AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Dad had been gone a long time now, but my mother and my brother shared a small house in Inglewood. They'd moved out here while I'd been serving, which was part of why I'd come West. The three of us usually hung out together for a few hours on Sundays.
I pulled up in front of the little house, noting that the lawn needed cutting and one of the shutters on the front windows was hanging askew. I tried to push down the anger that flared in my belly. I paid for this house now, and the only reason my brother Jarred was here was because he said he'd take care of things for Mom. We’d talked about the shutter the Sunday before, and he’d promised to do better. So much for that promise.
"Mom? Jarred? Hey guys, it's me." I let myself in with my key and stepped into the small dark entryway.
"Jace?" Mom's voice came from the kitchen, and I strode through the living room to find her, noticing the mess of dirty dishes and newspapers strewn around as I did.
"Hey Mom." She sat at the small round table, a cigarette in her hand and a mug of coffee in front of her. It was almost noon, but she still wore her robe and slippers, and her hair was a mess of tangles on her head. Mom looked tired, and she looked sick. But she wouldn't go to the doctor. I’d tried to take her for weeks, offering to pay, but she wouldn’t let me and there was still some of the authority structure between us. She was my mom. I couldn’t force her.
"There's my boy," she said, putting down the cigarette to stand, but as she pushed to her feet, she began coughing. The fit overtook her, and she leaned heavily into the table, hacking and wheezing until it passed.
"You still sick, Mom?" I was worried about my mother. And angry that my brother didn't care enough.
She stepped near, wrapped frail arms around my waist and looked up at me before pushing her cheek against my chest. "I'm fine, baby. How are you?"
I kissed her cheek and let her go, and then poured a cup of coffee and sat down, trying not to notice the mess on the counter, the overflowing trash. "Mom, where's Jarred?"
She sighed. "He's got a new girlfriend," she said. "He hasn't been home in a little while."
"A little while." Worry swirled inside me next to a new dread. I gave her a stern look. "Translate. Days? Weeks? He was here last Sunday."
"He left right after you did. So a week, I guess," she said. "But I understand. He's a grown man, he needs to live his own life—"
Mom had always made excuses for my little brother. He was her baby, and he could do no wrong. Except it seemed like a lot of what he did was exactly that. Wrong.
"If he's a grown man, he needs to get a damned job and take responsibility for himself," I said, standing to begin the work of putting the house back together. "He should be keeping this place up, taking care of things. Of you."
I hated this. I hated that the best I could do for my mom was this rumble-down shack in a bad neighborhood. I hated that my brother was content to be a freeloader his entire life, catching whatever ride came his way and ignoring everything else. The obvious question rose in my chest and I thought about pushing it away, but I had to ask. "Is he still clean?" When Jarred was gone more than a couple days, it generally meant he was on a bender.
She sighed, coughed, didn't answer, and the ice forming in my gut made me feel sick.
"Shit," I muttered, washing dishes and stacking them in the drying rack. I glanced over my shoulder at Mom, who sat staring into the distance, smoking. "Mom, you need to quit smoking."
She narrowed her eyes at me. "I'm still your mother, Jace. You don't get to tell me what to do."
We'd been over this. Many times. Mom was sick and we all knew it. Smoking was killing her, but she refused to go get a diagnosis, preferring to wait and see how bad it got. I hated not knowing, but in a way I shared her hesitation. I couldn’t stand the thought of losing my mom, and maybe denial was better than finding out she had something we couldn’t afford to treat.
"You get your check this month?" I asked her. She collected disability, and it was about all that kept her eating. I paid for everything else. But there had been a month when Jarred had intercepted the check. It was the first time I'd actually punched my little brother.
"I talked to the mail carrier," she said, ducking her chin like this was something to be ashamed of. "He puts the check in a different spot. For me."
I smiled at Mom. She might be sick and frail, she might have lost her desire to really live, but she was still sly and smart. "Nicely done."
"I'm worried about him, Jace." The defeat in her voice told me all the things I wished weren't true.
"I know, Mom. Me too."
"One day, I know he just won't come home."
I put the dishtowel over my shoulder, sank into the chair across from her again. "There's not much we can do, Mom. He's a grown man. He's making his own choices. He and I had the same opportunities—he went a different way."
Mom reached across the table for my hand, and I took her bony fingers into my palm, a sad little place inside me flooding with a feeling I couldn't let show. My mom, the woman who had cared for me my whole life, looked like she was dying. And there was nothing I could do.
"I thank the universe every day for you," she said. "And sometimes, when I'm not being so goddamn selfish, I wish you'd never been born."
"What?" I half-laughed in surprise. What did that mean?
"Because I have nothing to give a boy like you. So bright, so capable. I brought you into a family that didn't want us, a life with nothing to offer you." She paused, coughing and sputtering for a long minute before regaining herself. She looked back up at me, tears in her eyes. "But if it weren't for you, Jace, I'd be such a lonely sad old woman. I'm selfish, but I'm so happy you're here."
