A mother's love

Chapter 24

Brian recognized the smell instantly. It was faint but it was familiar enough to him for it to be immediately perceptible to him. He returned home from school to the smell and despite his mother's efforts to conceal her relapse to prevent a confrontation Brian was too hurt and enraged by her transgression to let it go without him saying anything.

"You've been drinking today," he said, trembling as he sought to suppress his rage.

"No, I haven't..."

"Don't lie to me!" He cut her off.

"Okay, yes, I have, but only a little," she said pleadingly.

"How could you do this?"

"I needed help, to calm myself, it's the only thing that helps."

"That's why I've been saying that we need to go to a doctor and get you on medication."

"I am not crazy, okay! I am not crazy."

"You're sick, you need treatment, that's nothing for you to be ashamed of."

"I don't need treatment because I'm not crazy, all I need is some help, some soothing from time to time."

"All day every day is not from time to time, and you don't calm down when you drink, you're worse when you're drunk."

"I am not worse, I feel better, I don't feel like I don't have any control over myself."

"You don't feel it because you're numb from the drink; it's not a solution, you need medication."

"I AM NOT CRAZY!"

"WOULD YOU STOP SAYING THAT! I heard what dad said to you the day he left, he said that he was sick of dealing with your crazy bitch shit; you remaining in denial doesn't change the facts and it doesn't change what people think of you, so stop saying 'I'm not crazy' like a stuck record!"

"That's not why your father left; he left because of you, because he didn't want to deal with the trouble of raising a child, and at times like this I wish I'd gone with him!"

"How could you have gone with him when he was running away from you?!"

"He did not run away from me, he loved me, it was you he was running away from, if it weren't for you I would still be with the man I loved and we'd be living happily together, and I wouldn't have to put up with being judged for something as simple as wanting to bring myself some relief and you being cruel to me by calling me crazy."

"If you think all of that is true then you really are crazy, because that is some of the most deluded nonsense I've ever heard. Do you really think that if you tell him the next time he makes one of his phone calls that I'm no longer here that he'll come racing back here to be with you?"

"Yes, in fact I wish you would leave, it was you who fucked everything up, you took the man who was the love of my life and drove him away, you're nothing but a reminder of everything that giving birth to you has cost me."

And just like that, all of the reconstruction that they had spent weeks achingly working on was destroyed. Brian had known that what he and his mother had formed was fragile though he'd never thought it would prove so fragile as to be levelled by an exchange of words lasting less than two minutes. He walked away from his mother and sealed himself in his room where he could take all the time he needed to process and absorb the sudden and dramatic end of the brief glimpse that he'd been given into what might have been. Pounding in his head was Brenda's voice telling him not to trust his mother, as were his own words from the very start when he had issued the same caution to himself. It may not have been possible for him to have a close, loving relationship with his mother but there was one woman in his life whose love for him was undoubted. He knew where Brenda was and he knew that she was waiting for him; all he had to do was go to her.

It was three days before Brian informed Brenda of his mother's relapse and their subsequent regression to their former state of co-existence. He wanted to first be clear about what his feelings were before they were impacted by Brenda's reaction, which would predictably be outrage at his mother and empathy for him. He knew that Brenda understood him well enough to have caught on that there had been some negative development in his life that she had her reasons for not commenting on, reasons that Brian didn't speculate on because he was quite sure what they were. When he did finally tell her about the nature and details of the argument that he'd had with his mother the three days that he had delayed sharing t with her to fortify himself proved to have had no such effect. He was more upset about things falling apart with his mother than he'd originally thought. Brenda's arms encircling him was like a cocoon being spun all around him of the softest, warmest threads that dissolved his attachments to everything but Brenda and the love and tenderness that she yearned to give to him unfettered from the constraints of their present circumstances, so that when she whispered to him "Now will you leave with me?" the word "Yes" emerged from his mouth unimpeded by any concerns he had about how his mother would get on in his absence.