Authors: Joyce Carol Oates

Missing Mom (43 page)

“You’ll live with it, Nikki. I’ll help you.”

I waited for Strabane to say more. I knew him now: my lover.

I waited for him to reason with me, to argue with me. I waited for him to say those words we say to one another at such times. But he remained silent. He gripped my hand in such a way that his fingers pushed through my fingers, and held them tight. I understood that this was the reasoning, this was my lover’s argument.

In this way ended my first full year of missing Mom.

About the Author

JOYCE CAROL OATES is a recipient of the National Book Award and the PEN/ Malamud Award for Excellence in Short Fiction. She has written some of the most enduring fiction of our time, including the national bestsellers
We Were the Mulvaneys
and
Blonde
, which was nominated for the National Book Award. She is the Roger S. Berlind Distinguished Professor of the Humanities at Princeton University and since 1978 has been a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. In 2003 she received the Common Wealth Award for Distinguished Service in Literature and the Kenyon Review Award for Literary Achievement.

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Other Ecco/HarperCollins Books by Joyce Carol Oates

NOVELS

Blonde*

Middle Age: A Romance*

I’ll Take You There*

The Tattooed Girl*

The Falls*

SHORT STORY COLLECTIONS

The Assignation

Where Is Here?

Faithless: Tales of Transgression*

I Am No One You Know*

NOVELLA

I Lock My Door Upon Myself

NONFICTION

George Bellows: American Artist

On Boxing

PLAYS

The Perfectionist and Other Plays

MEMOIR/ESSAY

The Faith of a Writer*

Uncensored: Views & (Re)views*

CHILDREN’S BOOKS

Come Meet Muffin!

Where Is Little Reynard?

*Also available as a HarperCollins e-Book

Credits

JACKET DESIGN BY HIGH DESIGN, NYC

JACKET PHOTOGRAPH BY PETER ZANDER/PICTUREARTS

Copyright

MISSING MOM.
Copyright © 2005 by The Ontario Review, Inc. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

ePub edition September 2005 ISBN 9780061748080

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Oates, Joyce Carol, 1938–

Missing mom : a novel / Joyce Carol Oates.—1st ed.

p. cm.

ISBN 0-06-081621-X

I. Title.

PS3565.A8M54 2005

813'.54—dc22

2005040002

ISBN-13 978-0-06-081621-6

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