beginning of "Dear Mom,"

PART ONE
EVERETT

CHAPTER ONE
DENIAL

The first major question I can ever remember asking my father is, “Dad, where does the rain come from?”

I was five years old, and in those days we lived in Middleton, Washington, where it rained more than it didn’t. I remember this day, this question, because my sister Lucy was just a wiggly tiny baby, and it was right after Mom left. Couldn’t have been more than two or three weeks. I’d been sitting by the window in the den, which overlooked the driveway and the street. Lucy was in a baby seat on the floor, making nice gurgling noises. When Dad walked in the room, he smiled at her—a small smile, but the first one I’d seen on his face in weeks. Then he looked at me.

“Matthew,” he said. “What are you doing?”

I was waiting for my mother, of course. That’s always what I was doing, and looking back now, Dad must have known that. But I was just a kid—a sad, confused, lonely kid—and I wanted Dad to think I was tough. So I lied. I said, “Watching the rain.”

Dad sat down next to me. His face was kind. I’d walked in on him crying more than once those past weeks, and I hadn’t liked it. I liked him better this way, when he was just being my good old cheerful dad. “That sounds like a fine idea,” he said, and we sat there, father and son, watching the rain run rivers down the street.

I wanted to ask where Mom had gone, when she was coming back, didn’t she love me anymore. But I didn’t want to ruin the moment or make Dad upset. I didn’t want to make me upset, come to think of it. So more to end the silence than anything else, I said, “Dad, where does the rain come from?”

He looked a little surprised. I usually saved questions like those for Mom, because she gave the simple answers kids loved. I asked her why the sky was blue; she said to match my eyes. Dad always went into long scientific explanations for the phenomena I questioned. He may be an ironworker, but that’s just to support Lucy and me, and Mom too. Dad is one of the smartest people I know, and I was glad then for a long explanation about the water cycle. The timbre of his voice comforted me and eased the anxious feeling I had in my belly. As he talked, I scooted closer and leaned against him. He put his arm around me and kept talking. He didn’t have to assure me that everything would be all right. He didn’t have to tell me where my mother was, or when she was coming back, or if she loved me, because right then, it didn’t matter. It was just me and my dad.


***

I don’t really know when my mother hit rock bottom, since I was so young when it had happened. I don’t know when her duties as wife and mother got to be too much. I was blind to a lot of it, I think, because Dad had tried protecting me, and because I was three, four, and five, and up to my eyeballs in Power Rangers and Ninja Turtles and toy trucks and gummy bears. I was selfish, I suppose. Aren’t all little kids selfish, though? That’s how they are. They’re leeches, expecting their parents to drop everything to play, get them juice, tell a joke, buy a toy. They don’t understand about jobs, stress, money, fatigue, or, in my mother’s case, drugs. They think, with full certainty and little logic, that their parents’ lives do, will, and should revolve completely around them, and that a fistful of wilted wildflowers, a bear hug, a crinkled Valentine covered in glitter, repays their parents entirely.

And maybe it does. I’m not a parent, so I wouldn’t know. I’m just an eighteen-year-old kid who’s made some bad choices, if you ask my probation officer. If you ask my dad, I’m a good kid overall, I’ve just got shit for brains. If you ask my mom—well, I have no idea what she’d say. She doesn’t even know me. She’d probably say something sappy though, like how my eyes match a summer’s sky, or how she and I used to play leapfrog in the front yard until the porch light came on. That’s just how she is.

Then again, I’m probably more selfish now than I was at five. At least back then I gave little things back, thinking it made me and my parents even. Now I don’t give anything back because I know I don’t have to.

I remember the first time I got in real trouble with the law. I was thirteen years old and a cop had caught me outside the town’s Shole Elementary School. He said I was vandalizing, but if you ask me, spray-painting “AS” before the school’s name added some comic relief and was actually a great improvement overall. The cop brought me to my house first, woke up my dad, and explained angrily what a screw-up his firstborn was. Dad stood there in our kitchen, rubbing his eyes and patiently listening to the cop rave on and on. Then he just said, “Okay, officer, what do we do now?” Dad came with us down the station, leaving Lucy, who was eight at the time, with our neighbor. As soon as we got there, we had to fill out paperwork.

“Mother’s name,” the pig barked.

“Don’t have one,” I responded.

Dad looked over at me, and the pain on his face almost made me regret saying it. Almost.

I had meant it, though. Mom had never been there for me or Lucy or Dad. She’d been there. Sometimes. For herself. When her borrowed or stolen money had run dry and she needed a place to crash. But it was never for long, never permanently, no matter what she’d promise.

I hated her. Hell, I still hate her.

The last time I saw Mom—about five or six months ago, I’d say—we had a huge fight. We’ve been having those more and more. It’s gotten to the point where she’ll call and I’ll just hang up. No explanation, no regret, that’s how little I think of her. But she had come for one of her visits. I don’t know why. She’s remarried, still on drugs, but she’s got money for them now and doesn’t have to leech off us. So I really don’t know why she keeps coming by. I’ve made it plenty clear exactly what I think of her. I know that for a long time, Dad let her come crawling back for Lucy’s and my sake, and for an even longer time, I put up with her for Lucy. Lucy hero-worshipped Mom, and she’d get worked up every time Mom left, like it was a horrible surprise. More and more lately, I’ve seen a change in my sister. She’s thirteen years old, and she’s developing that icy bluntness in her eyes I adopted at age eight or nine.

So, the fight. Mom had come around and was sitting in the kitchen with Lucy as I came in from Brett’s. Lucy looked relieved to see me, and Mom put on this huge smile. “Matttteeeewww!” she cawed.

Can I just be the first to say that I hate the way my mother says my name? Like it’s something sticky she’s trying to smear off, that’s exactly how it sounds. I tossed my keys and pack of cigs onto the counter and nodded at my sister. “Hey Luce,” I said, then stepped to the fridge and opened it.

“Aren’t you going to say hello to your mother?” Mom asked.

More than her absence, more than her choices in life, what I hate most about my mother is how she acts like she deserves my respect. She honestly thinks she does, which is not only ridiculous, it’s offensive. And she’s always pulling the mother card too. Calling herself “your mother.” As if I like to be reminded of that.

“Well, I wasn’t planning to, no,” I said.

“How was your day?” she asked. I swear. Like we were just a normal family. It made me sick.

“Don’t you mean, how was the past two months?” I asked. “Two months, Mom. That’s the last time I saw you.”

“I came by last month but you were out—”

“Coming by once a month doesn’t make you my mother or my friend,” I snapped. “Where’s the child support check, Mother? Or was a measly check too much to ask for, too?”

Mom’s eyes got fiery. “I’m doing my best, Matthew,” she said fiercely. “I know I’ve made mistakes, but—”

“No, not made. You’re still making them. You haven’t changed. You’ll never change.” I grabbed my keys and cigs again, ready to get out of there.

“I am making changes in my life—”

“You’ve got a husband to pay for a few expensive habits,” I spat, “so maybe you won’t keep burying us alive with bills. Those aren’t changes that make you a decent human being.”

Well, you get the idea. I’m not the sad little boy who waited by the window for months on end…or the second-grader who was too ashamed to admit to his teacher about his absentee mother, so he went along with the class and made a Mother’s Day present, which he kept on his dresser for a whole month before throwing it away…or the third-grader who was actually hopeful about his mother sticking around this time, so he made a Mother’s Day present with his class again, and brought it home, again, only to find that his mother had packed and left that morning…or the fourth-grader who faked sick the whole week before Mother’s Day to avoid this problem altogether…no. I’m not that boy. I may not like who I see in the mirror all the time these days, but at least I know what I want. Or, more to the point, what I don’t want. I don’t want her. I don’t need her.

And that’s a fact.