The Wrong Family(12)

“I was thinking about getting a burger.” He didn’t look at her when he said it, but Winnie was glad. A little smile had crept onto her lips. He’d noticed the mother and son across the way, too; she’d seen him looking. A burger was a great idea.

“Good idea,” she said, glancing at the menu. “I will, too.” When the server came by, Winnie order two Impossible burgers with chips. She eyed the salads wistfully but shut her menu with a snap that blew her hair up around her face. That was what parenting was all about—the sacrifices. She would eat fake red meat if it meant bonding with her son.

The chips cut into the roof of her mouth. Winnie only flinched when Samuel wasn’t looking. She hated feeling judged by a thirteen-year-old. He ate them like they were as soft as cheese; she watched in amazement as their sharp little ridges folded like paper behind his teeth. She felt victimized, her mouth tender. She reached for her veggie burger instead. Samuel hadn’t touched his; he was too busy grinding up those vicious little chips. She was trying hard not to say anything; instead, she bit into her own with enthusiasm.

“Try your burger. It’s delicious.”

“I don’t think anything pretending to be something else can be delicious.”

Winnie set her sandwich down, frowning. She blotted at the ketchup in the corners of her mouth. “What are you talking about? I thought you wanted a burger.”

He looked up at her, his chin tilted in a challenging way. He reminded Winnie of a bull in that moment.

“I wanted a real burger.”

“Samuel!” she said, exasperated. “Come on. Now you’re just being ridiculous. You’ve had a hundred veggie burgers.”

“And I’ve never liked them.”

She replaced her sandwich on the plate and stared at him. “So you’re just not going to eat them anymore?”

“I’m not,” he said. “I’m going to eat meat from now on because I’m not a vegetarian.”

The food she’d already ingested rolled in her belly. Winnie felt sick. She’d spent thirteen years raising this boy in what she thought was the best way, and now he was dismissing their way of life so casually, like it didn’t mean anything.

“We’ll talk about it later. If you’re not hungry that’s fine, but your dad—”

“I am hungry. I ate all the chips and I’m still hungry.”

She knew that if she told him to eat his veggie burger the argument would continue and spoil what was left of the evening.

Samuel was scrolling through his phone now, and she noticed that he was reading an article in the Seattle Times about the homeless.

“Do you want dessert?” she asked, pushing her burger aside. His only response was to raise a curious eyebrow like he was being pranked. She lifted a finger to call the server over, her eyes never leaving his face.

“Can we have one of every dessert on the menu, to share?” she said, glancing at Samuel. His face was incredulous. “So long as they don’t have meat in them.”

He cracked a small smile. Truce! Winnie thought.

“Don’t you want to see the menu...?” the server asked. Winnie’s smile broke for a brief second. Hadn’t this stupid girl heard her? She was trying to be the cool mom. “Just one of everything,” she snapped. The girl nodded and walked away. Her expression said It’s on your dime, salty bitch.

“What are you reading?” Winnie asked.

“Nothing. Something for school.” He immediately closed the browser on his phone and set it face down on the table.

“You know, I used to work with the homeless, for my job, before you were born.” She expected him to ignore her, or—cue her personal least favorite—roll his eyes, but instead, he looked at her with interest.

“In what capacity?”

Capacity! Winnie almost snickered, but she knew how much that would offend Samuel. When she was his age, she certainly wasn’t saying words like capacity. Besides, she was used to his large vocabulary. She kept her face neutral.

“Well, I was a case manager for people with mental health issues. Some of my cases were...well...homeless.”

“Really? How old were they?”

Now that she had his attention, she didn’t plan on losing it. She shrugged as nonchalantly as possible. “All different ages, some as young as you, all the way up to people Granny’s age.”

“Why were they homeless?”

Winnie searched her mind for a good answer, one that would interest him.

“I had one guy, his name was Adam. He came up to Seattle when he was twenty-four, right after getting out of jail. He beat a guy up, that’s why he was in jail,” Winnie said, seeing the question on Samuel’s face. “He’d gone to school to be an engineer—before the fight and the jail time. But by the time he got out, his mom had disowned him, and he had no other family in the area.”

“So, nowhere to go,” Samuel concluded.

“That’s right. He came to Seattle because he heard he could get work up here, but the job didn’t pan out, and so he was homeless.” There was a long pause during which Winnie thought he was done discussing the topic, but then he propped his birdlike elbows on the table and rested his chin in his hand. “Did he have a mental illness?”

“That’s none of your business,” Winnie said firmly. She could tell that switching to the mom role had cost her Samuel, because he looked away. She felt immediate regret. Should she have told him that Adam was diagnosed with schizophrenia and that on his twenty-sixth birthday he’d gone missing? The police hadn’t bothered to look for a homeless man, though they’d written up the report for Winnie and then told her to have a nice day.