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“Mom? It’s me,” I call out, filling the sink with soapy water. “You doing alright?”
No answer. Drying my hands on a dish towel that looks reasonably clean, I head to the living room. It’s a mess in here, too. Dirty laundry piled on the coffee table and the nearby chair. Stacks of mail on the floor. Mom sits on the couch with a sleeve of Oreos, unable to take her eyes off the programming in front of her. The way she’s been going the past decade with the junk food, they’re going to need to take her out of here with a crane.
“So. You’re too good for the front door now?” So she did hear me come in. She just didn’t feel like answering me. “Trying to what—scare me into a heart attack so you don’t have to deal with me anymore?”
“I knocked. A lot.” Without thinking, I collect the mountain of dirty clothes from the table, shoving them into a giant ball in my arms. It gives me something to focus on other than how she pushes my buttons. “And called. I even sent a text. You just didn’t answer. What should I have done? Left?”
“How do you expect me to hear you knocking? I told you my aids weren’t working. Cheap pieces of shit. I don’t know how you got talked into buying them.”
I take my time walking to the laundry room, letting her words float into the hallway and past the door, hoping that I can stop myself from saying something I regret. I slip into the muscle memory of routine, knowing exactly where the detergent is and just how much to pour into the little plastic cup, treating the entire process like some kind of super functional meditation. When I return to the living room, I feel centered enough to handle things with grace and understanding.
“Can I look at them for you?” I sit in the chair next to hers now that it’s devoid of dirty clothes. “If I don’t get them working, I’ll take you back to the doctor’s office first thing in the morning. You can read the doctor the riot act right there in the office and I won’t lift a finger to stop you.”
She squints at me, mulling the concept over, before acquiescing and placing the aid on the table. It takes me all of thirty seconds to realize the battery is dying out and another minute and a half to replace it with one of the extras I made sure were stored in her kitchen the day we brought the damn thing home. It’s another five minutes to clean them with a Q-tip and some rubbing alcohol, and then they’re as good as new. I’m not doing anything the consultant at the office didn’t already show her how to do multiple times. But apparently, I need to be the one to do it. Just like everything else. It’s not that she’s incapable of doing things for herself, she just doesn’twantto.
Mom is pissed at the world and nothing I say or do is going to change her mind.
There’s a twitch in her jaw when I give them back to her, as if she wants to scowl at me but can’t quite pull it off.
“Thanks,” she mumbles, fishing a cookie out of the plastic wrapping and setting it on the coffee table in front of me. The whole incident has left me without an appetite at all, but I take it to be polite. I don’t want one cookie to turn into a fight. “Can you stay and do another load of laundry after this one’s done? It’s hard for me to fold clothes with my arthritis.”
“I can’t.” I hate the way her face immediately sours as soon as I tell her no. Like one load of laundry is a slap in the face. “Elowyn is home alone and—it takes me so long to get here and back. I don’t want to leave her on her own any longer than I have to. That crazy intense ex-boyfriend of hers is always popping up and I don’t like to chance it.”
“Oh,Elowynis home alone.” Mom sighs, smacking her tongue against her teeth. “So you found yourself another one, huh?”
“I don’t know what that means.” I don’t have to sit here for this. The hearing aid is fixed, and the house is twice as clean as when I walked in. It’s the middle of the night. I could’ve let the damn call go to voicemail.
“You just have to be the hero.” Rolling her eyes, she whines at me, trying like hell to get me to fight with her. I take a few deep breaths and find my center. I’m not falling for it this time.
“I’m not trying to be a hero.” I stand up, making my way to the front door and ending the conversation before I say something that I’ll regret. “I don’t want the guy to hurt her.”
A pregnant pause lingers in the air and then, “You gonna kill him, too?”
I answer her question with a slam of the door, walking to my car so fast it’s practically a run. I shouldn’t have come here. I can’t keep doing this to myself, over and over. Every interaction with her is like tearing at a scab or chewing on a hangnail. It’ll never heal as long as I keep focusing on it. But I don’t know how to say no to her either. And as much as I want to pretend I’m doing a good job keeping her and Elowyn separate, these things don’t happen in a vacuum either. I chose to go to her tonight instead of staying with Elowyn.
I made the wrong choice.
She’s so hard on herself about Jesse. I can’t let myself be just another painful mistake because I was too afraid to set healthy boundaries with my mom.
When I come home, the apartment is dark and quiet. A single lamp in the corner of the room is the only sign of life. Elowyn must have left it on so I wouldn’t trip on anything coming in. She’s already in bed, the pullout made up more haphazardly than usual, as if she did it quickly and angrily. Another wave of regret washes over me. So rarely do we get a day off together, and instead of moving our relaxing bath straight into the bed so I could keep her up all night in a better way, I went ahead and threw the last few hours in the trash heap.
I don’t want to wake her, so I get ready for bed as quietly as possible, tiptoeing around the apartment like a cartoon burglar, holding my breath when I pull back the blankets and climb in behind her. The metal bed frame squeaks when I put my weight on it and I cringe.
“I’m glad you’re finally home,” she mumbles.
I wince under the cover of darkness. “I’m so sorry—the couch is so loud. I didn’t mean to wake you.”
“I wasn’t asleep anyway. Worried about you.” Elowyn turns to face me, sitting up against the pillows. She wipes at her face with the back of her hand, pushing her hair away from her forehead. It takes her eyes a moment to focus in the dim light, but when she gets a good look at me, her whole expression softens with pity. “You look like shit. Sorry. I mean… you look miserable. I can see the hurt in your face. You can’t keep doing this to yourself. You have to understand, Weston. You don’t owe her anything. She’s the parent. She was supposed to protect you, take care of you. Not the other way around. She put you in the middle of a bad situation between her and a dangerous man. She made the choice to put that man above her own son every day she stayed married to him. Can’t you see that?”
“I know,” I whisper, trying not to make eye contact. As I try to swallow, my throat moves with anger, fear, and years of regret. “It’s just—”
“No,” she interrupts, putting her hand on my shoulder. “No more excuses. You’re going to kill yourself trying to fix things when they shouldn’t have been your problem to begin with. It’s touching that you care so much but you have to let go. For your own sake. Just because she chooses not to move forward in life doesn’t mean she should get to drag you back with her.”
“Can we talk about it tomorrow?” I ask, amazed at how well she has the situation nailed down in so short a time. And why I thought it was easier to sacrifice my own life than to set up healthy boundaries with my mom.
Rubbing at her eyes again, she sighs. “Yes. It’s late. And you can’t change your entire life in the middle of the night. But just know that I care about you. And I think you deserve better than this. Your entire future should not be spent in penance for your past.” Leaning over, she kisses me softly, letting her forehead linger against mine before withdrawing and turning away into the pillows. “Stop blaming yourself, Weston. I believe in you.”
I lie next to her in the dark for what feels like hours, listening to her breathing shift as she falls into a deep sleep. My mind is still racing from the emotional rollercoaster of the day—thinking about the singing bowls and eating gyros, confessing my secret to Elowyn, and watching her stay anyway, all the way to my mom’s house and how gutted I felt eating that stupid Oreo on that busted-up armchair.
