Sunflowers and Ink

Part 2: Chapter 16 - The End

The calls started the next night at 8:00. Meara was just helping Stacey finish dinner and they were about to sit down to eat with Adam when the first one came. He ignored it, not even checking the caller ID. He was hungry, he missed homecooked food, and he'd barely had the chance to eat dinner with his roommates since he got out of the hospital for one reason or another. If it was Josselin, he'd call back later. If it was one of the Yazdis, they'd assume he was eating and leave a message.

And if it was his mom, he didn't want to talk to her, anyway.

The three friends lingered over their food for hours. Stacey had insisted on Greek food that night -- I've been craving it like crazy, he'd said -- so, since neither of them had any experience cooking it, they'd pulled up some recipes and articles on Meara's laptop and gone to work.

It was delicious. Meara was a little worried about the abundance of lemon, but it turned out perfect. He had a smile on his face through the whole meal -- he'd done something for the first time and it had turned out right with no mistakes. With all the problems with his mother, he'd briefly forgotten that was even possible. His friends helped, but his mother still held so much power over him, and he hated it.

At 10:00, Meara's phone rang again. The plates were all empty, now, personal and serving alike. This time, Stacey signed, "Go ahead. We'll take care of the dishes."

"But it's my turn," Meara signed back.

Stacey grinned. "You can just do mine next time."

Meara laughed and stood, jogging to his bedroom to try to reach his phone in time. He unplugged it from the charger as he answered without looking at the caller ID.

"Hello?"

"Hello!?" his mother screeched. "Don't you 'hello' me. After I went all that way to the hospital only to have that nurse kick me out, and now you can't even answer your phone?"

"But... I'm right here?" Meara said unsurely. Clearly he had answered the phone, or they wouldn't be talking. But he knew saying so aloud would make her worse, so he didn't.

"I'm talking about my call earlier," she snapped.

"Oh!" Oh. Oh. Meara swallowed. "Sorry, it was in the other room. I heard it, but I was making dinner, so I figured I'd get to it later. I had no idea it was you. We literally just finished eating dinner and I hadn't gotten back to my phone yet. Sorry."

He said it even though he wasn't.

Silence on the other end. For a moment, Meara thought she'd hung up on him. Just as he was about to check his phone for a connection, she finally said, "Don't do it again."

"Mom, I can't promise I'll always be able to get to my phone," he said softly. "I'm really busy. The best I can do is promise to always call back as soon as I can."

"I see," his mother said. "So it's okay to drag me out to the hospital when you have no intention of letting me stay, but you can't pick up your phone when I call you?"

"Mom, that was an accident." Meara's voice was almost a plaintive whine. "The nurse screwed up. I didn't ask her to call you. I didn't mean to drag you all the way out there."

"Either way, you didn't want to see me. Your own mother."

Because you always do this. But Meara didn't say so out loud, afraid of making her even angrier. How could he get away from her? How could he gracefully end this conversation?

He couldn't. He couldn't think of a way out, so he sat crosslegged in his bed, wrapped up in a soft blanket until his mother got tired of yelling and berating ten minutes later and hung up without so much as a goodbye.