A mother's love

Chapter 25

Brenda got all of her affairs in order with maximum haste. She advertised everything that she owned except for her car on Craig's List and accepted the first offer she received for every item, sometimes accepting as little as 60% of her asking price. She didn't care; selling all of her things was not about the money, it was about unburdening herself of her material possessions so she and Brian could get away as quickly as possible. She couldn't afford time to give Brian—who was prone to misgivings where his mother was concerned—time to reconsider his decision to agree to run away with her; she had to get him in her car and on the road before his worries about how his mother would fare without him caused him to change his mind. She gave in her two weeks' notice at the school intending to no longer be in town the morning after the final day of those two weeks. Her excitement about them leaving as well as her anxiety over the possibility that Brian might at the last minute choose to stay had escalated to a level at which she was vulnerable to a crash.

*

Brian had nothing to prepare; he just had to wait. There was no hope of recovery for the rupture that he and his mother had suffered; she made no effort to repair it and Brian felt no inclination to. He was finished with his mother; the compassion that he had once felt for her was gone, extinguished by the viciousness of the words with which she had wished for the end of his existence in her life. There was room in his life only for Brenda; he could honestly say he didn't care what happened to his mother after they'd left. She drank increasingly until after only a few days she was back to imbibing what had been her regular amount before she'd injured herself, and the more she drank the more impatient Brian became for the day to come when he and Brenda would be leaving. Like Brenda he had a hard time accepting that it was actually going to happen, that in a matter of only a few days they would be leaving everything behind and starting afresh, just the two of them. He worked hard to keep his eagerness contained, not knowing what he was doing to Brenda's anxiety because she was likewise keeping that concealed from him. It was only when Brian threw his bag into the backseat of her car and sat alongside her in the passenger seat that they showed each other what the moment of their escape meant to them. They kissed fiercely, two weeks of waiting and worrying came flooding out of them in a torrent that they had to get out of their systems before they set off.

They left in the dead of night at 1 a.m., neither of them looking back on what they were leaving behind with any regret. Remarkably they had neglected to have any discussions about where they would actually go and spent the first part of their journey driving into the unknown. Pulled in its direction by her lifelong attachment to it she put them on a path heading west. Their final destination would not be California, of that she was adamant. Along the way they stayed in motels and when they were in desperate need of rest and couldn't make it to a motel they slept in her car and took care of their morning ablutions in the bathroom of a gas station, a diner, or when they were really desperate, a public fountain.

Everywhere they went the assumption was made that Brenda was Brian's mother. The first time it happened was at the first motel they checked into in Arizona at 9 a.m. having been on the road for six hours.

"Would you and your son like a room with two singles?" The middle-aged, borderline obese woman manning the front desk asked her.

"Yes, thank you, that would be perfect," Brenda answered, slightly nervously.

The question disconcerted her. She was expecting people to assume that she was Brian's mother and she was prepared to portray herself as such, hearing the words being spoken for the first time though had provoked an emotional reaction within her for which she hadn't been prepared.

"That was weird," Brian said to her when they were in their room.

"It was, but that's the way that things are going to have to be from now on; if we allow people to believe that you're my son they won't develop any suspicions about us and we'll be safe, so whenever we're around people that's how we have to act, we can't allow anything to pass between us that gives people even the slightest indication as to the truth about us."