CHAPTER ELEVENSomewhere I heard, Normal is a town in Illinois. So, depending on who you ask, normal is a place, not simply a tolerable level of global static. But there was peace at home, as much as we could expect. Mom and Beep spoke mostly in guarded tones. Beep slept in the basement almost every night. In fact, the ping pong table had been permanently folded and stowed away to make room for an old bed he hauled home from a thrift store. The addition of the bed gave the basement a certain permanence, as far as bedrooms go. But even that new arrival did little to prevent Beep from tumbling to the floor on occasion, and the concrete proved an even more malicious adversary.
Mom arrived home late on Friday. Come Saturday morning, I was at the table sipping milk when she slipped into the kit
