dad's business a long time ago.  I know Mitch will take care of me." 

               You can't keep quiet in the background any longer and you lean forward, straining against your seatbelt, spitting out, "You're not taking the fall for this.  It was his marijuana and his bourbon.  In his car.  He isn't taking care of you; he's using you."

               Paul shifts quickly in his seat to face you. His tanned face with the bruise around his eye looks like it used to when he was two and you couldn't tell whether he was about to cry or have a temper tantrum.  "You be quiet, Mom," he mutters. "I'm not asking you.  Besides you're giving me a headache."

               "Me?  What am I doing to give you a headache?"  

               "Shh," Paul hisses. 

               Your husband says, "We're all tired.  Let's get some sleep and discuss it tomorrow."

               After the three of you arrive home, Paul starts complaining his headache is becoming worse.  You feel guilty that he is so stressed about the problem of the marijuana and the bourbon and you've made the situation worse by being judgmental of Mitch.  You bring him Advil and a glass of water.   When you enter his bedroom, he is sitting on his bed with his head in his hands.  He looks up at you with his shiner that is different shades of plum and black.  His brown eyes appear all shimmery as if he's on the verge of tears and his jaw is clenched.  He asks, "Mom, will you fill the bath tub with water for me?"

               You say in your gentlest voice, "Sure, Honey.  You think a bath will make it better?"

               "Yeah," he grunts.

               In the deep dark of the night when the world goes almost completely quiet, you wake suddenly.  Did you hear a slurp of a wave? Something feels amiss.  You fling back the coverlet and pad barefoot down the hallway towards the bathroom where you left Paul hours ago.  You hear your husband's voice behind you, calling, "Helen, Helen, what's wrong?" When you open the bathroom  door, you find a nightlight in the outlet by the sink, sending out a dim glow,  Paul's long frame stretched out, still in the tub, the bruise on his chest  shimmering under the water like a lurking stingray, his bandaged arm hanging  down outside.  An orange face cloth anchored between the tub walls and his hips protects his curled penis.  Paul looks up at you with a grimace, crow's feet forming around his eyes. The pale greenish water bounces around him as he moves to try to get up.

               "I can't seem to get rid of the migraine, Mom."  Tears fill his eyes and streak down his cheeks.

               At this moment, your husband is hurrying down the hall, wearing a tee shirt and a pair of sweat pants he's just pulled on.  "I need to take him back to the hospital, Helen.  Help him with his clothes."

               "Can I come, too?" you say.

               "You stay here.  I just need to take him quickly and have the doctor check to make sure there isn't something they overlooked.  I don't know about this migraine.  Maybe he has a concussion they missed."

               Off they drive off in the Volvo that is your family's only car, and you are left alone in the dark house where there is no point in even trying to sleep.  You gather your cell phone and return to the basement laundry room to finish washing Paul's clothes.  You pull the light cord at the top of the stairs, slink down the stairs and across the linoleum floor to start up the washing machine, tipping in a cupful of thick blue Tide and watching sudsy bubbles form where the sluice of water pours in.  You pick up the clothes from the floor, but before you drop each one in, you stop and inhale its scent.  The first item is a pair of blue jeans and it smells like sand, sun and salt from the beach and perhaps a little bit like marijuana and there is a stain on the leg that gives off a scent like grain alcohol.  The second item is a navy polo shirt with distinct body odor at the arm pits, only the smell of your son's body odor is something you can't get enough of right now.  For some reason, you are remembering him as a little boy when you used to read to him at night before bed.  There was a book of fairy tales with a story in it called "The Fisherman's Wife."  Paul liked that story.  You can see him at age four: flaxen hair and solemn brown eyes asking you to read it again.  It was a story about a fisherman who caught a magic fish that granted his wishes, only his wife was never satisfied with what he wished for, so the fish took everything away in the end.  

               Your cell phone rings.  Your husband is crying over the receiver, but he speaks to you between gasps.  "They took him right away in the E.R., Helen.  He had a cerebral aneurism caused by head trauma from the accident.  We should've brought him back to the hospital the minute he mentioned a headache.  I'm on my way home now."  

               You lay the cell phone back on the dryer.  You could go upstairs and look up cerebral aneurism on the Internet, but you don't.  You sweep up the rest of the dark pile of clothes and stuff it in, pushing down and spreading it evenly, watching the clothes grow wet and heavy.  You wonder if tonight life offered you a deal and you made the wrong choice; perhaps you should've listened quietly when Paul said he wanted to cover for Mitch.  The clothes in the washer swirl around, the legs of the jeans doing an awkward side stroke, as the sudsy water cleanses away the scents and odors of Paul.

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