"How long were you two like that?"
"Long time. We hadn't had sex in almost twenty years. When we first got married, I felt irreplaceable. And slowly I went from being important to the most irritating woman in the world."
She cut herself a bite and stuck it in her mouth. I took a huge sip of wine.
"You're not irritating," I said.
This time she didn't make any airplane sounds, sticking the fork up to my face until I stripped it clean.
"Thanks," she said. "Are you going to tell me about your date?"
"I don't think I can."
"That bad?"
There weren't words for what I'd felt that night with Handa. If there were words, I didn't know them. I'd never heard them. No one had ever taught me the words to detail a situation like that. All I could say to old lady Rhonda was, "Humiliating," but I knew that was only a shard of what I felt. Then: "She said she never wants to see me again."
"I'm sorry, baby;" old lady Rhonda said, rubbing my leg. "Why is that?"
I wanted to tell her. I really did. But I wasn't willing to chance that once she heard about the dumpster, the trapdoor, the wine puddles, that she'd leave me, too. "I don't want to talk about it.,
"You can tell me anything."
"Can we talk about something else?"
"Do you want another bite of steak?"
I nodded. She cut me one and flew it toward my mouth. "Please, don't ever tell me something that you don't want to," she said, "but I hope you know, I'll never judge you."
Me, Rhonda, I wanted to believe her, wanted to purge and tell her every contaminated thing I'd done. The top secret. The buried and ugly and hideous. But also the harmless, the bland. I wanted to believe that no matter the caste of syllables that came from my mouth, she'd understand me.
I talked with a mouthful of meat: "I believe you."
"You want to believe me, Crash Man. But I don't think you do yet."
I swallowed.
She cut me one more bite and flew it around in front of my face. "Mayday;" she said, lowering the bite so it almost smashed into my lap. "Mayday. We're losing altitude!" She pulled it up and I took it in. "I'll prove to you that you can say anything to me, okay?"
"Okay."
"Remember when I didn't want to tell you what my husband and I were fighting about? We were fighting about you."
"Why?"
"Because you're the son I never had," she said. She leaned over and hugged me, kept me pressed against her. I could feel her heartbeat knocking against me. I'll never make you understand, but being in her arms felt like I was in the womb, surrounded by its wet protection.
"That night with Handa," I said, "I scared her."
"How?"
I didn't answer.
"No matter what it is, please tell me," she said.
"I don't think I can."
"You can."
"Are you sure?"
"I'm sure."
And I told her everything about that night. And she kept me in her arms the whole time.
Stop Making My Life So Hard
I'd like to tell you one of my favorite memories of my mom. The day she told me I'd overslept and that I was about to miss the school bus, that I needed to get to the bus stop ASAP because she didn't have time to drive me to school.
I said, "Why?" and she said, "If I'm late again, I'm getting fired."
I didn't want to have anything to do with her losing another job, so I skipped the shower, but brushed my teeth and combed my hair a little. I got dressed as fast as I could and didn't eat anything for breakfast even though I was hungry, but it was serious business if she got fired, and I said to her, "Bye, Mom," and walked to the bus stop with three minutes to spare.
My stomach growled, but maybe I could bum a bite from another kid on the bus.
But three minutes went by and the bus wasn't there, which wasn't unheard of, this was the school bus and sometimes the school bus was late. I hoped I hadn't read the clock wrong on my way out the door. It was obvious that three minutes had gone by. It felt more like six or seven minutes. Still no bus. My stomach growled. I walked to the corner to peek for the bus.
Our garage door went up and my mom backed her car out. As she was driving up our street, she pulled over next to me and said, "Did you miss the bus?"
"I was three minutes early," I said, and she said, "Then where is it?" and I said, "Maybe it's still coming," and she said, "Jesus Christ," and I said, "I swear I was here early," and she said, "Just get in."
We drove. She sped, weaving in between cars, honking. She smoked and flicked the butts out the window.
"If I lose my job," she said, but never finished her thought, just kept saying that, over and over, "If I lose my job…" and "If I lose my job…"
I was starving and kept saying, "Sorry; Mom."
"I don't want you to be sorry," she said. "I want you to stop making my life so hard."
There was a clock on her radio, and I watched it, trying to slow the numbers down with my mind. I looked at green stoplights as we drove up to intersections and tried to keep the lights green, too. I tried to do everything I could think of to help, because I didn't want her to lose another job, and I didn't want it to be my fault.
We approached the last stop light before my school. It was green. I focused on it. I told it, please, you have to help me, you don't know what will happen if she doesn't make it.
I tried to reason with this light, to level with it, to show it our side of things.
But it wasn't listening. It went yellow. Red. My mom went, "Slut."
I counted every second until it went green again. Mom lit another cigarette. The veins in her arthritic hands looked like blue pens.
We turned right onto my school's street. I already had my backpack in hand. I said, "Just pull over and I'll jump out," and she said, "Okay," and I said, "I'm so sorry for this morning," and she said, "Don't worry," and I said, "No really, Mom, I'm so sorry if I ruined your job," and she said, "Just forget it," and we pulled up in front of my school, and the entire parking lot was empty.
There weren't any buses. Any cars.
There weren't any students or teachers walking around.
The place was completely deserted.
I looked at her, and she had this huge smile on her face.
She said, "I got you!" and I said, "What?" and she said, "It's Saturday, silly."
I didn't understand what was happening.
She told me that she'd made the whole thing up as a joke: she'd decided to wake me up instead of letting me sleep in so she could play a little trick on me. She said, "Were you surprised?" and I said, "Yeah," and she said, "You didn't have any idea?" and I said, "No way;" and she said, "I got you good," and she leaned over and tickled me, and I never minded being tickled, even though sometimes her nails were rough on my skin.
"How about breakfast?" she said, and I said, "You don't have to work?" and she said, "We've both got the day off."
We went to a diner, and I ate a sausage omelet while mom drank black coffee and kept on smoking. Every once in a while she'd excuse herself to go to the bathroom, but I didn't mind. The bathroom was in the back, and there wasn't a door near there. I knew she couldn't disappear until we left. I ate my omelet as slow as I could.
That Animal
The next morning, I had a hankering for Lucky Charms. Old lady Rhonda asked me for my wallet, said she left her money upstairs but not to worry, she'd pay me back.
"You don't have to do that," I said.
"Once you're cooking again, you can buy the cereal. Until then, I'm your sugar-mama buying sugary cereal." She also said she felt like mimosas, and she'd be back in ten minutes for Lucky Charms and cocktails.