Chapter 13
WARD
For a few moments, Ward was tempted to just ignore the buzzing phone but he knew his mother too well.
Irene would keep calling until he finally wore down and answered. By that time, she would have worked up a head of steam as to how he was always doing things to annoy her (which he wasn’t) and provided her even more ammunition for whatever bee she happened to have in her bonnet.
‘Hey, Mom,’ Ward greeted and even he heard the stiffness in his voice. He took a deep breath and tried to lighten it. ‘How are you?’
‘I’m fine, thanks for asking. I just got off the phone with your Aunt Helen and she wanted me to say “hello”, so here I am – saying “hello”.’
‘How’s she doing?’ he asked, trying not to let his hackles rise. He already had a feeling where this was going.
‘Oh, she’s the same as she always is. Kept going on and on about some guy she’s falling for online, and I tried to tell her not to forget that it might be some scam that she’s falling for, but she didn’t want to hear that. She didn’t want to listen. Why in the world is that? Why don’t people ever want to listen anymore?’
For as long as he could remember, Irene McKenzie’s problemwith the world was that she knew what was going on more than anyone else, but no one ever wanted to listen to her.
‘You know people – they already have their minds made up about things and that’s all there is to it.’
‘It’s like when I used to tell you that you needed to go to college and get yourself a business degree. I would tell you over and over and over again to get a business degree. Did you ever listen, though? No – no, you didn’t. You just wanted to play stupid games all the time.’
‘Mom, that “stupid game” I play got you a nice house and a very nice lifestyle,’ Ward retorted, careful to keep his tone casual.
‘Maybe,’ Irene replied, ‘but you can’t keep doing it forever, can you? You’ve already been out for months. And what about when you’re too old to play or worse, the Panthers dump you altogether? You’ll wind up bagging groceries at Walmart.’
‘Mom, with my investments, I’m confident I’m going to dodge that bullet.’ He forced a chuckle, willing himself not to rise to the bait. But somehow his mother knew exactly how to hit him in his weak spot. And in all honesty, bagging groceries sounded like a fine old job to him.
‘Guess who I ran into?’ she asked then, completely ignoring what he’d just said. ‘You’ll never guess.’
‘I’m sure it’s someone who doesn’t listen to you,’ Ward muttered.
‘Jerry Thornhill. You remember Jerry, he was in your class at high school. The two of you used to be so close. Then you just stopped hanging out with him – probably because you had your mind filled with ice hockey nonsense and—’
‘So, how is Jerry, Mom?’ he interjected, hoping to get the conversation over with as quickly as possible.
‘He’s fine. In fact, he’s more than fine. Turns out that he’s nowCEO of a major corporation and he’s doing really well.Reallywell. He’s married and he has two beautiful children. He showed me pictures of them. They’re absolutely lovely.’
‘Great, well, I’m very happy for Jerry. Thanks for the update,’ Ward murmured, preparing to hang up.
Irene was not about to go down without a fight, though.
‘So like I said, if you’d taken my advice and gotten a degree in business or something else worthwhile, you could be right where Jerry is now – with a beautiful wife, lovely children and a steady career.’
He’d had a shit day withdrawing from the pain meds and this was just about the last straw. ‘Hey, Mom, here’s a fun fact for you,’ Ward replied, ‘Jerry Thornhill – that guy that you admire so much – date-raped a girl our last year at high school, and Daddy’s money kept it quiet. So, while I was playing my silly little game, good ole Jerry was out there ruining some poor girl’s life.’
There was a long pause until finally in a quiet voice, his mother said, ‘I’ll give your best to Aunt Helen in return.’
An hour later, he was still fuming.
Nothing he did was ever good enough for her and the fact that he refused to follow the path she wanted for him kept the two of them at odds.
His father, whom Ward had never met, had walked out on Irene when she’d announced that she was pregnant, apparently. Forced to raise a child on her own – albeit with some financial assistance from her parents – his mother had made sure that her son never forgot that he was the reason she was alone in life.
Or that she reached for the bottle so much.
‘If I hadn’t gotten pregnant, my life would have been a whole lot different, but that’s simply the way things are,’ she’d told him a million times. ‘Still, no use crying over spilt milk.’
Chapter 14
