“Mom,” I said. “You don’t—”
There was a shrill ringing sound from her purse, which was on the island: her cell phone. She turned around, digging it out, then pushed a button, pressing it to her ear. “Deborah Queen. Oh, Marilyn, hello! No, it’s a perfect time. Let me just run and get those figures for you.” She held up her finger, signaling for me to stay put, then got up, disappearing down the hallway to her office. It was bad enough to be having to have this conversation; the fact that it was getting dragged out was excruciating. By the time she returned and hung up, I’d washed out my bowl and put it in the dishwasher.
“The bottom line is,” she said, sitting down again and picking right up where we’d left off, “that I don’t want you hanging around with those people outside of work.”
Maybe it was that I was tired. Or the fact that she couldn’t even commit to this conversation without interruptions. But whatever the reason, what I said next surprised us both.
“Why?”
It was just one word. But with it, I’d taken a stand against my mother, albeit small, for the first time in as long as I could remember.
“Macy,” she said, speaking slowly, “that boy has been arrested. I don’t want you out riding around with someone like that, out at all hours—”
The phone rang again, and she started to push herself up out of her chair, then stopped. It rang again, then once more, before falling silent.
“Honey, look,” she said, her voice tired. “I know what can happen when someone falls into a bad crowd. I’ve already been through this before, with your sister.”
“That’s not fair,” I said. “I haven’t done anything wrong.”
“This isn’t about punishment,” she said. “It’s about prevention. ”
Like what was happening to me was a forest fire, or a contagious disease. I turned my head, looking out the window at the backyard, where the grass was shimmering, wet under the bright sun.
“You have to realize, Macy,” she said, her voice low. “The choices you make now, the people you surround yourself with, they all have the potential to affect your life, even who you are, forever. Do you understand what I’m saying?”
In fact, I knew this to be true now more than ever before. With just a few weeks of being friends with Kristy, and more importantly, Wes, I had changed. They’d helped me to see there was more to the world than just the things that scared me. So they had affected me. Just not in the ways she was afraid of.
“I do understand,” I said, wanting to explain this, “but—”
“Good,” she said, just as the phone rang again. “I’m glad we see eye to eye.”
And then she was up. Walking to the phone, picking it up, already moving on. “Deborah Queen,” she said. “Harry. Hello. Yes, I was just thinking that I needed to consult you about . . .”
She walked down the hallway, still talking, as I just sat there, in the sudden quiet of the kitchen. Everyone else could get through to my mother: all they had to do was dial a number and wait for her to pick up. If only, I thought, it was that easy for me.
When I went to leave for work, I found myself blocked in by a van that was filled with folding chairs. I went back inside, pulling my mother away from another phone call, only to find out some salesman had taken the keys home with him after parking it there.
“I’ll drive you,” she said, grabbing her purse off the counter. “Let’s go.”
Silences are amplified by small spaces, we found out once we were not only in the car but stuck in a traffic jam, with other annoyed commuters blocking us in on all sides. Maybe my mother had no idea I was upset with her. Until we’d gotten in the car, I hadn’t really realized it either, but now, with each passing second, I could feel myself getting angrier. She’d taken my dad’s stuff from me, his memories. Now she wanted to take my friends, too. The least I could do was fight back.
“Honey, you look tired,” she said, after we’d been sitting in silence for a few minutes. I’d felt her glancing at me, but hadn’t looked back. “Did you not sleep well?”
My I’m fine was poised on my lips, about to come automatically. But then, I stopped myself. I’m not fine, I thought. So instead I said, “No. I didn’t. I had bad dreams.”
Behind us, someone honked.
“Really,” she said. “What about?”
“Actually,” I said, “Dad.”
I was watching her carefully as I said this, saw her fingers, curled around the steering wheel, pulse white at the tips, then relax. I had that twinge in my stomach, like I was doing something wrong.
“Really,” she said, not taking her eyes off the road as the traffic began to pick up.
“Yeah,” I said slowly. “It was scary. He was driving this car, and—”
“Your room was probably too hot,” she said, reaching forward and adjusting her vent. “And you do have an awful lot of blankets on your bed. Whenever you get hot, you have night-mares. ”
I knew what this was: a conversational nudge, her way of easing me back between the lines.
“It’s weird,” I made myself say, “because right after he died, I had a lot of dreams about him, but I haven’t lately. Which is why last night was so disturbing. He was in trouble, and I couldn’t save him. It scared me.”
These four sentences, blurted out too fast, were the most I had said to my mother about my dad since he died. The very fact they had been spoken, were able to bridge the gap from my mind to the open air, was akin to a miracle, and I waited for what would come next, partly scared, partly exhilarated.