For One More Day

Chick finds himself with his mother in a town he has never seen. The sun has set. Chick and his mother exchange a few regretful words about how they wish things had gone differently in the past, and how they both wish they had spent more time together. When his mother asks him if she was a good mother, Chick is suddenly ripped away once again from the scene before he can answer, and he again hears the policeman’s voice and sees the bright light. When he returns to the town, he finds himself several blocks behind his mother, but when he reaches toward her he is back again at her side, as if nothing has happened. She tells him they have one more stop.

Together, they enter a yellow apartment building. They find themselves in a bedroom with an older woman Chick does not know. The room is packed with heavy wooden furniture, and there is a cross on the wall. Chick’s mother caresses the woman’s hands and hair as she brushes her hair. When Chick asks who the woman is, his mother tells him that she is his father’s wife.

The chapter ends with Chick’s memory of dropping the first shovelful of dirt onto his mother’s casket when she is buried. The shovel feels strange in his hands, and he reflects on all of the ways he could have been better to his mother. He thinks about how a good son would have lived his life in a completely different way.

Chick’s mother tells him the secret story of his father’s life: he married a woman in Italy when he was stationed there in the Second World War, before he married Chick’s mother. When he realized that the war would end, he decided to come home and start a family with Posey. He eventually brought the Italian woman over to the United States and set up a house with her in a nearby town, where he had established a second branch of his liquor store business. When he divorced Posey, he went to live full-time with his other family. His mother also tells him that his father had another son, who is a few years older than Chick. Chick is especially hurt by this news. His mother explains that when she found out about the other family, she told his father to leave and never come back. Posey considered his actions a betrayal not only of her, but also of their children.

Chick begins to understand that the reason his life fell apart after that was because he no longer felt he deserved to have a family, and he sees a parallel between his own behavior and that of his father.

His mother explains that his father eventually left this woman also, and that his mother does not hate her because they both wanted the same things in life. Chick’s mother tells him that he has to leave, but before he does, she asks him why he wants to die. All his shame and dissatisfaction with his life comes pouring out in a series of disconnected sentences, and his mother tells him not to give up. She shows him that she understood his motives perhaps better than he had: “‘Yourfather.’ She nodded gently. And I realized she had known all along” (137). She understands that Chick’s desire to please his father had led him to make decisions that alienated him from the rest of his family and himself.

His mother tells him to come over to the other woman’s dressing table, where she has been sitting and weeping. Chick sees two objects on the table: a picture of a young man in a graduation cap, who he assumes is the woman’s son and Chick’s half-brother, and his own baseball card. He hears the woman mutter a word in Italian that he does not understand, perdonare, and suddenly everything around them disappears.