Circumstances 28

“Where were you?” she asked, and I knew something was wrong.  Her hair looked disarranged, and her personal grooming was always impeccable.  She was angry, too, and her question didn’t make any sense.

“You know where I was.  I was at Gary’s”

“Don’t you dare take that tone of voice to me.  I deserve your respect!  You should have been home hours ago!”

“There was no special time set for me to get home.  Why are you so upset?  I didn’t do anything wrong.  You’re trying to pick a fight!”  I was angry now, and she could hear it.  I’d never yelled at her in the past, but just recently I’d started doing so.  I didn’t like it, but I wasn’t able to hold in my anger now as I had in the past.  So, when she yelled, I was beginning to do it too.  She didn’t like it.
 

“I forbid you to talk to me that way!  Go to your room!”

I managed to control my temper.  “I was going there anyway.  When you calm down, maybe you can talk rationally.”

“That’s it!  You’re grounded!  No more going to Gary’s house.  Just school and home.  I’m fed up with you.”

She had some file folders in her hands, and she slammed them down on the little table in the entryway where we put the mail.  Her face was red, her eyes squinting.

I walked around her, feeling shaky.  I hated fighting, hated arguing, hated confrontation.  I’d had to listen to it way too much growing up, and it always made me feel small and worthless and powerless.

I climbed the stairs up to my room.  I stopped, took a breath, then sat on the bed.  The feelings I’d had at Gary’s house, the things his mother had said to me in the car, all were gone.  I’d reentered my real life.

I got on my computer, surfed around, but my stomach had the tight feeling I was so used to, and I couldn’t concentrate.

Eventually, my mother came upstairs and stood in my doorway, just watching me.  I knew she was there but didn’t look at her.  I didn’t need another fight.

Finally, she turned and walked away, but then came back.  “Keith?” she said.

“Yeah?”  I kept starting at my computer monitor.

“I’m sorry.  I shouldn’t have done that.  You’re right, I did know where you were.  You didn’t do anything wrong.  I was upset, and I took it out on you.  I do that a lot, don’t I?”

“It hurts, you know.  When you do that.”

“I’m sorry.  It’s just that... well, I’ve had a bad day.  A very bad one.  They’re cutting back in my office.  They’ve let some staff go, and they’re reducing the associates.”

“You got fired?”  The tightness in my stomach got worse.  If she lost her job, I didn’t know what we’d do.

“No.  No.  But... well, they want...”  She stopped and turned around, not looking at me.  She stood like that for at least a minute.  Then she turned back to me.  

“They want me to work out of our San Diego office for the next few months.  There’s a job there for an associate.  They said they hope there’ll be work for me back here when I finish with that assignment.  But they said they can’t promise it.”

She looked at me, her eyes red, and I got up and went to her and hugged her.

Hugging her was much different from hugging Mrs. Jenks.  Mrs. Jenks was a little stout, and that extra padding, her enthusiasm for hugging, and the love that seemed to emanate from her like warmth from an oven on a cold day, made you feel like you were being enveloped by a comfortable, welcoming pillow.  My mother was slender, her muscles were hard, and there wasn’t much tenderness in either her heart or her hug.  I got the impression, the few times we hugged, that she was putting up with it, but not enjoying it.

I hugged her, and I felt her shudder.  When I let go, she looked at me for a moment, then silently turned and started back towards the stairs.  She stopped, however, and called back to me, “Things might be hard for a while.  I need your help.  Be here when I need you, and do what I say.  You might start with cleaning up your room.”

I looked at my room.  It looked like it always did, pretty much OK.  I wasn’t messy, and in fact, I didn’t like messy much.  It was something that got me yelled at when I was younger.  It wasn’t spotless, like Gary’s was, but it looked fine.  I sat back down at my computer, but then started thinking, and it wasn’t long before I walked back downstairs myself.  I found her at the kitchen table, simply sitting, staring at the wall.

“Mom?  Does this mean I have to leave school?”

“Probably.  I can’t leave you here alone.”

“But for just a few months?  Then come back here?  I have to go to a new school where I don’t know anyone for a short time, then come back?”

“Dammit, Keith!  We have to face this.  In the present circumstances, we have to do what we have to do.  We have to face that.  What else can we do?  For God’s sake, don’t start whining about it!  Think about someone but yourself for once.  I didn’t want this.  I didn’t want any of this!  Dammit!”

“Are they going to pay for you to live there?  I mean, if they don’t do that, then you’ll be paying the mortgage on this house plus wherever we’re living there.  Can you afford that?”

“No, I can’t afford it!  But they said this is all they have, and I should feel lucky because they’re not making this offer to some of the other associates.  They said the job is there if I want it, but that’s all.  No expenses are covered.  Things are too tight for the company right now.  If I don’t want to do it, they’ll ask one of the other associates they’re letting go.” 

“So you’ll have to sell the house?”

“I don’t know!  Stop asking me questions I don’t know answers to!  Why do you always do that?  I’ll see if I can rent it, but who’ll rent a house for only a few months?”

It looked hopeless to me.  Both our lives were being torn apart.  “When do we have to go?”

“I have a week to decide.  I guess I’ll have to see what a realtor has to say about selling or renting the house.  I have to see what’s available in San Diego, too.  We need two bedrooms, but I don’t think I’ll be able to afford anything that big unless it’s a dump.”  She got up and started pacing, and I didn’t say anything else.

I didn’t want to live in a dump.  I didn’t want to start in a new school for a couple of months in the middle of the school year.  I didn’t want to have any part of any of this.  I didn’t want to leave Gary just when I’d found him.

That’s when I had my idea, my brilliant idea.  I started to speak, then clamped my lips shut.  I needed to think of the best way to present this.  The mood she was in was brittle, and I wanted her to say yes to what I was thinking.

So, I said, “I’ll be upstairs.  Maybe I can think of a way to help.”