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I hadn’t even wanted to go to begin with, but Mom somehow wrangled a promise out of me that I would at least try. Lola Green is not above guilt and manipulation in order to get what she wants, especially if she feels it will benefit those around her. On the167th day before I graduated high school, I told her no way was I leaving her alone with the store—I was the man of the house now, I meant to take care of her, and this discussion was over.
Many things ran across her face before she spoke: fear, laughter, horror. Love. So much love through it all. But then her eyes hardened, her mouth narrowed into a thin white line. Little lines appeared around her eyes and on her forehead. I knew that face. That face said that I had overstepped my bounds. That face said fifteen words were enough. That face said I had no choice and I would be going to college in the fall.
“Now you listen here,” my mother said with a snarl. She is a little thing, just coming up to my chin, and I’m only five foot nine. But when she needs to be, she’s all spit and fire and teeth and claws. Big Eddie always said if he ever had to brawl, he’d only need her at his side. “Your father and I worked our asses off to make sure you would never want for anything. You are not going to sit there and tell me that you’re not going to school. You’re going, end of discussion.”
I glared down at her as she tried to get up in my face, poking me in the chest with a lacquered nail. “I’m doing nothing of the sort,” I growled at her. “You can’t watch the store all the time. You’ve got other things going on.” And she did. She had run a small bakery out of our house for years before Big Eddie died. He always pushed her to go bigger, to think beyond Roseland. Word of her talent had spread to other towns around us and she seemed poised to break wide open. But then, of course, her husband drowned in six feet of water and put a hold on her future. It wasn’t until the Trio had arrived and put us back together as best they could that she started up again. At the time of our… discussion about my future, she and the Trio had just launched a website for the bakery. Lola’s Goods. It was getting more popular by the day, which meant less and less time for anything else. She knew this. But even better, I knew this.
Her eyes flashed. “Oh, no,” she said. “There’s no way in hell you’re using the station as an excuse. I don’t care if I have to send one of the Trio down there, or hire a townie back on. I don’t get why we just don’t sell it. The bakery is doing—” She stopped herself. She’d gone too far, said too much. This was a thing never discussed, and never was to be discussed. A sort of unspoken truth had come after Big Eddie died: she would handle her end and I would take over for my father. Big Eddie had always planned on me taking over for him one day. I’d been there with him at the station since I could walk: in the garage, the store. I helped him with the pump. He lifted me up to wash the windows with the scrubber. The first time he’d left me at the store to handle things by myself, I’d been fourteen. After a stern lecture of no goofing around and no giving my friends any pop for free, he’d rubbed a rough hand over my hair and told me how proud he was.
“Starting today,” my father had said in that deep voice of his, “you’re officially my partner here, okay? It’s you and me from here on out, Benji. Think you can handle it?” He held out his hand toward me, waiting.
I was thrilled. Elated. Moved to the point I thought that if I opened my mouth, tears would fall and my voice would break. But Big Eddie was telling me I was a man. Real men didn’t do any of that. So I grunted, snapping my head up and down once, twice. I reached out and shook his hand. His grip was tight, his hand warm.
The next day, he had old Mr. Perkins (the only attorney within fifty miles), draft up the paperwork. I didn’t know then he also made a change in the event anything should happen to him. If it did, the store would pass to me.
Which, of course, it did. And
my mother knew this.
“It’s my store,” I reminded her.
“I’m your mother,” she snapped, and the argument was over.
I was in Eugene at the University of Oregon for three months before I came
home. I didn’t speak to her the entire time I was there. I studied. I went out. I got laid. I took tests, read books, stayed out until the sun was coming up. When I figured enough time had passed and my point had been made, I packed up my things, said good-bye to the few friends I’d made, and drove back to Roseland. She didn’t look surprised when I showed up at the door, my arms crossed. The Trio ran over, squealing, covering me with fluttery kisses, their mingled perfume so much like home I had to blink the burn away.
My mother watched me for a moment from her spot by the sink in the kitchen while the Trio backed away, waiting to see what would happen. “You tried?” she said finally. “And?”
“It didn’t take.”
“No?”
“No.”
She pursed her lips. “I suppose you’ll be wanting Little House, then?” No. I don’t know if I could handle that.
Little House had been built by my father. He had thought it would be a place for
a workshop, a garage where he could have his own space to do with what he wished. But the moment he started building, he knew it was going to be bigger than that. Set further down the road than Big House, it had become my father’s life work. And since life doesn’t stop because he had something that he loved doing, it took us six years to finish. The hardwood was placed and varnished, the white paint with blue trim completed. Electricity and plumbing done. When finished, it was two bedrooms, one bathroom. An office. It was small. But then it too became mine. After.
“It’s like a littler version of our house,” I’d said once he’d finished. “Oh, is it?” he’d said, grinning at me. He reached over and grabbed me, putting me into a headlock while he rubbed my head with his knuckles. “A little house, huh?”
“Size doesn’t matter,” I managed to choke out in laughter.
He’d lost it then, and by the time he was able to wipe the tears from his eyes, Little House it had been named.
I gestured toward the Trio, unsure of what they’d want. Unsure of what to say. Mary and Christie had been staying there since they arrived. I couldn’t find the words to say no, no I don’t want Little House. I can’t stay there. I can’t live there. I don’t want to live there.
She shook her head. “They can stay here with me.”
I balked. “There’s not room here for all of you. It’d make more sense to just let me go back to my old room. They can keep using Little House.”
“Benji, it’s okay to—” Christie started, but she stopped when Mom raised her hand toward her, causing her to fall silent.
“It’s yours,” my mother said, her voice hard. “Big Eddie built it for you. You’re obviously grown up enough to gamble with your future, so you will take the house and you will live in it. You will clean it, you will handle the upkeep. You will pay for the utilities. You want to grow up so fast, fine. You’ll act like an adult. That’s what you want? Fine. Have at it. Do what you want.”
The Trio tried to leave the room quietly, but Nina, ever the klutz, ran into the door, causing it to fly open, smashing into a kitchen chair that fell over and skittered across the tile. My eyes never left my mother’s and hers stayed on mine. “Sorry,” Nina said hastily.
