August calls this “Elliott Alley.”
I get that my parents are proud of me and I appreciate their support, but does everyone who visits really need to see a picture of me in the bathtub? It’s like my mother has never heard of photo albums.
“They agreed to a tentative truce,” she says. “At least until playoffs.”
I make a mental note to avoid this place in March.
“So how’s life outside the bar? Are you seeing anyone?”
Ohhhh no. I’m not making this mistake again. “Did you need me to get something from the attic or…?”
She whips around, her narrowed eyes freezing me in place. “What is it with your aversion to small talk? This is why you’re single.”
She knows exactly why I’m single, which is part of the problem. If anyone is ever wondering whether they should discuss their love life with their mother, allow me to advise against it.
Knowing she was once privy to such private information only makes that particular door even harder to close.
Why are you shutting me out?
I only want what’s best for you.
You used to talk to me about everything.
That last one was because I didn’t have any brothers or sisters to lean on instead. At least now I have August—not that I tell him shit. But I could. And I definitely would talk to him over my mother.
“The attic?”
She spins on her heel, huffing and puffing like the big bad wolf all the way to the living room. “The Christmas tree and those boxes over there need to go up in the attic. While you’re up there, I hope you find some manners.”
I doubt she has manners in one of her many plastic tubs, but if she did, it wouldn’t be hard to find because it’d be perfectly labeled.
The tree’s prickly branches scrape my arms as I drag the largest piece into the hallway.
My mother stomps in behind me, lugging a box almost as large as she is.
Has she lost her damn mind? “Put that down or you’re going to throw out your back.”
“I know how anxious you are to get out of here and wanted to expedite the process for you.”
I am anxious, but if she hurts her back again, that won’t happen.
“Put the box down. Please?”
She sets it down and stalks back down the hallway, toward the kitchen.
I reach up and tug the string dangling from the ceiling. The spring on the stairs groans as I open the hatch and unfold them.
Fifteen minutes later, I have everything tucked away until next November, and the furniture that had been relocated to make room for my mother’s twelve-foot, pre-lit spruce is all back where it belongs.
When I head into the kitchen to make sure there isn’t anything else on her to-do list, I find her furiously scooping mashed potatoes into a Tupperware container.
She means well, I remind myself. The problem is that, for eighteen years, I was her job.
Now she doesn’t know what to do with herself.
Dad has a few years before he retires from the bank, so he’s gone Monday through Friday from eight until six.
She runs a craft group at church and volunteers for just about every fundraiser in town, but that’s not enough to keep her occupied.
