When I came home from work, Mom was sitting at the kitchen table, poking a small chunk of liverish-looking meat with a fork. At her feet, Claude, her fat tabby mewed and rubbed against her legs. Claude looked at me and hissed.

“What is that nasty thing you’re having for lunch?” I asked. It sat in a puddle of catsup next to a heap of caramelized onions.

“Tongue,” Mom replied. “And you’re right. It is nasty.” She dangled it before Claude, who sniffed it, then grabbed it, dropped it on the floor, and proceeded to chew it as vigorously as I’d seen him chomp the poor backyard birds he sometimes managed to catch.

I looked at the green scrubs Mom was wearing. She’d retired last year from the hospital where she’d worked as an anesthesiologist for 40 years, and now she pretty much lived in her old scrubs. Today, red splatters splotched and streaked the top.

“What’d you do, Mom, cut the tongue outta the animal yourself? Or did the catsup bottle explode again.”

Mom snorted. “Surely you can tell the difference between tomato sauce and blood, sweetheart.”

I waited for her to launch into her usual rant about how her beautiful daughter was wasting her talents as a lunch lady in the local junior high; how by age 50, which I was becoming tomorrow, I should be in my own home, in a respectable career, not mooching off her old mother and dating a 33-year-old loser like Bruce who was making no effort to find a job and move out of her spare bedroom, and how he never stopped complaining that he was allergic to Claude, and how he stayed up too late playing violent games online and whooping and yelling it up with other online gamers, and she was so sick of his loud, smoker’s voice, it made her shudder like the sound of fingernails on a chalkboard, and all his promises about a good gig just around the corner and he’d soon be turning me into a married, respectable gal, well, that was all talk, all loud, empty talk, and she was sick of it.

But to my surprise, she said nothing.

“Well, Mom, I’ll leave you and Claude to finish your lunch. You’ll be happy to hear that Bruce and I will be outta your hair this evening. He’s taking me out for a birthday dinner.”

I hurried down the hall toward my and Brucie’s room, my heart sinking a little when I saw the door was closed. Was he still sleeping? At two in the afternoon?

I pushed open the door. Bruce lay on our bed, his legs twitching.

“Honey,” I said. “Our reservations are at five. Rise and shine! Bruce! Answer me! Cat got your tongue?”

Behind me, I heard my mother’s voice. “His legs are twitching. That means he’s coming out of the anesthetic I gave him.”

I whirled around. “Mom! What?”

She shrugged. “You’re right, sweetheart. The cat does have his tongue.”