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If eye rolling had a sound, she would have heard mine all the way down the hallway and into the kitchen. Was she kidding me with the emergency visit? I wonder where I got my drama queen behavior from. She really needed to let go of the past. I’d hit a rough patch when I first came out and learned some things about my parentage, and in a fit of teenage angst had tossed out the ‘maybe everyone will be better off if I was gone for good,’ comment. I was being flippant and dramatic, and she instantly went into 72-hour watch behavior. To get her off my back, I’d agreed to see Dr. Leone for the first time.
Listening to her footsteps retreat from my door without so much as a grunt from me in response, I knew she meant business. The woman was nothing if not consistent. If she said it, she did it. My answer was to pull the quilt over my head and pretend this wasn’t my life.
Maybe my dad would’ve understood what I was going through better, but I would never know. The man I grew up knowing as my dad died when I was seven, leaving me with a mother with both too much time and too much money on her hands. Her suffocating love was the reason I’d gone all the way to California for college and what made it so hard to come back, tail between my legs, needing her help, which never came without conditions.
Enough time passed to prove I wasn’t just going to say how high as soon as she said jump, but not so much that she would come up here again. Throwing the covers off, the funk of my three-day stint in bed filled the room. No need to sniff my own pits. The room smelled as musky as hot, sweaty balls in a locker room filled with athletes from every team I ever played on. So, there’s a slight chance she was correct in demanding I take that shower.
I used the cold water to shock my system. Full blast on freezing, not even a little hot to take the edge off. Once the cobwebs lifted and I felt like whatever mother had planned wouldn’t crush me, I turned things warmer and got on with the business of cleaning my body. My dick might as well have been another arm. It was all about efficient scrubbing. Besides my natural morning wood, that thing hadn’t gotten excited about anything. I couldn’t even muster a dick-hardening scene of a sexy Daddy giving me a bath or showering with me in my mind. Pathetic.
Well, at least I could appreciate the trouble she’d gone through to put my favorite meal together. It was a comfort food specialty. If all these carbs didn’t lift my spirits, I guess nothing would. Biscuits, pancakes, and grits. The sad sap last meal. Was she fattening me up for the winter slaughter? Even if she was, I couldn't resist it. Mother was brilliant in the kitchen, and I would die a happily-slaughtered man. What gave me pause were the extra place settings around the table. I couldn’t imagine what the woman was up to now. I had to be a mental and emotional gymnast living with this woman.
“You made it in time. I knew you just needed a little push. I regret not doing it sooner.” Her tone was way too cheerful, and false–suspiciously so.
“It didn’t sound like I had much of a choice. By the way, it's perfectly normal to mourn the end of a relationship for a few days, Mother. And, for your information, I’m confident that Dr. Leone would not take too kindly to you using her as a threat to get me to do your bidding.”
“I don’t think making you shower and come down for a decent meal exactly counts as my bidding. It’s more like the Board of Health’s bidding,” she said, all while stirring one of her pots and moving it to a back burner she had turned off. When she turned back to me, we stared at one another with matching glares. Damn her, I thought, as I turned away first and took a seat at the table. The honey-laced southern twang in her voice smoothly covered the room like syrup spreading evenly over a stack of pancakes.
“Who are these extra place settings for, Mother?”
“Oh, Hattie and Eileen are coming by. I didn’t think His Royal Sadness would be up to his usual portions, so I told them to come for breakfast.”
“If I’m His Royal Sadness, what does that make you?”
“A woman with too many pancakes on her platter. Come here and help me bring this stuff over.”
I was going to need to put a plug in my funky mood and focus all my energy into finding my own place. If she had me on her schedule and brunching with her and the ladies after a few days, I could only imagine what a few weeks would look like. Most of my preteen years were spent being dragged around to functions with these ladies. I held doors, carried packages, and I was pretty sure I heard way more secrets than any eleven-year-old boy should.
Ms. Hattie and my mother had grown up right here in South Carolina together. They’d gone to the same school, the same church, been in the same cotillion class, and even came out together. I had to constantly remind her that it didn’t mean the same thing as it did in her day. Theirs was more of a societal coming out. Not like mine, where I declared I planned on asking a boy to junior prom. I’d heard of southern women catching the vapors, but that night I watched my mother completely succumb to them.
Those two dynamic debutantes would laugh like schoolgirls whenever they used the term ‘coming out’ and I rolled my eyes into my skull. Ms. Eileen made them a trio of troublemaking society dames in college when they pledged the same sorority. I found it hilarious that Ms. Eileen was the one from New York, with no grand southern lineage to tout, and she was the gentlest of them all. Flat footed, she barely reached the center of my chest, and I wasn’t quite six feet. She was always soft-spoken and often looked as put out as me when Mother and Aunt Hattie started cutting up. Mother was the only widow. Aunt Hattie’s husband, Uncle Lyle, was in an assisted-living facility after his second stroke. And Ms. Eileen was gloriously single. Her words. As far as I knew, she always had been.
While we set all the platters out, I decided to grill my mother about her day instead of the usual, where she took a deep dive into mine.
“So, are you ladies going shopping, to a show, or what?”
“I’m co-chairing the committee for this year’s Gullah Gala.”
“Really?” I’d heard the news the second it came out. I meant to sound impressed and not surprised.
“What, you don’t think I can handle it? I’ll have you know I spent two years on the committee and co-chaired last year as well. You would know that if you had bothered to come home last summer.” Her response wasn’t exactly hurt, but offended for sure.
“Of course, you can handle it. I meant it as impressed, not surprised. I apologize, Mother. So, is Aunt Hattie your co-chair?”
“Hattie, oh, gracious no. She loves the functions, but could never sit through all the meetings required to pull off an event.”
“So, Ms. Eileen? I can’t really see it, but if she lets you make all the decisions, I guess it could work.”
“No, pay attention, Hayes. The ladies are going to be my runners.”
“Runners? Mother, Ms. Eileen had a double knee replacement. You cannot ask her to run.”
“Are you finished, funny boy?” she asked me while still holding her stirring spoon like an extension of her arm.
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Just so you know, my son, you’ll be helping and running for me, too. As long as you’re here, you’ll be helping. No more lying around being sad for sad’s sake. There are lovely folks down at the Society and I cannot wait to introduce you around, especially to my co-chair, Mitchell Layton Sterling, Jr.”
The anguished filled groan came out involuntarily. He didn’t sound any better than the aunties. A pompous jackass with three names. I was obviously feeling desperate when my mind went to the idea of calling Preston and seeing if working things out was really impossible. Yeah, I was coming undone if Preston even crossed my mind. Maybe I should call Dr. Leone myself.
