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It bothersme that I don’t know her, but that she seemed to know me. Her words hadn’t gone unnoticed. But they’d registered in my mind second to her beauty—not to mention the way my body reacted. My cock stood the second she shifted her full hips sideways in that chair. Half of me had been jealous of the goddamned thing. And she’d muttered something about the football star, meaning possibly she knew me from school.
The rest of the evening was uneventful. I had two meetings I had to get through before I could do exactly what I’m doing now, sifting frantically through boxes in Mom’s attic.
“I don’t know why you need your old yearbooks at this hour, but I’m sure they’re here somewhere,” she keeps repeating as she finds random shit to stop and look at.
“Oh,” she says, picking up yet another dust-covered piece of nostalgia from behind a box. “Do you remember this? Oh, look at it!”
I turn and see her holding up a moth-eaten Santa hat. One that Father had worn one year and scared the shit out of David with. It wasn’t the hat that had done it, though. It was the hideous beard. He’d wanted white, of course, but it being near Christmas, they were out. So, Father had settled for a red beard—the only one left. He thought it was going to be festive and different. But it had been terrifying for David, and hilarious for the rest of us.
I smirk as I remember David’s face buried in my mom’s chest as she motioned for Father to remove it as she fought fits of laughter at David’s expense.
“Wonder if it would scare him straight,” I mutter.
“What?” she asks, clearly not seeing the same memory that I am.
“The beard.”
It takes a moment for her to catch up, and she laughs before her face drops. It does that when she thinks of David. And when I speak of him.
“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have…”
She cuts me off, “No, they’re your memories, too. And I wish it was only that easy. I’d find that godforsaken beard and go run the streets with it on.”
I smile, the imagery in my head of my mother running through the seedy downtown of Seattle with a bright red beard and Santa hat on plays in my mind.
“I’m sure you’d be arrested,” I tell her.
She drops the hat into a random box, sighing. “You’re probably right.”
She turns and begins rummaging. I almost feel bad for making her come up here. For making her dredge down memory lane when she’d been drifting to sleep in her chair when I arrived. She looked peaceful, content. And then, here I came with my strange requests and tunnel vision at midnight.
“I’m sorry I came so late, Mom,” I tell her, not looking back to see her face when she turns toward me.
“This is your home too, Em. You’re welcome here whenever you see fit. Strange time to want a yearbook, but you boys always were on the wilder side,” she replies. I hear her movement before she pats my back lightly in passing. “You know, I wonder if it’s on the bookshelves in Father’s office,” she says offhandedly.
“Well, why didn’t you say that a while ago,” I ask, dropping a lamp back into a box of books I’d been rummaging through.
She shrugs, a slight smirk playing on her lips. “Some time spent with your old mother isn’t time wasted, is it, Em?”
I move toward her where she holds her hand out for me to help her down the attic stairs. “No, it’s not. It’s time I’d like to bottle and keep in my pocket to replay over and over, that’s what it is,” I say, kissing her hand and slipping it into the crook of my arm to lead her down.
“You always were my sweetest boy. I know those teenage years got a little hairy with the hormones and all, but you came back to me in the end, hmm?” she asks.
As we reach the last step, I stop us, turning to meet her eyes, and she pats my face lightly.
“He’d be proud of you, you know. But those bags under your eyes tell me you’re burning the candle at both ends, Em. You need to take care of you.”
I nod. “I know, Mom.”
Three… two… one…
“You know, if you got you a nice girl to settle down with, I wouldn’t have to remind you of these things, and you could give me a grand baby or two to keep me company. You know, keep me on my toes.” She grins.
I shake my head. “You’re something else, you know that?”
“So I’m told.”
The yearbooks were in Father’s office, between the Webster’s dictionary and the many encyclopedias Mom had bought us boys for school projects and reports in high school.
