Page 5 of Slayer Mom
He pulled back and gave me a cheerful smile. “Don’t you have lunch with dad? You’d better hurry or you’ll be late.”
“We have to go back to class?” Wat asked, sounding much sadder about that than moving away from home.
“Come on!” Lock jogged back to school with Wat, leaving me sitting on the football bleachers feeling like I was playing that new version of the tetris game where everything inverted without warning, all the pieces of my life floating around without any root or anchor.
I sat there for a long time, just sitting there. There would be no discussion. My boys wanted to move away from me and have exciting adventures out in the big wide world without me. If Wat was really lighting people on fire, if everyone agreed that the boarding school was the best thing, what could I do? It’s what they wanted. No, I didn’t need to discuss things with Hazen. We didn’t need to talk about anything ever again.
I walked slowly back to my car, ignoring the nice security guard who told me to have a nice day. I was not having a nice day. I needed to talk to someone who wouldn’t expect me to be reasonable and accept the sensible course of action.
I drove straight to the iffy side of town, not quite bad, because that was two blocks east, and parked in front of a tall house that had been nice seventy years ago.
I got out and went up to the gate, ringing the buzzer while feeling numb.
It took Gloria a few minutes to answer. She buzzed me back. “Just leave the package in the package drop. I don’t need to sign anything.”
“Gloria, it’s Lucy.”
“Lucy? Lucy who?”
I rolled my eyes. “Lucky Mayhem to you. Can I come in?”
“Did you bring alcohol?” she asked, but the gate swung open, letting me into the narrow courtyard filled with desiccated leaves and plastic bags caught in the spindly bushes. She greeted me on the front stoop, staring at me with the greatest suspicion. Her bright purple eyes clashed with her short red curls, but it did match the purple caftan she wore over her lean frame.
“I’m so tired,” I said, walking past her into the house. I threw myself on the nearest slouchy chairand put up my feet on the books and papers piled on the coffee table.
“Are you wearing a suit?”
“And uncomfortable underwear, because I didn’t have time to change. I just got dressed in the laundry room in the outfit I wore last night.”
“You’re saying that you’re here because you’ve gotten bored with the soccer mom lifestyle and decided that it’s time to try prostitution? I appreciate you thinking of me first when looking for a pimp, but the market for mothers past their prime is surprisingly slim these days.”
I gave her a good glare. “Why did I come here?”
“You want me to read your fortune?”
I glanced over at the room with beaded doorways where she kept her crystal ball for the naïve tourist. “No. I just want to drink with you until I forget my own name.”
“Oh, good. It would be easier to do that if you brought alcohol, but I may have a few bottles in case of emergency in the basement. I’ll be back.”
She headed down the stairs in her green tartan socks, leaving me to feel like an idiot for so many reasons. I had no idea what I was doing there, but I had no idea what I’d be doing anywhere.
“From here to there, from there to here, funny things are everywhere.”
I zoned out until she came back up, carrying two large bottles of really good stuff, a scotch and a schnapps, along with a box that I hadn’t seen for over fifteen years. I’d given it to her when I got married.
“Why did you bring that up?”
“Do I look like a storage unit manager to you? Put your past to bed the right way, or the old memories will haunt me instead of you. You have too many ghosts.”
She dropped the box on my lap then fell into thechair next to me. She handed me one of the bottles. “Send me a nice case of alcohol for Christmas with all that nice money your husband gives you.”
“It’s not nice money. It’s treacherous money filled with ruinous truths and cruel kindnesses.”
“You’re getting poetic before you’ve had anything to drink? This is serious. Let me guess, he’s cheating on you! Or you killed him because he was so boring that you couldn’t take it anymore. I get that. You were completely justified. It was self-defense. It was him or you.”
I sighed heavily and opened my bottle. She had the scotch and had already taken a big swig. I sipped a tiny bit of my schnapps and then capped the lid. I didn’t really want to get drunk at lunchtime. I should call up Hazen and tell him I couldn’t make it. Like he’d called me up to tell me that he wouldn’t make it last night. I took another longer pull from the bottle while anger flared through me.
I said, “Did I miss something? I feel like the play ended, but no one told me that it was only a play. I thought it was real life. What is real life if it wasn’t that?”
