My neighbor says nothing, gets into the van, and slowly drives off. God, it’s exhausting watching him wrangle the kids. Thank god, I’m childless.
I chuckle and head inside. After I remove my tie and coat, I pour myself a glass of Sauvignon Blanc.
I dig around in my fridge and pull out some assorted vegetables and the shredded chicken breast I pre-made for a salad when my phone rings. I pick it up from where it rests on the counter, and see it’s my mother calling.
My stomach twists painfully, nuking any appetite I might have had. Each ring reduces my age and height. Every time I talk to her, I’m no longer a thirty-nine-year-old but a nineteen-year-old. Hell, sometimes she brings me back to when I was nine.
“Fuck,” I mumble.
I debate not answering it, but she’s fucking relentless. She’ll keep calling me until I pick up, then she’ll lay on the guilt thick enough to choke a horse. Nothing good comes from her phone calls. They startwell enough, but then they devolve into narcissistic cruelty. That woman can hold a fucking grudge like no one’s business. She’ll hold shit you did when you were five over your head for a lifetime, or until you beg for fucking mercy.
Yeah, I’m a grown-ass adult. Yeah, I could not answer it. But I’m weak around her. It’s like all my control and self-growth go out the window when I have to deal with her. She’s also the only family I have. Well, she has a sister, parents, and some cousins, but I don’t know any of them. Mom always kept me close to her side. My father left her when I was two, and I never saw him again, not that I remember him. I wouldn’t be surprised if she drove him out of our lives. Her motto has always been, ‘You and me against the world.’ It sounds like a great bonding moment. It was anything but.
No, Mom, it’s always been about you.
The sad part is that people like being around her. She’s charismatic, outgoing, and sweet around other people. But living alone with her, when no one was looking… Let’s just say I had no one to turn to.
The ringing stops, and I let out a breath I didn’t know I was holding, but the reprieve doesn’t last long when my phone starts ringing again.
I curse my life and answer it.
“Where were you? You made me call you again.”
“Hey, Mom. Yeah, I was… cooking dinner.”
“You’re avoiding me. I know your patterns. You never call me. I have to call you all the time. We’re family, Calvin. What will happen when I’m dead, and you have no one left?”
Live happily?
Despite my misery, I’ve spent my life bending over backwards to make my mother proud. I played football in high school, like the good Texas boy I was. I got good grades and went to fucking Rice Universityfor undergrad and to get my Mastery of Architecture. Do you have any idea how hard it was to get into that school?
Instead of her telling me what a great job I did, I’d get ‘Well, you weren’t the quarterback.’ ‘You should’ve tried to get into Harvard.’ And, my all-time favorite, ‘Why’d you get a job doodling all day? You should’ve been a doctor.’
“I call you all the time, Mom.”
“Once a month is what you call all the time? You were like that as a child, always too busy for your mother. You’ve always been cold and distant, just like your father. He was nuts and a loner. You’re exactly like him.”
And there it is. Whenever she’s not happy with me, she accuses me of being my father, a man I’ve never known, so I can’t dispute her words. She’s told me I’m crazy so many times that there were days, months, even years when I actually believed it.
“Are you going to leave me, too? Your only parent? We’re family. That’s all that matters.Tsh. What am I saying? You’ve already left me. You’re in a different state. You never visit me.”
Family isnotall that matters, but I don’t argue with her as she reduces me to a child instead of treating me like a man who’s nearly forty.
“Now, we can talk about the lack of gratitude for me raising you all by myself later. I need to make sure you’ll be there for your cousin’s wedding next month. I presume you got the invitation?”
Wedding? Cousin? Who the fuck cares? Why does my mom? She’s kept me away from family my entire life. Why see them now? There has to be something she’s getting out of it. That’s the only reason.
“I don’t know her, Mom.”
“That’s neither here nor there. We’re family. You’ll be there. Did you get the invitation?”
I saw a fancy envelope come in the mail a few days ago, but I didn’t open it. “I think so.”
“Double check, and I expect you to offer the newlyweds an expensive gift. They have a registry. Make sure you pick out the nicest and most expensive gift.”
Ah, she’s going to flaunt my money and success to spite her family. To show how great she’s doing without them. Jesus fuck. And gee, here I thought she was perpetually disappointed in me.
“I will.”
