A mother's love

Chapter 20

That evening, Reena offered to help Brian prepare dinner. Being more comfortable working in the kitchen alone he declined her offer. Reena made nothing of his decline of her offer and returned to watching Judge Judy. Brian fried burger patties to go with some round rolls he'd bought on the way back from going to see Brenda at school. Since leaving her Brian hadn't stopped thinking about her. He was being crushed by his fecklessness in the face of her pain and the possibility that he had done irreversible damage to their relationship by pushing her away after she had proposed that they run away together. He had left her at a time when she was in need to return to his mother, who'd still been asleep when he'd returned and after waking up was every bit as unknowable to Brian as she had been earlier when they'd returned home from the clinic. The thought entered his mind, watching her sitting and watching TV, that he'd made a horrible mistake by alienating Brenda in order to be close to this woman who was a mystery to him. He felt sorry for her, but she was not worth giving up Brenda for, Brian just hoped that their relationship was resilient enough to sustain the blow he had dealt it without it leaving too much of a scar, and that being an older woman Brenda would in time come to understand his reasons for making the choice that he had made. He was reasonably confident that he hadn't lost Brenda but he was well aware that when it came to his mother her reserves of patience were limited.

Most of Brenda's hurt was her disappointment in Brian for not recognizing the mistake that he was making in having faith in his mother. Brenda's hatred of Reena was strongest when Brian's burn scar was visible to her. Brian took Brenda's hatred of his mother as a sign of how much she loved and cared about him. Reena's fall had thrust them into direct competition with Brian having the responsibility of keeping them from ever coming into direct contact with each other, a considerable change from when he was able to be with Brenda without giving any thought to his mother, who had existed as nothing more than an unfortunate obligation he was burdened with. Eating their burgers that evening in the living room with the TV on and Reena still watching Judge Judy, Brian wondered why he didn't hate his mother the way that Brenda did, whose hatred had little to do with the fact that Reena was her rival for his love; she was offended on a human level by Reena's failures as a mother.

He stopped analyzing himself and returned to contemplating his mother as she sat next to him. He wasn't sure what to expect from the second chance at having a normal relationship that they'd been given. There was too much history for them to start from scratch, too many things that couldn't be forgotten or forgiven. Whatever they built was going to have to be built on the foundation of their turbulent past, an undertaking that was going to take time that Brian doubted Brenda was going to give him. As he struggled to find a starting point from which to begin things anew with his mother he continued to be assailed by his fear that he had placed his relationship with Brenda in far greater jeopardy than he realized. His feverish thinking paralyzed him and the only words that passed between he and his mother that night came in the form of the polite and reserved 'Thank you' that she said to him when she had finished eating. The size of the task before him was immense, much larger than he'd imagined it would be on the way home from the clinic on the bus when he'd first entertained the idea of having a more positive relationship with his mother.

Later that night, when he wassitting alone in his room at 12:30, having become unaccustomed to sleeping at areasonable hour, the time and effort that it would take to bring what he'dimagined on the bus to fruition came to seem increasingly unworthwhile, whilehis anxiety over potentially losing Brenda over it grew rapidly. He wasdistracted from these thoughts by the sound of someone tapping against hiswindow that he knew could only be one person. He slid the window up for Brendato climb in, and when she did she kissed him with desperate longing.