Gloria Wallace had one son and no life.

The purpose of one’s life is to bring children to the world, watch them grow, give them a good education, marry them off, make sure they bring children to the world, watch them grow, give them a good education, marry them off, make sure they bring children to the world, and so on, ad infinitum. Her parents taught her this by example, pressuring her to marry her first serious suitor at nineteen. She wasn’t in love, but she respected her husband. Love wasn’t important; children were. Within a year, her stomach began to show. She was pregnant. Six months into the pregnancy, she had a miscarriage and lost her daughter. A year later, she was pregnant again. Five months later, she had another miscarriage. Her second daughter died.

Going through this process again was unbearable. Going through life without children was worse. Despite the pain, Gloria tried again. This time, she gave birth to a healthy son. A miracle. Gloria cried with joy at the sight of her living son. But the doctors later said she could never give birth to a child again. Gloria cried with sadness at the tragedy.

The son’s name was Norman.

Ever since he could remember, his mother constantly asked him, "Norman, how do you feel?" And her voice always cracked. She was terrified for Norman’s well-being, and he absorbed this twenty-four hours a day.

When Norman was six, his father died in an automobile accident. From that moment on, Gloria’s every moment, every thought, was devoted to Norman, to making sure nothing more would ever befall this misery-ridden family.

Norman was never allowed out of the house without supervision. Norman was never allowed near sick people and sharp objects. Norman was always very careful. He never did dangerous things. Terror gripped him every time he crossed the streets. He lived his mother’s fears.

At eighteen, Norman applied to all the best colleges. He was rejected. Eventually, he was accepted to the state college. He moved out of the house, lived in the dorms, majored in physics, and called his mother twice a day.

Gloria Wallace would sit in her dark apartment, light, television, and radio turned off. She would stare at the wall and worry about her son. Worried if perhaps he had met the right girl, worried about his progress in class, worried about his interaction with his friends, worried that he might fall down the stairs and break his neck in that dangerous state college so far away from her supervision.

Test season came. Norman studied. Gloria fretted. She spent more sleepless nights than her son.

Norman consistently failed each and every test. Gloria was disappointed. Eventually, he had to drop out. Whenever Norman came to visit her, Gloria wept.

"What happened to you, Norman," she would ask every time he came.

"I don’t know, mother."

"You were so smart as a child, Norman," she would always plead. "You had such potential! How could this have happened?"

"It’s the teachers, mother," he would say. "They had it in for me. Half of them hated me. The other half couldn’t stand opinions that differed from their own. Whatever I did, it was always wrong because I did it. They had it in for me, mother. They tripped me up. They hated me. They made sure I would fail all the tests."

"It’s not possible that everybody had it in for you, Norman. Some of the this must have been your fault."

"Mother, you weren’t there. Even if I answered everything correctly, they would look for some tiny detail I missed, and fail me on that. I was in a no win situation."

"You were so special, Norman!"

"I am special, mother. That’s why I failed. Normal people hate special people. They envy us, and they do everything they can to bring us down, to crush us completely. That’s the only way these people feel special. They had it in for me, mother. And now my life is ruined because of them. My life is ruined."

"You’re a failure, Norman," Gloria would always sob just as Norman was about to leave. "A failure."

By that time, Norman would be too exhausted from explaining his point of view, and all too ready to see it from his mother’s point of view. "I know," he would clench his teeth. "I know."

"How could I have raised such a son?" She would always ask. And at this point, Norman would always break down and cry, too.

All through his adult life, Norman would come to see his mother at least twice a week.

**********

When Gloria turned seventy-five, Norman was forty-one. More than twenty years had passed since Norman had dropped out of college, and they still had the same conversation every time.

Norman had never been able to find a steady job. People had it in for him, he explained to his mother. And so they made sure to get him fired on the flimsiest of excuses.

Near his forty-second birthday, after three months of fruitless job searching, Norman found a job as a night janitor for a large research company. This time, his mother broke down completely.

"A failure, Norman," she said in her cracked voice. "My life had been a failure."

"You could have been something, Norman," she cried.

"You’re nothing, Norman. Nothing," she held her face between cupped hands.

Norman sat beside her silently, and agreed with every word.

**********

A few months later, Norman came to his mother with a paper bag.

"What do you have there?" she asked.

"I have good news, mother," he said.

Her face darkened in suspicion. "Good news?"

Norman asked her to sit down on the sofa. He sat down beside her.

"Remember the place where I work," he began slowly. "Worlds Unlimited? Do you know what that company does?"

"It’s a research company. Something to do with physics."

"Ah, but what? I’ll tell you. They’re looking into parallel universes. They’ve had some real breakthroughs, and no one is supposed to say anything yet. But... See, they’ve established links with some parallel worlds, and they can actually monitor stuff that goes on in these worlds, take pictures, and so on." He took a deep breath. "Sometimes when they leave and I’m all alone, I... uh... I tinker with the gadgets."

"Norman! They could fire you! They could jail you! They could--"

"I was careful, mother," he put his hand soothingly on her knee. "And what I found is very, very important." She became silent, but still looked at him crossly. "See, last week, I went over all the data they downloaded into the computer, all the data they gathered from the other world. When I saw the cover of that world’s Time magazine, I stopped. You’re not going to believe this."

"What is it?"

"Here. I printed it." He produced it and gave it to her.

Gloria examined it closely.

"Norman! That’s your face!"

"Read what it says."

It congratulated Norman for winning the Nobel Prize for physics. "Here is the article itself," he gave her a few more pages.

"How can this be?" Gloria whispered, as she read the pages.

"When parallel universes split, mother, something different happens in each one. In one, I go this way; in another, I go that way. In one, a bad thing happens; in another, something good happens; and in another, nothing special happens."

She finished reading the articles.

"You’re more famous than Einstein over there," she was in awe.

"Exactly! This is me. This is the real me. I always knew I had it in me."

"But it’s another world, Norman."

"But it isn’t. It’s our world! It’s my world! It’s the me that should have been!"

"Norman, the Norman of that world didn’t make the same mistakes you did. He was successful, he--" and she began to choke on her own tears, as she recalled the failures of her son.

"But don’t you see? All my failures, all my lack of success - that’s all because of the universe! When the world splits into parallel worlds, some Normans have good luck, some have bad luck. Some Normans live to their full potential and some are stopped. Inevitably, there have to be some worlds in which I get only bad luck. This is one of them. But it’s not my fault I had failures, nothing was ever my fault! It’s because the universes split. It’s all physics’ fault. See? It’s not me. This is the real me," he gestured at the cover.

Gloria looked at the cover and then at Norman. She understood. For the first time in twenty years she was proud of her son.

The end.