CROSS (A Gentry Boys Novella)(20)
Stone chuckled and prodded me toward the front door. “You have your key? I didn’t leave the window open.”
“No.” I kneeled on the bed of river rocks underneath the kitchen window and started turning over their smooth egg shapes until I found what I was looking for. Stone was right there, swiping the key as soon as I had it in my hand.
“At least we won’t have any unhappy middle aged people waiting up for us,” he said lightly.
No one besides me would have caught the edge beneath his words. Stone had a tough skin but he could be hurt. I knew that. I remembered the look of grief in his eyes as he watched the cuffs circle my wrists and the way he’d reached for me in the back of the police cruiser. A big brother, trying to comfort his little brother. I clapped a hand on his shoulder, feeling affectionate.
“At least there’s that,” I agreed.
We were both wrong though. The kitchen lights were dark but the room wasn’t empty.
“Welcome home,” she snapped and flipped a switch.
I rubbed my eyes, briefly blinded by the glare and when my vision cleared my mother was giving me her best impression of a fire-breathing dragon. She’d probably been sitting at the table for a while, judging by the nearly empty bottle of red wine in front of her.
“Hey, ma,” Stone answered gleefully and kissed her dry cheek before heading out of the room.
My mother slammed a palm on the table. The bottle of wine fell over.
“Get back here, Stonewall!” She was breathing fast, like she’d just run a fifty yard sprint. Anger could do that I guess, take your breath away. And this was about as angry as I’d ever seen her. No matter how big a guy gets there’s something uniquely cringe-worthy about standing underneath the cloud of your mother’s fury and waiting for the storm to break.
She waited until Stone had quietly rejoined my side. No one noticed when I reached out and righted the fallen wine bottle. A red puddle bled off the edge of the table and dripped silently on the floor.
“I’ve had it,” my mother hissed with venomous finality. She pushed herself to standing position and even though she was nearly a foot shorter than either of us it seemed she was ten feet tall as she said terrible things. “You know what it’s like for me? To break my back every day keeping a roof over your heads, trying just to get through another f*cking shift at the pharmacy so I can go back tomorrow and do the same thing? There I was tonight, feet aching, head throbbing, watching the clock and praying it moves just a little fast when Ginny Brant comes running in to tell me that my sons, my sons, have been arrested for stealing a car, racing it like maniacs and then crashing into a canal.” A string of saliva shot out from her lips and collected on her chin. She wiped it away angrily before continuing. When she did she practically choked on her own words. “You’re no good, either of you. The worst of the Gentry blood is too thick. No effort to give you a decent life is going to change that. I tried. Elijah tried.” She shook her head miserably. “I should have known better.”
Stone sighed with exasperation. “For god’s sake ma, it’s not like we’re serial killers. We do dumb shit sometimes and we’re sorry.”
My mother sniffed. “You don’t care who you hurt.”
“I’m sorry,” I said quietly and her eyes snapped sharply to me.
“You especially,” she whispered. “There’s nothing worse than what you come from.”
“We come from here!” Stone yelled. “We come from you!” He raked a hand through his hair, muttered a curse and then slumped against the counter. The tears in my eyes were unfamiliar. I cried about as often as I played chess. In other words, just about never. But even that was more emotion than Stone was ever willing to part with. It hurt, seeing him on the verge of breaking down, and knowing it was all my fault.
There’s nothing worse than what you come from.
“We’re not bad,” I said, hearing the quaver in my voice. “As for tonight, I’m real sorry, okay? It was my fault and I’m sorry. I’ll do whatever it takes to make it up to everyone.”
“Not enough,” she said flatly. “Not enough.”
“What the hell do you want?” Stone asked wearily. “Blood from the sand?”
“No.” She shook her head. “No.” She sighed loudly and started to leave the room. She said the last words with her back to us. “I’m done. You stay out of trouble and you can live here until you finish school. Anymore of this shit and you’ll find the locks changed and your crap in the street. Both of you.”
My brother and I listened to our mother shuffle away to her bedroom. We stared at each other as her door slammed, both of us feeling the same bleak symbolism in the gesture.
“It’s not true,” Stone said grabbing my shoulder and looking me straight in the eye. “It’s not true, Con.”
“I think she meant it all right.”
His jaw clenched. “I don’t give a shit what she meant. She was always going to find an excuse to slam the door. It’s not true what she said, that we’re no good.” He smirked vaguely. “Well, maybe it’s true of me. But not you, Con. You’re the best guy I know. And if she can’t see that then she’s as f*cking blind as she is stupid.”
I flinched when my brother grabbed me by the back of the neck. Stone tipped his head close to my mine until our foreheads touched. Dimly I remembered how we used to stand this way when we were kids. Little kids. When the world was big and we’d wander carelessly past our boundaries, often getting lost, we’d stand together just like this and whisper, “strength in brothers,” to keep the panic away. It was from a movie about a Roman gladiator. The slogan in the movie was actually ‘strength and honor’ but we thought it was ‘strength in honor’. We changed it to ‘strength in brothers’ and everyone at school started repeating it even though they didn’t know why or what the hell it meant. There was strength that came from having someone to go through life with. But all these years later we still had a lot to learn about how to survive in the world. We’d squandered our opportunities at school, maybe past the point of no return. We’d gotten on the wrong side of far too many people, and now our own mother was ready to throw us to the wolves.