Page 164 of Two Marlboros

Being on bad terms with my mother turned out to be far worse than being on bad terms with my father.

I struggled to breathe slowly, little by little, but eventually the air lacking forced me to take a deep breath. The air I threw out made a tremendous mess.

My mother focused on getting into the roadway, and I thought for a moment she had forgotten about me. I didn’t know if she was watching me or not - I hadn’t known since the beginning of the trip. The glove compartment and the sticky stickers on the windshield proved to be my lifeline.

By a cruel twist of fate, our car was very quiet. I tried to think of a speech, something to say, but nothing came to mind. It was no longer possible to talk like in the old days, because I was the jerk who had ruined everything. Alan had told me that the situation, according to him, was not as bad as it seemed; I, on the other hand, had some doubts.

I hoped all the way that my mother would start the conversation. From her tone I could have guessed what her feelings toward me were, but she did not utter a word for the entire trip. All the rest was my choked breaths and minimized swallowing.

We pulled into the underground parking lot. I realized only then that the radio was on, but that no one had turned it on. My mother parked the car among many others, despite the vacant spaces, then turned the key to turn the car off. We both took off our seat belts and I waited for her to open the door.

The problem was that she did not open it.

Noclickcame, nor did I hear her feet leave the passenger compartment. I barely rotated my gaze toward her, who was now staring at the space in front of her, observing nothing in particular.

It was summer and yet my fingers were cold, shaken by a slight tremor. My gasps were soon the only sound.

“I guess you came for a reason, since you couldn’t wait to leave.”

I had little desire to argue, only to burst into tears and beg for forgiveness, even taking all the blame if necessary. I was not looking for a confrontation, not wishing to crumble what little was left of our relationship.

“...Sorry.”

“What? I didn’t hear you.”

The lump in my throat silenced me for a moment, to pass the next.

“I wanted to apologize.”

She huffed, “For what? For acting like a child or for judging as you saw fit?”

I still felt like crying and asking for forgiveness as the only solution. Both of her sarcastic options hurt too much. Perhaps she had also felt similar pain to what I was feeling at that moment?

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to say those things.”

The biggest excuse. “I didn’t mean to.” “You misunderstood.” “It was my fault.”

The direction of her labored breathing suggested to me that she had stopped looking at the hood of the car in front of ours and turned toward me.

“No, that’s where you’re wrong. You wanted to say those things. Because the world is mad at you and we are all ungrateful assholes, aren’t we?”

I widened my eyes. What was going on? Where had my mother gone? Who was that woman? Did she really think that of me?

My breath cut off more and more every second, and so the air went into my lungs in hiccups and out in slow, long breaths.

I would have taken all the blame, but I didn’t want to hear things like that. All the confidence that being that Nathan Hayworth had given me was crumbling before my eyes, with nothing I could do about it.

“Come on, repeat a little what you said last time. Come on, grown man, tell me again that I never did anything for you.”

A car passed behind us, looking for parking. My hands were shaking more and more. Maybe my whole body was shaking too, and the grip on my stomach was back, along with the lump in my throat that shook me every time and made me take those slow, long breaths.

“I know what you’re thinking, you know. That your father found out about you, that he wanted to kick you out of the house, and that I didn’t have the courage to stop him. That’s it, isn’t it? Say it, say it went like that!”

A dry, loud breath of mine flooded the car. No, the truth was that I had begun to sob. I quickly clamped my mouth shut, as if it might have loosened the grip on my heart that I felt, a grip that was squeezing and crushing what little was left of my dignity. It squeezed and squeezed, until it hurt; then it loosened a little, only to start again right away, as if in a sadistic game.

Everything I had held in for years was now there, said out loud. I leaned my face against the back of my hand, but really, I just wanted to hide my shame. I was ashamed of who I was, maybe even of my own existence.

Hearing someone else say that made it sound pretty pathetic. How many times had I thought that? And how many times had I done it perhaps to hide another truth? I had never had the courage to face my father. I had never had the courage to be myself. I had preferred to be the boy bullied and abandoned by everyone, the one to feel a little sorry for.

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