Salvatore Difalco is a Sicilian Canadian poet and short story writer.

Second Factor Authentication

My mother started when I entered the kitchen, her blue eyes wide and bright, blue lips trembling. She stood at the sink in her familiar pink gingham apron, hands raised defensively. I hadn’t visited for a long spell and maybe looked a little different, just as things looked different in the kitchen. The pink Formica table must have been new. A red Bialetti moka pot on the stove looked fresh out of the box. And from what I could discern, my mother’s Lewy body dementia had worsened since I last saw her.

“Who are you?” she cried.

I smiled. I felt anguished—look at what remained of my once vibrant, sweet mother—but I smiled to reassure her. “Ma, it’s me, your son.”

She shook her head. “I don’t know you.”

“Ma, it’s me, Sam.”

“I don’t know no Sam. You better leave, sir. My daughter’s on her way. She won’t like this. I have nothing here for you. You can take my jewels, but they’re not worth much, and I have very little money. You can take the television. I can’t watch it anyway.”

“Ma, stop. It’s me for God’s sake.”

Almost the same thing happened a few months back, in the grocery store. My mother stood at the apple stand handling some pink ladies when I approached her. “Ma,” I recall saying, expecting a big smile, but instead she reacted almost violently. “Who are you?” she cried, turning to a woman beside her. “I don’t know this man,” she protested, “tell him to leave me alone.” I didn’t wait to be rebuked. I dashed off red-faced and humiliated. But I shouldn’t have been surprised. Dementia is a bastard. My sister was probably planning to send her to a home and move into the house. That would explain the new furnishings.

I tried remaining calm so my mother wouldn’t start freaking out. I stepped closer, smiling warmly. “You know me, ma,” I cooed. “You know me.”

The front door opened and closed.

“Ma,” I heard, “it’s me, ma.”

“That’s my daughter,” my mother said.

But the woman who entered the kitchen wasn’t my sister.

“Who the fuck are you?” I asked.

The woman glared at me. “Ma, who is this man?”

“He says he’s my son. I think he’s crazy.”

The woman flashed her cellphone. “You have to leave, mister. I’m calling 911. But you have to leave right now.”

“Ma,” I said, but clearly nothing I could say would change things.

Violetta

Manfred’s mother told him his future bride was fragile. “You’ll have to be very gentle with her,” she warned. He had not yet met her and had never seen her, not even in photographs. “You don’t have to know what she looks like,” his mother insisted, “I saw her and I approve one hundred percent.” His widowed mother guided him well in most matters, and he more or less trusted her. Her choices were usually sound. But on this count, uncertainty prevailed. She had perhaps been a little too insistent about this girl from a nearby town. And she kept using words like fragile and delicate to describe her. Why? Was she made of glass or something? What good would that be, a woman made of glass? How would such a woman bear and raise children? How would she maintain a household if so constituted? Her name was Violetta and on their wedding day her beauty and daintiness pleasantly surprised Manfred. She reminded him of a porcelain doll and had a sweet voice and manner. Now he understood what his mother had meant and why she had been so insistent: beauty often trumps all other considerations. He vowed to be gentle as a dove with Violetta and handle her as though she were a flower. But on their wedding night, when she lay on the matrimonial bed and Manfred, welling with passion, clumsily tried to mount her, he heard a crackling sound and a deep groan that filled him with horror. But perhaps more horrifying was the sound of his mother’s voice issuing from the armoire next to the bed and crying, “I told you to be gentle, you idiot!”