Page 78 of Two Marlboros

“I don’t feel like playing with him,” I replied annoyed.

“Do you think I felt like waking up every night to feed him? Or because he had peed his pants? I’ll tell you: I didn’t feel like it, but I did. And do you know why? Because I’m an adult!”

I looked at the table, at the cabinets; everything but her.

“Sometimes there are things we don’t feel like doing,” she continued, “but we do them anyway. That’s your brother there, Nathan, and you’re an adult. And look at me when I talk to you!”

She took my chin between two fingers again and tugged it toward her again.

“If you are adult enough to drive a car and smoke, then you are adult enough to play with your brother.”

I kept looking at her only because I didn’t want her to tug at me again. I had never told her I smoked, but it was impossible for her not to have noticed and I should have known. I felt that I had let her down. It was nonsense, but in her eyes, I read resignation, as if by now I had been a degenerate child who was being tried not to be run down too quickly. I felt her affection slipping away slowly, sensed in those eyes a mere blame and not a motherly advice. My gaze slid to my feet, but she did not intervene, perhaps because I had to be adult enough to do it myself.

I listened to the sound of squished toy soldiers, increasingly sporadic, and brought a hand to the door handle. My mother took me by the wrist, without squeezing, and when I turned around, she used that same hand to caress my head.

“I just want our family to be together, Nathan. We’ve been through so much already, don’t put yourself through it too.”

I waited a few seconds, but she didn’t add anything else. I figured the lecture was over, but she stopped me again.

“Wait. These are for you.”

In her hand was something like five hundred dollars, which I pushed away. Like every time she had taken them from my father without him noticing, but I didn’t want to feel indebted to him.

“I don’t need these, Mom, really.”

I did need them, but I learned to take care of myself. I tried to leave, but I felt the cigarette packet slipped out of my pocket: she was stuffing the money in there. She handed the pack back to me and I still felt embarrassed to be the son she didn’t want me to be.

“Now go that way, he’s waiting for you.”

I just nodded and said thank you, after which I went back into the living room to Jimmy.

He was still lying on the carpet, holding the locomotive that he now drove unwillingly and enjoyed flipping over with each encounter with the toy soldiers. I approached and waited for his reaction, which did not come. I then sat down beside him, who merely raised his eyes to me, only to lower them again soon after. I waited a while, hoping that he would pass me some toy and come up with a story, but it was not that simple. I thought back to the disappointed look he had just before - I really was naive if I thought I could solve everything just by sitting by his side.

“Will you let me play with you?”

Jimmy kept tripping his locomotive and imitating its crackling sound, as if he hadn’t even heard me.

“Jimmy?”

There was a jump in the volume of smoke coming out of the little train, a sign that he had not only heard me but was also ignoring me. I reached out a hand to grab a toy soldier, but Jimmy grabbed the whole train and threw it on top of it.

“Ouch! Are you crazy?”

I felt my hand and pretended to be hurt, but it did not trigger any reaction from him. He merely put the carriages back in place and restarted the little train.

“I’m talking to you! Don’t throw the train, understand?”

He raised his little hand from the locomotive and nudged my knee.

“You only do that because Mommy told you to. You don’t give a damn about playing with me.”

“That’s not true.”

He was right, but I was an adult and had to do something to fix that situation.

“And then, you are not my real big brother.”

“What do you mean?”

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