Amy Yamada - Bedtime Eyes

Finally, Rick spoke.

“You don’t belong here,” he said in a low voice. “Would you kindly leave?”

She had brought it on herself, but the woman turned pale and her lips began to tremble.

“No, I’m not leaving,” she retorted. “Jesse is my son.”

Jesse was looking down at the floor with his hands in his pockets.

Coco was seized with the impulse to rush over and cover his ears.

“Jesse, does she look after you right?” asked the woman accusingly.

Since she was having no effect on Rick, she had now decided to switch the direction of her attack.

“No,” replied Jesse.

Now it was Coco’s turn to hold back her anger.

“And does she cook for you?”

“No.”

“Does she ever wash your clothes?”

“No.”

“Well, how about your room? Does she clean your room?”

“No.”

Coco’s head was reeling as she listened to Jesse trying to get at her through his mother. It seemed that he just couldn’t stop the stream of lies. Coco began to wonder if he had the sign of Satan tattooed on the back of his head under his hair.

“I don’t think this young woman knows how to look after Jesse,”

concluded the woman with an air of authority. “I think I’d better take care of him from now on.”

“Coco has been doing just fine,” said Rick calmly. There was no anger in his voice.

“But you heard what he said. Jesse, you want to come home with me, don’t you?”

There was no reply.

“Honey, I’m living with a great guy now. You’ll like him. He can be your new daddy.”

Jesse remained silent. Rick held his breath, waiting for his son’s reply. The choice was his.

Coco’s heart was in her mouth. If Jesse agreed to leave, she would finally be free of the torturous burden she’d been struggling under for so many months.

The three adults waited anxiously for Jesse to speak. Each second seemed like an hour. Coco half expected him to try to get out of it by starting to cry again, but he finally answered.

“I think I’ll stay here for now.”

The tension in the room suddenly eased. I’ll stay here far now. Even Coco had to admit that it was a stroke of genius. It was enough to please Rick, and yet at the same time it was also enough to pacify his mother.

“Oh, my poor baby. My poor, poor boy!” wailed his mother, pretending to be upset by the whole thing.

Coco looked on in amazement. This stupid bitch really didn’t have a clue. She had no idea how much it upset Jesse to hear her cursing at his father. Giving birth itself wasn’t anything special—the important thing was bringing a kid up and understanding him. She didn’t know anything about Jesse. She didn’t realize how clever or how cunning he was, or what had made him like that. She was completely ignorant. Maybe she could raise a kitten or a puppy, but she didn’t know the first thing about bringing up a child. She could never be a real mother.

Coco didn’t feel anger toward Jesse’s mother anymore. And anyway, she was ugly. Coco didn’t know if it had anything to do with living with Rick or not, but it certainly had nothing to do with her. She could harp all she wanted on what Rick had been like in the past, but Coco wasn’t interested. She didn’t want to hear it. She only cared about the Rick she knew now.

Suddenly, Coco wondered if it had all just been an excuse. The woman had claimed that she had come to see Jesse, but what if she was really still in love with Rick? This would be the only way she could think of to see him again. So that was it! It was all clear to her now.

Rather than hating Rick, his ex actually hated herself because she couldn’t stop loving him. She loved Rick so much that she couldn’t vent all her anger on him. So even after they split up, she was left with a lot of pent-up emotion for which she had no release. What better excuse than Jesse to keep in touch with Rick? Jesse was their child, a constant reminder of their time together, and he served to feed her self-loathing.

As long as she had that, Rick would always remain in her heart. Her heart was nothing more than a diary to record her grudges against Rick.

But she bookmarked the pages with love.

Rick didn’t return her love, so she probably hated Coco, whom he did love. The only way she could get back at Coco for taking her place in Rick’s life was by accusing her of not taking good care of Jesse.

Coco considered Jesse. What on earth was he? He had been tossed back and forth by his parents’ love-hate relationship, and as a result he didn’t even know how to get the attention or the affection he craved. If his mother and father continued to take out their hatred on each other, there was no denying that it would eventually consume him, too.

If things continued like this, Jesse would never be able to love anyone. He seemed to know that he couldn’t be happy with his mother because she was consumed by hatred for his father. But Coco couldn’t believe that he would ever be happy living with her either. Coco didn’t exactly hate Jesse, but she didn’t love him either. Despite her efforts over the last few months, she still couldn’t tolerate him. It was odd that she found it so easy to love Rick, but she couldn’t get close enough to Jesse even to begin to touch his heartstrings. Coco felt that if she got close enough to give a tug on even one of those strings, Jesse’s heart would unravel like a knitted sweater.

Jesse’s mother started getting ready to leave. She looked completely different now from when she had arrived. She picked up her bag and swung it violently across her shoulder. It hadn’t been properly closed, so all of the contents fell out and scattered across the floor. There was a cheap lipstick, a worn-out wallet, and a gaudy handkerchief, none of which matched her heavy makeup or her haughty attitude. She scrambled around on the floor to pick them up, and it reminded Coco of Mil-let’s painting of French peasant women bent double in the fields collecting the broken heads of wheat after the harvest—the scraps. Coco felt sorry for her. Scraps were all she would have from now on, whomever she found to love.

Rick didn’t move. He watched her but said nothing. Jesse, on the other hand, instinctively got down on his hands and knees to help. So he was able to express his love, thought Coco. The question was whether his mother could accept that love. She had refused to look after him unless she was paid for it. Maybe she, like Jesse, could take love but not return it.

“Take care of yourself, Jesse,” she said. “Next time I’ll take you with me.”

Coco showed her to the door.

She said good-bye to Jesse as she left, but she didn’t even go through the motions of thanking Coco or asking her to continue to look after her son for her. She just turned and left with angry eyes and a furrowed brow. That made it all the more clear to Coco that her visit had just been an excuse to see Rick and had nothing to do with Jesse at all.

As she watched her walk away, Coco felt as though all the energy had been drained from her body. She was frightened to go back into the apartment because she knew that the atmosphere of hatred she detested so much would be lingering there. The air would be thick with it, stifling and cloying, and it would be hard to get the stench out of her nostrils.

That night Rick went out. He didn’t tell Coco where he was going and, even after it got late, he did not return. As he had been putting his jacket on, she had wanted to ask him not to go, but she knew that he couldn’t bear the poisonous atmosphere in the apartment and she knew he was the type of man who ran away from situations like this.

One reason she didn’t want him to leave was that she didn’t want to be left on her own with Jesse. She wanted to ask the boy why he had lied about her to his mother, but without Rick she didn’t have the courage to face him.