The Prim & The Improper

Chapter 1: Moving Truck & Authenticities

Chapter 1

Between the ages of four and eleven, Graham Matheson never grew tired of his mother's less than angelic voice. Her out-of-tune attempts at keeping up with the rhythm of Whitney Houston's "Dance with Somebody" could wash away his darkest of moods. He knew that each day his mother sang was a day she'd taken her "happy pills" and a day where he wouldn't come home from primary school to find her wrapped in blankets on the sofa clutching a yellowed picture from her wedding, murmuring loving words to the long-dead man who once stood at the alter next to her.

However, after years of constant repetition because Ms. Matheson refused to give up her "soul song", Graham had been driven closer to the brink of insanity than his mother had ever been. What used to be a sign of another day without darkness became the start of a countdown to the day his mother would once again try and fail to achieve her dream on one of Britain's many televised singing competitions. Soon after that, the humiliating whispers would begin as he walked down the halls of his secondary school, all his peers snickering at the poor boy whose mother seriously overestimated her talents.

Now, if you asked, Graham could spin a long-winded tale surrounding the hatred he felt towards the pitiful song of his mother, starting with the loud echoes of her screeching that traveled with ease through the walls of their below average London flat and ending with the decision she made without his consent to move them across the globe to California so she could finally get the chance she knew she deserved. This single, momentous decision twisted sixteen-year-old Graham's life in directions so opposite his English existence he could almost call himself an American. He simply needed to ditch his accent for something far more natural for the patriotic nation and he could be crowned a golden boy. But a golden boy never lasts long without a golden girl on his arm, and the girl Graham had not so gracefully fallen for was everything but that.

~~~

"Mum," Graham struggled to breathe out the simple word as he lifted a box dubbed "Caution: Heavy" in bold, black Sharpie letters on the side. When his forty-year old guardian refused to acknowledge him for the third consecutive time that morning, he waddled over to the dirty, stained armchair she sat in and knocked her massive headphones away from her ears. "Are you going to help or not?" The woman shrugged her slim shoulders, which were already growing red from California's powerful mid-afternoon sun and returned her headphones to their original position, head bobbing along to a Cyndi Lauper pop classic. Graham rolled his eyes and brought the morbidly obese box into their fifty-year-old bungalow.

Once he placed the brown box on a plastic coffee table, Graham fell backwards onto the ratty sofa he knew was at least five years older than him. The familiar skunk-like aroma of the cushions enveloped him in a wave of homesickness. He clutched a pillow to his torso, struggling to dampen the blow of all the England memories that came rushing to the front of his mind faster than he could think them away. He saw all his friends, his family, the prestigious college where he would have studied law had the move never occurred and of course, he saw the ivy-covered tombstone of his late father, which would never again proudly display one of Ms. Matheson's colourful bouquets the way they had every week since his passing.

"Why is it that of all the women in England, my father had to choose mum? Honestly, why?" Graham moaned into the burgundy pillow cover, dragging out the final vowel of his last word.

"Because I was sexier than Diana herself in my time, love," Ms. Matheson quipped as she entered the modest home with a small box in her arms. Graham furrowed his eyebrows and silently bit down on the knuckle of his index finger, hoping that his mother's retort would end there. It didn't. "You know, Graham, your dear old mum has a lot more to offer than you young people may think. Other than my stunning looks and out of this world voice, I happen to be a wonderful person and a not-so-terrible mother. Not that you cared to notice." Graham slid down in his seat as she spoke, pulling his Manchester United tee up past his nose to muffle his quiet chuckling at his mother's modest description of herself. Moments like these made him wish his father was still around to reassure him that his mother's insanity didn't come with age and he wouldn't be a Penelope Matheson in his children's lives.