Son of Tesla

SON OF TESLA: Chapter 6

"JEREMY!"

The voice careened through the house. In his upstairs bedroom, Jem winced. Mom. Must have seen the car in the driveway. She didn't sound happy.

Pounding on the stairs let Jem know she was on her way. She burst through the door like a tsunami.

"Jeremy William Parson! What happened to your car?"

"I got hit on the way back from school. I was waiting to tell you when you got home."

"Oh my God! Are you alright?" The anger dissolved into an expression of concern. She swept his head into her hands and searched his eyes. Jem instinctively pulled away, but the corner of his mouth curled up into a smile nonetheless.

Rachel Parson was a bubbling well of boundless energy. Cortez shouldn't have been looking in Central America for his fabled fountain of youth; he should have steered straight for the sleepy suburbs sprawled west of New York City. She was a caricature of the working mom: Stern, but caring. Thoughtful, but scatterbrained. Originally Polish somewhere down the line, but now just a vague blend of Caucasoid tendencies rolled into springy brown curls and pale skin that took on the shade of boiled lobster after ten minutes in the sun.

Rachel Parson didn't walk; she bounced. The only time Jem had ever seen the spring fade from her step was when his father had died three years ago. More than anything, that's what had scared Jem. The sadness of loss was present – more than present, some nights – but seeing the change come over his mother had hit him right in the gut. Like an ice cream cone melting on a summer day, his mother had wilted. Slumped. Dragged in the mornings and retired in the evenings before the eight o'clock shows had time to finish.

The constant, unfailing pool of vitality had withered and dried.

But of course, time dulls even the sharpest wounds. She'd gotten better. They all had. Jem, just turned fourteen, had been on the brink of understanding the meaning – the real meaning – of death, but it wasn't until the year after that he'd fully come to terms with the fact that his father had been swept off the sidewalk by a drunk driver and was never, ever coming home again. Until then, the encompassing feeling was one of temporary absence. A long vacation. He'd never even seen the body. When it came, the permanence had hit hard, but it also swept away Jem's regret and inexplicable guilt and gave him a chance at a clean start. After a year of night, the sun had finally poked its nose over the horizon and brought some light back into the Parsons' lives. It was a thin, pale light, but anything was better than the darkness they'd trudged through.

Ashley, his then-eight-year-old sister, had bawled on cue, gone to bed red and puffy-eyed with the rest of them. Jem sometimes thought she had a better understanding of it than either he or their mom, as precocious as she was. Whether by virtue of her younger age or her superior grip on the situation, she'd been the first to recover. And when Jem came around, they went to work on their mom.

Slowly but surely, Rachel Parson had refound her spark. Laughter crept back around the breakfast table. They could look each other in the eyes without being reminded of the man who just wasn't there anymore. Rachel stopped setting a fourth place at the dinner table, an unconscious habit that had infuriated Jem with the implications it wrought.

As a family, the Parsons had stumbled, and they had held their feet.

Jem was grateful for the change. Now, when he thought back to his dad – the baseball games, the hunting trips, the secret late nights watching horror movies after his mom had gone to bed (she didn't approve of the violence) – it was with a warm fuzz of happiness. The edges were still tinged with regret, but just the edges. He'd been a great father and a supportive, positive husband. The memories were what mattered.