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“Son of a Baby Ruth… you have got to be kidding me,” I mutter, which makes Owen’s face light up while he lets out a whooping shout. “You are now five feet and a half inch. How did you grow a half an inch in three days? Is that even possible? What the hell does Aunt Birdie feed you?”
Owen laughs as I grab a pencil from a cup on the coffee counter and notate today’s measurement on the wall before unlocking the tape measure. It zips back up inside itself, and I hand Owen the folder to put away while I put the tape back in the drawer.
“They don’t feed me. They starve me while Uncle Palmer beats me with his golf clubs and Aunt Birdie hooks my brain up to electrodes and makes me watch fetish porn,” he replies easily, shoving his folder in his backpack resting on one of the bar stools and then hefting it up by one strap over his shoulder.
“Good God, Owen—”
“Did someone say fetish porn?” Birdie shouts when this time I do hear my front door slam shut. I glare at my sister as she breezes into my living room with another bottle of wine in her hand, still beautiful and glowing with happiness, while I smell like rotten milk and have chocolate sauce in my hair and a coating of stickiness over my body that will require at least a twenty-minute hot shower to remove after a shift at the Dip and Twist.
“Don’t ask the questions if you can’t handle the truth, Mom.” Owen shrugs, taking another banana from the basket on the counter, giving my sister a high-five as they pass each other in the living room, and then turning the corner to disappear into his room.
I’m not an idiot. I know I can’t shield my son from everything. He has a smart phone, he has access to the internet, and he has other teenage friends, some the same age and some older now that he’s in high school and playing on the freshman baseball team. He’s going to hear things, and he’s going to see things unless I want to keep him in his room in a bubble for the rest of his life. I’ve just always taught him to be responsible, respectful, to never give out personal information to anyone, if someone asks him for a picture of his feet it is a big deal and it is creepy as hell, dick pics live forever, and don’t be a bully online or anywhere. He knows he can talk to me about anything, and he does. Sometimes, he overshares. Okay, all the time, he overshares. I’d much rather he overshare than lock himself in his room and lock me out of his life. I’m his mother and his father, and I never want him to feel uncomfortable talking about anything with me. Even if I have to grin and pretend like I don’t want to vomit when the word “porn” comes out of my baby boy’s mouth.
“I never should have let you, Tess, and Emily have a hand in raising my son,” I tell Birdie when she gets to my kitchen island and sets her wine bottle down on the counter next to my fridge. “Why is he talking about fetish porn when he gets home from an evening at your house?”
“He actually taught us a thing or two over dinner tonight,” Birdie informs me as she pulls a magnetic corkscrew off the side of my fridge with a crab on it that says Dockside Eddy’s. “Did you know Climacophilia is when you get turned on by someone falling down the stairs? Palmer was laughing so hard I think he peed his pants a little. I tried to get Owen to push him down our back deck stairs to see if it sparked anything, but Palmer wasn’t up for it. He was drunk but not that drunk.”
While Birdie uncorks her bottle of wine and then pulls two more wine glasses down from the cabinet above her, I walk around the breakfast bar to take a seat at one of my wooden turquoise stools, grabbing my phone and pulling up Emily’s contact information then clicking on the FaceTime button.
“Sorry I’m late! You didn’t start Sip and Bitch without me, did you?” Tess asks, walking through my front door with her own bottle of wine while I wait forever for our crappy island Wi-Fi to connect the call to Emily.
I don’t even blink when I see Tess’s short, poker-straight bob with blunt bangs across her forehead is no longer a vibrant shade of fire-engine-red and is now bright purple. Tess changes her hair color as often as I buy a new Hawks jersey or T-shirt.
Oh… my… God, he saw me wearing one of his shirts! This night just can’t get any worse.
