“Then I guess you’d be like, how nice we get to have my son’s girlfriend over for dinner. Let’s make crab cakes with real crab.”
“Real crab, huh?” She laughs. “I’m very happy to hear we’ve won the lottery in this alternate reality.”
“Just sucks it’s only that. This is a whole new world.”
A whole new world. Since I’m delirious, all I can picture is a boat made of souls, tearing through the surf and crashing onto a beach made of stars. They explode on impact, flying into space. Some stronger than others. Some disappear completely. “I think about Dad all the time.”
“Me too.”
“I’ve never needed him more than this past year.”
Mom holds me even tighter. “Oh, sweetheart.”
“What do you think he’d say about me and Jamie?”
“Well…” She rests a finger on her chin. “I think all parents want their kids to be happy. And I think good parents learn and adapt so that happiness grows. He would do the same.”
“Do you think Dad’s out there?” I ask. “Not like in heaven or anywhere like that, but what made him a person, does that exist?”
“It has to. I need it to. He is still very much alive for me,” Mom says.
“Is that why you never remarried?”
She swallows with a thump. “Partly.”
“Why?”
“Because I can’t imagine loving another person the way I loved your dad,” she says. “When we met in college, I fell madly, hopelessly in love with him. All my friends thought I was nuts because he was too big and too tall and too this and too that. You know what that’s like; you’re just like him.”
“I do.”
“But I didn’t care. I knew we were meant to be. Then we had our little surprise, you, right before senior year. We decided he would stay in school and I’d get my degree later. By the time we bought this house, he already had cancer. We just didn’t know it yet,” she says. “We had so many dreams for this place. We were going to plant a row of arborvitae right over there.” She points. “Change out that ugly fence for a new one.”
“Why don’t we do those things, you and I?”
“Time. Money. It all slips away.” Mom sits there. I don’t think I ever noticed how sad she was before. I always thought the sighing and the pining was her just being a mom.
“We need to sell the house,” I say.
“I’ll never do such a thing.”
“We can sell it, move to an apartment. It’ll be fine,” I say. “It’d be a lot less stress.”
“You’re my number one priority.” She hugs me tight. “You come first.”
“Don’t you think Dad would want both of us to be happy? I’m not a Labrador; I don’t need a yard.”
She lets me go. Her gaze slides to the shitty chain-link fence.
“I think it’s time we get happy,” I say.
“Perhaps you’re onto something.”
Now I hug her. “We’re going to be okay.”
She stops and holds my stubbly cheeks in her hands. “I’m very proud of you.”
“You are?”
“Of course I am! You’re a dream kid,” she says. “Most of the time.”
“Ha-ha.”
My hair has grown since fall and she brushes some off my forehead. “I think we should have Jamie over for dinner,” she says.
“I already told you, that’s out.”
“Well, maybe another girl sometime. Or boy.”
I look up to the sky. “I know that book you have gave you a million options to support in the most helpful Helpy McHelp-Help way, but here’s the honest truth: I’m just a guy who likes a girl. So I’m whatever that’s called and that’s it.”
“Okay,” she says. “Sounds good to me.”
My face is crusty and my butt is cold. The sun is up and there’s not much more to this day than an eventual trip to the hospital. I need sleep. My mom nuzzles me like a kitten or cub or something and I bust up laughing.
“What?” she cries out.
“Nothing. I love you.”
“Well, good, because I love you,” she says. “I’m freezing. Come inside with me and get ready for school.”
I get to my knees and start to inch across the roof. “I’m going to bed.”
“No way. If I have to go to work, you have to go to school.”
“I promise I’ll be good tomorrow, but all I want to do is sleep until my doctor’s appointment,” I say. “It was going to be a half day anyway.”
Her mouth crunches up, but I can tell she’s thinking about it.
“Play hooky with me—have a sick day. Make waffles and watch Netflix.”
Now she leers at me with a wink. “Now you’re the bad influence.”
“Yay,” I cheer.
She goes in through my window and then I do. I shut it. She closes the lock. “You need to dust, Dylan. Good lord, look at this.” Mom shows me her filthy finger.
“Day off,” I remind her, and collapse into bed.
Pulling up my covers, she rubs my shoulder through the blankets. “I’ll wake you up when it’s time to go.”
The door shuts with a click and I’m out.
A heavy, deep hole opens up and I slide into it and close the lid. Warm and soft, I feel my dreams tiptoeing in after a while. Wild great things that make no sense and I’m along for the ride, until blackness hits me like a gong and I’m unconscious.
I dream of Jamie. That plane of hers is there and she’s coming down the ladder. I’m waiting on the tarmac, wearing a suit.
Something stirs me.