Coffee Crumbs

lana del rey says summertime sadness

Second place winner of the Summer
Surprises Contest, written
by rmargx

My mother hated summer. She told me it reminded her of bee stings and fresh grass and sunflowers by the roadside and drops of orange juice on the kitchen floor. She told me the air brought back bad memories into the house and the sun was too hot on her skin. I asked her to go swimming with me, but she told me the sea would spit her out and bury her in the sand. I didn't understand her words, but I knew that the season never bode well for her mind; summer was my mother's monster. 

I once asked my father why mother feels this way about summer. He merely sighed and told me to finish my vegetables. I asked him again why mother wasn't eating dinner with us, but he got out of his chair and walked out of the dining room before I could even get the words out of my 10-year-old tongue. I sat alone, in a table made for four, with the house's secrets laughing behind my back. I wish I could have turned and bared my teeth back then, demanding their silence with the flick of my wrist. But I was young, and the world was a dark, dark place filled with my father's indifference and my mother's sorrow.

As the summer season went through its full bloom, my mother's erratic behavior turned up a notch. Her mood swings were giving me a whiplash. One moment she was dancing on her feet, humming an old tune, with her nightgown billowing around her dainty ankles, going in circles around the house. And the next, she was weeping and sobbing, her shouts of desperation echoing from her room at 3 in the morning, a haunting song of her worries and anxieties casting webs of unknown ghosts in my ears. On nights like these, with the hot humid breeze blowing through the curtains in my room, my mother's wail upstairs and the sound of glass clinking as my father drank himself in oblivion in the kitchen, I dreamed of a red Popsicle melting into a puddle of blood over my fingers. 

One summer day, the pool waters sparkled like diamonds below the raging sun in our backyard, whispering a tempting plea to take a dip and hide away from the afternoon heat. I took it and dove, goggles and breathing gear on my face. My mother was knocked out from the pills she swallowed this morning and my father drove off in his truck sometime around noon, telling me he'd be back around six. Kicking and paddling, I roamed the surface of the pool, coughing up chlorine water as I went. 

"Joseph?" a voice called out. I turned my back and watched as my mother stood before me, a knowing smile on her face. 

"Yeah?" I swam nearer, "what's up, mom?" 

"The voices are getting softer," she had replied, her eyes distant and empty. 

Confused, I asked her, "What do you mean?" 

"Summer's almost over, isn't it?"