"Alright! Alright! Alright!"
"Jesus Christ, Cecile!" Ben said as he sat himself up on his grandmother's cheap suede couch. "Can you wait until I wake up before you start in on me?"
He cradled his greasy blond head in his hands; half listening to his grandmother go at him once again for smoking pot in the house. It was a routine he had become very accustomed to living with since he first started crashing on her couch six months ago.
"You're screwing up your life with that shit," Cecile said as she turned and walked out the garage door, "It's time for you to grow up."
"Cecile, you are a real piece of work."
The woman was pushing seventy-three and she still acted like a freewheeling liberal hippie. She was all about fighting for a cause, the tree hugging, bra flailing, make love not war kind. She allowed Ben to move in because she liked his "damn the man!" lifestyle towards life, a lifestyle none of her children ever attained. He thought she'd be cool about the weed; hell, that was why he moved in with her in the first place.
Head still cradled in his hands, Ben groaned loud enough to agitate Cecile's poodle to start barking from the other side of the house. He had recently returned from Portland where he spent all of his life savings towards being parentless, jobless, and stoned with his friends for a year and a half. Naturally, his parents were never supportive of his decision to forego college and run off across the country without any plan. He didn't blame them, either. When his friends asked him to move to Portland with them, his only reason for going was because he was told drugs were cheaper and better out west. Once the money ran out, he had no choice but to return home, but his parents weren't keen on the idea of him moving back into his old room. When he called them to break the news that he was ready to come home, his father simply told him, "If you're old enough to be a man and move across the country without your parents and waste your life savings because your idiot friends told you to do so, then you can find your own damn place to live." And hung up on him.
The doorbell began to chime "Daydream Believer," startling Ben out of his state of melancholy and causing him to look up towards the door. His mother was on her toes peering through the stained glass window searching for human life roaming around on the other side. She took it upon herself to come over at least once a week bearing gifts and food to make up for her inability to be strong enough to stand up to her husband's decision to deny Ben his bedroom. She wanted Ben to move back in, but she knew it would be less stressful for everybody if he didn't. She felt like she was protecting Ben by backing her husband's decision. In a sense, she felt like it was her fault Ben ended up the way he was. Not because of her parenting, but because of the influences she allowed around Ben. Cecile with her unrealistic and extreme liberalist lifestyle and Olly with his burnout lifestyle, lived a mile up the street. Neither of which were positive influences on Ben, but Marian knew being around them made Ben happy. Ben was never bitter about not being allowed to move back home, at least not towards his mother, but he knew that if he pretended he was distraught by it, his mother would shower him with money; money he could use to fund his vices. He lethargically pulled himself up off the couch to open the door for his mother.
"Marian, you're early."
"It's 9:30, Benjamin," Marian replied, "I thought I'd stop by and make you breakfast."
Ben made his way back towards the couch as his mother helped herself to the kitchen. He pulled out his guitar and began to play "Lost Highway," an old Hank Williams tune, Marian's favorite. He would always pull it out when she came over knowing she'd hum right along to the tune and do a little dance in place, forgetting about lecturing her son about his burn-out lifestyle and how he would end up being like his Uncle Olly. Marian wasn't humming along this time, nor was she dancing. She wasn't even smiling. She stood in place breaking eggshells into a Teflon frying pan.
