Yvonne

YVONNE

     ‘Have you been in the bath yet our Dean?’     

     Dean Ellis was so infuriated by the way his mother always barged into his room without knocking. It was a good job he’d put his pants and trousers on. He was a man now for God’s sake. He wasn’t a boy anymore. He went to the gym three times a week. He could lift dumbbells almost half the weight of himself. He had pecks. He had a firm, flat stomach. He didn’t look like he’d been pumped up, he’d have hated to look like that, but he looked fit and able. He was happy with that and he didn’t want to go any further. He didn’t want to become obsessed. But, whatever, he was twenty and his mother should respect his privacy.

     ‘Mum, could you please knock before you come in?’ he asked. She was standing there in her standard knee length blue overall that was buttoned all the way down and which she’d worn forever. She looked way older than her mid-forties. She was an agoraphobic. She hadn’t been out of the house since his father left when Dean was a baby. Various doctors and home nurses had tried to help her but she’d thrown it all back in their faces, just like she’d pushed all of her family away. It had made Dean’s life difficult to say the least. His mother never took any pleasure in a sunny day. They’d never been on holiday or even on a day out. Nobody invited them round at Christmas or came round to see them. Life had been conducted entirely within the home he’d grown up in and it had made her desperately possessive and controlling. She was paranoid of anyone on the outside. One day he’d leave her behind in her own little world with nobody for company except the empty space inside her own head.  

     ‘I don’t knock on doors in my own house, thank you very much’ was Yvonne Ellis’s swift and indignant reply. ‘Now have you been in the bath?’

      ‘Yes, Mum, I’ve been in the bath and I’ve hung up my towel’ said Dean as he reached for his shirt and started putting it on.

     ‘You can’t have been in the bath, our Dean, I didn’t hear you’.

     Oh Christ, thought Dean. Here we fucking well go again. ‘Mum, I’ve had my bath and that’s that’.

     ‘No you haven’t had your bath, Dean because if you had I would’ve heard you’ Yvonne shrilled, adamant that she was right. ‘Now get back in that bathroom and run a bath now!’

     ‘For crying out loud, Mum, don’t talk to me like that! I’ve had a bath and I’m now getting ready for work. So if you don’t mind’.

     ‘Oh you think that just because you work in some swanky hotel you can laud it over everywhere’ she scoffed. ‘Well you can’t! In my house it’s my rules and mine only!’

     ‘Mum, I’m twenty years old’.

     ‘Meaning what exactly?’

     ‘Meaning you can’t talk to me like I’m a child anymore!’

     ‘Dean, I’m your mother! I can speak to you how I see fit’.

     ‘Oh no, Mum, you can’t’ said Dean. ‘I won’t have it. Not anymore’.

     ‘Why do you always have to fight me, Dean?’ she pleaded, wiping away what Dean called her ‘ever ready’ tears because that’s what they were, always on hand to add another layer of drama to proceedings. ‘Why do you seem to like upsetting me?’ 

     ‘Mum, I don’t like upsetting you and there’s no need for you to get upset’ said Dean. ‘I’m just trying to get ready for work’.

     He was so pissed off with all this. Every time he went to work she started a confrontation over nothing and he’d worked out why a long time ago. She wanted him to go out in a bad mood and reflect that on those he met when he was outside. She didn’t want him to be popular with people. She wanted him to be solely dependent on her. She may have some severe emotional issues but she was also fucking devious and he’d had a lifetime of it. She was his Mum and he loved her but she was such hard work. She wanted him to remain a child so she’d have a purpose in life. Well he couldn’t do that. He wanted the normal life he’d found with his friends. He wanted to meet someone and fall in love one day. He didn’t want his life to repeat hers.