We Are the Light(68)
Phineas calls this a beautiful compensation and I know you will agree with that.
I could tell Jill was also sad to leave her parents, but she tried to hide it as we made our way down to Florida.
Phineas made me promise not to stay with my mother and her boyfriend, Harvey, saying, “Set yourself up for success. Carve out a space just for you and Jill to regroup, decompress, and heal, in between exposures.”
It was strange to think of being “exposed” to my mother, like she was radiation or strong sun on a hazy day—something that could give me cancer. But we took Phineas’s advice and, much to the horror of my mother, who was highly insulted by our refusal to stay in one of her and Harvey’s three “luxurious” en suite guest rooms, Jill and I checked into a small motel with a life-sized pink neon palm tree out front. Since all of the motel rooms had two beds, we decided to save money and check into one room instead of two.
The next morning we met Mom and Harvey at an open-air breakfast place on the beach overlooking the Gulf of Mexico. It was cooler than I had expected and I regretted not wearing a jacket. Harvey wore a panama hat on his balding head, a thick push-broom mustache under his red nose, and a fishing vest equipped with a ridiculous number of pockets on his body. Mom mostly wore diamonds. They talked about their country club. They talked about Harvey’s “state-of-the-art” fishing boat, which he referred to as his “baby.” They talked about Harvey’s son, Hunter, and his thriving real estate business, letting us know about the many multi-million-dollar sales he had recently closed. They talked about their neighbors, who all were either too loud or had bad taste and, therefore, had decorated their homes the wrong way. The more they talked, the more I felt like I wasn’t even there at the table. I tried to tell myself they were only attempting to fill the silences, but whenever Jill tried to speak, Mom and Harvey would talk over her, which started to make me feel like there were sharp knives trying to carve their way out of my belly.
Mom complained about her pancakes being soggy because there was too much syrup and Harvey sent his eggs Benedict back twice, saying the sauce was “off,” before he told the waitress he’d lost his appetite. Harvey kind of sulked from that point on, especially whenever our waitress checked up on our table, asking if everything was okay. When Jill smiled and brightly told the young woman that the tomato omelet was excellent, Mom and Harvey actually frowned.
Claiming he had scheduled a day out on his “baby” before he knew we’d be visiting, Harvey left us after breakfast, but not before insisting on paying the bill, which he had managed to have reduced significantly on account of his meal being “inedible.” Mom and Harvey didn’t notice, but just before we all got up and stepped out onto the beach, I saw Jill slip our waitress two twenties.
After saying goodbye to Harvey, Jill suggested we take a walk on the water’s edge, but Mom started interrogating us about what we had bought everyone for Christmas.
Jill said it was a surprise, which is when Mom—with a sober face—said, “Harvey’s family takes Christmas gift giving deadly seriously.”
She went on to say we needed to give them worthy presents, and suggested shopping immediately. “Especially if you didn’t bring anything all that impressive,” Mom added.
I thought about David’s and my lumpy coffee mugs and I began to feel like all my internal organs were falling out of my body and splatting on the concrete around my feet.
Jill once again suggested a walk along the beach, but Mom said she really wanted to get the Christmas shopping out of the way and that doing so would take a huge load off her mind. She said she’d pay for everything and then joked that it would really be Harvey who would be paying before she put a hand on my arm and said, “And Lucas, my sweet boy, I know exactly what you can get for me!”
It was at this point that Jill said, “You realize that you haven’t asked your son a single question, right?”
“I just asked him to go Christmas shopping with me,” Mom said.
“Lucas made you a present with his own hands and it’s beautiful,” Jill said, greatly overestimating the aesthetic quality of my pottery.
“That will never do,” Mom said with a worried look on her face.
It was here that Jill started screaming at my mother, calling her names that I don’t even feel comfortable repeating—especially in writing—and she didn’t stop yelling for at least five minutes. Mom broke down crying and said that Jill was horrible and mean and ugly, which just made Jill yell louder, and at one point, I started to worry that Jill might even hit Mom. Instead, Jill screamed, “Lucas is the best thing in your life and you treat him like he’s the worst! He’s needed you! He’s needed someone to love him for fifty years! And no matter how much the rest of us try to fill in for you, you still have so much power over him and it’s like you don’t even know how much damage you’re constantly doing!”
“At least I’m not sleeping with my dead friend’s husband,” Mom said through tears, which is when Jill closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and walked away.
When Jill was out of earshot, Mom said, “Lucas, you simply must get rid of her.”
I looked at my mother’s tear-streaked face for a long beat, before I chased after Jill.
My mother called for me but I ignored her.
When I caught up to Jill, I could feel the anger rolling off her in waves, so I simply walked quietly by her side and, somehow, we ended up back in our motel room. Once the door was closed behind us, Jill faced me and said, “Your mother is impossible.”