On Tuesday, my mother asked me if I wanted to help her clean out the attic. And while I had zero interest in going anywhere near her house, where Stupid Gary would inevitably lurk, I hadn’t spent any quality time with my mother in a few weeks, so I agreed. Luckily Stupid Gary wasn’t home, and I hoped he was somewhere getting followed by wild dogs. Or at least working late hours with a coworker he hated.
“Mom!” I called once I’d stepped through the front door.
“Upstairs!” my mother yelled back. I dropped my messenger bag in the foyer hallway and headed up the stairs, where I heard my mother shuffling around in my old bedroom. When I stepped into the doorway, I saw her on the floor surrounded by open boxes and their contents.
“Look at this!” she said with a grin, showing me a piece of paper. I stepped closer and realized it was a crayon drawing of alien people with very long legs and very tiny heads. On it was written “MY FAMILY” in large shaky letters. There were only three people, because even as a child I didn’t want to include Stupid Gary in any of my drawings.
“Isn’t it adorable?” my mom said. “Oh, this is so precious.”
“Is this how you define cleaning out the attic?”
“I was doing just fine until I found these boxes. Look at these pictures of you as a baby. I forgot I had these.” She held up several glossy prints of a baby curled up inside a crib. It could have any baby, honestly, if it weren’t for the tight dark curls growing thick at the top of my head.
“I should frame these.”
“Jesus, Mom, you can’t frame every picture of me as a child.”
“I know, but you were so cute. What a sweet baby you were.”
My mom wasn’t the most emotional mother in existence, but you wouldn’t know it from the way she was looking at my baby pictures. I leaned down and picked up a small stack, flicking through them with mild interest. I stopped when I reached a photo of my mother seated on a plaid couch, one arm cradling me while the other circled the shoulders of her boyfriend at the time—my biological father. I saw so few pictures of him, and my mother rarely talked about him. They’d been together two years, and only six months after my birth. I had one memory of talking to him on the phone, but I could have fabricated that. I knew him only from pictures, and from looking in the mirror every day. I had my mother’s mouth and nose, but I had his scrawny frame and thick dark curls—and his passion for booze. Alcoholism was genetic, I heard. It was why my mother didn’t want him involved in my life, why they hadn’t tried harder to make it work. They’d been young and stupid and at eighteen, my mom didn’t know shit about being an mother and a real working adult. So she broke up with him and moved back to her hometown of Los Angeles, where she met Stupid Gary and married him for his money. At least, that’s what made the most sense to me. Stupid Gary treated her like shit, so I couldn’t imagine her ever truly thinking he would make a loving husband.
As a child—and even as a teenager—I’d had various fantasies in which my real father showed up at our front door and let me stay at his place on the weekends. Because of the nature of fantasies, he wasn’t a poor drunkard with no concept of parenthood. Instead, he’d gotten his life together and worked his way out of debt and addiction just so he could be the father he’d always wanted to be. I’d be mad at him, but then I’d forgive him, because I’d never had a dad who loved me. We’d go do things together, though I had no idea what, because he was some redneck from Montana and I was the total opposite. But we had to have some things in common beyond drinking too much, right? Maybe we liked the same Netflix shows. We probably shared the same taste in shoes, because I’d always loved wearing cowboy boots and there was no other explanation than the fact that my dad wore them all the time. Even in the picture I held he wore them.
I must have been staring at the photo too long, because my mother stood and peeked over my shoulder.
“Ah,” she said. “Isn’t that most hideous couch you’ve ever seen?”
“Yeah, was that your decision?”
“I think we pulled it out of a dumpster.” She chuckled and moved away, leaning down to pull a stuffed purple bear from another box. “Aww, look! It’s Softie! Do you want to keep her?”
“Why would I want to keep my childhood stuffed bear?”
“For the good memories? What, are you too cool for your childhood toys?”
“Yes, actually. I’m an adult.”
“No fun.” My mother squeezed Softie against her cheek, and I couldn’t help but laugh. “Maybe I’ll keep her then.”
I snatched her away from my mother. “Give me her.”
My mother reached into her pocket and pulled out her cellphone. “Let me take a picture.”
“Mom…”
“I won’t put it on Facebook. Your secret is safe with me.” Grinning, she held up her phone. “No smile for me?”
“Ugh.”
She snapped the picture anyway, because I very rarely smiled for photos anyway. It was a running joke with Josh, but I was mostly just frustrated my mother. I looked down at Softie, whose eyes had sunk into her pilled fur with age. It was a bear that had been meant for a girl, but I’d latched on and even Stupid Gary’s constant griping about it wouldn’t change my mind. Stupid Gary was all about that heteronormative bullshit, so it was no wonder he’d never treated me like a son.
My mom nudged an old paper box with her toe. “Justin, can you go through these few boxes here and pull out what you want to keep? If I go through it, I’ll keep everything.”
I did as asked, pulling out more old drawings, some Power Ranger action figures missing various limbs (probably from being thrown down the stairs during battle), and a lot of sheets of homework I’d done in elementary school. It shocked me that Mom had kept all of this, as I hardly remembered making any of it. One assignment asked me to draw what I wanted to be when I grew up, and I’d drawn a man with an egg-shaped guitar—Rock Star.
Didn’t get very far on that one, did I?
Most of what I found I designated for the trash, but there were some funny childhood drawings and writing samples that I deemed interesting enough to keep. I also decided to keep my banged-up figurine of Princess Leia and Darth Vader—no way would I ever toss those. Jar Jar Binks was definitely meant for the landfill though.
“Why did you choose now to clean out the attic anyway?” I asked as I shuffled through more pictures of me as a toddler. My mother must have walked around with a camera around her neck all day.
“Oh, well...” She paused, heaved a heavy sigh, and looked over at me with reluctance. “You know Gary and I have been at counseling…”
“Oh my God, you’re getting a divorce?” I asked, trying to conceal my glee at the prospect. Would there be a day I could hang out at my mother’s house without worrying about Stupid Gary showing up and talking shit?
“Not yet. But…” She didn’t look nearly as happy about divorce as I felt. “I wanted to finish school first so that I could get a job. I have no income stream at the moment.”
“Fuck that. Take Gary for all he’s worth. You put up with his shit for twenty years.”
“Justin.”
“What? Mom, you gave up your life for him.”
“Because I wanted to be home to parent you and Zoe. He didn’t make me.”
“He didn’t complain either.”
“He works so much. Someone needed to be home for you two.”
Gary being a workaholic was one my childhood’s only blessings. But even that bit me in the ass, because he was always in a foul mood when he was home, and there was no one he loved to take it out on more than me. After I’d moved out, my mother became the whipping boy, and every time I saw her she looked older and sadder. Which was fucked up. Because Gary was such a shithead womanizer, my mom felt like she had to maintain a certain standard of appearance, and because of that, she could still get any guy she wanted. True, dealing with Stupid Gary gave her more wrinkles than she might have had otherwise, but she was still beautiful.
I was her son and her favorite child at that, but my opinion wasn’t all biased. Guys hit on her at the fucking grocery store. They were usually nasty sixty-year-old men who hit on women twenty years younger than them, but still. My mom could get it. And maybe, for the first time since she had me at eighteen, she could do what she wanted and chase her own happiness. I still believed she only married Gary because she wanted a father figure and supporter for me, not because she thought Gary would make a good husband.
“Did Gary cheat on you?” I asked.
“I don’t know. I don’t think so.”
“You don’t know?”
“He works so much. He could be having affairs with multiple women.” She brushed some of her dark hair out of her face. “We haven’t had sex in six months.”
“Oh. Well. I, uh, didn’t need to know that.”
“We stayed together for you and Zoe. Now that Zoe’s in college and you’re… doing whatever it is you do, there’s not much more reason to stay married.”
“You could have divorced him when we were in high school. We would have been fine.”
“Justin…” She bit her lip, her hands wrapped together in her lap. “I’m still unsure about all of this, and it’s because… well, after how he helped you with rehab, I’ve been worried that you might need him again.”
“Wait, what?”
“Honey, you’ve been doing so well, but I know that relapses happen, and if Gary no longer feels any need to support you—”
“You’re staying with Gary in case I relapse? So that he can pay for treatment? Jesus, Mom. That’s—that’s crazy.”
“If Gary hadn’t been able to pay for the nice place we sent you… I don’t know where you’d be right now.”
“I’m not going to relapse. It’s been three years and I haven’t even touched the stuff. I wouldn’t even know where to get it. I told you that part of my life was over.”
“And that’s wonderful! I’m so proud of you for how far you’ve come. But if anything happened to you and I couldn’t afford to give you the best—”
“I’m not going to let you be miserable because of the slim chance I’ll need Gary’s money.”
“I’m not miserable with Gary.”
“Yeah you are. Everyone is. Gary is miserable with himself.”
My mother sighed, probably figuring (correctly) that we were launching into futile territory. I could complain about my stepfather all day, a hobby my mother didn’t enjoy with nearly as much relish.
“I’m going to be fine, Mom,” I insisted, wondering if there was something about me that made me seem otherwise. I truly hadn’t touched or looked at coke in years. Losing all your friends and the boyfriend that supplied it to you tended to help a person stay clean. I’d always gotten it at parties or through friends, which was why it took my mother so long to figure it out. My intervention came once I got dumb enough to think I could slip money out of Gary’s wallet. “Josh is pretty good at keeping me out of trouble.”
My mother reached out and squeezed my shoulder. “I’m proud of you, Justin.”
My mother had told me that more than a few times, but it still made me happy to hear it. I’d disappointed her so often that despite everything else I was failing at in life, at least my mother felt comfortable enough in my stability to divorce her shitty husband. “Thanks.”
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