text: You and your buddy Ben gather your cheap spelunking gear from the corner of his basement where you keep it and hoist it up the narrow steps to his living room.
  
  His mom is sitting there the same as when you’d come in, still in her bathrobe, a green terry cloth robe Ben said his dad gave her, that’s how old it is. You head through the room without saying anything since she never responds when you do anyway, not so much as a "hi there" even though you've been her son’s best friend since the two of you dominated the kindergarten playground together. It gives you the creeps to see Ben try to talk to her. He's never tried to do what the rest of us would do if our mothers were walking, breathing vegetables like her. We’d have lost it long ago, taken her by the shoulders, slapped her, told her to fucking snap out of it. But not Ben. He lingers behind you, and you know he is bending down to kiss her on the cheek.
  
  What do you do next?
  > You this family stuff isn't your business. Pause and wait for Ben.
  “Bye Mom,” you hear him say as the screen door closes behind you. He might get a nod from her but that’s it, a nod without looking up, her eyes spaceylike from her pills, watching TV with the sound all the way down, as usual.
  
  You wait on the porch under the oversized black POW/MIA flag, which rolls in crazy arcs from the October wind. One of these days you'll get around to telling Ben he should take the flag down. It's a dark omen and makes the whole house look like somebody just died when in reality, Ben’s father went MIA more than twenty years ago.