watch a cockroach creep across the table. This place is a dump. I should clean it. Michael’s apartment was a dump too, but he’s a bachelor, so that’s different. His place looked just like the guys’ places where I hang out on the weekends: messy, clothes on the floor, old pizza boxes stacked under the kitchen table, empty beer bottle boxes by the back door. Except he had books. Lots and lots of books, everywhere.
I liked picking up his shirts and folding them in a pile, even though I hate doing the same thing in my own house. My mother and I have fought endlessly about my laziness. At home, with my own stuff, I just don’t care. But at Michael’s, it’s like I wanted to clean the bathroom and take out the garbage and remove the bins from the fridge and rinse them down. It’s insane. I became a cleaning lady when I was at his place. Not because it disgusted me or because I wanted him to be impressed, but I think because I just wanted to take care of him. And that’s such a weird feeling, I can’t explain it.
I hear Scott’s voice inside my mom’s bedroom. They’re fighting. Their voices are somewhat muffled, but I can hear enough to know that Scott is pissed off about something my mother did, probably something stupid. Scott puts my mom straight. He doesn’t let her dick him around. She needs that. Someone strong and reasonable.
“I’m not your prisoner!” she yells, storming out of the room. She’s wearing a tight pink tank top and my blue boy short underwear that hangs loose on her.
“Hey, I’ve been looking for those!” I shout from under the covers, only to be drowned out by Scott’s bellowing voice.
“Then don’t have strange numbers on your phone! If there are no strange numbers, then you wouldn’t have to look!”
My mother storms back to the bedroom doorway. “I have friends, you know! I’m allowed to have friends.”
“Not if you’re fucking them, you’re not!”
Oooooo! I pull up the blanket to hide my smile. He’s totally right. Smart man. My mom does have fuck-friends. Everyone knows this. She’s a classic hustler, only she’s a woman. She tells men what they want to hear, gets what she wants out of them, and plays them off against each other. Even she calls herself a
cougar.
“Go to hell!” she shouts.
“Do you mind?” I shout, because I don’t like her being such a bitch to Scott. “I’m trying to watch a movie!”
My mom turns her head to the mound of blankets on the couch and sees my blazed eyes looking out. “Sorry, I didn’t see you.” She pauses a moment and does a double take, like she knows I’m in a medicated daze, but then she heads back into the room and closes the door behind her. The shouting continues. I turn up the volume so loud the TV vibrates and tickles my ears, and I start to laugh.
That night, I make a point of saying something to my mom about Scott, because, despite my sleepy fog, I actually worried about them all day. It seems I’m always worrying about my mom, and I’m getting real tired of it. Worrying when she’ll break. Fall apart. Fuck up. Get drunk. Get depressed. Crawl into her cave to hibernate because things are getting rough, leaving me to take care of everything.
“Don’t screw this up, Mom,” I say to her after she gets off the phone from talking to him, seemingly like everything is fine again.
“What does that mean?” she asks defensively, ready for a fight.
“Nothing. Just don’t go all crazy or get him jealous.”
“Thanks for the vote of confidence,” she snaps.
“Well … it’s not like I don’t talk from experience.”
She doesn’t say anything back. Probably ’cause she knows I’ve got a lot on her, and that there’s no way she could win this argument. She starts to tidy up the kitchen a bit and then finishes a half-eaten orange that’s been lying on the counter since yesterday.
“Anyway …” I let her off the hook. “I like him.”
My mom steps into the kitchen doorway, wipes her mouth with a napkin, and smiles. It was a rare confession of approval on my part. “You do?”
I smile. Suddenly the mood is lighter. I like that about me and my mom: we can say shit to each other one minute, then be nice the next. “Yeah. So like I said, don’t screw it up.”