A small piece of paper, cut out from some newspaper and left on the kitchen counter, caught my eye.“At the market.Be right back”, my mom had written.
The phone she had placed on a tiny table in the hallway, next to the living room door, rang, and I stared at it for a few sleepy seconds before stepping closer.
“Well, hello!”said Jett from the other side of the line.
Jett was a guy from my old school and part of my group of friends.He lived in a huge apartment back in Wayneth, where he loved throwing parties with fancy themes and guest lists at the door.The parties always ended up badly, but his parents never seemed to give him any consequences.Jett believed there were no consequences for him in life.
We became friends when he got involved with the wrong crowd.I saw it happening and felt like it could goreallybadly.I stepped in, interfered, and defended him.After that, I started to be part of the guest lists.
I held the phone close to my ear and heard a bunch of loud voices echoing on the other end of the line.I guessed my group was out doing something, enjoying summer in the city, and that the call was coming from a street payphone.
Jett greeted me again in his usual casual tone, and a few other voices shouted hello too.Then Knox yelled that I wouldn’t believe what bar had just opened on his street, and said something about what Jett had done to bet a hundred bucks on someone the other day.Vivian asked, half-yelling from farther away, if I’d managed to find a way to escape back to the city.I said no.And deep down, I wished one of them had cared enough to ask me more about it.
But no one said anything about how it was at this new place of mine.Or how I was.
Glass bottles clinked, laughs echoed, and the call kept going.Jett still held the phone, but they had too many distractions to pay attention to it.It was as if I wasn’t here, but also as if I was.
I was always content with the distance between our silly conversations and the real ones we never had.But at this moment, for some reason, it was all bothering me.So, after a few minutes of being a non-participating actor, I hung up the call.
They were out having fun.Great.But it all just made me feel cut out of the scene.Cut out of the movie.And most of all it made me feel… the loneliness.
I had already felt lonely before, even back in the city.Once, I tried to vent about it to Knox.He laughed and simply said that what I needed to think about wasfinding a girlfriend.
I’ve thought about girls before.I’ve had a few girlfriends back in the city, nothing serious, after all, I was only seventeen.And everything in the city changed fast, the relationships, the restaurant names, the trendy bars, the places I called home.I was okay with not living with much consistency...or so I thought.
My mom showed up at the kitchen door, carrying a bag of leeks, interrupting my jam-spreading breakfast moment.“Do you want to come with me on Friday to see your new school?”She came in and grabbed the least exciting topic.
“Yeah, I guess I’ll have to eventually,” I answered, leaning against the kitchen sink.“But I kind of have plans on Friday afternoon, if that’s okay with you.”
My mom’s smile widened.“Of course, yes, son.”She sat on a bench at the kitchen counter next to me.“What are your plans?”she asked.
And I told her.About Miss Amara and her lively personality.About the Center, every corner I got to see, and every aspect Ella told me about.And about Ella herself — not detailing much to my mother.Her warm smile, her gentle voice, painted freckles, blue eyes — all that I simply kept just to myself.
I spoke as my mom nodded along with my words, smiling with them.She listened to me curiously and intently, laughed heartily, and saved her questions for last.
Wow.
My mom was surprisingly present for me at that moment.In a way I wasn’t expecting.
We got along.Imperfectly.But we did.She wasn’t a very easy person to deal with.But actually, maybe neither was I.She was going through a hard period too.I was grateful to be here with her, and grateful for her.After all, she had been both a mother and a father to me.For as many schemes as I’d thought about to escape back to part of my older life, I wasn’t going to leave her at this moment.
She needed my presence too.
When Ella told me about psychology appointments at the Center, I thought maybe my mom could schedule one.I knew she had been seeing a psychologist back in Wayneth, but I also knew she wouldn’t go on her own.I could check at the Center for her.
I’d just put the remains of our lunch in the fridge and asked my mother if she would like to come for a walk with me.
“I feel like staying inside and taking a nap,” she answered, heading to the living room.“But you go, take the car.The beaches around here are really nice.You should go.”
I nodded and accepted the idea.I would drive around again and try to find a nice place to… breathe?Think?Something.
I took a left turn, passed trees and more trees, until the tarmac ran out and the wheels of the car were now rolling over potholes, rocks, and dirt.I decided to pull over and walk.
I went to the trunk and took out my guitar.
The town was small compared to the mountains that separated it from the ocean.There was a lot of green before you reached the blue.
I knew where I was.Or… sort of did.
