Great Expectations

I'm digging through a stack of CDs now, but most of the ones up here in my room are useless: the classics are scratched to the point of ruin, and the unlabeled ones are demos from defunct teenage bands I used to play with onstage. It'll be a silent romp with the buttons tonight, I'm not in the mood to play YouTube DJ. Besides, nothing I could find up here in my deceivingly safe hermitage would top the chorus of that last song I heard on my ride home. Those lines about first wives and everybody leaving are just too damn catchy. They made me run that last red light between my room and me tonight. And if I'd had someone in the passenger seat or a pack of smokes to console me I would've sped right past my driveway and went for the ride that I would've taken had I been seven years younger.

I used to do this with a beer can statue and an overflowing ashtray next to my mouse pad. Now I'm lucky if there's a squirrel on the tree outside my window or my ancient neighbor's out back sucking on a cigarette that should've killed him years ago. As long as this cursor's still blinking there's still hope. It was no overstatement when I said I need these people like holes in my head, though maybe that'd relieve some of the pressure. The phone keeps ringing, but it's not who I want it to be. Not tonight.

Sometimes my mother doesn't understand the power of words. She's a classic example of why one should respond instead of reacting, should take a few moments to let that filter between brain and mouth kick in. I know she usually doesn't mean to be harmful with her statements; at the same time, however, she should know her son well enough by now to realize that he's an over-sensitive emotional packrat who takes words, both written and spoken, very seriously. Tonight, Ma, you failed.

We were watching TV over a meal she'd made to lure me to the house. The fried flounder with onions always went so well with white rice, peas, and carrots. It was a combination I'd enjoyed since childhood, a tried and true time machine that takes me to a better place when there was still the semblance of any kind of family life. A segment about infant memory came on as we chewed our food at the table. She reached for the remote control and turned up the volume. The reporter said that newborn babies start memorizing events in the womb, simple things like the theme song of the mother's favorite soap opera. My mom smiled and looked over at me; "Stevie's Tricycle" she said. That's the title of a book she used to read to me through her stomach and after I was born. It's been packed away in a cardboard box somewhere for years, but if you opened it to any page and gave me the first few words I bet I could finish the sentence. And the colors, the lush greens of the bushes in the background and the red and yellow fruit, presumably peaches, hanging from the trees in little Stevie's yard. I remember those, too. The tricycle was fire engine red and had long streamers dangling from the ends of the white handebars. I wish I remembered more things like those streamers.

"Maybe you subconsciously remember what he did," she said after swallowing her bite of rice. I knew which "he" she meant, the only one it could possible be. I pretended not to hear her and hoped she'd change the subject. She didn't.

"I was seven months pregnant with you when he..." but I cut her off before she could finish.

"Please, Mom. Not to be rude, but I don't want to know."

I have enough reasons to hate the man, to fear him, to love him senselessly despite his abandonment, to pray I don't complete the cycle. Some pieces of the puzzle should remain brown-side-up for the sake of what's left of my own well-being. My mother didn't seem to agree. She wanted to fill me in on some abusive act that he perpetrated while I was still defenseless, not that I'm much less vulnerable now. Shit, I haven't seen the guy in almost three years and I'm still haunted by his Roman nose and blank shark's eyes.

The rest of the meal was silent. Mom acted as if I'd insulted her by not wanting to hear the tale that I knew would only break my heart further. Part of her was hoping I'd complete her sentences like I would've if she started reading "Stevie's Tricycle" so she wouldn't feel so alone in that memory. Thankfully, it's not one we share. I cleared my plate and put it in the sink making sure to express my gratitude for dinner. She nodded her head flippantly and took a sip of the white wine she was drinking from a dixie cup. The kitchen didn't feel as warm as the womb.

My stepfather was well into the vodka by the time I went back to the living room to talk to him about work. He repeated himself within the same sentences and sucked at the tumbler of ice like it contained some unknown cure. It seemed like a good time to make my escape since the conversation was going nowhere. I went upstairs to bid my grandmother farewell. She told me in her native tongue that she prays for me every day and that God is with me wherever I go. I rubbed her back and thanked her even though I wasn't so convinced as to God's intentions for keeping tabs on me. I feel more like the guinea pig or the jester than the beloved son most times. And that's just what my name's supposed to mean, Michael David: "He who is like the Lord; Beloved." It's laughable, really.

That laundry must've been crucial to the next day's outfit. My mother was folding it with the fervor of a desperate stockholder as the line graph plummets. "Goodnight, Mom," I said as I gave her a hug. She barely wrapped her arms around me, didn't look me in the eyes. "What's wrong?"

"I'm tired, Mike," she lied. She'd been tired all her life, partially from dealing with people like my estranged father and the drunk downstairs. It had never been an excuse to half-ass her only child.

I left her to her folding, grabbed the bag of leftovers she'd packed, and headed for my truck, fumbling for my keys in the pocket of my jeans. When the stereo came on I was glad to hear that blue-collar voice belting the woes of a lost generation. And when that song I mentioned earlier came on I hit twenty over the speed limit like that dreaded "he" was following me. Sometimes I wish that was the case. I'll never let my hostage get away.