A long lane at night

2.7. THE GREATEST REWARD Part 1

** ALLAN **

IT WAS ALWAYS A BLAST WHEN MY MOTHER CAME TO visit. Miss Margaret has always been that kind of person who everybody loves and her blunt personality aged very well with her. She's in her mid-seventies now and she remains the strong independent woman she has always been. Just make sure to not spoil any of her telenovelas for her and she will love you like her own child.

It's always great to see especially how my sons absolutely adore her. She is better than four grandparents combined, mostly because she doesn't have much of a choice. My father and his wife were good grandparents, but they were only the visiting type. They would come for special occasions, bring presents to the boys, and leave. But my mom was the real deal. She would take the boys with her whenever she missed them or she felt like Brian and I could use some alone time. She also came to sequester them if they were absent for too long. Since living in the big town and closer to her, Jack has made a habit for himself to regularly have lunch at his grandmother's and he always tells me he eats like he's six again.

As for the boys' other two grandparents, well, there's nothing much to say about them, is there? I like to forget that they exist and that is easy almost ninety percent of the time, because I've been with Brian for over thirty years and guess what? I still haven't met them. There are times I even imagine they're only a figment of Brian's imagination, because how can you have a child and simply say 'you're eighteen, bye-bye'? I don't know if that's what they really said, but the truth remains that, other for birthdays and holiday cards with tactless presents, they have been entirely absent. I did wonder once if Brian was the one faking those cards, much like he did Father Christmas for the boys, but he was the one who felt the most hurt when they arrived.

And, obviously, when I say birthdays, I mean Brian's and the boys', because they have never showed any indication of being aware of who I was, although I appear in lots of the pictures Brian has sent over the years. He never had the real strength to cut that frail cord, but I would never ask him to do so. I was brought up to believe you don't give up on your family, but what can you do when they have already given up on you?

Brian had his outlet with his Mama Maggie. His. His and exclusively his. It is uncanny how her entire persona flips when she's talking to him. She's Nanna Maggie for the boys, so that's someone closer to who Brian gets, but for everyone else, myself included, she's Miss Margaret.

Yeah, yeah, she loves me, she raised me well, she would give her life to save mine, all that, all that. But watch her for five minutes when she's with Brian. She coddles him. She coddles a fifty-two-year-old world-renowned musician. She has been to every single one of his concerts and performances since he went back to show business. I have as well, but I'm the husband, I'm expected there. Even the band members of his tours loved her. Things were not always that positive for her, though, because she always seemed to take the worst end of his fame.

Very early on, journalists were attracted to my story with Brian. 'A young prodigy returns to the spotlight thanks to his YouTuber of a lover,' but Brian and I have always been reclusive. I was much more of a public figure than he was, but unless I was getting paid, I wasn't showing my face anywhere. They were always trying to discover something nasty about either of us, trying to get a scoop of a failed minor celebrity marriage, but we never gave them anything. When the lights go out, Brian and I are just a regular couple raising their children ... in a private land that was once a public natural park, but those are minor details we don't focus on.

My mother had to move, though, if I recall it correctly, shortly after Brian had turned thirty, because they had discovered her address and started pestering her for an interview. She had refused to leave the big city, but allowed me to buy her a new house in a closed condo with some considerable distance from the first place and was glad to sell her old place and spend the money on herself.