by Rod Foglio
him. In the end, the house was hers, and it was there that she would raise her son.
As the years went by she saw a psychiatrist, who almost helped her to see that Curtis’ infidelity wasn’t about her, but about him. She gained more self-confidence as she got older. Eventually, she married again; this time to a man she didn’t love. She was determined not to make that mistake twice. The second marriage was better and lasted longer, and he never humiliated her like Curtis had done. But it would always be Curtis that she loved, as foolish as she knew it was. She lived with the sad acceptance that as rotten as he had been to her, he was the love of her life. He had swept her off her feet, and it was a rare evening when she did not reminisce about how the attractive stranger with the hypnotic blue eyes had approached her in a bar. She, who had always felt so plain and socially inept, had landed a handsome man. She often fantasized about what could have been, and she second-guessed her own actions. What if she had taken him back? What if she had not doted on him so much while they were married? Had she smothered him? When she was alone, she sometimes cried about it. At other times, she took solace in her memories of the good times that they had, and fantasized about what kind of life she had wanted to have with him.
She focused all of her energy and attention into raising her son. Resembling his father from the beginning, Jason was born with the same pale blue eyes that Curtis had once mesmerized her with. She saw a lot of Curtis in the boy, and as he got older, in spite of never knowing his father, he continued to remind her of him. Occasionally, his mannerisms would mirror the way Curtis once behaved, the way he moved from room to room, or sat at the table with his two fingers pressed against his cheek. But there was one difference between the two that Eileen made sure of, that Jason respected women. On the psychiatrist’s advice, she kept no secrets from him, and he knew how his father had hurt his mother. He vowed never to be like him. Eileen had molded him into the man she had wanted Curtis to be. The two of them were close, but as he grew into adulthood he pulled away and she felt alone again, a feeling that was intensified when she and her second husband finally separated. After ten years in a stable, but loveless marriage, she decided to let the man go. It had been a marriage of convenience, and he was a role model when Jason needed one. She had used him for the benefit of her child, and though she did have pangs of guilt for doing so, she had no regrets about it. Her son was worth the compromise in her morals.
The evenings she spent by herself after Jason went away were lonely ones, but they were tempered by a sense of accomplishment. Jason did well at college, and his future appeared bright. He was a good boy, and she was very proud of him, but also proud of herself for doing such a good job of raising him. She looked forward to his phone calls with updates on how well he was doing at school. But one day he called to let her know that he had gotten a young woman pregnant, and he intended to get married. Eileen couldn’t be more disappointed.
“But what about school?” she asked him over the phone.
“I can go back later, when we have more money,” he offered optimistically.
“You won’t go back, people never go back once they quit. I’ve seen it a hundred times.” She wouldn’t hear of that happening to Jason, so she offered for him and his wife to come and live at home. While he finished school, she would support them. He would have to commute from her house, which would be a long drive, but they rationalized that he could minimize that by scheduling his classes into some sort of blocks, so he only had to make the drive two or three days a week. Since this would allow him to complete his summer quarter and graduate early in the winter, Jason saw the wisdom in the arrangement and agreed.
Eileen hung up the phone and stared sadly out the back window. Directly across, was the garage, and to the right was a small yard where she kept her vegetable garden. She had kept a garden for many years now, and it was her pride and joy. There was a large black bird perched on the fence this day. She’d never seen a bird like that in the area before. Is that a crow? she wondered. Thinking that it was a very pretty bird, she nonetheless figured that she had better put up some kind of scarecrow soon to protect her vegetables. She watched it for a moment before she turned away. Observant, the bird noticed when she left, and flew down to peck at her garden when she wasn’t looking.
When Jason brought his new wife home, Eileen took an immediate dislike of her even as she spied her getting out of the car from the front room window. She was very pretty, with long blonde hair, and her pregnancy bump was already visible. She wore a red dress that Eileen felt would be more appropriate for an evening out, then to meet ones new mother-in-law. Eileen tried to be gracious when they entered the house, but was taken aback by the girl’s aloofness. After giving a simple greeting, the girl barely said anything, and seemed more interested in the food Eileen had put out than on making a good impression. Her attitude led Eileen to conclude that she was selfish, and that she would not make Jason happy. Eileen already believed that this girl would ruin her son’s life. Deep down, she did not believe that she loved him either. She just didn’t believe it. The girl’s name was Candy. That’s a stripper’s name, was Eileen’s opinion on that. What a bimbo.
As an awkward conversation progressed, Eileen asked them, “Why didn’t you want to get married in a church?”
“Candy isn’t religious,” answered Jason.
“But didn’t your mother want to see you get married?” she asked Candy.
“Her mother passed away when she was young. She was raised by her grandmother,” Jason answered for her again.
“Oh, I’m so sorry,” Eileen said regretfully, and paused before she asked the next logical question, “Wouldn’t your grandmother have wanted to go?”
“She’s dead too,” Candy replied coldly.
Eileen decided to drop the subject then, and helped them carry their belongings up to Jason’s room. Candy only had one large suitcase and a small make-up case.
“Is this everything that you brought?” she asked her when they were upstairs.
“You are going to be living here.”
“Um, yes. I left everything else behind. Most of that stuff wasn’t worth keeping.”
Eileen thought it odd that a young woman would give up most of her belongings so easily. Doesn’t she have knick-knacks, photos, keepsakes from her childhood? I could never just leave those kinds of things behind. Then, just to be nice, she told her, “You can decorate the room the way you like.”
Candy looked around the room and then pointed at the St. Joseph statue on top of the bureau, “You can take that out of here.”
Eileen had placed that statue in that very spot twenty years before when Jason was a baby. It depicted the saint holding the child Jesus in his arms, in essence being a father to him. She looked to Jason, and could tell he wasn’t going to say anything to contradict his bride. So she picked up the statue gently and moved to leave the room, “I’ll keep it in my room for now.” She was offended. She was a practicing Catholic, and had raised her son to be one as well. “Do you want me to take his bible away too?” she added with more than a hint of sarcasm.
Neither of the kids answered.
The situation went from awkward to tense very quickly. Eileen had a chip on her shoulder from the beginning, and Candy didn’t help matters. Though Candy was attentive to Jason in many ways, she didn’t help out around the house. Jason cleaned up after her, which Eileen didn’t think he should have to do. She spent most of her time lounging around, either watching television or eating, and Eileen found that infuriating. But the most shocking part of the whole situation was that Eileen could hear them making love each night in their bedroom across the hall. It was always the same. She would hear Candy speaking softly, then moan in such a way that Eileen would want to scream at them to stop. She found it incredulous that they could do that in her house. Any logical thinking person would know that she could hear that. It disturbed her so much that she had to sleep on the couch downstairs in order to avoid it.
Jason wa
s able to get a part-time job at a grocery store and began commuting to college, but that didn’t last long. He soon became ill. It started early after the marriage. He was tired all of the time, and had little energy. At first he tried to overcome his fatigue by sure force of will, but as time went on he began to sleep more and more. Eventually, he simply could not handle the stress of working and going to school. Within a few months, he quit both. Eileen thought his illness was psychosomatic, and a doctor was inclined to agree. She believed that her son was unhappy with his decision to marry Candy, and was withdrawing from his responsibilities, though in a less overt manner than other men might do. Eileen went so far as to suggest to him that he send Candy home to her remaining family. Jason was furious with this suggestion, vowing that he would never do that, since Candy’s family had all but abandoned her. So as Candy’s pregnancy progressed, Eileen took care of the both of them, and between that and her job, she was nearing complete exhaustion herself. Jason had no health insurance, and Eileen could not afford to send him to expensive doctors for further evaluations. As the months went by, his energy dissipated until he slept nearly all day long, rising only to eat and