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“I never should have stayed away so long.”
His mother stepped back, adjusting the way his glasses rested on his ears in a gesture that sent him right back to standing in the kitchen before the first day of fifth grade. “That’s true.”
“I hurt you.” It was written in the unblinking way she held his gaze.
“Yeah.”
The one word was all it took for him to lose it. He bent his arm to cover his face as he started to cry.
“Come here, you.” She wrapped her arms around him. “Looks like you got a head start on punishing yourself.”
“I’m sorry,” he said, the words fragile and shaky and not enough.
“I know you are.” She brushed his hair back from his forehead in slow strokes. “Sometimes you’re a disaster. But you’re mine.”
She held him long enough for him to soak through the shoulder of her shirt.
God, he felt like shit. To have parents as good as his and leave them voluntarily, when so many people were robbed of the singular security of having their mother hold them.
Eventually, she pulled away, swiping at her own eyes. “Well, you gonna come in or are we going to stay out here and continue to make a spectacle of ourselves?”
He nodded and followed her inside, his throat too raw for words.
“Didn’t even bring flowers,” she said under her breath as she shut the door behind him, startling a laugh out of him that came out like a bark.
Once inside, she headed to the sink, letting the water run over her hands for so long he knew she was using the moment to collect herself. “Your father’s at the store,” she said before he could ask.
The tiny kitchen looked the same as he remembered. Time had neglected to reach the Conners’ house. Same jaunty tablecloth. Same overflowing pile of cookbooks. Same fridge covered in countless snapshots of family and friends.
Josh couldn’t help himself. He wandered over and traced the faces of his cousins’ babies with a shaking hand. They’d gotten so big since he’d seen them last. What in the hell was Beth feeding them?
His mouth watered from the scent of spicy tomatoes wafting from the stovetop. When he turned around, his mother had shoved a bowl of soup on the table. Apparently, her anger didn’t cancel out her constant desire to feed him.
“You don’t deserve my cooking, but I’m a benevolent woman,” she said, looking at the spoon she’d laid out expectantly.
Feeling surreal, he pulled out the chair and sat. The first bite acted like an elixir. The pain he felt over the loss of Clara didn’t fade, but his vision got a little clearer, and his body no longer felt like it would turn on him at any moment. The soup somehow cast warmth in corners of his heart long gone numb. The feeling of being home was overwhelming.
Despite all the trappings of normalcy, the tension in the room was palpable. After a few bites, he pushed away the bowl. “If you want to yell at me, just yell at me.”
His mother pulled ingredients out of the fridge and carried them to the counter. Josh had a feeling she was trying to avoid looking at him. “I’m not going to yell at you. Though I can tell by that look on your face it would make you feel better.” She slathered butter on bread with angry, jerky movements. “What the hell were you thinking?”
Josh raised his hands in surrender. He knew he’d fucked up in multiple ways and it was hard to know which ones she was most mad about. “I thought you wouldn’t want to see me.”
She slammed the knife down on the counter. “Where in the world would you get a stupid idea like that?”
“Well, for starters, the last time I saw you, I told you I was making porn and you turned white and ran from the room.”
“Oh for God’s sake, Joshua, it was shocking. Maybe your generation is more open-minded, but in my day pornography still raised eyebrows.” She picked up the knife and resumed buttering for only a moment before she stopped again. “Besides, you told me while I was trying to take a twenty-pound turkey out of the oven. I needed a moment to process.”
“It was more than a moment,” he grumbled, reduced to the child who had received regular chastisement at this kitchen table.
“The point is”—she slapped cheese onto the bread haphazardly—“when I came back to the kitchen you’d gone. And when I tried to call you the next day you’d changed your number.”
He’d been scared. Josh hated seeing his mom upset. Avoiding her had seemed a lot easier in comparison. He hadn’t expected to like performing as much as he did. To find himself unintentionally building a life with Stu. The longer he stayed away, the harder it became to bridge the distance he’d inflicted.
The uncomfortable moment of silence was broken by his mother pulling a frying pan out of the cabinet and setting it down none too gently on the stove. When she did speak, her voice cracked in the exact way he knew she’d been trying to avoid. “Do you have any idea how that felt? You scared the crap out of me. I was worried sick for weeks. I had to run down Curtis Bronson at the pharmacy and threaten him with fingernail clippers to find out you’d moved in with some new girlfriend.”
She tossed butter into the pan and it hissed. “I wasn’t mad that you’d chosen porn. I was mad that you chose porn over us.”
