Page 12 of Something Good
“Honey, I’m home!” I called out in a corny, over-the-top tone. Jimmy rolled his eyes but didn’t look up from his book.
“Where’d you go?” he asked.
“Out.” At my short answer, he looked up, his eyes cutting through me. Jimmy might be a little shy, a little socially anxious, but not with me. He had a way of calling me out on my bullshit, sometimes with just a look. No one else had that ability, not since Will.
Fuck.Will occupied way too many of my thoughts.
It was my turn to roll my eyes. I set my board in the corner and shut the door behind me. “I just went for a walk. You were asleep, and I needed some air. Okay,Dad?”
“Just leave me a note or something next time. I worry about you too, you know.”
“I’m a big boy. I can take care of myself.”
He rolled his eyes.Again. “Yeah, you do that so well.”
My eyebrows shot up in indignation. “The fuck is that supposed to mean?”
Before he could respond, the door behind me burst open, and Mom came sauntering in as if she hadn’t been gone for the last three days. She was wearing acid-washed jeans that looked like they’d been painted on, a red crop top more suitable for a girl my age than a thirty-five-year-old mother of teens, and a pair of black platform wedges with a strap that looked ready to give out at any moment. She pushed her long, stringy blonde hair off her face, offering a smile as if she hadn’t ruined our lives for the last seventeen years. “Hi, babies! I’ve missed you!”
“Where the fuck have you been, Mom?” I asked coldly. God, she pissed me off so much. I tried not to let my anger show—it didn’t change anything—but sometimes, it bubbled to thesurface without my permission. I just had to bide my time until Jimmy got into a good college, and then I was out of here.
Her eyes flashed. “Don’t talk to me like that. I’m your mother. Show some fucking respect.”
“Showyourselfsome respect, Mom. Jesus. Where have you been?”
She huffed out a breath, heading through the living room into the little kitchen at the back of the house. “I was with Carlyle. He went on a real hot streak at the casino. Won eight hundred dollars!”
Carlyle, her boyfriend-of-the-month, was an out-of-work mechanic she’d met playing slots at one of the casinos in Council Bluffs, about an hour away. As far as I could tell, he was a manipulative asshole who’d made it clear he couldn’t stand us the one and only time we’d met him, but Mom had been completely oblivious to his disdain, her vision clouded by the hearts and rainbows of newfound love. It was always that way with her and whoever she was dating at the moment. Carlyle wasn’t any different from any of the other guys she’d fucked over the years. They were always losers, usually jobless, and never liked us or wanted anything to do with us, which was fine because we didn’t want anything to do with them either.
She opened the pantry and stared at the mostly empty shelves for a moment before turning toward the fridge to do the same. “Where’s all our food? Did you guys eat all the bread?” she asked, annoyance in her tone.
“We don’t have any bread becauseyouhaven’t been to the store in two weeks.” God, she was so fucking clueless.
She turned toward me, popping her hip and crossing her arms. “Well, you two are old enough to do some shopping. You really could help out around here a little more.”
My jaw dropped. Just when I thought her bullshit couldn’t surprise me, she popped off some asinine comment like that.
“With what money, Mom? I barely make anything at Walmart, and they’ve cut my hours again. You’re never fucking here. Do you even have a job, or did you get fired again?”
She sniffed. “I didn’t get fired. I quit. That asshole manager at the gas station wanted me to work the graveyard shift. Besides, Carlyle’s looking at an apartment in the city!” Her eyes lit with excitement.
My hands flew out in exasperation. “And then what, Mom?”
“What do you mean? Carlyle’s going to take care of us.”
Could she really be that obtuse? “He told you that?Allof us?”
“Well, not exactly,” she hedged. “But his brother bought a building in Omaha, and he’s going to cut Carlyle a real good deal on the rent on one of the units. If everything goes through, we’ll move in next month!” She clapped her hands and squealed like a teenage girl who’d just found out she’d made the cheer team.
“You’re kidding me, right? Besides the fact that Carlyle can’t stand either of us, you can’t just uproot Jimmy from his home, his school.”
“Oh, he’ll be fine.” She waved her hand dismissively, turning back toward the cupboard above the fridge and pulling down a bottle of cheap vodka. She’d always had this infuriating ability to ignore anything in her reality that kept her from getting what she wanted. No matter how bleak things looked, no matter how ugly the truth, she convinced herself everything would be fine.
She’d quit or been fired from so many jobs that I’d lost track of the number, always convinced a better opportunity was waiting for her. It didn’t matter that we might not be able to make rent or pay the electric bill. She always had some scheme on the horizon that would make everything better. I was tired of the merry-go-round, of the constant gaslighting, of the toxic positivity. If it weren’t for Jimmy, I’d have walked out a long time ago.
She made to move past me, I was sure to get drunk in her bedroom, but I grabbed her arm, stopping her before she could get by. “You need to pull your shit together, Mom. Jimmy doesn’t deserve this.” She tried to yank her arm out of my grasp, but I held fast. “Do you even know how smart he is? He could actually go to college, make something of himself, get out of this stupid town. You need to get a job, Mom. And keep it. Be a responsible human for once in your goddamned life.”
“You graduate from high school and now you think you know everything, huh? You wanna judge me for the way I live my life?” She stepped in close, her petite frame just a few inches from my taller one. With her chin jutting out and eyes flashing, she said, “You think you know how to be a parent? You fucking take care of him then. I’m moving in with Carlyle next month whether you come with me or not.” With that, she yanked her arm out of my grasp and stalked off to her room, slamming the door behind her.
