My parents’ house is on the lake, just forty-five minutes from New Orleans. Once, years ago, the lake house had been my mother’s prison. When I was a kid growing up, before my parents found each other again, when it was just me and my mom living in that tiny rental in Nashville, she’d have nightmares. They were usually loud, shook the walls of that two bedroom house. She’d scream and cry out as though she’d been through a war and not just endured the shitty childhood with an alcoholic mother who smacked her around when she didn’t do what she was told.
Once, I asked her about those nightmares. Told her she reminded me of the soldiers I’d seen with PTSD on the news.
“I didn’t return home a hero, Ransom. I barely survived my battle.”
I’d never understood her, not really, not until my own battle begun right out on this lake.
It was cooling, fall flirting on the breeze. The tall magnolia trees that lined the back side of the house swayed and twisted and from the crack in my window I could hear the slow rustle of the waves against the dock. I was procrastinating, biding my time as I always did when I came here. The longer I stayed away, the more patience, more nerve it took me just to leave my car. There were too many ghosts in that house. Too many memories that reminded me of who I’d been and what I’d done.
“Brah!” the little voice yelled at me from the front door. It was the same small voice that hadn’t shut up since he started speaking at nine months old. He was smart, too talkative for a baby, but Koa still couldn’t pronounce my name right and Dad’s attempts at teaching him kaikua’ana for “brother” hadn’t been successful. “Brah” came out of his mouth easier than my mom liked, but there is no correcting my little brother. Nearly two years old and a small gap between his tiny front teeth, Koa stared at me with his hands on hips trying to pretend that our father wasn’t just in the doorway. “Br-ah!”
He was bossier than my mom. Two and a half feet tall with a mop of curly black hair and that little shit ran the house like he owned it. Koa stomped his foot.
“Yeah, buddy, I’m coming inside,” I promised him before he could finish the wobbly step he made away from the door. Dad had him by the waist of his tiny red shorts and off the ground before I shut the car door. In a few steps I was close enough to take Koa from Dad and bounce him in my arms. But right away I knew something was off—the little body was warm, and his eyes were unusually bright. I frowned up at my father. Kona shrugged, rubbing his eyes. “Fifteen month molars. Your mom says he’s getting them way too soon. It’s this whole thing.”
“You got me.” The boy wiggled in my arms and I handed him back to my father. “This,” I said pointing to the tall curls looping down to nearly cover Koa’s eyes, “is getting ridiculous.”
“Tell me about it.” Dad swept Koa’s bangs off his forehead. “We’ve been busy.”
“I bet.” The little monster squirmed out of my father’s arms as we walked inside, skirting the litter of trucks and Legos that scattered here and there on the floor. “Real busy it looks like.”
The place looked nothing like the sterile, empty house we’d moved into almost three years ago when we’d come home to settle my grandmother’s estate. My mother’s mother had been very-old-money rich, very pretentious and concerned with appearances. There hadn’t been any pictures of my mom in this house, and certainly none of me, since I’d never met the woman and she likely had no idea of my existence.
Then mom and Kona reconnected, and soon after they got married, she was pregnant with the little monster currently digging through a plastic bin of Tonka trucks. I doubted my grandmother would have appreciated the comfortable clutter on her marble floors or how all of her wingbacks and ornate furniture had been strewn with SpongeBob plush toys and miniature footballs.
The floor was covered—trucks, stuffed monkeys (his current obsession)—miniature hockey sticks and pee-wee football pads and about a dozen wooden and plastic blocks. I took the truck Koa handed me, frowning when he pulled on his ear. “You sure this is just his molars coming in?” Koa let me move his hair back, but wouldn’t sit on the leather sofa next to me.
Dad slumped into the sofa cushions, looking tired, dusting flour from his wrinkled t-shirt. “Yeah. We took him in Friday. The doctor said it’s normal.”
“Something you would know if you answered your phone.” Shit. My mother’s tone came into the room before she did. I didn’t like the sharpness in her voice. It told me I’d pissed her off yet again.
“Brah! Brah.” Those demanding swipes against my leg caught me off guard and I skirted the Tonka truck Koa kept offering me.
“I got it. Here,” I said, handing Koa the dinosaur that was digging into my back between the cushions. Again he pulled on his ear and I felt useless watching him wobble out of the room and into the small play area that had taken over the dining room.
My mother finally appeared, looking miserable and swollen, and more tired than my father even though he was the one who he seemed ready to nod off next to me on the sofa.
Still, she was beautiful. There were shadows under her bright blue eyes and her chestnut hair was longer, fell past her waist in a thick braid and thin wisps of hair stood out around her face. But her cheekbones were still high and arched, her fine, thin bones giving her the look of a Lady and not the bad ass musician she’d become.
“Mom?” I met her in the middle of the room, attempted to grab the plates in her hands. “You actually cooked something for lunch?” The look she gave me was cool and annoyed, but I ignored it, fully aware that you should never, ever say anything stupid to pregnant women, like “hello” or “how are you?” Especially if it’s anything to do with their weight, their looks in general or them being incapable of doing anything at all. In fact, it’s a general rule of thumb, so I’d discovered, not to say anything but “you look so beautiful” or “you can’t even tell you’re pregnant” to them.
“I mean, should you be doing all that?”
But, I didn’t always follow my own advice.
“I’m not helpless, Ransom. I’m pregnant.” She refused to relinquish that tight hold on the plates and moved around me, using her protruding stomach to push me to the side.
“Very pregnant.” I mumbled, stepping out of her way.
“What does that mean?” My mother had the ears of a wolf and could level even the biggest bully with one glare. I was on the receiving end of that glare and despite how annoyed she was with me—I had no clue what sin I’d committed now—I gave her a big smile. It matched the one beaming on the sofa, the one attached to my smug, tired father as he watched Koa playing.
Mom looked between us, then gave us both that scary scowl. “I called three times this morning and you didn’t answer.” Her knuckles whitened as she gripped the plates. “And don’t you start fussing at me about cooking for my family. Even the ones who don’t answer the phone. I’m not going to sit around here waiting for this baby to pop out.”
The arched eyebrow, the narrowed left eye…damn. I hadn’t even heard my phone this morning. “Mom…”
“Wildcat, he’s just worried.” Kona said, coming from the sofa. He, at least managed to get the plates from her with an easy kiss on the top of her head.
“Your feet are still swollen. Shouldn’t you keep them up?”
Her glare, this time at least, didn’t send me running, but I did manage to avoid it as she went back into the kitchen. My father watched her walk away, then dusted the residual flour from the hem of his shirt as he set the plates on the table. He must have caught the look I gave him because he answered my unspoken accusation with a frown. “She kicked me out of the kitchen.”
Pathetic. Absolutely pathetic how my father, big two hundred-forty-five pound former linebacker that he was, could be cowered by my mother’s grumpy attitude.
“And you went running?”
“You’re her kid. I know you’ve been on the receiving end of her fury once or twice.” Kona blinked and I didn’t particularly appreciate the way my father rolled his eyes at me. “Not lately, huh? She actually still likes you.”