Page 54 of Only the Small Bones
Concentrating had been impossible lately, so I didn’t even bother trying to think back to an exact date. “I don’t know.” I settled onto a stool.
“I’m making your favorite. Your great-grandmother’s secret recipe.” She stole glances at me while she put the finishing touches on the jambalaya, fighting to mother me from a place of support instead of nagging. What was done was done. I hadn’t eaten in who knew how long, so she’d feed me now, and then find a creative way to encourage me into treatment for what we both knew was going on.
“Have you run at all this week?” She kept her tone conversational. “We’ve had a few sunny days. I don’t knowwhat’s been going on with all this rain lately. You’ve gotta get out there whenever you can.”
“No.” I could feel another headache coming on. Running helped. She knew that too.
She turned the fire down under the stock pot and set the lid on top of it. She’d made enough to last me a few weeks, maybe more. I’d need to freeze some of it.
“Well, I just so happen to be off for the next few weeks. I need the break,” she said, waving off my silent concern. My mother loved to work. She never took more than a day or two off, here and there. “Plus, Thanksgiving is in less than two weeks.” She rested her forearms on top of the island. “I figured you could come back to Brooklyn with me tonight. Spend some time out there, get a change of scenery. You could run with me and Delilah in the mornings.”
I squeezed her hand. “I’m pretty sure what you and Delilah do is called power walking. She’s too old for anything more.” The Yorkshire Terrier had been with her for over a decade.
“I’ll put her in the stroller then.” We both laughed, though mine felt tinged with mania. The tears in her eyes said she’d picked up on it.
“You told me you were okay,” she whispered. She’d checked in with me a few times, and for her benefit I pretended things were fine. “I’m worried about you, baby.”
I sighed. “Did you close your office at the last minute because you were worried about me?”
“Absolutely,” she said without hesitation. “You swore you were fine, but something felt off. I should’ve just shown up at your door like I’ve been wanting to, but my caseloads were this high.” She raised a hand above her head. “I kept saying: tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow...” She shook her head, squeezing my hand in return. “I heard it in your voice today,William. You told me so. And so I did what I should have done over a week ago.”
I felt the sudden need to cry. The urge felt crushing, debilitating. I wanted to be alone, even when I called her. I’d used my last reserve of strength to ignore my mind telling me I’d be a burden and to not to let anyone in. I couldn’t trust my thoughts right now. “What about all this jambalaya you just made?”
She smiled, pointing to a clear tote bag filled with her infamous Tupperware containers. “We take it with us, or course.”
I picked at my food and swallowed a couple more painkillers while my mother packed up the leftovers.
“Is what happened to the dining room the reason Ryan decided to go to Safe Haven?”
I’d managed to tell her Ryan was gone before drifting off earlier. “No. I think what happened at the gala did that.”
She didn’t pry any further. “It was the right decision.” She passed me another bottle of water from the fridge. “You need to stay hydrated.”
Itwasthe right decision, and I had the note he left behind to give me hope. It was impossible to feel hopeful though when I couldn’t find it in me to face our biggest hurdle. I needed to be free of my painful past. I needed to unlock the shackles it held me in. Believing I deserved heartache needed to end. But how could I end what I did, in fact, deserve?
I’d lapsed into another one of my extended silences, staring at a vein in the marble of the island. My mother tapped the space in front of me. “Huh?” I snapped my gaze to hers, catching the look of worry.
“I said put the water down before you spill it, baby.”
I’d uncapped the bottle, and held it tilted near my mouth. I set it down without taking a sip, massaging my forehead.
“You know, when you were about six, you came home from school one day in a rage.” She crossed her arms and settled back against the counter. “You were always friendly and sweet, with a dash of melancholy. Your father suffered from the blues too,” she whispered more to herself than me. “Your grandfather always used to say ‘What you got to be tortured bout, Mally?’”
He used to call me Mally, his Geechee accent made it sound more like Molly, though.
Even as a kid I had a touch of sadness in me. I felteverything, even the things other people were feeling.
“You were in rare form that day,” my mother said, not a hint of humor in her tone. I listened carefully, because this seemed different than a typical trip down memory lane. There was a reason she’d chosen this story. “The schoolyard bullies had found someone new to pick on, and you didn’t like it one bit.”
None of that rang a bell, but it was a long time ago. Six was a tricky age. Young enough for me to not remember certain events at all, but old enough for me to remember bits and pieces of others—especially if my memory was jogged. I swallowed at the thought—and what else it could apply to—before leaving it behind.
“So I wasjealousbecause they stopped picking on me to bother someone else? That’s… toxic.” And it didn’t sound like me at all.
“No, the whole reason they started bullying you in the first place was because you’d been distracting them from setting their sights on the new kid. He was the smallest boy in class, and he wore a knee brace. You would do silly things to draw their attention after school. Tell them video games are stupid, or show off your big, fancy vocabulary.” She rolled her eyes.
“Samuel,” I whispered. There was power in hearing a name. Memories of that time started trickling in. “I used to dare them to spell big words right.”
“You used to double dare them,” she corrected. “You were always such a bright boy.”
