Between Mom and Jo

by Julie Anne Peters

  There are garbage bags piled to the roof between buildings, and it stinks. I plug my nose as I get out. Jo’s suddenly at my side, guiding me toward the stairwell. “Your grandparents always figured me for white trash,” she says. “I guess they got that right.”

  I don’t know how to respond. Am I supposed to feel sorry for her? I can’t when I’m feeling sorry for myself.

  “I can see you’re so stoked over this deal you’re wetting your pants,” Jo says. “The exterior’s just a front. Wait’ll you see the inside. Think Trump Towers.”

  I follow Jo up the rickety steps. Her apartment’s on the second floor, halfway down a concrete walkway. She inserts a key in a door and screaks it open. An enormous dog leaps out at us, barking and drooling. I grab the doorknob to keep from being leveled.

  “Down, boy,” Jo orders the dog. It obeys, and sniffs my crotch. Jo rolls her eyes. “Men.”

  The dog takes an emergency leak off the landing. I hope there’s no one underneath. With a sweep of her arm, Jo motions me inside.

  “What’s his name?” I ask. As I venture one step over the threshold, the dog bears down my back to beat me inside.

  Jo cocks her head at me. “Well, he was first in line for death row at the pound, so take a guess.”

  I laugh. It feels good to laugh.

  Jo says, “Okay, so this is the skybox.”

  The apartment is cramped. Dingy. The one curtain on the window is falling off the rod. Boxes and trash bags climb to the popcorn ceiling. It’s been more than a week and she hasn’t unpacked anything. This feeling comes over me; it overwhelms me. It’s . . . ease. Comfort. Even safety.

  Jo swings open a door at one end of the room. “Oh my God!” she gasps. “We have a bathroom.” She slams the door. “Don’t tell the landlord. He’ll raise the rent.”

  I slug her as she passes by. She slugs me back, then punches on the CD player. Metallica bursts my eardrums.

  “What?” Jo yells.

  “What what?” I yell back.

  “That sappy smile on your face.”

  I try to wipe it off, but it’s stuck. For the first time all week my stomach doesn’t hurt and I’m not on the verge of tears. A bass riff claws at my cortex and slithers down my trachea.

  Jo crosses to the banged-up refrigerator and wrenches it open. “Let’s see. We’ve got leftover Chinese,” she hollers, “and rock-hard pizza. Or your favorite, chicken wings.”

  My stomach grumbles. “That’s it?”

  “Hey, my gourmet chef bailed on me.” She shuts the fridge.

  “No, I didn’t!” I scream. “You left me. You deserted me.” Our eyes meet.

  “I didn’t want to,” she yells back. “I —” Trudging over, she twists down the volume on the CD player. “I didn’t have a choice.”

  “Yes, you did. You could’ve stayed.”

  She shakes her head. “No, Nick. I couldn’t.”

  I know it, but I don’t want to believe.

  “I stayed as long as I could. You knew what was going on,” she says. “I don’t need that shit. I don’t stay where I’m not wanted.”

  “You were wanted.” I glare at her; soften the look.

  She looks away. Her face sags.

  I don’t want her to cry. I add, “You could’ve taken me with you, at least. Are you kidding, leaving me alone with the Ice Queen?”

  Jo shakes her head at the floor. “You weren’t mine to take. And don’t disrespect your mother.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because she’s your mother.”

  “But why couldn’t you —”

  “Because I never adopted you.” A plastic bag rustles, and Lucky 3 launches up. He leaps on Jo’s front and about knocks her off her feet. Jo scruffs his ears. “You goof,” she says.

  “What do you mean?” I say again, louder. “Why didn’t you adopt me?”

  “Because I was trusting, okay? And stupid.” Jo pushes Lucky 3 down. “Can we talk about this later?” She heads for the bathroom.

  Why would she have to adopt me? She’s my mom.

  “No, we can’t.” Now I’m mad. I’m enraged. All the times she made me fight, made me decide what was worth fighting for. I charge her. “Did you even want to take me?” I shove her from behind. “Did you?”

  “Nah.” She swings around. “You didn’t mean anything to me.” She clenches the tendon on my shoulder and squeezes.

  I club her off. I’m not joking. “Why didn’t you fight for me?”

  She opens her mouth, but no words come out.

  “Did you even ask?” Because that’s what’s been bugging me. Killing me. I never once heard Jo ask for me. I never heard her argue with Mom, yell, scream my name, insist, “Nick is my kid. He’s going with me.” Aren’t I worth fighting for?

  Off a TV tray, she picks up an empty McD carton and opens it. A shred of shriveled lettuce inside. She gazes into the depths of the cardboard for seven, eight seconds. I whack it out of her hand. “Answer me.”

  She lifts her eyes. Her lips part. “I can’t fight her for you.” Jo’s eyes go dead. “I won’t.”

  A rising panic lodges in my chest. “Why? Don’t you want me?”

  Without warning, Jo crushes me to her. She holds me so hard my spine cracks. “Of course I want you. You know I do.”

  “Then why?” Why? I choke back tears.

  Jo doesn’t answer; just holds me and rocks me. We stay that way for a long time. I hang on to her. I never want to let her go.

  She wants it too. I know she does. She wants me.

  Lucky 3 starts barking. Barking and lunging at us, snagging Jo’s sleeve in his teeth. Jo and I separate a little. Stupid dog. I think, Go away. She doesn’t need a dog. She needs me.

  Later, we’re sitting on the floor, sorting through CDs. “Some of these are mine, you know,” I tell Jo.

  “So take them,” she says.

  “I don’t want them. I’m just saying . . .” I scan around the apartment; check it out. “Where do I sleep?” I ask.

  She doesn’t hear.

  “Where —”

  “You’re not staying.”

  I start to blow. “But —”

  “Your mom doesn’t even know you’re here. If she did . . .” Jo slices a finger across her neck and makes a slitting sound in her mouth like paper ripping. “I’ve got to get you home soon.”

  Home, I think. Where is that now? Here? There? I know where I want it to be. For no reason Lucky 3 scrabbles to his feet and romps through the garbage bags. This dog is mental. He drops a slimy tennis ball into my lap.

  Jo says, “I haven’t talked to your mom yet about . . . you know, visitation rights. All that crap.”

  “So call her.” I lob the tennis ball toward the kitchen, and Lucky 3 bounds after it. He slides across the linoleum and crashes into the stove, then gets his paw stuck in a pizza box and drags it across the room. It makes us both laugh. Dumb dog, I think. Retard. Okay, I already love this dog.

  “I can’t talk to her yet,” Jo says. She pries open a CD case to check if there’s a disc inside. Most of them are empty. The ones that aren’t contain mismatched CDs. “Besides, I don’t have a phone. I’m getting one. It’s scheduled for installation on Monday, supposedly.”

  “I’ll talk to Mom and call you. Then you can come and get me.” Summer vacation starts in ten days. I hadn’t been looking forward to it until now. I’ll stay here with Jo. We’ll do all the stuff we used to do, like fish and spar at the gym and go target practice. My marker’s propped in the corner, I see. It’s globbed with paint. We’ll rent movies and slum at the mall. “Do you have a pool?” I ask.

  “Does Trump Towers have a pool?” She clicks her tongue. “A cesspool.” She continues to open and close the CD case. Her knuckles are raw and her hands are chapped. I wonder if she’s still working at FedEx. I’m afraid to ask. The look on her face is the same one she had when she told me about Mom’s cancer.

  “What?” I ask. Nobody died. No one’s dying. My Barbour’s
sea horses have parasites or something, but I can treat them. “You don’t want me here, is that it?”

  Jo casts me a withering look. “You know that’s not it. It’s just . . .” She shuts the CD case and pitches it across the room. “If you’re here, you’re not there.”

  I widen eyes at her. “Brilliant, Einstein.”

  She reaches over and smacks me upside the head. “Don’t be a smartass.”

  I catch her wrist and yank. The force topples her over frontward. She throws a headlock on me and we wrestle in the trash. Lucky 3 barks his brains out. Jo and I noogie each other and roll. I pin her to the floor. “Onetwothree.” I slap the mat. I leap up and dance around like Rocky, my arms in the air. I come at Jo again.

  “Time,” she calls, grinding her back into the wall. I slide down beside her. We’re both winded. I pick up a magazine from a stack by the TV tray. It’s the Sports Illustrated swimsuit edition. Jo and I always fight over it.

  She says out of nowhere, “What’s your philosophy of life, Nick?”

  “What? What do you mean?”

  “You know what I mean. What do you tell yourself at a time like this? How do you make it through?”

  You do what you need to do. Right? It sounds lame, particularly in this situation. Mom’s philosophy, ignore it and it’ll go away, is even weaker.

  Jo goes, “You handle this shit better than me. I need to know what you tell yourself. What’s your pick-me-up line?”

  I shrug. “I don’t know.”

  “Come on. I need a little inspiration here. My well’s run dry. I’d fill it with beer if I hadn’t made this regrettable promise to this sorry-ass person who doesn’t even have a philosophy of life.”

  My philosophy? “Life sucks and then you die,” I say.

  Jo blinks at me. She crunches her head against the wall and starts to shake. She’s laughing. Uncontrollably. Except it isn’t the kind of laughter that billows up from your belly and disperses in balloons of happiness and joy. The kind that makes you forget how bad things really are and that you’re hurting, maybe bleeding, afraid of dying or going away. This laughter is harsh, strident. It hurts to hear.

  I squinch my ears and will her to stop. Stop! She goes, “Hoo boy, Nicky.” She slaps my bent knees and pushes to her feet. “Let’s go rustle up some grub.”

  She waits for me at the door, but I don’t move. I can’t. I can’t tear my eyes away from the object in Lucky 3’s mouth. It’s one of Jo’s grizzly bear slippers, all ratty and ripped. I didn’t know she kept those.

  Out of this river inside me a tear sluices down my cheek. Then another. I’m bawling, and Jo’s cradling my head in her chest and shielding me with her body, and she’s crying too. Tears are gushing from my eyes and I’m sobbing so hard I’m hiccuping. Jo’s wailing. Jo’s leaking more than me.

  After we soak each other in tears, we sit for a while, recovering.

  Jo speaks aloud the words I can’t form: “God. I never knew anything could hurt this much.”

  Mom

  She runs a yellow light, her eyes shooting flames and her mouth crimped, so I know she’s pissed. Good. She had no right. She didn’t even ask what I wanted.

  We pull into the garage, into the vacant space left by Beatrice. There’s only dust and cobwebs where the tools used to be. Empty hooks for fishing gear. A busted shovel. The garage is haunted. The whole house is haunted.

  Mom gets out and leaves me in the car. Fine. I’ll live in here.

  She’s standing by the sink, drinking a bottled water when I stumble in a minute later. The empty garage creeps me out.

  “I’m not proud of you.” The first words she’s spoken since we left Neenee and Poppa’s.

  I want to say, Yeah? Well, I’m not proud of you either.

  My pits are soaked and my hands are clammy. It’s hot, sweltering. The air conditioning in the car is busted, and Jo’s not here to fix it. I want a soda, but Mom’s giving off venomous vibes, and I’m not walking past her.

  “I thought we had a deal.” Her eyes cut to me.

  “You did,” I say. “You never asked me.”

  Mom drops a jaw. “We discussed all the options. Where were you?”

  Here, I think. Invisible. Listening to you go, “Blah, blah, blah.”

  “You didn’t want to go to camp and you refused day care at the Y and you couldn’t come up with the names of any friends whose parents I would’ve been happy to call and ask if we could work out a plan for having you stay with them during the day. So we settled on Neenee. You were happy with that.”

  “No, I wasn’t. You were.” I hated the idea. A whole month at Neenee and Poppa’s? I’d die of boredom. They didn’t like me watching TV during the day or playing video games. What was I supposed to do for a whole freaking month? “I hate it there.”

  Mom scrapes out a chair and sits. She presses the sweating bottle of water against her forehead. I saunter to the fridge for a Coke.

  “Who were you calling?” she says, accusingly. She adds under her breath, “As if I didn’t know.”

  Then don’t ask, I think. The icy cold fizz in my mouth is a welcome relief. I slug down half the can. I’m hungry too, but I’ll eat later. After Mom leaves. After she runs to her. I know that’s why Mom wanted me gone, so she could be with her.

  “Did you realize it was long distance? Do you know how much Neenee’s phone bill is going to be?”

  Like I care. That telephone in the basement was my only link to life. The only human connection keeping me alive.

  I feel better now. Calmer. I miss my fish. She’d better have followed my care and feeding instructions to the letter. As I head for my room, Mom says at my back, “I’m not done talking to you.”

  Blah, blah, blah. I wonder how my Acropora frag is doing. I should’ve been here to keep an eye on it. Coral is fragile. I should never have trusted her with the tanks. If she doesn’t know how to take care of me, how could she take care of my fish? I go to close my door, but Mom’s followed me in and pushes it open. “How many times did she call you?”

  Everything looks the same. Neater, maybe. Kerri better not have been in here.

  “Nick, I asked you a question.”

  It’s too quiet. Too. Freaking. Quiet. I crank on my stereo full blast.

  Mom charges across the room and slaps off the power. “Answer me.” She whirls and clenches my limp arms. “Look at me when I’m talking to you.” She gives me a shake.

  My eyes bore into her chest, her hole. They slowly rise up her neck to her face. “She didn’t call me. I called her.”

  Mom blinks, like she doesn’t expect that.

  “Why can’t I stay with Jo?” I ask. “She’s home during the day. She wants me around.”

  Mom’s eyes veil.

  Okay, that wasn’t fair. I know Mom has to work. But none of this is fair.

  I tell Mom, “She’s working nights now so she’s around in the daytime. There’s plenty to do. You wouldn’t have to worry about me keeping busy.”

  Mom pivots and veers toward the door.

  I yell, “I’m speaking to you!”

  She doesn’t even slow. Fine. Be that way. I’ll just talk to Jo on the phone all day here.

  “I don’t like you going there.” Mom reappears on the threshold. “I don’t appreciate how surly and uncommunicative you are every time you come back from there. And that neighborhood she lives in isn’t safe.”

  Lies. Excuses. Why doesn’t she just tell me the truth? I say it for her: “You hate Jo.”

  Mom affects her classic look: You wouldn’t understand.

  But I do understand. I’m smart enough to understand, Mom. You’re selfish and I hate you.

  The doorbell rings as I’m dragging to the kitchen for a bag of chips. I feel sluggish. Mom’s upstairs, creaking around. The shower just came on.

  Whoever’s at the door knocks. I know who it is. I don’t answer.

  The door opens. Why’d she even bother to knock if she has a key?

  “
Hey, Nick,” Kerri says, bounding into the kitchen. “I didn’t know you were back.” She sets a vase of flowers on the table.

  I don’t respond. We’re out of chips. When Jo was here we always kept a stash of junk food in the bottom cupboard. Kerri must’ve found it and told Mom. Or ate it herself.

  “You want to come to dinner with us? We’re going to that new sushi bar down the street.”

  I look at Kerri.

  Her eyes widen, and she claps a hand over her mouth. “Ooh, sorry. I forgot. You don’t do fish, do you?” She rubs a knuckle against her front teeth. “They have teriyaki and rice bowls.” Her eyebrows arch. She has penciled brows. Fake brows.

  Shut up, I think. You make me sick. Be careful not to touch her, I think as I slip behind and head back to my room. My sanctuary. I’ve missed it. My tanks, my fish, the soft buzz of lights and whirr of motors. I swear I can hear my fish whispering to me, communicating with me, telling me what they want and need. They’re my only company now that Jo’s gone. My sole companions, so to speak.

  I stretch out on my bed and close my eyes to memorize the feel and sound and smell of my aquariums. I imagine I’m with my fish in the water. Free, untethered. The glass walls dissolve and our space expands, flows to the open ocean. This is the only space I have left here. When Jo moved out, she took more than her stuff. She stripped the soul from this house.

  A sharp rap on the door snaps my thoughts back.

  What now?

  “Nick!”

  It’s Mom. I roll off the bed, taking my time. I wrench open the door.

  Mom startles, like she didn’t think I’d come.

  Fooled you.

  “We’re going out to dinner. If you need me, I left the number by the phone.” She waggles a stiff finger at me. “Stay off the phone.”

  I want to break that finger. I eye Kerri behind Mom, rolling her eyes at me. What? We’re not in this together. We have nothing together.

  Mom adds, “If you get hungry, there’s a quiche in the refrigerator that Kerri made.”

  I’d starve before eating her food. I’d poison myself before I’d be poisoned by her.