Where Is The Edge

Chapter 4

Flashback:
November, 1994

It was another day when the food got cold, and I had to put it back in the pan so that it could heat up when my mother arrived. The poor woman was again working overnight, this would be the third night in a row where she tentatively arrived at eleven o'clock at night, and at five in the morning, up again.

I could do nothing but sit and watch something on TV, read or listen to my music. I liked to cook but I ate very little. It was a bit boring alternating between all that while I waited for her to come home, before she didn't go out so late and we could go out and do something, or I could go out with Stefan because she was at home for me to ask her permission.

I tried calling her work once, and her irritating boss answered, when I asked to get through to her, he started laughing derisively and asked me not to distract her, so I knew she would indeed have to be here to ask for permission to go out, or else she would be upset not to see me here.

After what was about ten pages of my book, I heard the key go into the lock and turn the doorknob. I found her, a little disheveled, her heels in one hand and her handbag in another. I immediately got up to help her and she mumbled a "thank you".

"Hi, mom," I greeted her gently, "are you hungry? I made something new and I'm sure you'll like it," I offered, once she was seated where I was before.

"No thanks, I ate at work, save it for tomorrow and you eat," she replied in a sleepy tone, and managed to smile, "how was your day?"

There were times when she would smile even if it was the last thing she wanted to do, she would ask me how my day was even if what she longed for was to be able to go to sleep in her bed at once, these were things that, though I didn't say it, I could tell.

"It was good, I listened to the Stevie Nicks records you had saved and..."

"You dig into my stuff?" she interrupted me, a little exasperated.

Normally I used a portable CD player and speaker to listen to my music, but while sorting through her clothes in her wardrobe, I came across various works of art - Bon Jovi, Stevie Nicks, Queen, Nirvana and Fleetwood Mac. I didn't think it would bother her, anyway, I had decided to take out all her clothes to reorganize them so she wouldn't have so much trouble finding certain items she was constantly looking for because it was messy, I hadn't searched at all.... well, maybe a little bit.

Due to boredom, I was also tidying up the house or remodeling, on this occasion I thought she was going to like the fact that I had found her old vinyls.

"No... that-that box was in your wardrobe, I was tidying it, and when I was rearranging your clothes, I saw that box," I explained, she looked as if I had rummaged through a safe or something, as if I had done something illegal.

"Put that box back," she ordered me, "and don't search it again."

"I wasn't searching, I found it."

"I don't care, don't do it."

I sighed deeply, picked up the record box and carried it back to where I found it, but when I pushed it back, something was bumping into it, preventing me from accommodating it.

I pushed the box aside and stuck my hand in a bit, I felt a sort of a notebook? So I pulled it out. It was a photo album.

It was true that the house was rented and we couldn't do much to decorate it, but it would be nice if we framed some pictures and put them on a shelf.

I opened the album.

There were pictures of me as a baby, as a newborn, there were the bracelets from the hospital, the first lock of hair I had cut, also the typical picture in the bathtub, later there were pictures of my first birthday. It was when I turned to the next page that I felt like the world fell on me and crushed me.