Call It What You Want(11)

I rifle through my memories of the day. I don’t want to talk about any of it.

“Do you ever see Connor anymore?” she says, her tone musing. “I’d hoped his parents would leave you boys out of it all, but—”

“I don’t want to talk about Connor.” I stab another piece of chicken.

A blanket of quiet tension drifts over the table, and we eat through it, our weird sentry watching over us from the end of the table.

I wonder if he’d notice if I put a literal blanket over his head.

Suddenly, I can’t eat anymore. I put my fork down. “I have homework.”

“Rob.” Mom’s voice is quiet.

“What?” I keep my eyes on my plate.

“I’m worried about you.” A pause. “I’d really like it if you’d see someone.”

“We can’t afford it.” I stand up, taking my plate with me.

“There’s a counseling center on—”

“No.” I push through the swinging door into the kitchen, then scrape my half-eaten meal into the trash can.

When it first happened, I went to a psychologist. The woman wanted me to draw pictures and talk about how they made me feel. I told her they made me feel like I was in kindergarten, and I got the hell out of there.

I haven’t gone back.

Mom pushes through the swinging door. “Would you please talk to me?”

“I am talking to you.”

“Rob.”

I hate that I have the same name as him. I hate it.

But what are my options? Bob? Bert? No.

I start to place my plate in the sink, but then think better of it and rinse it to put in the dishwasher. “School is fine,” I tell her. “Connor is fine.” I grab one of the pans from the stove and run it under hot water. “I just want to finish the year and get out of there.”

The water runs hot, almost too hot to bear, but I thrust my hands into it and scrub hard. The air behind me is so quiet that I think Mom has left the kitchen.

Her hands settle on my shoulders, and I jump. Suds fly.

“You were such an outgoing kid,” she says. “It’s not good for you to lock yourself in your bedroom all the time.”

I duck and swipe suds off my cheek with my shoulder. “It’s fine.”

“It’s not fine.” She pauses. “You shouldn’t be carrying all this—”

“You shouldn’t, either.”

“Please, Rob.”

It’s the please that gets me. Mom never asks me for much. I try not to ask her for much. We’re trapped in this private hell together, so we try to take it easy on each other.

I drop the pan in the sink and snag a dish towel, then turn around to look down at her. She’s six inches shorter than me, and I can see every gray hair along the edge of her forehead.

She wouldn’t like me pointing that out. I know from experience.

The gray doesn’t matter, though. When I was a little boy, I always thought she was beautiful, and I still think so, even now. Soft cheeks. Warm eyes. Kind hands. Connor’s mom is always hard. Pointed joints. Severe makeup. Stiff hairspray and rigid styles. Mom wears loose dresses, her hair long and wavy. Workout videos in the living room have replaced a personal trainer at the gym, but she stays active.

I can’t remember the last time I ran a mile.

“Tell me what you want,” I say, my voice low. “I’ll do it.”

“I want you to start going to the free counseling center on Mountain Road. Once a week.”

I roll my eyes. “Mom—”

“Didn’t you just say I could tell you what I want and you’d do it?”

“Fine.” I try not to sound surly. I fail.

“And I want you to get out of the house and get some exercise. Three days a week.”

“It’s thirty degrees outside.”

She pokes me in the chest. “So run fast.”

I smile.

She doesn’t smile back. “We’ll get through this,” she says quietly. “Okay?”

I take a breath. “Okay.”

From the dining room, my father begins making noise. It sounds like a persistent humming, but there’s no mistaking the element of panic in it. Something is frightening him. Or causing him pain. Or something we won’t even be able to identify.

Mom and I burst through the door.

The smell hits us both at once.

I don’t know if he recognizes that we’re here, but he doesn’t stop the noise. He won’t stop until he’s cleaned up.

Early on, Mom once lost her patience and started screaming at him. “Shut up! Shut up! Shut up!” I thought she was losing her mind. I thought she’d hurt him. I wrestled her away from him, and she burst into tears and sobbed all over me.

He didn’t stop humming then, either. She was clutching me, sobbing into my shoulder, and behind her, Dad was sitting in a pool of his own crap, groaning incoherently.

I didn’t know what to do. I wanted to run.

I probably would have, if she hadn’t been hanging on to me so tightly.

When Mom finally got herself together, her breath was shaking. She didn’t look at me. Dad was still humming, a sound that was growing into a keening panic.

She didn’t look at him, either. She walked out of the house and slammed the door.