“I know.” He shrugs. “This is what I meant,” he whispers. “More room.”
I’ve seen the stuff he’s got in the storage unit. “You really did totally move out.” He apparently left nothing behind but furniture.
“Yeah. She can use this room as a guest room now, if she needs to. I have literally nothing here.”
I start to say something about how he’sdefinitelystaying with me between semesters, but then I bite the words back.
We’re still a long way from that, even though it’s my goal.
Okay, screw that, my goal is to have him in my bed—and not just to soothe me back to sleep after a nightmare—longbefore the end of the semester, but it’s not the current reality and I don’t want to spook him.
I’m glad I came tonight. If for no other reason than to seethis. A glimpse into his psyche.
Meeting the monster in person.
The house feels too perfect, borderline sterile. Like a perfectly staged house for sale instead of a home. No surprise, considering she sells real estate.
What’s conspicuously absent, however, are any visible pictures of Owen, even though there are plenty of portraits of Elandra and Austin together, Elandra in younger years, and even a few of Austin.
Literally, theonlypicture I find of Owen is one taken most likely at his high school graduation because of the cap and gown he wears. In it, the couple flanks Owen, and the woman’s too-wide smile is no doubt intended to make her look like Mother of the Year.
The house screams narcissist.
Owen’s step-father, Austin, is a weaselly little man who obviously enjoys being pushed around by his wife.
Ah. Now I can see Elandra’s “type.” She married one and trained another.
It’s a valuable insight I tuck away for later.
As the evening progresses, while Elandra’s obviously trying to evaluate me, it turns out that there are more than enough of her husband’s co-workers at the dinner they’re hosting to ensure she’s on her best behavior.
For now.
I’m careful that, during the entire evening, I keep an eye on Owen and I casually intervene and redirect Elandra’s attention from him to me if I think she’s pushing his buttons a little too hard. Usually by using flattery and asking well-placed questions about Florida politics and what she does for a living. Questions that make her look good as a host, and reflect well on her by my obvious knowledge of what we’re talking about.
Thank you, Susa, and thank you, eidetic memory.
When people find out I’m a decorated combat vet, it makes Elandra puff up a little. Now I’m a value-added accessory to her main narcissistic supply’s presence at her little soirée. That means I’m promoted in status from being merely tolerated in her home to that of a welcomed guest, and I practically have to peel her off of me from that point on.
But, because I’m more than a bit of a bastard, I also let a few exchanges briefly play out between Owen and his mother, just to see what happens.
Because Ineedto see what happens.
Not because the sadist in me likes watching Owen cruelly twist in the wind at the end of his mother’s sharp and well-honed tongue, or blush under her cold glares, but because I want to seehisreactions. How he responds to her, and the things he tries to do to keep her from acting like that in the first place.
The dance they’re doing around each other.
The painful comments she slings at him disguised as “just kidding” sorts of jabs. Camouflaged. Verbal harpoons her guests can see striking their target and sinking into Owen’s flesh, but they don’t recognize them as such and even laugh at their impact.
Perhaps in a different family, such as the one I grew up in, those kinds of comments absolutely would be harmless, funny, even, in a far different context.
But not tonight.
She’s trying to get her overdue pound of flesh out of Owen in any way she can, and it disgusts and angers me.
That’s why I let her go on for a little while. I want Owen to have a new baseline fromthismoment forward. Tonight will be a study in stark contrasts—choosing the hell he has here, or the welcoming, gentle haven he has with me and Susa.
I want to be the one to pick him up and dust him off, to comfort him on the flip side of this endurance test.
