A mother's love

Chapter 22

The breakthrough with his mother that Brian was waiting for was no closer days after her fall. The tense atmosphere that pervaded any common space they inhabited was unabated as they failed to interact with each other with anything but the most painstaking tentativeness. Reena continued to take good care of herself without Brian needing to persuade her, there were even times when he came home from school and found her preparing dinner. Alcohol was not an issue and with each day that went by without it being an issue the more confident Brian became that the change his mother had undergone was real and would prove lasting. Little conversation passed between them and it was always stilted. She'd ask him how was school when he returned home and he'd answer 'fine'; he'd ask her how her day had been and she'd answer 'fine'; if she wasn't already preparing dinner when he returned home and he asked her what she wanted to eat she would answer 'anything'. Understandably Reena was curious about Brian's girlfriend April. Not a dinner went by when she didn't ask about her, questions which Brian answered with truths about his relationship with Brenda.

"Do you sneak out of the house often to go and see April late at night?" She asked him one evening during dinner.

"We see each other every night," Brian responded expressionlessly.

"And where do you two meet?"

"At her apartment."

"Are you two having sex?"

"We are."

"And you're being safe?"

"Yeah mom, there's nothing for you to worry about."

"As long as you're being safe I'm not worried; I trust you."

"I haven't been to see her since the day you fell on the glass, I've been staying at home in case you need me for anything."

"You don't need to worry so much about me, I'm fine, almost all of my cuts have healed and I'm not in any pain, you should feel free to go and visit her if you want."

"Thanks, I'll tell her."

"Do you love her?"

"I do."

Then Reena looked at Brian with a wistfulness in her eyes that he was seeing for the first time.

"What?" He asked her, jarred by the look she was giving him.

"Nothing, it's just that you're all grown up and I completely missed it, and there's nothing I can do to fix that," She said regretfully.

Moments such as this were moments of extreme ambivalence for Brian. On the one hand his mother displaying regret was a positive sign that she was becoming less self-absorbed, on the other hand it angered him that she felt she was entitled to feel regret since it was her fault that he had grown up outside of her field of vision. The latter emotion he suppressed; the only way forward for them was for them to leave the past behind.

The only aspect of his relationship with "April" that Brian had not been entirely honest with his mother about was them no longer seeing each other late at night. The visit that Brenda had paid him in his room on the night of their fight in the storeroom was followed by others. Needing to satisfy their lust they had started making love in the storeroom after school despite the danger the noise posed, but this wasn't enough for Brenda, she had to have more, and so on her second visit, despite being warned about the thin walls by Brian on her first visit, she seduced him and they made love on his bed, a cramped, cautious, heart racing affair. Being in his room where they had to be extra careful not to make any noises that would be audible to his mother gave them both an adolescent thrill. Not even after Reena said to Brian one evening that she had heard noises coming from his room and asked if it had been April, to which responded that she had been missing him so she came to see him, did he say to Brenda that they should stop, although the deception that they were perpetrating on his mother did start to gnaw at his conscience, especially after she expressed disbelief at the fact that they were having sex in his room and she was yet to meet her. Reena had eased into the topic of meeting April, at first she had worried that she and Brian weren't close enough yet for her to make such a request but the more he talked about her and how much he loved her the more interested Reena became in meeting her and the more she made her feelings known to Brian, who demurred every time. Reena didn't interpret his repeated demurrals as being suspicious; like she said, she trusted him.

Not until his mother started asking if she could meet his girlfriend did Brian give any serious thought to the peculiarity of his relationship with Brenda. The secrecy that it required had always made it seem special, not untoward, as if what they had discovered was disapproved of by others because they didn't understand, they weren't possessed with the requisite depth to appreciate the power of their love to overcome the barriers of convention. In no way was he doubting his love for Brenda or her love for him, but the general reasons for why their relationship would be subject to not just public disapproval but legal intercession started to concern him. Having gotten the clear from his mother to start leaving the house again, Brian returned to spending his nights at Brenda's apartment and things returned to normal.

"Is what we have really so special that we're right to ignore what other people would think of us if they were to find out about us?" He asked her in bed one night after they'd made love.

"Yes, of course it is, I'm willing to risk everything to be with you, that's how much I love you and how much I believe in our love, and I believe wholeheartedly that you would do the same for me; trust me when I tell you that that is rare; I've never had this before and if you were to look closely at any other couple you would see that they don't have it either."

Brenda's words and the passion with which she had spoken them assuaged Brian's concerns about them needing to perhaps examine more closely the fundamental feature of their relationship, freeing him to focus more on the good things in his life, of which he presently had more than he only very recently could have imagined himself having. Between his mother and Brenda things were all but perfect, for the first time in his life Brian had only little to worry about. Brenda had stopped trying to convince him of what a mistake he was making by giving his mother a chance and she said nothing further about them running away together, and whenever he talked about how well his mother was doing she said that she was glad to hear it and her approbation was ingenuous.

Brian had been over optimistic in his expectation of a breakthrough; what was taking place between he and his mother, he realized, was more realistic. It made sense that after years of extreme remoteness their mother-son linkages wouldn't instantaneously meld back together but would stitch themselves back together in a slow, fitful process of progress and setbacks. It was too soon for Brian to raise the prospect of Reena obtaining some form of employment, in fact he wasn't sure if that would ever be a realistic possibility, but the issue of getting her to agree to start taking medication for her bi-polar was one that he was drawing closer to raising with her. Every setback they suffered was the product of her mood swings. Paranoia being a prominent symptom of bi-polar, the topic about which she was the most curious, Brian's girlfriend April, was a consistent flashpoint.

"Why don't you want me to meet her?" "Am I not good enough to meet your girlfriend?" "Are you embarrassed by me?" "Am I not important enough for you to involve me in such a big part of your life?" "Do you know how it makes me feel for you to shut me out like this? How worthless and excluded it makes me feel?" "If I matter to you so little just tell me, then I'll know where I stand and I won't bring this up anymore! But don't act like you want things between us to be different and then treat me this way, because you're just being cruel!"

These were Reena's most common refrains when she became excessively agitated about Brian not introducing her to April. The simplest solution to this problem would have been the truth, an option not available to Brian. He didn't hold it against his mother when she berated him like this, it would have been unfair of him to hold against her something over which she had no control. The moments when she lost control underlined the need for her to embark upon a course of treatment, which he couldn't get her to agree to.

"I'm not crazy!" she would insist vehemently, refusing to listen to any more from him on the subject.

Aside from giving up drink Reena wasn't open to making any other substantive changes, and the one thing she wanted from Brian more than anything else, to meet his girlfriend, he couldn't give her. They had hit a wall, a route around which there was none.