“It was for Tara, Mom! She almost got raped! I’m not going to let anything happen to her.”
That was a mistake.
“Oh, that whore?”
I would never, ever, ever have hit my mother.
She’d cursed me out, slapped me across the face, called me a pathetic excuse for a Harrison, forgotten to come to my high school graduation, frequently fallen asleep at the wheel when she drove, hadn’t told me she loved me in ages, and asked to see me for things other than groceries and medication so infrequently that I wondered if she was less of a mother and more of just a wicked bitch.
Rather stupidly, though, I would not succumb to her. I would not become a hopeless blob of decay and dying. I would not lose control and hit her.
But that did not mean that her words would not drive me to hitsomething.The wall, my bike’s seat, the next asshole who said something to me, the door to our house…at least I could thank my mother for having brutally strong knuckles for the amount of damage they had taken over the years. I guess she wasn’t entirely worthless and draining.
“She is not a whore,” I hissed, bowing my head.
“She took you away from me and then dumped you without warning,” my mother scowled. “That bitch doesn’t deserve a second of your attention.”
“No,” I said.
I didn’t say that word often to my mother. I needed to say it more.
“Don’t you ever talk about Tara like that,” I said. “She was a great person. It just didn’t work out, but I know—”
“I bet she’s probably sleeping with one of your friends now.”
If I didn’t leave, I was going to break my foot kicking the coffee table in front of me.
“I’ll be back with your groceries and medication.”
I turned, ignoring the last words of my mother about how she needed more cholesterol medication than she had last week.Doesn’t matter. You’ll probably be dead before the end of the year at the rate you go.
And it wouldn’t be a fucking moment too soon. Not like I’m losing someone who loves me.
I didn’t emerge from the house unscathed. When I got to the front door and tried to open it, the door got lodged in the frame, as if the wood had somehow expanded and made it impossible to open.
“Fuck!” I yelled as I pulled on the door.
“Watch your language, boy!” my mother shouted.
I finally got it open. The door slammed open and hit the wall.
“Stan!”
That’s fucking it.
I left without shutting it behind me. There was a screen door that would make sure bugs didn’t get in. My mother could deal with the fucking heat on her own time.
I got to my bike with my nostrils flared, my cheeks red, and my eyes scrunched so they wouldn’t water. I looked back at the house, once the model of a small-town family, once a place with a mother who was tough but loving, a father who had served in the military, and sons who may not have been destined for the big city but would always do right.
Now, that family had been cut in half. One of us had moved on. The other couldn’t even remember who the fuck had left. I’d tried for years to get my mom better.
I was done fighting.
If my mother couldn’t love me, there was nothing to fight for. It was time to move the fuck on.
If only doing it was as fucking easy as determining it.
* * *
