Ain't No Mountain High Enough

"Stranger in Moscow"

We both stared at each other in shock for a solid five minutes before my mother finally came out into the hall and shut the door behind her.

I couldn't believe what I was seeing. There were no dark bags under her eyes, and her hair was no longer the frazzled, stringy mess I remembered it to be. She actually looked like she had been taking care of herself. She had even put on healthy weight. It was like she was a completely new person!

"Randall?" she said after a moment. Her voice sent memories reeling through my mind. Her eyes just kept getting bigger as she studied me with the most intense stare I've ever seen. "Randall, it's really you!"

I stared at the floor. "Yeah..."

"What are you doing here?"

That made me look up. "I came to see you, I guess." Sarcasm leaked into my voice. What else would I be doing here? I sighed and tried not to let my temper blow this early. Seeing her face again was making the internal volcano rumble. Here she was all this time and she never bothered to come see me!

"What...what happened to you?" She gestured to my wheelchair.

"Car accident," I said quickly. "Don't want to talk about it. I want to know why you've lived this close to me all this time and you never came to see me."

She looked taken aback by the comment, which only made me more annoyed. Was it wrong for me to wonder such a thing? She wrung her hands and noticed Arjun standing down the hall, which made her eyebrows raise.

Arjun stood unmoving, and he simply stared straight ahead at the wall. If he noticed my mother looking at him, he was pretending he didn't.

"Look at me," I said a little more sternly than I meant. It did the job, though. She turned her hazel eyes towards me, and the sadness in them made me sick. What was she sad about? That I'd ruined her hiding spot?! "Answer my question."

"I-I wanted to, Randall," she said as she raked both hands through her hair. "I've missed you so much...but I thought maybe you didn't want me to come back. I've done such horrible things to you... You didn't need me in your life."

I straightened in my wheelchair and felt the volcano starting to blow. Once it went, I'd have no control over whatever I'd say to her. "You don't think I wanted my own mom in my life?" I said. I shocked myself with how cold my tone sounded. She flinched like I physically hit her. "You think I wanted to be alone?!"

"I knew you'd be fine without me!" she cried. She backed against the door, and fear that she would go inside her room and not talk to me made me roll myself forward with one hand and grab one of her wrists with the other.

"Maybe I was!" I said. "Maybe I was fine! But what kind of mother ditches her own son when he needs her most? What kind of mother acts like her son doesn't even exist? After Dad died, you ignored me and told me to get out of your life! What kind of mother does those things?!"

"That's why you don't need me!" She pulled herself from my grasp to wipe the tears out of her eyes. "I was horrible to you! Everything I did haunts me, especially everything I did to you! I had to get away from you, because I was so afraid of what I'd do next!"

I rolled backwards to put space between us. Yeah, she'd hurt me before, but that didn't mean that I never wanted to see her again. There were times where she told me how much she loved me when I was a kid, and I just wanted to know if that was still true — if it was ever true.

"I'm different now, Randall," she said, sniffling and wiping her eyes. "I don't drink anymore or anything. But-"

"Then why didn't you come and see me?!" I cried. "Was it too much trouble to drive three hours to see your own son?!"

"I already told you why," she said, her tone aggravatingly calm. "Randall, you need to live your life without me in it. You would be happier if you never saw me again."

"Don't try to tell me what would make me happy!" My voice cracked with emotion. Tears stung my eyes, and it was all I could do to hold them back. I paused to try and collect myself (in vain), then took a deep breath before I kept going. "Mom, I...I wanted you to come for me...I kept thinking you would come home, but you never did. You didn't leave a note, you never texted or called. You just left. I didn't know what to do. If it wasn't for Arjun and his mom I don't think I could have made it." I gestured towards Arjun, who was still staring at the wall.

My mother crossed her arms and nodded slowly.

I felt the internal volcano go quiet, but it might have been because I was just plain exhausted from everything that was going on. I was tired of getting angry. "Mom, when...when I was in that wreck, I almost died." I pressed my hand to my forehead. "And they called Arjun to tell him what happened since they couldn't get you to answer the phone." I locked eyes with her, though my vision was blurry. "You should have been there, Mom. When their kid almost dies, a mom is supposed to be at the hospital with them. And you couldn't even pick up the phone!"

She looked at the ceiling and took a deep breath. "I got a new number," she said, like that made everything okay.

"But if you didn't, would you have come if you got the call?" I felt it was a dangerous question, but I had to know.

She kept on staring at the ceiling, and I couldn't decide whether she was trying not to cry, or if she was praying. Eventually, she said, "I don't know."

I don't know. What the heck was that supposed to mean?! I quickly wiped at my eyes, then started to turn away. "Ok." It was all I could say to that.

"Randall..." She must have been unable to come up with a reason for me to stay, since she let me go on down the hall and around the corner with Arjun.

Maybe it had been a bad idea coming here after all.

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Listen to "Stranger in Moscow" by Michael Jackson!

Peace ✌️~ A.J.