Praise Title Page Copyright Disclaimer Dedication Epigraph PROLOGUE 1ST TRIMESTER: ONE TWO THREE FOUR FIVE 2ND TRIMESTER: SIX SEVEN EIGHT NINE TEN ELEVEN 3RD TRIMESTER: TWELVE THIRTEEN FOURTEEN FIFTEEN SIXTEEN SEVENTEEN EIGHTEEN NINETEEN 4TH TRIMESTER: TWENTY TWENTY-ONE TWENTY-TWO TWENTY-THREE TWENTY-FOUR TWENTY-FIVE TWENTY-SIX TWENTY-SEVEN EPILOGUE Author''s Note Acknowledgments About the Author Names, dates, and identifying characteristics of certain people and events portrayed in this book have been obscured for literary cohesion, to protect privacy, and to make myself seem younger and thinner. * PROLOGUE * VOYAGEUR New York City, 2010 "It''s time," my father''s voice creaks through the phone. My father has called me exactly three times since I left home, in 1996, and never at eight thirty in the morning. "Her threats are serious. She''s really planning it," he says. "The details." He doesn''t make any of his usual jokes: she is plotting her plot for when she plotzes . Or: she''s ready for her seventy-two virgins.

That''s how I know it really is time. I feel my esophagus battering through me like a pendulum. "I''m coming." I dial my brother. "Eli, book us in at court for tomorrow morning," I say, as if I''m referring to a mani-pedi, and not requesting an injunction against the woman who bore me. I hear my blood pump, quick, staccato; imagine hers gushing through her thick veins. Imagine it stop. She just likes the attention, I remind myself, attempt to console myself.

Eight hours from New York to Montreal. I can make it. I must. I look out of my all-window apartment at the new high rises and old water towers, at the buzzing Mondrian grid of Manhattan streets. I see their arrangement: parallels and perpendiculars, squares, equal angles. They are numbered in order, so no one ever gets lost. Someone is looking out for you. I live on the eighteenth floor, reminding me of chai .

The Hebrew for one and eight, the symbol for luck. The word for life. I am on top of things here on my mountain--I can see the moat, protect myself. "What''s going on?" Jon, suited up for work, comes into the living room, which is sparse, airy, barely furnished. The exact opposite of both of our mothers'' homes. "I''m going to get the court order," I say. "Finally." "Finally," he repeats, knowing that I''ve been trying to do this, waiting for my dad''s support for years.

I smell his Irish Spring. Like the Irish are so known for cleanliness, he jokes in his British accent. To me, it''s the scent of savior. "Call me." "If you''re lucky." I grab his hand. He squeezes back. I memorize the pressure of his knuckles on my skin, think how our bodies'' link is entirely different from the bonds that hold together DNA.

I am wired. It''s actually happening. I have only twenty-five minutes to catch the bus. Within ten, I am packed and in a taxi headed to Port Authority station. I call Mom as we stop and start in the traffic around Times Square. "What''s going on?" My stomach is clenched. "I can''t go on. They''re coming to get me," she says.

She is terrified of them . "There''s no point. Even God is telling me to kill myself." "Well, God''s made a lot of mistakes," I say, but God ? When has she ever once mentioned God? I try to breathe, feel the pulse in my eyes. Eight hours is a long time. "I''m coming," I say, as we pass a billboard for yet another Shrek . "Don''t kill yourself." It''s very simple: just don''t kill yourself.

The concept of her nonexistence short-circuits my neurons. The area behind my forehead goes numb. "I''ll be there soon," I add as the cab jerks to a halt. The need to check in with her became worse over the past few years. Sometimes she doesn''t call back for hours. Usually, she''s just on Valium, or engaged in her fantasies, or deeply ensconced in Masterpiece Theatre . Thanks, PBS, for your riveting programming that has aged me ten years. I hop on the bus, clutching a southwestern tuna wrap from Au Bon Pain.

The difference in my two lives has never been more apparent. Within a quarter of an hour I go from an aerial condo to Greyhound. Sashimi to sandwich. My chosen family to my birth one, and accordingly, I revert. I find an empty seat. I know this route well. "Voyageur" is the Canadian branch of Greyhound. Meaning "traveler," its rolling French connotes wild adventure, Jules Verneish explorations, sing-along expeditions across the Yukon''s blazing horizon, instead of the reality: the alcoholic luggage schlepper, the characters who travel back and forth with plastic bags instead of suitcases, and the racist customs officials who interrogate them.

Seeing my Canadian passport, their main question is: did you buy anything? Well, I always want to answer, considering I''ve been away for fifteen years, I have done a touch of light shopping. I text my friend Melissa, who I''m supposed to meet for lunch later that day, a mini celebration for my thirty-third birthday. "Heading to Montreal," I explain. "Just a little impromptu vacay." To prevent my mother from hanging herself with her vast collection of pencil cases. I check in with Mom. Still alive. I e-mail my brother: "you''re on call when I lose reception in the Adirondacks.

" I''m thankful he''s on the ground, can pacify her with his soft voice, his slow gestures, until I get there. He soothes her more than I do. She likes him better. Then, I take out a pen and the forms that have been sitting in my drawer. I need to fill in the blanks, and to do it perfectly. For years, I''ve tried to find ways to get my mother into treatment, secretly speaking to social workers, doctors, therapists, driven by the image of her cured: smiling, laughing like she used to, maybe even leaving her house, coming to mine. I''ve done more research for this project than for my PhD. Then again, my mother is much more complicated than Representations of Domestic Space in Contemporary Art.

You won''t have a good chance at court unless your father participates, they all warned. He''s the one who lives with her. Enables her, they meant. Only now, staring at the legal questionnaire and the "patient''s history," I''m not sure where to begin. How to narrate the tale of my mother falling apart? The brain that turned in on itself over decades, in little unremarkable steps, like the ascent of the Nazis, I think, and wonder if I should start with the Holocaust. My grandmother''s escape from Warsaw to Siberian work camps, my mother''s wartime birth in Kirgizia, in transit, her formative years in ravaged Poland, DP camps, born into the fresh smell of a murdered family, a refugee before she knew what home was. Eventually coming to Canada, but never really settling, never committing to a house, a stable structure. The way a few extra piles of books turned into domestic mayhem, mounds of old paper towels, thousands of videocassettes, stale Danishes that formed a barricade across her kitchen, a fortress to protect from the next world war that was always just around the corner, especially in suburban Canada.

The slow stewings of a victim complex. The disputes, the real estate battles, tens of thousands spent on lawyers, not to mention the rooms filled with spy devices used to record every meeting, the gradual disjoining from friends, cousins, siblings, her own name. The stacks of "research" to help her track down "the people who are after her," who--she claims--break into the house, leave her cryptic messages, mess up her papers. The house bolted stiff with locks and alarms, loudly ticking clocks in every room. Cameras. Laptops. Binders. The pill vials.

The story of how a person becomes a shadow. I read the next question on the form. "Is she a danger to herself or to others?" They mean life danger, the social worker had explained. "Yes," I write. In "family history," I write that her mother suffered from the same thing. The exact same thing. We reach Albany''s bus station, our pit stop, the midpoint. Transitional space.

Not here, not there, but a halfway house. The cafeteria hosts middle-aged women in miniskirts, and might just double as a brothel. Over the years, I''ve pushed myself into constant motion, moved countries, climates, crossed borders, waded in endless hinterlands. An expert at layovers. In the rancid bathroom, the metal door is shiny but offers no reflection, as if my short body, brown hair, plastic-framed glasses are not really there. I buy the one remaining bottle of sparkling water--my insides, at least, feel sharp, bubbly. A few months ago, my mother said: you were the normal one born into an abnormal family. I''d felt both vindicated and angry at that truth.

Then again, a nerdy, workaholic, insomniac, recovering academic, former stand-up comic--I wondered how many people would call me the normal one. But chez Batalion, I am the metaphor for normal, the simile for the sane. Please don''t kill yourself. Please. This time, I''m going to get it right. I''m coming home to save you. I''m coming. Back on the bus, my cell rings.

Mom, still alive. "Where are you?" she barks. "Where?" Definitely still alive. And kicking. "Four hours away," I answer and spill fizzy water on my thighs. I sigh: they will be wet for that whole time. "What good is that?" she wails. "I need you here.

I have so many problems, Judy. No one ever does.