Till Next Time | completed | currently under re-edit

1

The sound of a heavy and exasperated pair of boots stomps across the living room, followed by a seemingly timid clicking of heels on the hardwood flooring.

"Leave the door open!" Dad's voice booms.

Some soft pleading followed by loud grumbles and dismissals reach my ear. Sometimes the key to surviving a household is to pay attention the sounds of it. They unveil more about people than the pictures along the staircases and the magnets on the fridge. I have always found them very reliable.

"Look, Nancy, I have had to stoop down to levels lower than my limit to get your son -"

That's right. Your son.

"-into school after school as he goes about throwing his temper tantrums and getting himself expelled!"

My lips part, mimicking my mother's. I can almost feel from muscle memory nothing but an empty breath escapes -as usual- before she can say something, and Dad takes that opportunity to fill in the silence.

"Six schools, Nancy. Six schools in four years. There aren't any left in the neighborhood and I can't ship him out!"

Yes, because of damage control. The people here know John Baxter and respect him. Every other resident owes him a favor. Every other person works for him. All the rest gush over him. He could be God.

"John, he's young and troubled and -"

Mom isn't able to finish, as usual.

"Let me put in a very subtle way, Nancy. If he gets kicked out of this school, I am done. He gets nothing. I won't sweep whatever I have worked so hard to build for thirty years right into his irresponsible and incompetent arms."

"John, we really need to sit down and talk about this."

An absurd relief sweeps over me. My mother was finally able to get an entire sentence out, affording me at least a moment without Dad's grating voice slashing against my eardrums.

"I have a business to run!" Dad barks back, a cue for Mom that it was enough conversation between them for a day.

Silence prevails in for a minute or two, like always. In between I hear Dad pull his chair back. Its screech against the floor has always reminded me of a wailing man awaiting the guillotine.

But I don't see the well-rehearsed part play out where my mother immediately walks out of the room, holding back all her tears and residual self-respect, and walks straight to the master bedroom and shuts herself in for the rest of the day, persuading herself that John Baxter, one of New York's biggest corporate giants is still the John Baxter she met in college and fell hopelessly and irrevocably in love with.

That break in routine irks me like an itch inside the skull.

Then she says, "John. He's our son."

Until then I was fiddling with a lone thread that was jutting out of my backpack. But now my undivided attention is on my mother. I wait patiently for a reply.

"He needs to start acting like my son."

My melancholy is interrupted by the familiar clicking of heels and I immediately break into a hurry to leave as soon as possible. The well-known feeling of being choked comes over me and I grab the car keys from the counter before Mom can drift into the room and wrap me in her embrace and say "Good luck, Brook." Cruelty, I know how to deal with. Softness, however.

I cannot unravel on this fine morning.

"Brook" was the last thing I heard before I broke into a jog.

"I'm late, Mom," I say, picking up my sneakers at the doorstep and leaving the slippers behind. Mom's rule. I cannot wear my shoes here, lest that means any physical contact or eye contact or conversation with her. I don't want to be touched, spoken to or looked at right now. Maybe she understands because as I go on to shut the door I accidentally allow myself to sneak a glance at her.