A mother's love

Chapter 30

Brenda returned home from her first day of work at the supplementary learning centre at 9:15 more tired than she was expecting to be. The children to whom she was giving additional instruction were not excellent students who wanted to obtain a deeper understanding of the work so they could be even more excellent. The children that came to the supplementary learning centre seemed to have been sent there as a last resort. Brenda was dealing with children that in some cases were struggling with basics like reading and spelling. As far as she could tell the supplementary learning was nothing but a money-making scheme, parents paid exorbitant fees for their children to receive additional instruction about which there was nothing special. If she wanted to Brenda could have put in the absolute bare minimum of effort and she would face no consequences as a result of her unconscientiousness. She couldn't do that, it wasn't her style, nor was it her style to be a willing participant in the fleecing of parents who were under the impression that they were paying $50/hr for their children to receive tutoring that was going to work miracles on them; "Learning through patience and perseverance" was the centre's motto. In the latter she had no choice, she had to earn a paycheque and her employment at the SLC was her only way of doing that. Were it not for Brian and her responsibility to provide for him Brenda would have quit after her first day.

She returned home and the sight of Brian sitting on the comforter in the living room waiting for her instantly raised her spirits; so long as she kept reminding herself that everything that she endured was for him she would be fine. She threw her bag down on the floor, closed the curtains, sat down next to him on the comforter and started kissing him. They made love on the comforter and Brenda was able to forget about how terrible her first day at work had been and how little she was looking forward to going back tomorrow.

Things between them started changing a few days later when Brenda turned her attention to enrolling Brian in school. He wasn't happy with her strategy of using the burn on his arm as a way of deflecting suspicion away from them and after using it in the principal's office Brian's displeasure with it and with her telling him every time how great he'd been became increasingly apparent. Brenda thought that Brian would be more understanding, that he would have greater appreciation for what had to be done for the sake of their protection. It had never occurred to her that she could be wrong about him, that she could overestimate his resilience which she thought had been tempered by his years of hardship with his mother. Obviously she had been wrong, as she had been about many things. She hadn't anticipated that Brian would form an attachment to someone like Michaela so quickly and she hadn't anticipated that her impression of him would undergo such a drastic alteration once he started going to school that she had to struggle to bring herself to kiss him. Despite this change she continued to be unhappy about the rapidly growing closeness between Brian and Michaela, or Mickey, as Brian had taken to referring to her as. She didn't like seeing a box of her things in the living room after she and Brian had made love and the thought of Brian attending one of her shows gnawed at her endlessly.

Brenda had always planned on letting go of Brian one day but that day wasn't even remotely close and she had no intention of letting him go for him to be with someone like Michaela, whose aimlessness would only be a burden on him. It came as a great surprise to Brenda to hear from Taren that they were really enjoying having Brian over for dinner every night; Brenda had been arriving home every night to half-eaten dinners. This revelation came during the night that Brian had gone with Michaela to her show and Taren had come over to their house to keep Brenda company. Brian came home from the show at 11:30, on a school night. Everything was happening too fast for Brenda, the time when she would have to take control by asserting the parental authority she'd been wary of was fast approaching.