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“Don’t worry? Don’t worry?” Mother turns on me. “Of course I was worried! Worried you were starving. Homeless. You scared me to death disappearing like that.”
“Mother, I’m a full grown man. I’m not helpless,” I say, annoyed.
“I know that!”
“It doesn’t sound like it. Despite what you may think I’m perfectly capable of fending for myself.”
Mother scrunches up her face. Silence lingers between us filled only by the birds nesting down for the night and the distant sounds of engines revving on the track.
I take an irritated sip of my beer.
“I’m sorry,” Mother says.
Beer goes down the wrong pipe and I sputter and cough. Okay, make that three times and counting.
“What did you just say?” I ask, clearing my throat, still not quite believing I heard her correctly. Mother never apologizes. For anything. It’s one of her worst traits.
“Don’t be shitty.” Mother scowls at the woods rather than meet my eye. “I will admit I am not the softest mother. Maybe I should have been less… demanding.”
“There are war lords who are less demanding,” I mutter.
“It’s just…” she trails off and then clears her throat. She sounds odd. If I didn’t know her better I’d say she sounds emotional.
“Your father was better at these things. I shouldn’t say this, but I was always jealous of the connection you two had. He always knew how to get you to settle down, how to eat your vegetables. Whereas I…” She taps a fingernail against the bottle, making a sharp clicking sound.
“I was just good at running the bank. Numbers make sense to me. Babies? Still couldn’t tell you the first thing about them.” She turns to me. “But don’t let that make you think I didn’t love you. I loved you and I still do. I’m just not the best at saying it.”
“Or showing it,” I mutter.
“Don’t be shitty,” she says again out of habit. Then she presses her fingers to her forehead, as if chastising herself. I should cool it. She’s obviously trying.
“I want you to come home,” she says. “It’s not the same with you gone.”
“I’d imagine the bank is running more smoothly,” I say. “But then I hear I wouldn’t have been coming back to it anyway.”
Mother starts and her hands grip the arms of the chair. “Liz was not supposed to tell you that,” she growls. “Is that why…?”
“No,” I say. “Well, it’s far from the only reason. I’ve lived in your shadow for way too long at an institution I couldn’t care less about.”
“You try to give your children everything…” Mother grumbles.
“You forced me down a path I’m just not suited for! And then after you made sure that was the only option I had, you traded it away for a billion-dollar bank account. Of course I was upset! And you knew I would be. Otherwise you wouldn’t have had Liz keep it from me.”
“I didn’t trade it for the account.” At my look, she relents. “Okay, it was partially about the account. But how was I supposed to know you suddenly wanted to take a more active role? After a decade of complaining, I didn’t think I was bargaining with something you cared about.”
“You didn’t know because you didn’t ask me. You’ve had a plan for my entire life since the moment I was born. And I never got a say in it. Anything I wanted was either beneath my position. Any complaint was ‘ungrateful’.”
“You make me sound like some kind of evil puppet master, pulling your strings,” Mother says. “So I made you come work at the bank. I was keeping you out of trouble! God, you were in the tabloids every other month it seemed.”
“And why do you think that was?” I ask. My voice is raising, but I don’t care. “All I ever wanted was to follow in Dad’s footsteps. I could have had a career like his in the Marines. I would have been respected, not a joke. But you stole that from me. All because it wasn’t a part of your plan.”
“That is not why!” Mother’s voice cracks with emotion. It surprises both of us into silence. Mother hastily wipes an eye and composes herself.
“Then why?” I ask, quietly.
“Because I already gave one man to this country. I wasn’t going to lose you too.”
My chest tightens. My mouth opens, but no words come out.
