Page 121 of The Way I Am Now
“A while.” She shrugs, then smiles and reaches over to mess up my hair. “So, what did you think? Will you be going again—I’m sure you can find a meeting near campus pretty easily.”
I nod. “Yeah, I think I might.”
“That would be good for you, with everything that’s been going on,” she says. “I’m always here—you know that—but a mother isn’t always what you need.”
I’m not exactly sure what she means by that, not sure if she’s talking about Dad or Eden or school or what, but I take this moment to ask her the question I’ve been too afraid to say out loud: “He seems different this time, right?”
She waits to look at me until we pull up to the red light. “He was really shaken when you didn’t come home over winter break last year. It hurt him.”
“I’m sorry,” I begin. “I didn’t mean to—”
“No, stop,” she interrupts. “That’s the point, you took a stand—you’ve never done that before.”
“Oh,” I mutter.
“And it didn’t just hurt him, it scared him. He realized he could lose you. That’s what’s different this time. As far as I can tell, anyway.”
“You’ve stood up to him lots of times,” I point out.
“Well, it’s different. He knows I’m not going anywhere. We’re in this thing together. For better or worse, right? That’s what I vowed, and I’ll be damned, it looks like I’m sticking to it. But you?” She pokes my arm. “You made no such promise. I think he finally gets that.”
“Do you regret it?” I ask her, though I’m not sure I’m ready for the answer. “Sticking to your promise, I mean.”
“No,” she responds. “Especially not lately.”
When we get home, equipped with a few bags of random groceries for good measure, Dad is outside in the driveway, illuminated by the motion lights on the side of the garage. He’s slowly dribbling one of my old basketballs I hadn’t seen since middle school, and when he sees us pull up on the side of the street, he tosses his cigarette on the ground, steps on it quickly.
“Does he really think I don’t know he’s smoking?” Mom says, shaking her head as she unbuckles her seat belt and starts getting out of the car.
I reach into the back seat for the bags, but Mom comes up behind me and touches my arm.
“I’ll get these,” she tells me. “Why don’t you go hang out with your father awhile, huh?”
“Yeah,” I agree, “okay.”
Dad starts walking down the driveway toward us, with the ball perched between his arm and his hip. “I was about to file a missing persons report on you two,” he jokes.
“Mother-son bonding knows no time constraints,” Mom says, always quick on her feet, in a different way than Dad is.
“Need help with those?” he asks.
“I’ve got it,” Mom says, hurrying up the driveway, stopping for just a second as Dad gives her a kiss on the cheek. “Don’t stay out here too late, boys,” she calls over her shoulder. “And, Joshua, don’t go too easy on him.”
I stay behind. Not sure what to say, I hold my hands up. He passes me the ball. I pass it back. He goes for a shot, but I block him. I take the shot instead.
He claps his hands and waits for the pass.
He tries to get past me, but I block him again.
And again. And again.
“Wow, all right,” Dad says, laughing. “You’re really not gonna go easy on your old man, are you?”
“Nope.”
“Good,” he says, and I think we both know we’re not talking about basketball anymore.
I pivot and jab, drive forward, stay a step ahead of him, make the basket. Over and over. I’m tiring him out, I can tell, but I don’t stop. Not until he’s standing there in the middle of our driveway, hands on hips, breathing heavy, smiling only a little when he says, “All right, all right.” He raises his hands in the shape of a T and shakes his head. “Time-out, okay? Time-out.”
