Michael
“Honey, are you feeling well?” Mom asked when we walked into the kitchen. She finally seemed to be on the mend. She still looked too thin, but other than that she seemed to have bounced back. She cupped my cheeks and pulled my head down. Her lips pressed tenderly to my forehead, the way she’d done when I was sick as a child. She’d always said a mother didn’t need a thermometer, she’d know how her child felt by the heat of his skin. “No fever, but you still don’t look well.”
“I’m fine, Mom,” I insisted. Jagger helped himself to a piece of fruit and sat down at the table between us. “I’m just tired, that’s all.”
“Well, maybe you should think about hanging up the bar rag,” she suggested. Funny she said that, since I’d been thinking the very same thing.
“Yeah, I think you’re right,” I told her. “In fact, I know you are. I’ve actually started sending out some resumés. I’ll have to take a job in Abelman because there’s not much around here, but I’m pretty sure I’ll be able to get back to a normal schedule at some point.”
Mom practically squealed in delight. She probably would have, if such reactions weren’t absurd, as she’d liked to say every time Erica went all giddy and girly. “That’s wonderful! I’m sure Jagger will like having you home in the evening. And Dax, too.”
I flinched and quickly shot a look Jagger’s way. I shouldn’t have tried talking to Dax when I picked him up today, because that led to twenty million questions from my son about why Dax and I were mad at one another. Questions I didn’t have answers for. Questions my mother would ask if she found out.
“What’s that look for?” She followed my eyes to Jagger and drew her own conclusions. “Jagger, sweetie, why don’t you go find Papa? I think he’s out working in his shop and I’m sure he’d love the help.”
The chair legs scraped across the floor and I reached out to try to keep the chair from clattering to the ground. Jagger got more than just a little excited when he got to help his grandfather make something.
“Okay, now that it’s just the two of us, I have a few things I’m going to say to you, Michael Douglas.” Middle naming me got my attention. Mom slid her chair closer and laid her hand over mine. “Relationships are hard work. Now, I know you might not feel that way because everything with Erica seemed to be a natural progression. But honestly, I think that’s because the two of you screwed up and resolved that the only way you knew how.”
“Are you saying it was a mistake for me to stay with her because of Jagger?” I was stunned stupid by that. I knew Mom had her reservations about Erica, and I knew she’d cried when I told her I was proposing, but itwasthe right thing to do.
“That’s neither here nor there,” she told me. “On the other hand, as much as I love Jagger to death, there’s no doubt in my mind that you wouldn’t have spent your entire life with her if not for him. The two of you were so different, but you were also the ones who would put up with one another. You catered to her spoiled whims, and in return she was willing to stay mostly quiet when you placed your future in front of her needs.”
But she wasn’t, I wanted to say. She was far from quiet, which was exactly why I’d thought about breaking up with her a lot before she told me she was pregnant. Shit. Maybe Mom had a point. When I was honest with myself, I could admit that Erica and I had no business walking down the aisle in front of half the town. But to admit that felt like I was somehow saying we also shouldn’t have had Jagger, and he was the only thing I had left that was important in my life.
“If you’re serious about pursuing this thing with your friend, you need to realize that it’s going to take work,” Mom scolded me. “You can’t expect everything to fall into place and the three of you ride off into the sunset. You have to work damn hard. And it’d be easier to do that if you weren’t working five nights a week.”
“I know, Mom,” I said, trying to appease her. And damn, it’d be nice if she’d quit lecturing me, because every word she said was true. Life with Dax wasn’t easy. Being with him scared the hell out of me, even more now that we’d slept together, because I wasn’t sure he and I viewed what’d happened that night the same way. I feared that he thought it was just sex, but it was more to me. It was a life-defining moment. No matter how many times I’d had sex in the past, it was the first time I truly understood what the hype was about. And I craved it like a junkie needed his next fix. “But it’s probably too late for that, anyway.”
Mom simply shook her head. “I don’t understand you.” She sighed heavily as she stood to refill her glass of water. “You’re such a smart boy. Sometimes, I think that’s your biggest fault.”
“Gee, thanks for the vote of confidence,” I grumbled. My shoulders slumped forward and I started picking at the edge of the table. When she caught me, she slapped my hand away.
“You know I’m right,” she continued once she was comfortable again. “Everything came easy to you when you were a boy. You were so smart the teachers had problems challenging you. You never studied for tests but still managed to pass with flying colors. You were accepted to every college where you applied, and continued your success there. As wonderful as all of that is, I do wonder if it stunted you in other ways.”
She wasn’t holding back today. I didn’t want to hear what she had to say, and yet I couldn’t stop myself from asking her to clarify. “How so?”
“When you have an easy life, it doesn’t teach you how to cope with the hardships,” she said softly. “It’s only been a few days since you sat in that very chair and told me something that I have to believe was difficult for you, but I was okay with it. Do you know why?”
“No,” I admitted. In fact, I was still confused as to how she’d accepted me coming out, if it could be called that, so easily.
“Because you’ve been different for the past month,” she told me. I was about to open my mouth to remind her she’d been sick and we hadn’t really seen one another, but she interrupted me before the first word was out of my mouth. “I know what you’re going to say, but that’s actually part of it. For a long time now, you’ve been holding everyone at a distance, but you didn’t with him. He was a stranger to you, and yet you got to know him, and thought highly enough of him that you asked him to stay with Jagger at night while you worked.”
“Well, in my defense, I didn’t have much of a choice the first night, and after that he offered to keep staying there so Jagger could sleep in his own bed,” I argued.
“But you did have a choice,” she pointed out. “You know that you could’ve called Erica’s parents and they’d have been glad to spend some time with him. They miss him.”
No way. I still stood by the view that I’d rather call in than pick up the phone and tell them that they were right, that I couldn’t raise Jagger on my own.
Mom slapped me upside the head. “Stop that.”
“Stop what?” Playing dumb never worked with her. I knew this, but apparently I kept thinking it might eventually fool her.
“Your entire body tensed up when I mentioned them,” she informed me. “I know they’re not your biggest fans, that’s our job, but you’re delusional if you think they want to take him away from you. Or that they’d get away with it if they tried. Eventually, you’re going to have to trust me about that.”
“Maybe you’re right.” I thought back to Dax saying pretty much the same thing to me one night. “But what if you’re not? I’m not sure that’s a chance I can take.”
“You could, if you really wanted to. They deserve to know their grandson just as much as your father and I do.” I prayed Jagger and Dad would walk in, because she wouldn’t talk about this in front of him. Not again. Not after the time he’d overheard me freaking out and we’d had to convince him nothing bad was going to happen. “But back to what we were talking about. What happened between Wednesday and today that’s given you a change of heart?”
