“Dyschord is better,” she counters. “We’ll figure it out, Asch.”
There’s no “figuring it out,” and she knows it. It’s so far beyond our price range that it might as well be on another planet.
“Yeah,” I say anyway. “We’ll see what happens. It’s paid through the end of the year, at least.”
We work in silence in the kitchen.
“What would you like to do for Christmas?” she asks me.
“Nothing special,” I tell her. “We can watch TV or something.”
Mom smiles at me, but it looks strained. “Maybe a few days before, we can go out to eat at that restaurant you like. I got a bonus and thought we might splurge.”
We shouldn’t. But I know she’s going to feel guilty if she doesn’t do anything, and the place I like is reasonably priced. “Yeah, sure,” I say.
“Don’t get so excited,” she deadpans. “You might hurt yourself.”
I hug her again. “It sounds great, Mom,” I tell her.
She glances at the clock on the oven. “Shit,” she mutters. “I need to get some work done. My deadline is midnight for this project.”
“Go on,” I say, shooing her on.
“Don’t clean without me,” she tells me. “Unless you want to work on your room.”
“I’ll do that,” I promise.
She heads to her room, where she has a small desk set up, and closes the door.
I go to my own room with a sigh, then text Blaze.
Asch
How’s it going over there?
Blaze
Mom is happy to see me. She’s showing me photos of her dahlias. So many dahlias. I’m glad the seeds I sent her worked out.
Asch
Do I even want to know how they’re going with your dad?
I’m not sure I do. But we can’t figure out how to move forward if we can’t even get a feel for what’s going on with him.
Blaze
Haven’t seen him yet. He’s at some meeting.
I’m free tomorrow, I’ll come over and help you clean.
I freeze, briefly paralyzed with the fear of having him over at my place. I can’t let him see it. He knows in theory that my mom is a hoarder, and he knows how messy I am, but there’s no way in hell I’m going to let him come over.
But what am I supposed to do? Go over to his place? That sounds like an even worse idea.
Asch
Nah. Let’s go do something else. I’ve got it handled here.
