Her hair was shoulder length, crimped, and bleached blond—though, from the overgrowth at
her scalp, I guessed that her natural hair color was likely closer to Cameron’s dark locks. She
was wearing a tight, V-neck sleeveless shirt that showed off her well-endowed cleavage.
Unfortunately, it also emphasized the beer gut that hung over her skintight jeans. Her blue eye
shadow drew attention to her beautiful dark eyes, and almost all of the cigarette butts in the
ashtray still had traces of her bright red lipstick on them. Her skin was translucent, like silk
wrapping paper, the kind that stuck out of gift bags.
We sat in silence while Cameron’s mother gulped down the other half of her beer and stared at
me over the rim of her glass. “You’re too skinny and you’re very pale. You need to put some
makeup on,” she announced to the table, “but I doubt there’s anything you can do to make that
hair color any better. Have you tried to dye it? The lady next door sells wigs—they’re made
from real horse hair. I can get you a good price.”
I could feel the blood rushing to my cheeks.
Cameron was furious. “I didn’t come here so that you can insult my girlfriend. I came here to
talk to you about Rocco.”
“Rocco?” she asked between puffs. “Where is that little bastard?” She leaned over the table,
smirking at me. “You know that ungrateful child left me alone with no good-byes or anything.”
She added, “I was worried sick and almost called the police till Cammy called me a couple weeks
later to tell me that Rocco was with him.” Cameron rolled his eyes as his mother turned to him.
“Seems all of my sons eventually leave me to fend for myself.”
We sat in uncomfortable silence again. Cameron’s mother got up to pull another bottle of beer
out the fridge. Cameron was shaking his leg, nervous, mentally preparing to break the news to
his mother.
“You came to talk to me about Rocco, so talk,” she urged. She sat back down and poured another
glass full.
Cameron cleared his throat and looked at his interlaced hands on the table. “Rocco was … he’s
dead.”
His mother immediately looked up and glanced from Cameron to me. The tears welled up in my eyes,
and the knot in my throat inflated. I had to look away.
“What?” she asked, incredulous.
“He was shot and killed a few days ago,” Cameron said, his voice shuddering.
His mother stood and started pacing around the kitchen and shaking her head. I could hear her
mumbling and swearing under her breath. Finally she stopped and winced at Cameron.
“You’re just a pariah,” she rasped to him. “I didn’t put up a fight or make the police
bring Rocco back to me when I found out he was with you because he looked up to you so much. You
come here with your expensive car and your little girlfriend and you think that this makes you
better than the rest of us. All your money did was get my little Rocco killed. You’re nothing
but a bastard, just like your father. You ruined my life, and now you’ve ruined my baby Rocco’
s life. I curse the day you were born.”
My fists, my jaw were clenched. I watched Cameron. He was very calm, like he had expected this
from his mother. He got up and dug into his pocket, pulling out a large stack of hundred dollar
bills.
“Someone will contact you with the funeral details,” he said, as he placed the money on the
table. “Make sure some of this goes to getting food for those kids.” He walked over to me and
gently pulled my chair out to help me up. As we exited the kitchen, I saw Cameron’s mother
snatch the money from the table and stuff it down her shirt.
Neither one of us spoke in the car. Cameron’s eyes stared vacantly at the road as we sped down
the street. We passed a street light, and, instead of turning on the road that we had come in
through, Cameron kept driving and turned down a narrow laneway instead. There was barely an inch
between the car’s side mirrors and the warehouse walls that flanked the laneway. He continued
to drive dangerously fast until we got to the end, where the string of warehouses stopped and
the lane opened up into a makeshift pier of gravel and rocks overlooking the Callister River.
Cameron unfastened his seatbelt and dashed out of the car. He stuck his hands in his pockets and
stiffly leaned against the hood. I stepped out, climbed on the hood and wrapped my arms around
him. His body was rigid, and he was breathing short angry breaths. When I pulled in closer, I
felt his muscles slowly relax again.
“I used to come here a lot when I was a kid and needed to get away from my mom,” he told me.
I glanced around. We were in the bay of a commercial part of the river. Factories and smoke
stacks bordered the shores and large barges carrying steel and crates floated back and forth
across the harbor. A dead fish floated on the mud-brown water by the rocks.
“It’s lovely,” I remarked.
He chuckled. “I didn’t have much to work with back then.” He turned around to face me.
“So, you met my mother,” he said bitterly, “What did you think?”
I smiled sheepishly. “She’s lovely too, Cammy.”
He shuddered. “Please don’t ever call me that. I hate it.”
I leaned in and kissed him lightly, so as to not frighten him away.
We lay on the hood of the car and listened to the steam whistles blowing by the other shore. I
thought about Rocco and finally understood why he had been so desperate to make a life away from
his mother. Another thought occurred to me, and I turned to Cameron.