Can I Come Over?

2:Another Day In the Neighborhood

I walked through the front door and observed the mess she had made. The cream carpet was littered with beer bottles and old plates she had eaten on. The old burgundy couch had been flipped over onto its back. The curtain toward the back of the house had been ripped down so the sun shined throughout the house. I stepped further into the room and was able to look past the chipped dark-brown wall into the kitchen. Boxes of frozen dinners and junk food decorated the already needing-to-be-swept floor.

I sighed as I bent down to pick up the beer bottles that rested near my feet. I'm gone for two days and this is what I have to come back to. Once I dropped the bottles into the garbage can, I threw my jacket and duffel bag onto the kitchen counter.  

I might as well get to work.

*  

Two hours later I had everything cleaned up from her "Weekend of Fun" and had even swept and mopped the kitchen floor.  

I collapsed on the couch, exhausted. Though the house was small, cleaning it all by myself had been a lot of work. My eyes had begun to droop when I heard keys jingling from outside the front door. I propped myself up onto my elbows just in time to see her come through the front door.

Her hair was like a bee's hive over her head, visibly knotted. Her clothes hung loosely off her body, wrinkled beyond ironing just once. My eyes finally traveled to her face. I saw how tired she looked; the bags under her eyes reached her cheekbones. Her eyes... Once shining crystal-blue, just like mine, were now dull, almost lifeless. The wrinkles surrounding them didn't help her appearance. Although she was in her late thirties, she looked around fifty.

Her eyes caught mine before she surveyed the newly cleaned house.

"About time you decided to come home," she said in a scratchy voice, walking past me.

"Hey to you too ma," I said following her into the kitchen.

She walked to the fridge, looking for something to eat. She sighed loudly before shutting the door with a slam. She should’ve known there was nothing there but a molding jar of mayonnaise, a bottle of water, and a small jar of sauerkraut. Because she relied on a government check every month and spent it on drugs and beer the second it came, there was rarely food in the house if I didn't put it there.

"Where the hell is the food?" she yelled angrily.

"What the hell happened to this house? I came back and it looked like a tornado ran through this place," I said in a calm tone.

Her eyes shot to me and within two seconds she was standing in front of me with her finger pointed to my face. "Who do you think you're talking to?" she yelled. When I didn't answer it only served to make her angrier.

"I said who do you think you're talking to? Don't you ever talk to me like that again! This is my house, you just stay here. You're lucky I give you that much." she said before taking her icy stare off of me. The lump that felt so familiar to me formed in my throat. It never got easy. The cold looks, her attitude towards everything I did... She'd never forget that I had to get us out of the terminal situations we had been in. She'd never forgive me for losing her the ‘love of her life’.

I looked down at my feet just so she couldn't see the look in my eyes. Her disappointment still had the power to shatter my heart. But I was no dummy; I had lost all hope of her ever being the same person as she was a long time ago. Terry had ruined her. The way I refused to let him ruin me…

"What about this mom?" I held up a soft pink sweater with a sparkly tiara in the middle. We had come to the mall to get some shopping done for the new job she had just gotten at the bank, so she wanted to get me something too.