All I could do was make a face.
“Yeah,” Hutch agreed.“By then, I fuckin’ hated her.Because she was a vain, selfish woman.She didn’t have anything wrong with her.She wasn’t bipolar or schizophrenic.She was Lisa Hutchison.She was Bree.Beautiful.Able to snap her fingers and bring a man to his knees.And she liked doing that.Especially to my dad.”
“Are you…er, sure of that?”I asked carefully.
His answer was immediate.
“Fuck yeah.Because you were right about Bree.I have no idea how I didn’t see it.Mom started to get older, and it wasn’t so easy to find some guy to shack up with.Or party with.Or take her out to an expensive dinner.That’s when the petulance started.The temper tantrums.That was when Dad started his turn from loving her and wanting to make it work, to loving her but knowing he couldn’t live with her anymore.Because, if she couldn’t get the world to treat her the way she wanted to be, she was gonna make him do it.He might have loved her, but he was a man.There was only so much he was going to take.He wasn’t going to dance attendance or grovel.Then it was her slamming out to go stay with Aunt Elaine for three weeks to ‘teach him his lesson.’”
“Was your Aunt Elaine like that?”
He shook his head while taking another bite of toast, threw it on his plate, chewed, sat back, swallowed.
“She’s married to the same man, now probably it’s been over forty years.She wasn’t as attractive.But that doesn’t mean my Uncle Shane wasn’t a cowed man.She snapped, he moved.Sometimes I think that was what Mom was looking for.What she tried to mold Dad into.She just picked the right and wrong guy.The right bit being, he loved her, so he let her get away with too much, and took her back every time.The wrong bit being, he wasn’t going to fold for her.What he tried to do was do his best to handle her.He failed.”
“That had to be tough, living in that kind of tug of war.”
“It sucked,” he bit.
Oh yeah.
And from what I was reading, Hutch had somehow found a version of his mother in all his exes.
The cheater.
The manipulator.
And the pretty girl.
“She named me Ranger.And Emmett.Dad hated both those names, but he let her do that too.That’s why he called me Hutch,” Hutch explained.“And that’s why I don’t use Ranger at all, and everyone calls me Hutch.Though, also, it’s a fuckin’ stupid name.”
Although I disagreed, and thought it was a kickass name, I was not about to say that.
I understood his play.
“So they got divorced,” I said.
“Yup.Then she got cancer.”
Ah, hell.
“Of course, Dad was all in.This time, it was because this was his only child’s mother.”His eyes locked on mine.“In the end, Mabel, for him, it was all about me.It was always about me.”
I nodded, though with the heavy way he said that, I was concerned.
Not that it wasn’t heavy, just that it somehow soundedmoreheavy.
“No, you don’t get it,” he said.“Another thing with them, he wanted more kids.She refused.He was a kid guy.An animal guy.A big softie.He had lots of love to give, which was good for me, and good for her, but he had so much, it wasn’t good for him.He wanted more family to give that love.”
More reason for him to have left her.
I didn’t say that.
I just listened.
“So she got sick, and he took her in.He cleaned her port.He fed her broth.He helped her to the bathroom to puke.He got her magazines to read during chemo sessions.It took her five fuckin’ years to die, and he was at her side through all of it.”
It was so unlike Hutch to say something likeit took her five fuckin’ yearsto die, it made me shiver.
