Circumstances 30

I wiped my eyes on the back of my hands.  Gary gave me a good squeeze, then let me go.  I was worried by the way Mrs. Jenks looked.  If my mother had said no, well...

As I neared the patio, Mrs. Jenks turned and walked inside.  I found her sitting at the kitchen table.  I pulled out a chair and sat down.  Gary did too.  Mrs. Jenks looked at him, then nodded, accepting his being there.

She looked at me, saw the angst in my face, and smiled.  “Don’t be upset, Keith.  You’re going to stay with us until she has a better grip on things.”

I felt like a ton had been lifted off my chest.  But then, I wondered...  “Uh, why did you look so worried then?” I asked her. 

She shook her head, acting a little embarrassed.  “I should have realized you’d be looking at me for some sign of what we’d decided.  I’m sorry.  I should have been more sensitive and not scared you like that.”

She stopped, but saw I was still looking at her expectantly.  She knew I still wanted my question answered.

“I guess what you were seeing in my face was that I was a little upset after talking to her.  She sounded… well… strange I guess.  Is she all right, Keith?  I mean, well, I’m not sure what I mean.  I just didn’t like the way she sounded.”

“I don’t know,” I said.  “I’ve been thinking the same thing, that she seems different somehow, that her moods are worse, that she’s more edgy.  I don’t know the right word for it.”

I stopped, trying to figure out what I wanted to say.  After a moment, I said, “My mom’s always been a lot different from you.  She’s not the motherly type, and never has been.  But I think...”  I stopped, trying to figure it out.  “I think for some reason her attitude or mood or whatever, well, maybe she’s feeling a lot of pressure right now.  We don’t have much money, almost none really.  She doesn’t get any help from my father.  He’s completely disappeared.  We haven’t heard anything from him for years.  She doesn’t make much money at her job and has to make car payments and house payments and insurance payments and all that, and she has to dress professionally where she works, which means paying a lot of money for clothes and getting her hair done and that sort of thing.  Now she doesn’t even have a job she can be sure of, and, well… it’s tough for her.”

I raised my head to speak directly to Mrs. Jenks.  “She’s a very competitive person, and she judges herself against others.  She’s not doing as well as she wants to, as well as she thinks she should be.  She talks about people she knew in college, people who didn’t get as good grades, who are much more successful than she is, and I think that drives her a little crazy.  She always saw herself as the best, and now she has to cope with, in her eyes, a life that to her is a failure.”

I stopped and looked down at the table, and I began shaking with an emotion I couldn’t control.  “And then there’s me.  I know she feels she’d be better off without me around causing her more problems, having to take care of me.  I’m a burden to her.”

I stopped.  It sounded awful, saying that, but that’s how I felt, and I was pretty sure it was true.

Mrs. Jenks reached out and put her hand over mine.  Her eyes, I saw when I glanced up at her, were full of compassion.

“Well, you won’t have to worry about any of that for a while now, Keith.  Tomorrow, after school, we’ll drive over there and get all the things you want to have here, and we’ll move you into one of our spare bedrooms.  It’s about time one of them got some use.”

“Hey!”  That was Gary.  “Why can’t he stay with me?”

She smiled at him, and reached her other hand out for his hand.  She now was holding one of each of our hands.  She spoke to Gary.  “It’s fine for a sleepover, but he needs his space and privacy just like you do.  He’ll be here for quite a long time.  He needs his own room to study in, to sleep in, to have a place for his things.”

“But...”  Gary was clearly upset by this.  It surprised me.  I knew I loved sleeping with him, but then I had feelings for him, the type of feelings I knew he didn’t have for me.  Maybe when he’d heard I’d be staying, he’d got the idea that he’d have a built-in sex partner for the next couple of months, and here the idea was getting shot down right out of the chute.  Maybe that was it.

I thought of something to say, and this seemed like a good time to say it.  Maybe it would make him feel better.

“Mrs. Jenks, is it all right, if I’m feeling bad or need company, to go to his room some nights?  Like if I feel I might have another nightmare, or am worried about something?  You remember that nightmare I had here that first night.  Well, after that, when we went back to bed, Gary held me the rest of the night.  I fell asleep right away and don’t think I’ve ever had such a good night’s sleep.”

Mrs. Jenks opened her mouth to reply, then shut it again, and looked at both of us for a moment.  When she responded, it was with a question of her own.  “Is that why..?”  She stopped, then continued.  “I knew something was different when you two came down to breakfast that next morning.  I could feel a different vibe coming from you both.”  She stopped and studied her son, and he blushed.

Oops.  I wished he hadn’t done that.

She didn’t comment on the blush, though she did look at Gary for a moment longer than I thought she needed to.  But instead of commenting, she turned back to me.  Her eyes softened, and she said, “Anytime you want to do that, Keith, it’s OK.  Anytime at all.”