It was a little late in the day for a big sex talk, but Eve felt like she had no choice but to let Brendan know how disappointed she was. What he’d said to Becca was not okay, and Eve needed to make that clear, even if it ruined their last day together. She didn’t want him to begin college without understanding that there was a fundamental difference between sexual relationships in real life and the soulless encounters he presumably watched on the internet (he insisted that he stayed away from all that crap, but his browser history was always carefully scrubbed, which was one of the warning signs she’d learned about at the PTA meeting). At the very least, she needed to remind him that it was not okay to call your girlfriend a bitch, even if that was a word you used jokingly with your male friends, even if the girl in question claimed not to mind.
And even if she really is one, Eve thought, though she knew it wasn’t helpful to her cause.
Brendan must have sensed that a lecture was imminent, because he did his best to seal himself off in the van, tugging the bill of his baseball cap low over his sunglasses, nodding emphatically to the hip-hop throbbing through his sleek white headphones. As soon as they got on the Pike, he reclined his seat and announced that he was taking a nap.
“I hope you don’t mind,” he said, which was the first halfway polite thing to emerge from his mouth all day. “I’m really tired.”
“You must be,” she said, larding her voice with fake sympathy. “You had a really busy morning. All that heavy lifting.”
“Ha ha.” He propped his bare feet on the dashboard. “Wake me when we get there, okay?”
He slept—or pretended to sleep—for the next two hours, not even leaving the van when she stopped at a rest area outside of Sturbridge. Eve resented it at first—she really did want to talk to him about sexual etiquette and respect for women—but she had to admit that it was a relief to postpone the conversation, which would have required her to confess that she’d been eavesdropping outside of his door and to quote the phrase that had upset her so much. She wasn’t sure she’d be able to say it out loud, not without grave embarrassment, and she had a feeling that Brendan would laugh and tell her that she’d heard wrong, that he would never say, Suck it, bitch, not to Becca or anyone else, and they’d end up disputing the basic facts of the case rather than discussing the issues that really mattered. He could be a pretty slippery customer when he needed to be; it was another trait he’d inherited from his father, a fellow master of denial and evasion.
Just let him rest, she thought, inserting a Neil Young CD into the slot, mellow old songs that left her with a pleasant feeling of melancholy, perfect for the occasion. We can talk some other time.
Eve knew she was being a coward, abdicating her parental responsibility, but letting him off the hook was pretty much a reflex at this point. The divorce had left her with a permanently guilty conscience that made it almost impossible for her to stay mad at her son or hold him accountable for his actions. The poor kid had been the victim of an elaborate bait and switch perpetrated by his own parents, who, for eleven years, had built a life for him that felt solid and permanent and good, and then—just kidding!—had ripped it out of his hands and replaced it with an inferior substitute, a smaller, flimsier version in which love had an expiration date and nothing could be trusted. Was it any wonder that he didn’t always treat other people with the kindness and consideration they deserved?
Not that it was Eve’s fault. Ted was the guilty party, the selfish bastard who’d abandoned a perfectly good family to start over with a woman he’d met through the Casual Encounters section of Craigslist (he’d falsely claimed his marital status was “Separated,” a self-fulfilling prophecy if there ever was one). Eve had been blindsided by his betrayal and devastated by his refusal to get counseling or make even a token effort to save the marriage. He just pronounced it dead and buried, unilaterally declaring the past two decades of his life to be a regrettable mistake and vowing to do better on his next try.
I have a second chance, he’d told her, his voice quivering with emotion. Do you see how precious that is?
What about me? she’d replied. What about your son? Aren’t we precious, too?
I’m a jerk, he explained. You both deserve better.
The whole world acknowledged her status as an innocent victim—even Ted agreed!—but Eve still felt complicit in the breakup. The marriage had been floundering for a long time before Ted found his way to Craigslist, and she hadn’t done a thing to make it better, hadn’t even admitted there was a problem. Through her own passivity, she had enabled the disaster, letting her husband drift away and her family fall apart. She’d failed as a wife, and therefore as a mother, and Brendan was the one who’d paid the price.
The damage he’d suffered was subtle and hard to pinpoint. Other people marveled at what an impressive young man he was and how well he’d weathered the divorce. Eve was delighted by the praise—it meant everything to her—and she even believed it, up to a point. Her son did possess a number of good qualities. He was handsome and popular, a gifted athlete who never lacked for female attention. He’d done well in school, good enough to be admitted to Fordham and Connecticut College, though he’d ultimately settled on Berkshire State University, partly because it was more affordable, but mainly, as he cheerfully informed anyone who asked, because BSU was a party school and he liked to party. That was how he presented himself to the world—as a big, friendly, fun-loving bro, a dude you’d totally want on your team or in your frat—and the world seemed happy to take him at his word.
To Eve, though, he was still the bewildered boy who couldn’t understand why his father had left and why they couldn’t just make him come home. For the first couple of months after Ted moved out, Brendan had slept with a picture of his dad under his pillow, and more than once she’d found him wide awake in the middle of the night, talking to the photo with tears streaming down his face. He’d toughened up over time—his muscles turned wiry and his eyes got hard and the picture disappeared—but something had gone out of him in the process, all the boyish softness and vulnerability that had touched her so deeply. He just wasn’t as nice a person as he used to be—not nearly as sweet or as kind or as lovable—and she couldn’t forgive herself for letting that happen, for not knowing how to protect him, or how to fix what was broken.
*
They hit a traffic jam on the edge of campus, a festive convoy of incoming freshmen and their families. Inching toward the Longfellow Residential Area, they were cheered along the way by clusters of upperclassmen in matching red T-shirts who were apparently being paid to greet the newcomers. Some of them were dancing and others were holding up handmade signs that said, Welcome Home! and First Years Rock! However mercenary its origins, their enthusiasm was so infectious that Eve couldn’t help grinning and waving back.
“What are you doing?” Brendan muttered, still grumpy from his nap.
“Just being friendly,” she said. “If that’s all right with you.”