A mother's love

Chapter 8

The next time Brian saw Brenda was the day after she had been absent in the library after school. He had been waiting for her for two days but when she came to the library she looked uncharacteristically out of sorts, which caused Brian to feel more uncomfortable in her presence than he normally did.

"I met your mother."

"You what?" Brian asked, shocked.

"Your mother, I met her."

"How? When?"

"Yesterday, when I was away from school. I got your address from your student file and I drove to your house. Your mother was home and she and I spoke."

Brenda's violation of his privacy was so extreme that Brian didn't know how to react. He was embarrassed to have someone at school know the truth about his mother but mostly what he felt was anger that he had to keep suppressed in order to preserve whatever this was that was taking place between them.

"Why did you do that?"

"Why did you lie to me? When I asked you why I'd never met your mother you told me that it was because she works two jobs. Why did you think that you couldn't trust me with the truth?"

"Having met my mother you should know the answer to that question."

"You can trust me with things like this, and I'm not just saying that because I'm your teacher; I care about you."

"There's nothing you can do anyway, as much as you may care the truth is that you can't do anything."

Brenda was wordless as she had no choice but to accept that he was right. In all the time that she had spent thinking about how much she wanted to help him she hadn't devoted any time to thinking about how she would actually help him.

"I can listen; if ever you want to talk to someone you can come and talk to me."

"I still have to go home to her every day, talking isn't going to change that."

"Knowing that you're not going through everything alone helps, trust me."

"What makes you say that?"

"Because that's how I felt when I was getting divorced."

"Did you have any children?"

"No, we never had any children."

"So you're all alone then."

"Yes, I am."

"Is that why you've been coming here to talk with me? Because you're lonely?"

"I think you're special, your insightfulness is beyond what I've seen in any student that I've ever had before."

"None of this has anything to do with you going to visit my mother."

"It's got everything to do with me visiting your mother; I don't want to see your potential wasted because you have to take care of an alcoholic."

"There's nobody else to take care of her, I'm all there is, and I'm used to it; I don't like talking about it because I don't want it to stop feeling normal to me."

Not wanting to talk any further about his mother Brian got up off the floor and left the library having only spent half an hour reading. He walked home feeling more confused than ever. He had spent two days waiting for an opportunity to speak with Brenda about his mother and when she had come to him to speak precisely about his mother he had run away. He wanted nothing more than to trust Brenda and confide in her about everything but his shame was too great; it was going to be a while yet before he was able to tell Brenda all the things he wanted her to know. He grew more confused when he asked his mother in the evening about the visit that she had received from his teacher.

"I never spoke with one of your teachers; the only person that came here was some woman trying to save my soul."

The woman that had come to their house proselytizing must have been Brenda in disguise. She had disguised herself, he surmised, because her interest in him was not that of a teacher concerned for her student, but something else entirely.