CROSS (A Gentry Boys Novella)(11)

He held the cheese up, considering. “Why?”

“It’s got more mold than the Gnome’s toe jam.”

Stone cracked up. The Gnome was once the mayor of Emblem and he was one of many local jokes. Stone tossed the decrepit cheese into the garbage pail.

“Seems like a waste,” he clucked. “There are starving people on Main Street.”

“There are starving people in this kitchen.”

My brother yawned and sank into a chair. “Well damn it then. Go get cleaned up and let’s hunt down some dinner.”

I felt pretty good as I showered off. It was Friday night and it was summer. That right there was reason enough to feel good. Hopefully late tonight I’d get some alone time with Erin. I’d been aching extra hard ever since that night under the bridge, the night of the blackout when we’d almost given in. After the lights blasted back on I was glad we hadn’t and I knew Erin was glad too. But still, the ache was there.

My good feeling went away a little when I returned to the kitchen and found my mother standing there with her hands on her hips and a scowl on her face. It seemed like she got a little bit more unhappy every day. She was unhappy with the messy house, she was unhappy with her job, she was unhappy with whatever shithead she was hooking up with at the Dirty Cactus and bringing home to bed. But above all she was unhappy about putting up with us.

She barely took a breath between declaring, “This place is disgusting,” and “Stonewall you haven’t done a damn thing today,” and “Conway I thought I told you to keep your distance from that sneaky little girl next door,” and “My god would you look at that yard,” and “Never thought I’d have two sons who acted like good-for-nothing Gentry trash,” and on and on and on.

Stone gave me an eye roll and flapped his right hand a few times to mimic her running mouth. She stopped mid-rant and glared at him but said nothing. It was me she turned to next. My mother crossed her arms and gave me a frank once over that dripped with contempt. Even though Stone’s constant antics had a long history of giving her more heartburn, I was actually her least favorite. We all knew it.

“How many times do I have to tell you to stop smoking in my damn house?”

I glanced down at my empty hands. “I’m not smoking in your damn house.”

“Don’t lie to me. I can even smell it in here now.”

“That was me,” Stone declared cheerfully. He linked his hands behind his neck, a bemused smile on his face. “I’ve sitting in the living room all afternoon chain smoking and binge watching porn on pay-per-view.”

My mother pretended he hadn’t spoken. “I saw you, Con.”

She was lying. There was no point in jumping on that merry go round though. She was forever plucking one thing or another out of thin air and deciding to get pissed about it. She’d always had one of those hair trigger personalities, as easy to strike as a match, but she hadn’t always been this sour toward us. Elijah’s slow slide toward death had exhausted her and left a mean-spirited shell that had little use for motherhood.

“Sorry,” I told her even though I wasn’t because I hadn’t done anything.

Her nostrils flared and her mouth puckered. She was trying to come up with another bullet to fire. Once again Stone spoke up.

“I drank your last beer too,” he announced, propping his bare feet up on the kitchen table in a way that was bound to drive her nuts. “And I broke the washing machine.”

That got her attention. “You broke the washing machine?”

“Yup.”

“How?”

“I needed to clean a hammer.”

She chewed her lip, probably trying to decide if he was serious or not. With Stone, the answer was usually not, but tossing a hammer in the washing machine seemed like the kind of thing he might do just to be perverse.

I stifled a laugh. It didn’t quite work. A sound like a gasping bird escaped my mouth and my mother refocused, glaring. All at once though she seemed to grow tired of interacting with us. She shouldered her purse and started to push past me out of the room.

“What’s for dinner?” Stone called.

“Get a job and buy your own dinner,” she snapped but she reached into her beach bag-sized purse, withdrew a twenty-dollar bill and slapped it on the table. “Bleeding me dry,” she muttered.

Stone grabbed the money and raised an eyebrow at me. “Mom, can I please borrow your car?” he asked in a voice of pure innocence.

“Don’t push me, Stone,” she grumbled. She was already gone from the kitchen but then she suddenly doubled back and wagged a finger at me.

“Let me tell you something, Conway. You get that crazy little slut knocked up, don’t come crying to me to bail you out of it.”

I tensed. She could say whatever she wanted to about me but I wasn’t going to stay quiet while she talked about Erin like that. I didn’t know what the hell she had against Erin, other than the fact that Erin was my girlfriend and my mother probably figured any girl who liked me had to have a few screws loose.

“Don’t worry, Ma,” Stone said airily. “I’m sure I’ll make you a grandma long before he does.”

“I don’t wanna be a grandma,” she howled. Then she left once and for all, muttering about ‘ungrateful brats’ all the way down the hall before slamming the door to her bedroom.