The Book of Masks (Vol. 4)

A Mother's Love

Previousy: "Music Matters" 

You're feeling stiff and boneless after your nap. So you prop yourself up on the bed without turning on the light, and watch some videos with the sound down soft. Music, movie bits, random shit, even some sports clips.

It isn't quite eight when you hear the front door open and voices in the living room. One of them is your mom's so you assume the other is Tad's, until it speaks up and sounds much deeper than your brother's. You pause the video and listen intently. Yes, it's your mom, and a man. But who? There aren't any men—no uncles or neighbors or social friends—in her life. At least, none that she brings home.

Well, none since that one fuck-head she had around the house a couple of times when you were ten. He wasn't over that often, and then he was never over at all.

A light chill settles over your joints as memories you never troubled over, and so never made any deductions from, start to click into a pattern.

And you find yourself paralyzed as footsteps and voices come down the hall. They pause near the junction where the doors to three bedrooms meet. Then your mom murmurs something, and your door knob fumbles and twists. The door opens a crack, holds, then closes. Your bed is not in line of sight, so you don't see who it was—and they don't see you. After it closes, your mom speaks again, this time loud enough that you can make out the words out with friends in the jumble.

Then you hear her bedroom door close.

You feel very stiff all over, so stiff that your joints seem to crack as you click off your phone, lay it aside, and resettle yourself on the bed. You draw your knees up and push your face into them.

The fuck am I going to do? you wonder.

* * * * *

It's forty-five minutes before you hear voices again, and another ten before you hear a bedroom door creak open. They're talking in low voices, loud enough that you could make out the words if you wanted to. But you keep the pillow over your face.

It was really tough for the first ten minutes or so, waiting to find out if there were going to be noises, or if two doors between you and them would be enough to muffle them. Ten minutes in which you turned over and pushed your face into the pillow while clenching a hard fist.

Ten minutes before remembering that it's not your mom with a strange man in her bed, about to take him up her pussy.

Then it just became really awkward. A bit of a fight, too, as you had to push Kirkham back down when the bedsprings began to groan. You flipped onto your side and listened with a grimace as they rocked, and paused, and rocked again; fought to keep from jumping at the occasional stifled shriek; clenched your eyes shut and tried not to visualize it when there was one long, last quick burst of bedsprings, followed by a long ritardando. You flipped onto your back and let the sweat pour off as you gaped at the ceiling. When the voices resumed, you picked up the pillow and casually tried suffocating yourself with it.

Because by that point you and David Kirkham were commiserating with each other.

You couldn't keep him out of your head completely, and with mordant curiosity you would probe at the memories or test drive the emotional reactions, and then he'd come roaring back to the surface.

Kirkham never knew his father, and his mom never speaks of him. If he or Tad ever asked her about him, they must have been young, because there are no memories of the question, only an impression that there never was a father, except biologically. When, with blunt curiosity, you asked yourself if David and Tad even have the same father, the swift reaction was brutal: like your impersonated personality was trying to kill you by provoking a stroke.

As for that one guy from years back—what was his name? you can barely remember his face—it's pretty clear now what that was. And though you can find no memory of saying anything, you do remember the hostility that David felt for him. And when David Kirkham doesn't like someone— Well, that person would probably feel it. And even at ten, you'd bet Kirkham was someone to handle carefully.

After the voices have moved back down the hall, you sit up. "Are you going to be okay?" you ask yourself in a murmur, and it is Will Prescott who asks it. You let yourself fall backward into your impersonation, and it is David Kirkham who surfaces to answer, "I'll be fine," you growl, "but someone else isn't going to be." You heave yourself off the bed and trudge for the door.

The house is silent and dark when you emerge. Also empty. The front door is ajar, and when you put your eye to the peephole you see your mom and some guy, arms around each other, standing next to a car in the driveway. You suck on a tooth for the entire length of time it takes them to kiss each other goodbye. When your mom turns back toward the house, you trudge over to drop heavily onto the sofa, which faces the door. You stretch your legs out, crossing them at the ankle, but take great care not to cross your arms. Instead, you drape one along the arm of the sofa, and the other along the back.

Your mom flicks on the light when she comes in. There's a contented smile on her face.

Then she looks up and sees you.

"Jesus!" she exclaims and leaps about three feet into the air. She puts her hand to her chest to settle her breath, and stares boggle-eyed at you.

"Where's the car?" you calmly ask her.

"What?"

"The car," you repeat. "If that guy brought you home—"

"How long have you been here? You weren't here just—" She point down the hall.

"I got home around four or so."

Her eyes widen. "All the lights were off," she stammers.

"I fell asleep. Was in my bedroom."

Her expression turns wary. "How long were you asleep?"

"I woke up before you got back. Yeah, you looked in my room." You miss having a toothpick to roll around, but take comfort that your tinted glasses are hiding your eyes. "You didn't see me."

"I saw your lights were off."

"Yeah, well, I didn't feel like turning them on. 'Specially not after I heard you bringing company in."

"Oh, honey," she says, and her face twists up with motherly sympathy.

"So how long's this been going on?"

"Um ... With Robert, you mean?"

"Iz'at his name? Robert who?"

"Robert Hamm. He's—"

"Fuck me."

"What?"

"Go on."

She pauses to give you a direct look. She is still pale, but she is beginning to master herself.

"He's one of the physicians at the clinic," she says. "You've met him, when you've come out. He's the—"

"So how long've you been playing doctor with each other?"

A spot of color shows in her forehead, and her eyes harden.

"I don't have to explain myself to you, David. I'm your mother—"

"I just wanna know how long he's been fucking you," you tell her, "and whether he is going to keep on fucking you. Is it going to be a regular thing, is he going to start showing up here even on days he's not fucking you, am I going to have to get used to seeing him around? Or is—?"

"You don't get to talk to me like that, David!"

"These are obvious questions," you retort. You are keeping an iron grip on your voice, but your chest is like a furnace. "Totally appropriate, if I'm going to understand what's going on." You shrug with your hands. "So explain to me what's going on."

Her lips peel back, but she looks everywhere in the room except at you before answering.

"We've been seeing each other for a couple of months," she starts to say.

"You must'a been seeing him around longer than that," you retort, "if he works at the clinic with you, like you said."

She nearly chokes, then reaches for the door.

"I don't have stand here for this," she snarls. "I don't have to—! If you want us to be a family, David—!"

"You want us to be a family?" you ask. You chuck your chin at the door. "With him?"

She freezes, breathing heavily.

"I like him, David," she says through gritted teeth. "I'd like it if I didn't have to—" She almost chokes on the words. "Sneak around with him."

You lift your chin. "Who says you gotta sneak around?" you softly ask. "You worried about me, what I think? Who says I give a shit? But maybe he wants to sneak around. Maybe got his own reasons to."

"Listen to yourself, David! That's how come we have to 'sneak around'!"

"Yeah? For how long?"

She starts to reply, then catches herself, and draws a deep breath.

"You're a big part of my life, David," she says. "You and Tad are the biggest part. But I do have a part of my life that is mine. Just as I assume you've got a part of your life that I'm not part of." She gives you a very pointed look.

You shrug. "Makes sense," you say. "So if you can bring someone home, I can too, right? Fair's fair, isn't it?" You tilt your chin further.

"No," she says, "it's different. Besides, if you wanted to start doing that, what about Tad?"

"What about him?"

"Would you bring someone home when he's home? Exactly," she says when you shrug. "And I'm thinking about Tad when—"

"Where is he, by the way?"

"Tad? I sent him to a sleepover with a friend. I assumed you'd be arranging your own sleepover," she adds with a glower.

"Fine, so we'd be careful about Tad, both of us," you say. "Then—"

"I'm always careful about Tad." She holds your eye. "Why do you think I asked your Meemaw to take him in next year?"

Next: "A Little Night Music" 

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"Table of Contents (Vol. 4)" 
"The Book of Masks (Vol. 4)"