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“A credit card—” she says and I raise my hand, cutting her off.
“My credit card limit is low, my payments are manageable, and I don’t think I really need to explain myself anymore.”
She raises her eyebrows, eyes wide. She’s not used to me talking back.
“And anyway,” I continue, “I’ll still pay my rent when I’m gone, so don’t worry.”
She sucks at her teeth and looks around the darkened room, as if it will give her answers. Where did I go wrong? I can imagine her saying.
Finally she looks back at me and she seems tired, like the lines around her eyes suddenly deepened. “This is just so . . . impulsive, Joshua. You’re just like your sister.”
That was meant to cut like a knife, but it doesn’t hurt. “And just like my sister, are you going to let me back into the house when I return? Or will the doors lock on me, too?”
Her eyes narrow into slits. “That is not fair. Vera went to live with a married man. That behavior is unacceptable.”
After all this time, my mother still doesn’t get it. It doesn’t matter that Vera is happy, that Mateo got a divorce pretty much right away, that things are great for them and they’ve beaten a lot of those heavy odds stacked against them. None of that matters. Your fuckups will never let you shine in the Miles household.
“Well, she did it anyway, despite what you think, and I’ll be doing the same.”
A weird softness comes into her eyes for one moment, like she’s peeled off a mask.
“Why do you hate me so much?” she asks so quietly I can barely hear her.
Now I’m the one who’s stunned. “What? I don’t hate you.” I just don’t really like you most of the time, I think, and it surprises me. It’s strange, actually, to think about your parents in terms of liking them or not, like they’re some person you kind of know and you can form an opinion of them based on how they act, how they treat you, whether you click or whether they annoy the shit out of you. We’re all thrust into our parents’ lives without a choice, and you grow up together as they raise you. You love them and they love you.
But liking them, as people, to be around—that’s a whole other bag of balls. I love my mom because, well, I do. I’m her son. She’s my mom. But for the first time, I realize I actually don’t like her at all. It’s fucking weird.
“I’ve gone wrong somewhere,” she says, going into her dramatics. Whatever vulnerability I saw, that little thing that made me like her a bit more, is gone.
I contemplate saying, Look, Mom, I love you but I don’t like you. But instead I indulge her and say, “Well, Mercy turned out great. Married to a rich husband with a stick up his ass. Nice house, though.”
“Joshua,” she says. “Watch your language.” But she doesn’t argue my statement either.
After that, she leaves, looking defeated, as if she just lost a sale to another Realtor. The funny thing is, I wasn’t one hundred percent sure I was actually going to quit my job and buy a plane ticket to the land of Gandalf and flightless birds and backward draining toilet water. But now, after her reaction, now I’m sure. I’m going.
And I don’t even know why. It comes back to Gemma, of course, but I don’t think she’s the reason for me taking flight so impulsively. I don’t even plan on looking her up—how could I find her anyway? I don’t even know her last name, and the last thing I want to be is a stalker.
But she was at least the catalyst, the push I needed to go into the great unknown. You can only ignore the call so many times before you know it’s time to go.
Life is spreading her legs for me.
I’m going in.
Everything happens so fast. The next day I quit my job. They aren’t too sad to see me go, which makes me realize that even if New Zealand goes tits up, at least I made the right decision. I’ll get a new job; a better one.
I collect my vacation pay and put it aside in the bank. I did save money, that was no lie, but it’s really not a lot. I can put the flights on my credit card but everything else has to come from the savings account. I start looking into hostels, into backpacker buses, into camping. Everything seems so expensive but I see some cheaper options out there to make every dollar stretch. I can work on farms in exchange for room and board. I can do the same in some backpackers. I could probably even find some under-the-table work if I really got stuck. I could eat ramen noodles and drink cheap beer. I could make anything work, if I had to.
The fear doesn’t set in until it’s a few days before November twenty-third, the day of my flight. I talk to Vera on the phone and she’s still in disbelief over the whole thing.
“I can’t believe you’re actually going,” she says.
“I guess it’s a bit out of character,” I muse, rolling up a joint in my room.
“Well, no that’s not it,” she says. “You’ve always been a bit impulsive. I just never thought you’d be this way for a girl.”
It was probably a mistake to tell her about Gemma. I didn’t tell her much, but it’s enough for Vera to get the wrong idea.
I sigh. “I’m not going for her. She just . . . made me think if she can do it, I can do it.”
“What am I, chopped liver?” I know she’s a bit hurt that I’m going there and not to Spain, especially over Christmastime.
“But you’re really tasty chopped liver, Vera,” I tell her as I light the joint, taking the first puff. I used to smoke a lot more but I’ve seriously cut down over the last year.
