December 18
Get your family out of there, Noah. Please. The city isn’t safe anymore.
None of them are. If you’d been watching the news, you’d know this by
now. Please, honey. Please. For me. For your mother. You need to leave
New York before it’s too late, before your family gets hurt . . . Mom left another message.
Noah didn’t even hear his phone ring this time. Her voicemails are digital mosquitoes buzzing about his ear at all hours of the day—and night—hungry for blood.
This one landed at eleven. Shouldn’t she be in bed by now? Fast asleep?
Paul Tammany must’ve just gotten off the air.
“Everything okay?” Alicia props herself up on one elbow in their bed, sensing tension.
Noah nods, still listening to his mother.
“Is it her?”
“Yeah.” The frequency of Mom’s calls has really ramped up since Thanksgiving. Something’s in the air. Or maybe it’s the fluoride in the water. Or the cell towers, all that 5G microwaving her brain.
I just watched another news story and they said there have been more protests—these riots and I, oh God, Noah, I’m so worried for you . . . So worried about my grandbaby . . . When Noah was just a boy, growing up in Virginia, his mom would take him to the library. She’d let him check out two books. Any two. His choice. Their deal was simple:
One for you and one for me. Mom would read one book to Noah at bedtime while he had to read the other on his own. He’d pick a picture book to tackle—the easy reads, Sendak or Silverstein—while for his mother, he’d tug the doorstoppers off the shelf. The cinder-block books. Tolkien. Dickens. King. He can still remember the sound of her voice, a soft southern lilt gamely taking on the personas of every last character, her words filling his bedroom, his mind, his dreams.
Noah can still hear her voice now.
When I think of you up there in that god-awful city, with all those awful people around, I—I don’t know. I wish you’d come home to us. You can’t be safe up there. Kelsey can’t be safe . . . He doesn’t recognize her at all.
It’s not Mom. It can’t be.
Technically, yes, that’s her voice. But . . .
the words. They don’t sound like her thoughts at all. These are someone else’s words in her mouth. Her mind.
It’s getting worse.
She’s getting worse.
“Is it bad?” Alicia’s voice is calm. Fair and balanced. Working as an admin at a nonprofit will do that—her uncanny knack for putting out fires with nothing but the serenity in her tone.
“Pretty bad.”
“How bad?”
They’re talking about a reckoning, son . . . Noah stares at the ceiling, phone pressed to his ear, his mind’s eye filled with his mother’s distorted visions of a city on fire, of protests right outside their window, complete chaos.
I know you don’t believe me and I know you think I’m overreacting, but I—I just wish you would wake up, honey, before it’s too late. I wish, I wish you would open your eyes. “Can I hear?” Alicia slides in closer. There’s that curiosity of hers. That mettle. Probably the first thing Noah remembers about meeting Alicia was how she was the one to approach him at that Antibalas show in Williamsburg—what? Thirteen years ago now?—in the back room at Black Betty. She kick-started the conversation, buying the next round. They danced with their drinks held up at their shoulders, those crinkly plastic cups, spilling G&Ts all over themselves. They both carried a hint of juniper all the way back to his apartment, seeped into their skin.
“You don’t want to hear this,” Noah says.
“What’s she saying?”
Somebody ought to do something. Somebody ought to put a stop to these people—
These people.
“Nothing.” Noah deletes the message before he finishes listening to it. What Alicia hasn’t said, but what Noah’s sensed anyhow, is that she’s starting to ebb. Pull away from him. His family. And she’s pulling Kelsey away with her.
When Thanksgiving discourse shifted to immigration, who’s creeping into the country, didn’t his parents notice Kelsey sitting across the table? Who just passed the mashed potatoes? Didn’t they realize their granddaughter is half Haitian?
An invasion, Noah’s mom called it.
Why can’t they all just stay in their own country? What about me? What about Kelsey? Alicia asked Noah’s mother at the table, point-blank, in front of Ash and his whole fam, Christ,
everyone, having held her tongue as long as the first serving of turkey.
What do you see when you look at her? Your own granddaughter? Mom said,
no, no, she wasn’t talking about her daughter-in-law or granddaughter. She was talking about
those other people.
Noah hasn’t picked up a call from her since; just lets Mom go to voicemail now. Lets her ramble on for as long as she wants, filling up his inbox with her endless messages. He traps them. Suffocates them, like bugs in a jar.
But it’s not going away. Mom’s not stopping. This has festered for far too long.
Noah needs to deal with this.
“I’m gonna call,” he says, already dialing. It doesn’t matter how late it is.
No answer.
Strange. Mom always picks up. No matter what she’s in the middle of, she always makes time to talk to her boys. Particularly Noah.
Mr. Golden Boy, Asher always jabs.
Pampered Prince.
So why isn’t she picking up? Why won’t she answer?
“Maybe she’s asleep?” Alicia suggests.
“Maybe.”
Neither says anything for a breath. Alicia holds on to Noah’s eyes. Really takes him in. “Plenty of people are going through this,” she says, breaking the silence. “I read in
The Atlantic—”
Noah drags his pillow over his face and releases a low groan. “Pleeeease. No more articles about deprogramming your parents . . .”
It’s far too late for an intervention. That ship sailed last Thanksgiving. Noah already tried dragging Mom and Dad back from the ideological brink of their batshit conspiracy-laden crackpottery. Before packing his fam in the car and plowing through traffic to get to Grammy and Grandpa’s house for Turkey Time, Noah Googled “how to deprogram your parents,” like he was cramming for an exam. He clicked a couple links. Printed a few articles. He even highlighted a couple sentences.
Debate won’t help. Arguing only makes matters worse. Your loved ones are lost in a conspiracy theory loophole. They are falling down their own personal rabbit holes. Only patience and understanding will pull them out. Talk to them. See their side. Find common ground. Did the writers of these listicles even know folks like Noah’s father? He’s the most stubborn son of a bitch Noah’s ever met. He’s lived with his bullheadedness his entire life.
But Mom . . .
Not her.
Mom is still Mom, isn’t she? Somewhere deep down? Trapped in her own body? There has to be a scrap of sanity left, just a glimmer of common sense buried deep beneath the calcifying wave of conspiracy theories shellacking her brain, one queasy meme after another.
“You’re not alone,” Alicia says. “That’s all I’m saying.”
Sure feels like it. This downward spiral may have started years ago, but this last month has been a wildfire of voicemails. Used to be just one a week. Now it’s up to three a day. Noah has felt so isolated from his family—his own mother—ever since she tumbled down the rabbit hole.
Whatever crawled back up isn’t Mom anymore.
Copyright © 2025 by Clay McLeod Chapman. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
