— You are so full of shit.
— Thomas, you want to attribute your behavior to a set of external factors. You want to cede your life and decisions and consequences to forces outside of you, but that’s the coward’s way. And blaming your mother? It’s so easy. You were not a lump of clay I molded. You and every other child comes into the world with their personality baked in. How else do you think a kid like Jim Avila is gay and designs dresses when his parents are white-trash farmers? The thing you always had was a need to blame. You get a bad grade, it’s because the teacher doesn’t like you. Some girl doesn’t like you and it’s because she’s a slut or whatever else. I mean, as a mother I was exasperated by all this. I wanted to be on your side but there were too many battles. You were at war every day, and it was exhausting.
— So you take no responsibility.
— I take the same amount of responsibility as any parent. Which should be limited. If you were raised in a standard two-parent family, with all the money and stability in the world, you would have turned out exactly the same. Maybe with some superficial differences. You’d have slightly different clothes.
— That’s an incredible statement.
— Thomas, I wasn’t one of those mothers who waited ten years to have a child. I wasn’t placing all my worldly hopes on the outcome of my womb.
— Wait. What’s that got to do with anything? What does that even mean?
— It means I wasn’t so awed by the idea of having a child that I went dancing around you like you were some golden calf. Most parents are so grateful to their children for existing that they become obsequious. I promised myself I would not be one of those obsequious mothers.
— Obsequious? You are amazing.
— I find all that disgusting. It begins a lifetime of perceived debt that does no one any good.
— I have no idea what you’re talking about.
— Thomas, I did not think you some miracle bestowed upon me. You were born and I was happy to have you. And I don’t think you thought of me as some miracle, either. We were, or should have been, partners. I was happy you existed and wanted you to thrive. My hope was that you were happy to exist and that you yourself would endeavor to thrive. But instead you were aggrieved by your existence and my role in it. I think that’s why you were so drawn to Christ.
— I wasn’t drawn to Christ. What does that mean?
— You used to draw the crucifix on your notebooks. Other kids were drawing spaceships or Grateful Dead skulls or penises, but you were drawing crucifixes. You thought that was you, suffering on the cross. I considered you a partner and an equal but you wanted to be beneath me and a martyr.
— You’re the one who brought me to church.
— I brought you once. You know how I hate Christianity and all that wretched iconography. You know what? You see pictures of Buddha and he’s sitting, reclining, at peace. The Hindus have their twelve-armed elephant god, who also seems so content but not powerless. But leave it to the Christians to have a dead and bloody man nailed to a cross. You walk into a church and you see a helpless man bleeding all over himself — how can we come away hopeful after such a sight? People bring their children to mass and have them stare for two hours at a man hammered to a beam and picked at by crows. How is that elevating? It’s all about accountability for them.
— What is?
— The Christians, the Bible. It’s all about who’s at fault. A whole religion based on accountability. Who’s to blame? What’s the judgment? Who gets punished? Who gets jailed, banished, killed, drowned, decimated. You want to know the main takeaway most people got from Jesus’s death? Not sacrifice, nothing like that. The takeaway, after all that Old Testament judgment, is that the Jews did it.
— Incredible.
— You loved it, though. Especially as a teenager. Young men love martyrdom. You get to be the victim and the hero at the same time. Do you remember when you said you wanted to be a priest?
— I didn’t want to be a priest.
— A monk? What was it? It was Don’s influence. Wasn’t his mom some Bible thumper?
— She wasn’t a Bible thumper.
— Don thought himself some kind of elevated young man, didn’t he? He took himself very seriously. The last time I saw him he was spouting some very pious stuff. He looked at me like I was one of his parishioners, like he was taking an interest in me — that he might save me.
— You’re faulting him for caring about you. I know how foreign that is to you. To care about someone. To care about their well-being.
— You mean me with you? If anything, I was too protective.
— Holy shit.
— What are you doing now? Don’t get so excited. Stop the jumping around, Thomas. Please. I didn’t make you get jobs. I allowed you to flounder. It made you soft. I let you quit college. I let you live at home.
— So why did you?
— I felt guilty. You guilted me into it. You made me feel like I’d done all these horrible things, so I coddled you. You’d have been better off in military school. The Army straightens boys like you out. You needed some discipline. You needed to be around people who wake up in the morning and go to work, do something.
— You didn’t keep me safe.
— I did keep you safe.
— Whether or not you felt responsible for my birth, you’re supposed to keep your children safe.
— I did as much as I could. As anyone could.
— You know what Mr. Hansen did with us? He played a game called “tailor.” It involved him measuring various parts of our bodies.
— Did he undress you?
— He says he didn’t.
— Do you remember him undressing you?
— No. But I could have buried that memory. We all could have.
— Oh get serious. So he took a tape measure or what?
— He put the tape measure against the insides of our legs. He did that to every kid, alone in his closet, and then we’d all lie on the bed together watching movies. He was breathing heavily the whole time.
— And that’s what has you thinking your life is irreparable?
— No. It’s just one of the many things I shouldn’t have seen or had to endure. Things I wouldn’t have been subjected to if you were present and sober.
— Thomas. I remember very clearly sending you to Mr. Hansen’s house. I was sober then and I’m sober now. It seemed like a fine idea, and a safe idea. There were kids going off on overnights all the time. Boy Scout trips, sports trips, band trips. Summer camp. It was not an outrageous proposition to allow a group of boys to sleep at a trusted adult’s house. And now you tell me that this man put a tape measure against your leg, and that this is the great crime of the world.
— I didn’t say that.
— Thomas, why don’t you kidnap some kid born with leukemia, or a woman who’s been sold into prostitution? You had a tape measure against your leg and it’s paralyzed you for life.
— I can’t stand you.
— Fine. But someone needs to give you some tough love. You’re soft. You need to find some steel.
— And you’re the embodiment of inner strength? Let me enumerate the places I found you blacked out. In the backyard. In your car, in the garage, as if you meant to kill yourself with carbon monoxide and fell asleep in the middle of the task. And growing up, I found you in my bed. That was once a week, at least, you’d be in my bed. I could smell the wine fermenting. You know that smell? It’s this musty animal smell, like your body was some wet sponge full of everything it wiped off the dinner dishes. See, the nice thing about having you here is that I can see what sort of withdrawal you go through. Are you already jonesing?