Page 75 of Wrecking Boundaries

We said goodbyes the night before. Josie mellowed after Sarah’s camp suggestion and sounded like she might actually miss me. There was a point during dinner I would have guessed she felt differently.

“You’re dressed like an office lady,” I say, finally noticing her clothes.

“My job is in an office, hence the office attire. Remember me telling you they’re training me for a promotion?” JuliaKnowles is barely fifty, without a hint of gray in her light blond hair. It’s shorter than it used to be and pulled back into a professional knot.

“You’re in a pantsuit.” I didn’t think she knew those existed. “The promotion, yeah, I remember. Is it happening?”

It slipped my mind. Between my racing performance and other career worries, everything at home slipped my mind.

It shouldn’t have.

Mom grabs the partially full coffee pot, quickly pouring the contents into her travel mug. The machine, still brewing, drops coffee onto the burner with a loud hiss. She puts the pot back in so it can finish. “Later in the summer, I hope.” She adds creamer next. “I’m going to sell this house next year,” she says in an off-handed manner.

I’m not prepared. “We just finished paying for it.” It’s also our family’s home. Dad lived in it. “Where are you going to go? Why?”

“Josie will be on her own soon, like the rest of you. I think something smaller, with less upkeep and lawn to worry about. A condo would be nice. Maybe one in a planned community.”

“But why?”

Mom crooks her head and takes my hand. “Our lives are changing, Jake. You grew up here, you and your sisters, but we don’t need this place anymore. It’s work, an upkeep. You lack time, and I lack interest.”

“There’s plenty of time. I can come home more often.”

She laughs softly. “Jake, you have your career to take care of. If I’m not mistaken, you’ll be married with kids soon. That’s enough for any man.”

“Not me.” That sounds horrible and a rejection of Sarah. “You know what I mean.”

“Are you going to visit every weekend to check thelightbulbs, Jake?”

“Yes, if it’s needed.”

She rolls her eyes, but her features soften. “You’re a great son, Jake, and you’ve become an even better man. There’s so much of your father in you. I look at you, and I see him again.”

“It’s the hair,” I say to lighten the conversation.

This talk is strangely unnerving. It feels like we’re putting my father to rest all over again. That doesn’t make sense, yet it sounds accurate.

“No, Jake, it’s the man you are. He never knew when to quit, either. My parents said we were too young to marry, so he bought a ring. I told him your go-kart racing was a child’s fancy, which would eventually pass. He was correct about that, too. He poured everything into helping you succeed.”

The coffee maker beeps. I set about making my cup, relieved there is finally something to occupy my hands. “It killed him, Mom. He worked himself into an early grave.”

Her silence is long enough to tell me she’s considered the same. “I won’t lie. I’ve had that same thought before, up until I realized it’s complete bullshit.” The intensity in her voice at the end surprises me. “He died because sometimes horrible things happen. Sometimes, your husband dies young, leaving you and your children alone. It’s unfair, and I still feel anger over it. He didn’t die because of you, Jake. He died because sometimes horrible things happen. It wasn’t fair that I became a widow, and it wasn’t fair that you had to step up the way you did.”

Is coffee always this bitter? I pour it out, filling a glass with lukewarm tap water instead. “I didn’t resent any of you. Our family needed me. What else could I do?”

“Like I said. There’s so much of your father in you.” She tilts up my chin, inspecting my face like she did when I was a kid. “The younger two never knew him, but they always had you. All of them did, and that’s why it’s time for you to stop.”

“Time to stop what?”

She’s throwing a lot at me, and her speech feels like it’s leading up to a goodbye.

“Stop trying to raise them. They have me.”

“I’m not,” I say, but my rebuttal has little weight. Her statement almost perfectly reflects Sarah’s advice, too.

“You are, and I should have stopped it long ago. Also, no more money. I make a decent salary, so we don’t need more assistance.”

“But this house, and braces, and everything.”

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