Page 28 of The Way We Rot
“Hello, Adrian,” Mom said, appearing from the kitchen with a warm, tired smile, a dishtowel in her hands as she dried them. She looked older than thelast time, her eyes sadder. “You actually made it.” Her expression was one of soft surprise, or relief, like she didn’t think I would.
I nodded, sheepish, kicking my shoes off by the door, fighting the guilt. This was our weekly dinner, though I’d missed three in a row now due to what I told her were work commitments. It left me full of mixed feelings that churned good and bad.
Home was bleak, though. No one else was here apart from me and Mom. Dad was gone; my brother was gone. My sister had fled the nest the second she was old enough, and we heard nothing of her either, on the other side of the country, living out of the darkness of what had happened to us.
We grew up well, happy memories and smiling faces etched into every facet of this house, heights measured on door jambs, ugly trinkets made by clumsy toddler hands, but now it was dusty, cobwebbed with grief and pain.
And now it was just Mom and me left in this small desert town with a large women’s prison attached, whereshehappened to be. I’d grown up in the shadows of the prison, vowing never to step foot in it, not as aninmate — when it still held men — nor as a member of staff. I’d put people in it, sure, but would never let myself go behind those concrete walls.
How the mighty fall.
Yes, I’d put dozens of men in other prisons, just not that one. It closed before I became a police officer, and while I’d arrested women, I’d had no desire to keep track of them. Only the odd, special few.
I rose up from scuffling up Boba and gave my mother a warm hug, squeezing her a tiny bit too tight before kissing her head and following her into the kitchen. A delicious savory scent was drifting into the hall, my stomach rumbling in hunger.I hadn’t eaten a proper meal in weeks.
“How are you?” I asked my mother, looking around for something to help with. She was a pro, my mother, at making it all look effortless. A casserole sat on the counter, vegetables boiled in a pot, and not a surface messy. Not a crumb or sticky patch anywhere, like the food had appeared by magic before her very eyes with a tidy flick of her wrist.
She always nailed it growing up too, raising three rambunctious kids without missing a beat. We’d been happy.
So I settled for sinking my ass onto one of the stools at the kitchen counter, and watched her stir the veggies, trying to drum up some warmth. The distance between us was heavy, tight. Unwanted. But neither of us were ever able to shake it.
“I’m okay,” she said, in a voice that showed me she definitely wasn’t. “Just… quiet, you know?”
“Boba not helping with that?”
“Oh no.” Mom smiled. “She is. I take her for walks with the neighbors a few times a week, and we go to the doggy park when we can. But… dogs can’t talk back, you know?”
I leaned down and ruffled Boba’s fur. “That’s why I like them so much.”
Mum chuckled, switching off the burner and carrying the pot to the sink to drain the water. “I want intellectual conversation, not brainless over there giving me those big eyes for another treat while I spill my heart out.”
“Why you spilling your heart out, Mom?” I asked, stiffening up. “What’s going on?”
“Oh.” She waved her hand at me in dismissal. “Nothing new. Nothing. I think that’s the problem. We’re just sort of… stagnant, you know? I miss him.”
Mom smiled at me then, but it was another sad one, the kind of smile I’d come to know and hate – I wanted her happy, healed and whole. But we were still so far from that. She once said she had it all, a happy husband and kids, a warm home and one good vacation a year.
Now everyone was either dead or scattered to the wind.
While she was stuck in what had happened, unable to see a path through, I had one. I had a plan. A fucking plan. And was well on my way to enacting it. The threads all needed to line up, then I would make my mother proud.
She could never learn what I’d done, but I would know, and that would be enough. If I saw her after, I would be able to look her in the eye with pride.
And if I managed to come back home with a fresh joy in my heart, maybe it would infect her, too.
We settled onto the sofa with bowls of the casserole and watched our favorite show, chatting away, letting the warmth of the food and our connection heal just a little something inside of us.
“You’ve made me wait three weeks to watch these episodes,” Mom said, curling her feet under her and gesturing to the TV with her fork. “I couldn’t stand it.”
I chuckled. “You don’t have to pretend you didn’t watch ahead, Mother,” I teased, smirking when she went bright pink and scoffed.
She thought for a second about denying it, but then shrugged, all sheepish. “Okay, fine, but I’m definitely happy to watch them again. So many handsome men in suits…”
I laughed, trying so hard for it to be real. To want to be here, in this, with my mother and my dog, with comforting food in the house I grew up in. The empty house. My mother rattled around in it by herself, and I didn’t even bother stopping by for almost a month.
She smiled like it was working though, as if she believed me. This is what I could do for her, for now. Make her believe we were healing.
But for me, I was far from done.
