Cops and Robbers
three
Braden.
I try to sleep a little bit when I get home.
I kick off my shoes and pull my t-shirt over my head and crawl onto the duvet, staring at the cracks in the ceiling in my too-small bed, in my too-small room. It’s quiet, so quiet that I’m going deaf as I gape blankly at the off-white ceiling.
Eventually the front door slams; Mom’s home. I listen as she rummages around, as her keys hit the table, as the fridge opens. My phone tells me it’s four eighteen, I’ve been lying here for two hours.
“Braden? Can you come here?”
She barely speaks loud enough, a jumble of profanities swim around in my mouth while apologies slur around in her own, she’s so drunk and it’s not even five o’clock.
I barely stride, it’s more of a scuttle to get to her before she breaks a glass and cuts herself again or trips over the foot of a chair and never gets up. A trail of her winter clothing—flannel coat, colorful scarf, a black glove here and a white one there—litter from the front door to the family room where she’s laying on the floral couch.
And I stare at my mother from the doorway, her once beautiful blonde hair hanging limply around her shoulders, her collarbones protruding from her chest, her sad naked face. Even at her worst my mother is a beautiful woman, no matter how much I hate her I can’t deny it.
She looks at me, her once baby boy grown into something more of a man, and I look at her, my once lovely mother morphed into something more of a self-destructing monster.
That same face contorts into disgust; she lifts a wine glass to her lips I hadn’t noticed she was holding before.
“What?”
It comes out more venomously than I mean for it to.
“I don’t like those,” she points to the designs sporadically littering my upper body. “or what you’re wearing, for that matter. You look like some homeless bum I pass in the morning.”
I ignore her comments, it’s the intoxication talking. We both know that.
She continues to emit callous half-thoughts at me over the rim of her glass as I put a pizza in the oven for her and grab a sweatshirt from my room. She’s still mumbling as I grab her keys off the table along with my own and I head to the front door, pausing only to jam my feet into my sneakers, as I turn to glance at her once more.
“While you’re out, buy some new jeans that don’t have holes in them,” she calls after me, looking like she’s about to descend into her version of nirvana.
My pockets are heavy with my mother’s keys and my cigarettes as I jump into my shit car. This is what it’s come to, having to take my own mother’s keys for fear she’s going to do something stupid. And this is what it’s come to, running away on a Tuesday night with a half-tank of gas, leaving Mom drunk and alone on the couch.
I try to sleep a little bit when I get home.
I kick off my shoes and pull my t-shirt over my head and crawl onto the duvet, staring at the cracks in the ceiling in my too-small bed, in my too-small room. It’s quiet, so quiet that I’m going deaf as I gape blankly at the off-white ceiling.
Eventually the front door slams; Mom’s home. I listen as she rummages around, as her keys hit the table, as the fridge opens. My phone tells me it’s four eighteen, I’ve been lying here for two hours.
“Braden? Can you come here?”
She barely speaks loud enough, a jumble of profanities swim around in my mouth while apologies slur around in her own, she’s so drunk and it’s not even five o’clock.
I barely stride, it’s more of a scuttle to get to her before she breaks a glass and cuts herself again or trips over the foot of a chair and never gets up. A trail of her winter clothing—flannel coat, colorful scarf, a black glove here and a white one there—litter from the front door to the family room where she’s laying on the floral couch.
And I stare at my mother from the doorway, her once beautiful blonde hair hanging limply around her shoulders, her collarbones protruding from her chest, her sad naked face. Even at her worst my mother is a beautiful woman, no matter how much I hate her I can’t deny it.
She looks at me, her once baby boy grown into something more of a man, and I look at her, my once lovely mother morphed into something more of a self-destructing monster.
That same face contorts into disgust; she lifts a wine glass to her lips I hadn’t noticed she was holding before.
“What?”
It comes out more venomously than I mean for it to.
“I don’t like those,” she points to the designs sporadically littering my upper body. “or what you’re wearing, for that matter. You look like some homeless bum I pass in the morning.”
I ignore her comments, it’s the intoxication talking. We both know that.
She continues to emit callous half-thoughts at me over the rim of her glass as I put a pizza in the oven for her and grab a sweatshirt from my room. She’s still mumbling as I grab her keys off the table along with my own and I head to the front door, pausing only to jam my feet into my sneakers, as I turn to glance at her once more.
“While you’re out, buy some new jeans that don’t have holes in them,” she calls after me, looking like she’s about to descend into her version of nirvana.
My pockets are heavy with my mother’s keys and my cigarettes as I jump into my shit car. This is what it’s come to, having to take my own mother’s keys for fear she’s going to do something stupid. And this is what it’s come to, running away on a Tuesday night with a half-tank of gas, leaving Mom drunk and alone on the couch.
♠ ♠ ♠
i don't even know anymore.