His phone rang.
His mother.
He sighed, trying to disperse the tension in his chest.
It didn’t work.
Predictably.
“Yes?”
“You haven’t called me,” she said.
“I’m sorry. I’ve been busy. I was on honeymoon, and now Heather and I have just found out that we’re having a son.”
She did not congratulate him. Because she wasn’t in the headspace. He had known that the minute he had seen her name on his phone, and he didn’t even know why he was bothering to introduce it into the conversation.
“I need you to come back to Vienna.”
“I can’t,” he said.
“Romeo,” his mother said, her tone shocked. “I’m not feeling well. I’m afraid… What if I hurt myself?”
“Mother,” he said. “You have a therapist. And I need you to follow the instructions that he’s given you. If you really feel as if you’re in danger, then you need to check yourself into the hospital. You know that I can’t get there immediately anyway. But I’m shopping. For furniture for my child.”
“The baby isn’t even born yet.”
“No, but he will be,” Romeo said, a cold rage filling his chest. His mother. His fragile mother, who didn’t do this on purpose, and he knew that. But suddenly everything just felt wrong. It felt angry. It felt awful.
Suddenly, everything felt like it was in danger of breaking apart.
Because his entire childhood had been fucked. And if he wasn’t able to build walls around all of this, then it was only going to be the same. He wanted his mother to be in his son’s life. But he would not allow his son to give endlessly to his grandmother. Not when she was supposed to give to him. And that’s how it would be. If ever Romeo did not have the energy, she would try to bypass him and get his child. It was what she had done to him. When she couldn’t get attention from his father she had…
“I love you,” Romeo said. “You know that. But I have a family. And—”
“This is about your wife. Because of course you care about her more than you do me. Because of course, she’s just like her mother and—”
“Mother,” Romeo said. “This is only you trying to make a bad feeling inside of you worse. Because if you do that, then you know that you can get me on a plane.”
“Are you accusing me of manipulating you?”
“Yes. Whether you’re doing it on purpose or not. Heather and I will come visit you soon. But I need you to follow your plan. I need you to take care of yourself. Because I have to take care of my family.”
Anger was threatening to tear a hole through his chest. He couldn’t act on it. He couldn’t treat his mother the way that his father did. That would be awful. It would be inexcusable. There would be no justification for it. None whatsoever.
Why did his feelings feel like they were going to choke him out?
He had to get a grip on them. He had to get a grip on himself. This was the kind of life he did not want his child living.
Whether it be from his mother, whether it be from him. Because it lived in him. It was threatening to get out now, to burn everything to the ground. To take everything that he had ever tried to do with his mother and render it useless.
Because part of him wanted to tell her to just do it already if she was going to.
It was years of anger and exhaustion, and he knew that he couldn’t say that. He knew he couldn’t.
“Call your doctor.”
He hung up the phone, and looked across the store at Heather. As she began to make her way toward him as he picked up his phone and called his mother’s therapist. “I need you to do a check-in on my mother. Please go to the house as quickly as you can. She’s supposed to call you. But I don’t necessarily trust that she will.”
