The Animators(91)

She merges onto the Mountain Parkway amid semis and RAV4s. One more night in Faulkner to pick up our things. Then back north. Another steely January hell in New York. Maybe I can wrap myself up in this thing. Spend a couple more seasons cramped in front of the drawing board, biding my time until my life comes to find me.

—

Mom’s Malibu is the only car parked in front. We find her hunched over the kitchen counter pecking at a laptop, brow creased. A pair of reading glasses perches at the end of her nose on a beaded chain reading NANA up one side and MAMAW down the other. She looks at us, mouth a straight line.

“Hey, Mom.”

“Well.” She pushes herself back from the counter and lights a Doral. “Y’all have a nice time in Louisville?” Two smeared syllables: Looo-vuhl.

“It was okay.”

“Now, how does a weekend turn into near on three months, again?”

“We ended up doing some of the project stuff there.”

“Mmm hmm.” She crimps her mouth like she’s holding in a cough drop.

“I thought you’d be at work,” I say.

“Off today.”

“Oh.”

She leans into the counter and stares at me. Something’s simmering. “Melody,” she says, “I need to talk to Sharon alone for a second. Could you go into the other room, please?”

Melody. Mel looks sidelong at me. “No prob.” She steps out.

I put my bag down, pins and needles in my bad leg. “What’s up.”

She waits a beat, then spins the laptop around with a flourish. It is the wild orange-and-lime banner of Filming Forum. The article: “Nashville Combat Creators’ Next Project: Life of Kisses?”

“I did a Google search,” Mom says. “This popped up first thing when I typed in your name.”

“You know how to run a Google search?”

“Sharon, I swear to God, do you think I’m stupid or something? Are you gonna explain this? Are you making some sort of cartoon out of us? Why’d they write this?”

I hold my hands out, take a deep breath. “This is a blog. The last movie did okay. They’ve been talking about us more. Someone caught wind of some gossip and they decided to post it. And our agent let them post it, because she figured it was good press.”

Her bifocals slip down her nose. She fumbles them off. “So they just made it up? Well, that ain’t legal, putting out lies like that about people.”

“Well, it’s not an out-and-out lie.”

“So you are making a movie out of us?”

“It’s not about you,” I tell her. “It’s about me.”

“That is making a movie out of us.”

“It is not. Why are you hell-bent on believing that anything that has to do with me also has to do with you?”

“Because it does.”

“That’s right. You’re the goddamn center of the universe.”

“Watch your mouth.”

“It’s not illegal,” I say. “Publishing a half-truth on a blog is sloppy, but it’s not illegal.”

She exhales hard through her nostrils. “You best stop correcting me. I don’t care if you’ve had a stroke or not, it don’t give you the right to come in here and set me straight wherever the hell you think I go wrong. And after you disappear for near on three months.”

I’d forgotten the bleeding, limping endurance race that is arguing with my mother. I raise my hands and let them slap down to my sides. “I don’t know what to say to you that’s not gonna hit a nerve, Mom. I piss you off with almost everything I do. Either that or I amuse you with how dumb, or weird, or pretentious I am. Why do you think I come home so rarely? Or why I didn’t call you when I almost died? ‘You had a stroke? Well, what’d you do that for?’?”

She blinks at me.

“Just once, I’d like to feel like I’m a part of this family. I’ve just had one of the worst weeks of my life. Would it kill you to ease up for once?”

“What happened,” she demands.

“Listen to you! My God, your tone, Mom. It’s like getting punched in the face.”

“I’ll talk if you quit yelling at me,” she says. “I’ll talk when you finish yelling at your mother.”

I stare at her.

“Four years,” she says. “That’s how long it had been since you were home, before this.”

“And I just outlined why.”

“If I’d spent four years away from home, your mamaw would have died of a broken heart.”

“Funny. You appear to be alive.”

“You best shut that smart mouth up.”

I feel my face flush. “Don’t talk to me that way,” I tell her. “And don’t you dare pretend your interest in my life and what I do is larger than it actually is. You didn’t come to my college graduation. You thought the first cartoons we ever made were a joke. There were second and third cousins who knew Dad was dead before I did. How was that supposed to make me feel? I never even got a fucking explanation from you for that.”

“He wasn’t your father,” she yells.

Everything stops. My stomach settles somewhere around my feet. “What?”