Generations

Generations Part 2, Chapter 2

Audree's heard jerked up from the sticky spot on the kitchen table where she'd fallen asleep. The front door slammed and she heard Nathan's heavy boots make deep thumps down the hallway.

They were even and smooth. He was mostly sober.

Jacob stayed quiet in the bedroom. "You up? I'm grabbing a beer," she heard Nathan say toward the bedroom door as he came down the hall to the kitchen.

His voice sounded dry. Not graveled exactly, but skinned like a child's knee after a fall.

He didn't turn on the light when he came in the kitchen. Nathan had always liked keeping them off. He said it hurt his eyes.

"Nathan?" Audree said into the darkness.

Nathan jumped back, hitting his back against the polished stone countertop. "Ow, fuck! Mom? What the hell are you doing here?"

His voice was a little higher, surprised. There was a soft, almost pleading tone, the sound in his voice when he needed help.

"I missed my boy."

Nathan rolled his eyes. He didn't like it when she got sentimental. The layer of grit he kept on the surface didn't let him show much emotion, or accept much from others. It was one thing she couldn't help him inheriting from her brother.

"I had some money saved up to come up here. I've never seen your place. So I gave myself a vacation."

"What money? Mom, you can't afford to just fly— "

"Why don't you let your grown mother decide what she can afford. You're my son. It's just money. It'll work out. Okay? Trust me?"

"Yeah." Nathan moved to the table and sat down on the stool across from Audree. He still hadn't taken off his canvas army coat. He got it at a thrift store in Boston, called it his "armor." It made him sound heavy as he sat.

"Really, what's going on?" he asked.

She looked Nathan up and down for a bit before trying to talk again. She hadn't seen her son in person for almost two years, since he moved. She saw Emit in him, like she always did. It wasn't really in appearance. Nathan grew tall and lanky in college, with sharp angles that started to emerge in his face as the baby fat left him. Now Nathan looked thinner than ever, his eyes falling deeper into his face and his neck drawn. It was nothing like Emit's build, all wide-set muscles and calloused hands.

But she still saw her brother in the way Nathan's eyebrows pushed together when his thoughts got away from him, the way his spine hunched when he sat, the way scratched at his scalp when he was nervous. This time, like every time, it frightened her.

"What's going on is I took a trip to New Jersey and that's all I have to say about it. What's going on with you? You've got me worried, you know."

Nathan looked down at the table and pulled at his long, brown hair. His hands were big, like Emit's, but his fingers were slender and graceful where her brother's had been meaty. "An artist's hands," she said when he was a baby.

"What are you talking about? I'm fine."

"I'm your mother. You can't lie to me. Just talk to me about it."

"I don't know..." The choke in his voice was immediate, like a ball of tears had been sitting there for days, waiting for even the smallest push. "I guess... I'm not doing well."

"You're using again?"

"Yeah," he almost whispered. "Little at first. More now." He began to cry openly, pushing his words through crying and phlem. "Things got so hard. Up here, alone."