Kevin O'Brien - Disturbed

Chris let out a stunned little laugh. “You’re joking.”

He looked at his mother, whose eyes met his for the first time since he’d walked through the door. She didn’t appear sad or apologetic or angry. It was as if all her feelings had shut down. She quickly looked away — and gazed down at her glass of wine. She took a sip.

Chris realized this was no joke.

He couldn’t remember anything else they’d said — just that his mother was moving out. All the while, he kept looking at his dad’s hands, one around his highball glass and the other clenched in a fist on the kitchen table. His mother kept fiddling with the saltshaker — picking at the little grains of salt stuck in the pour holes. She and his dad wouldn’t look at each other.

When Chris finally asked if he could go upstairs and they let him go, he saw the clock on his nightstand read 4:58. He’d been sitting at that kitchen table with them for only twenty-five minutes, but it had seemed like hours.

He kept thinking of the way they’d seemed so affectionate at the Hahns’ party two weeks before, and he realized it had been a lie. Chris hated admitting that to himself. And he didn’t want to admit it to his friends — especially Elvis. So he didn’t talk about it at all.

He felt bad Elvis had to find out about his parents’ separation from someone in school. Apparently, Mrs. Hahn had told Courtney, who broadcast it on her Facebook page. Chris had kept hoping — right up until the day his mother moved out of the house — that his folks would work things out.

Her new home was a two-bedroom apartment in a tall, eighties-era condominium on Capitol Hill. She showed them the indoor pool off the lobby — and off her balcony, a sweeping view of downtown Seattle, Elliott Bay, and the Olympic Mountains. She kept going on about how they were walking distance from Volunteer Park and all these great restaurants, movie theaters, and shops. So when he and Erin visited, they’d never be bored.

Chris couldn’t figure out why his mother had moved out of the house and given his dad custody. It didn’t make sense. It wasn’t practical. His dad was hardly ever home.

It wasn’t as if he liked his mother more than he liked his dad. In fact, he felt a stronger connection to his father — even though his dad was away so often. Chris remembered when he was a kid, and his dad used to give him the white cardboard eleven-by-eight sheets the cleaners put inside his folded dress shirts. It was heavier than regular paper, and Chris used the cardboard inserts for elaborate drawings of Lord of the Rings scenes. But mostly he used them for the posters he created to welcome his dad home from business trips. Chris would post one sign on a tree at the end of their block: WE MISSED YOU, DAD! He’d tape another welcome home sign on the lamppost at the start of their driveway, and another on the front door. It was always special when his dad came home. Chris would get a T-shirt or snow globe from an airport in another city, and he’d bask in his dad’s presence for the next few days — until another business trip took him away.

His dad might not have been home much; but when he was around, he spent a lot of time with Chris — and attended his swim meets (something his mom never did). All of his friends’ mothers had crushes on his dad. So when people told him that he was starting to look like his father, Chris took that as a big compliment.

He wondered what they’d do now whenever his father went away on business. Hire a live-in housekeeper? Go stay with Aunt Trish in Tacoma? Chris didn’t like it there. Aunt Trish had a house that smelled like rotten fruit and a cat who hated him. Plus she was vegan, and there was never anything decent to eat in her place.

It didn’t make any sense that his mother was the one moving out. Was she sick of looking after him and Erin? Was that why she’d decided to leave?

“Your father and I have already told you — several times — this separation has nothing to do with you and Erin,” his mother pointed out. “And neither does my moving out of the house.”

She was behind the wheel of her SUV. Chris, in the passenger seat, couldn’t see her eyes behind her designer sunglasses. Wind through the open window blew her close-cropped hair into disarray. She’d recently highlighted it with some silvery-brown rinse, a new look for her new life.

It was his and Erin’s first weekend visiting her in her new condo. He and his mom were driving on Interstate 5 back from North Seattle, where they’d just dropped off Erin at ballet class.

“You had to know, Mom,” he said, squinting at her. “You had to know that Erin and I would really miss you. It just screws up everything with you moving away. I mean, if Dad was the one who got a new place, I don’t think it would have made that big a difference, because he’s away so much anyway. Y’know?”

“I had to know that you and Erin would really miss me,” she paraphrased him in a cool, ironic tone. She looked stone-faced as she stared at the road ahead. “The way you used to miss your father when he was away? Do you think it was easy for me, raising the two of you practically on my own? Yet every time your father came home, you kids treated him like visiting royalty. You were always so happy to see him. Always the hero’s welcome. .”

“I thought you felt the same way whenever he came home,” Chris murmured numbly.

“See how much of a hero he is to you and Erin when he’s the one who stays put and does all those thankless household chores,” she growled.

Chris swallowed hard. “Then it’s true, you’re sick of us.”

“No, goddamn it, I’m sick of him!” she cried. She twisted the wheel to one side. The driver behind them blasted his horn. Chris braced a hand against the dashboard as his mother pulled over onto the shoulder of the road. She slammed on the brakes and the tires screeched beneath them. “I’m sick of you and Erin thinking he’s so goddamn wonderful when he’s never really been there for you — or for me.”

Stunned, Chris stared at her.

One hand gripping the wheel, she swiveled toward him. “He fucked around. Did you know that? Did you know your father — your hero — can’t keep his dick in his pants?”

Chris just shook his head. He’d never heard his mother use such language, and he couldn’t believe what she was saying. He still braced himself against the dashboard, though the Saturn was idling on the shoulder of the road. Other cars whooshed by.

“Every time he goes out of town, it’s just another opportunity for him to screw whomever he wants. Five years ago, he came back from Boston and gave me a dose of chlamydia — at least I think it was Boston where he must have caught it. I can’t be sure. For a while, he even had regular, steady girlfriends in some of those cities. Of course, he couldn’t stay faithful to them any more than he could stay faithful to me. One, her name was Cassandra, she lived down in Portland, and she was crazy. I’m talking certifiable. She was calling the house day and night, threatening me, for God’s sake. She even left a decapitated squirrel by our front door, the insane bitch. Your father can sure pick them. That was last year. . ”

Chris vaguely remembered for a while the previous May, when his mom had instructed him not to answer the phone and not to let Erin pick it up. She’d said some crackpot had been calling. He couldn’t comprehend that the crackpot had been a woman his father was screwing. He just kept shaking his head at his mother. He couldn’t say anything. He felt sick to his stomach.

“Now you know,” she said, her voice cracking. From behind her dark glasses, tears started down her cheeks. She leaned back in the driver’s seat, took off the glasses, and sobbed. “This is no way for a mother to be talking to her son,” she muttered, plucking a Kleenex from her purse. She wiped her eyes and nose. “But I couldn’t stand to have you go on worshiping him, when — when he’s been a terrible husband and at best, a parttime father.”