Somebody’s Been Stealing Mom’s Bike
Somebody’s been stealing Mom’s bike. Her wheels, she likes to call it. The first time she left it on the side deck, which is visible from the street. Unfortunate, but preventable, I thought. The next time it was in the garage, but she left the door unlocked. Also unfortunate, but also preventable, albeit slightly more invasive—somebody opened a door, somebody went somewhere they weren’t supposed to be. This time it was in the garage and the door was locked.
“Are you sure you locked it,” I say into the phone. I live a state away, in Oregon, which makes it hard to know exactly what’s going on.
“Am I sure? Of course I’m sure,” she says.
“Okay. It’s just that if you did lock it, whoever stole the bike must have a key.”
“What are you saying?”
“I’m asking who has a key.”
“I have a key,” she says.
“Right,” I say. “Anybody else?”
“Your father doesn’t have a key, if that’s what you’re getting at. I changed all the locks when he left. He’s not getting anywhere near that garage, even if his surfboard is still in there.”
“So Dad doesn’t have a key,” I say. “But I think you’re forgetting somebody.”
“Who? Bowe? Bowe’s never home. He’s always out with his friends. You’d think he was running for office the amount of socializing that boy does.”
“Mom,” I say.
“Yes?”
“I’ll talk to Bowe.”
So I call Bowe. It’s 4:30 in the afternoon and he sounds like he just woke up. But he didn’t just wake up, he’s high.
“Where’s Mom’s bike,” I ask.
“Dunno,” he says.
“Seriously, Bowe.”
“Seriously what?”
“I seriously need to know if you took it.”
“I didn’t take it.”
“Well it’s been stolen three times,” I say. “And we’re almost positive whoever did it has a house key.”
“Wait a second,” he says.
I wait.
“It was stolen three separate times?”
“Right.”
“So how does she keep getting it back? Is she buying new ones? Is she somehow finding it?”
“I don’t know,” I say. “I didn’t ask her.”
“Well maybe you should before you go on accusing me.”
For a moment, there’s nothing but the hum of the phone’s connection.
“She says you’re never home.”
“I am home, I just don’t leave my room.”
“Why?”
“Because, Neil. Every conversation turns into crying. I’ll say ‘What’re you watching?’ and thirty seconds later she’s crying.”
“She’s fragile,” I say.
“That’s what Dad says.”
“Is it? I guess it is.”
“He was here this morning.”
“He was?”
“To get his surfboard.”
“Did you let him in?”
“Yep.”
I hang up. I call Dad. When he picks up, he’s talking to somebody else. It sounds like a woman, a young woman, a woman younger than Mom at any rate.
“Neil, what do you need?” he says.
“I hear you went by Mom’s.”
“You heard correctly.”
“Why’d you go,” I ask.
“To pick up some things—my files, my surfboard.”
“She says her bike was stolen.”
“Her bike? No, I saw it there this morning.”
“So you see why I’m calling.”
“You think I—Jesus, Neil. We’ve had our differences, but I would never steal from your mother.”
“She says it’s been stolen three times in the last month.”
“Three times? So what, she keeps buying a new one every time this happens?”
“I know,” I say. “It doesn’t add up.”
Dad exhales into the phone, preparing something. “She’s fragile, Neil. She holds things in, she fabricates. You know, towards the end, her hair started falling out—did I tell you that? Big gray clumps on her pillow every morning.”
I wait until it feels appropriate, and then I say, “So you didn’t take the bike.”
“Neil, it’s in the garage, collecting dust. She should be riding that bike is what she should be doing.”
“Her wheels,” I say.
“Her what?”
“Her bike, she calls it her wheels.”
In the background, the woman calls my dad’s name. She says, “Keith.”
“I have to go,” Keith says. “Your mother will be okay. You should visit her. You should fly down for a weekend.”
“Maybe.”
“I love you,” he says. “You know that.”
“Yeah,” I say, then I hang up.
I imagine Mom sitting on the edge of her bed, her head pitched forward, staring at the floor. I imagine her fists balled up, the knuckles all pink. And then, I don’t know, I remember the way she was when I was young, when she would lead games of mother-may-I on the front lawn, barefoot, completely oblivious to the runners and the dog walkers and the cars rolling by.
My cheek twitches. I squeeze my phone to make it stop. I need to call her back. I need to set the record straight on this bike.
When she picks up she’s out of breath, and there’s wind thundering against the phone’s tiny microphone.
“Hello?” she says. “I can’t hear you.”
“Mom. It’s me.”
“Hello?” she says again. Then I hear a bell, a bell like you might find on a secretary’s desk or clipped to the handlebars of a bike.
“Mom,” I say. “Where are you?”
She doesn’t respond, but she doesn’t hang up either. She keeps riding. And for a while I stay on the line, listening to the wind, listening to her gasp at it.
Teddy Engs (@wardoengs) is a writer and musician living in Portland, Oregon. His work has appeared in Chestnut Review, and he is a reader for Typehouse Magazine.