A mother's love

Chapter 29

Attending school in Seattle turned out to be no different for Brian than it had been in New Mexico. He found the students insufferable and he was the same isolated, indifferent figure as he had been at his old school. He felt greater pressure to do well academically as a way of showing his appreciation to Brenda for giving him the better life that she'd promised him but aside from that nothing had changed regarding school. The changes had come at home, changes they were both aware of that they didn't speak of. Before leaving for his first day of school there was an awkward moment at the door when they looked into each other's eyes after saying good-bye and Brian saw uncertainty in Brenda's about what to do next which she compensated for pulling him to her and kissing him hard. Brian wasn't convinced by her kiss, it was just like their first morning waking up in a motel when he'd kissed her and her lips had been barely responsive. For weeks before they'd left she'd told him that she wanted them to run away because she wanted them to spend more time with each other than the three hours a night they spent in her apartment and yet since leaving there had been a shift in their relationship that was unrelated to Brenda's preoccupation with getting firm ground underneath them in Seattle. Brian didn't say anything about it because he didn't want the truth about what was happening between them circulating in the air around them. She was now his provider and her attitude had changed accordingly. There was plenty that Brian could have been doing to lighten her load, household chores that he had lots of experience with from his time with his mother, but Brenda wouldn't hear of it. She said that he had had enough time taken from him by his mother and her need to be taken care of and she wasn't going to be responsible for him losing any more; she would take care of everything in the household and all he had to do was focus on his school work and on being a teenager.

Brian didn't know what 'being a teenager' really meant, but if it meant acting like the children at school then he had no interest in it, in fact the only thing he was interested in was Michaela and learning as much as possible from her so that he could be better company for her. He had his own share of the blame for the change that his relationship with Brenda had undergone and that blame could be laid squarely at the feet of his boundless fascination with Michaela. At three in the afternoon the day after the dinner Brian went over to her house and she told him that the comic book store in the city where she bought her manga had just called her to say that they had just received the latest issue of Monthly Shounen Jump. They drove to the city in her car, a 1999 Honda Civic sedan that was in surprisingly good condition, and spent half an hour at the comic book browsing through comic books, graphic novels, manga, young adult novels from Japan, trading cards; an endless selection of cool things which Brian, because of the poverty in which he'd grown up, hadn't the slightest clue about. Attempting to conceal his ignorance from Brenda he browsed the store nonchalantly and listened to her without commenting when she called him over to her to 'check something out'. They left the comic book store with only the manga that they'd gone there for and Michaela drove them to the café where she was going to be doing her show that she'd invited him to. They sat a table and Michaela ordered coffee for them. For the life of him Brian couldn't work out what Michaela saw in him that was causing her to be so nice to him. He was nine years younger than she was, knew nothing about rock music and his only knowledge of Japan came from the few Haruki Murakami and Kenzaburo Oe novels that he'd read.

"I haven't decided on my set list yet, I need songs that are appropriate for this intimate setting," Michaela said to Brian just after they'd ordered their coffees.

"What about that song you played for me last night; are you going to play that?"

"No, I wrote that song to be performed with belting vocals and an electric, it won't work here."

"I can listen to some more of your songs and help you choose if you'd like."

"Thanks, that'd be great."

After the coffee shop they went back to Michaela's house and after showing him her extensive collection of manga she sat on her bed with her guitar and played for Brian the songs that she was thinking about using for her show: Better days, Into the light, Wasteland, No one for me, Fly away, Disentangle and Under water. All of her songs were about pain that she had endured, mostly from bad relationships. Brian related to her songs because he had endured plenty of pain himself, though not of the same variety as Michaela's. Her music was her way of expressing her feelings so they wouldn't fester inside her; Brian's only outlet for his feelings was having sex with Brenda, a form of expression that came to seem more unhealthy to him the more time he spent with Michaela and listened to her music.

Reena was never far from Brian's mind and the thought of her gave rise to complicated feelings within him that he needed to find a way to deal with somehow. Try as he might he couldn't forget about his mother completely and he found himself thinking about her constantly, wondering if she was okay and if she wasn't, given her ineptitude when it came to the matter of taking care of herself, how serious was the trouble that she'd gotten herself into. There were times when he would go to a pay phone, put a quarter in the slot and start to dial his mother's number before he stopped himself, put the receiver back on the hook and walked away. He and Brenda had long since passed the point of no return; no purpose would be served by him making contact his mother. Fearing that if he mentioned that he was worrying about his mother to Brenda she would take it as him expressing a lack of appreciation for everything that she had done he said nothing to her, and because he could reveal nothing of their past he could say nothing to Michaela, the only other person he could imagine himself confiding in. He played the argument that he had had with his mother that had led him to decide that he was done with her over and over again in his mind and the truth was that she hadn't said anything to him that he hadn't heard some version of from her before and wondered if he had just used it as an excuse so he could run away with Brenda, which left him feeling rotten.

Brian was still at Michaela's house when her mother returned home from work at six o'clock. After listening to the songs that she was thinking of using for her show and telling her that he thought they were all great Michaela retrieved the notebook in which she wrote all of her songs and solicited Brian's help in finishing some songs she was working on that remained stubbornly incomplete. Brian proved more helpful that she thought he would be. His understanding of what she was trying to achieve lyrically and thematically was immediate and the progress they made was substantial. They were so absorbed in their song writing that only when Taren poked her in Michaela's room to say hello to them did they realize that they had been busy for two whole hours. Taren was happy to see them spending more time together and she invited Brian to stay for dinner, an invitation he immediately accepted despite there being a bowl of spaghetti in the oven at home that Brenda had cooked in the afternoon before she'd left for work. Taren served dinner—fried chicken cutlet with rice and steamed vegetables—at seven. Brian and Michaela had both not eaten since mid-morning and in no time they'd cleaned their plates and were back up in Michaela's room.

Brian stayed at Michaela's until eight o'clock and returned home with a box full of manga and CDs that Michaela was lending him as a first step in educating him about all of the things of hers that he said were cool but that he knew nothing about. The valuables that she had placed in his possession were evidence of his importance to her: All of her volumes of Bleach and Nana, her favourite Smile Empty Soul, Fuel, Evanescence and Alice in Chains albums and her AlterBridge Live in Amsterdam DVD. She told him that he was to keep them for as long as he needed, she didn't want his mother getting mad at her for distracting him from his school work and his other responsibilities by forcing him to rapidly consume all of the material that she'd given him. The dinner that he ate at Michaela's house had mostly satisfied his appetite but to prevent Brenda's feelings from getting hurt Brian dished up a plate of spaghetti and forced it down, which left him feeling bloated. He had some schoolwork to do to get caught up to where the other students were but he decided to use the time until Brenda returned home reading volume 1 of Bleach, the manga that Michaela had instructed him to read first before he got started on anything else.