—
My mother is allergic to New York. She is particularly allergic to Brooklyn. The fact that flannel and high-waisted jeans are hot trends with the kids strikes her as both ridiculous and suspect. When homeless people yell at her, she is inclined to yell back. When I explain that there’s a service that will deliver your groceries, and another that delivers cleaning supplies, and another that delivers pet supplies, she says, “I don’t understand how people up here are so skinny but so lazy. I ain’t wastin money on that shit.”
She goes to a bodega and spends thirty bucks on detergent and Mop & Glo and Clorox wipes. She tries to haggle with the store owner. He tells her to fuck off. She pays up and lugs it all back to the apartment, then collapses on the couch, frowning at the red grooves the bag handles dug into her palms.
“Told you,” I say.
The next day, I am persuaded to clean myself up and take her to Prospect Park. “I wanna see something while I’m here,” she says. “And I won’t quit until you leave the house for once. Don’t need you getting to be a crazy old shut-in at thirty-three.”
“I am old and crazy.”
She leans in and swats me on the butt, hard. “Shut up,” she says, a weird, ragged edge to her voice.
Subway fares have risen twenty-five cents since I last rode. Swiping the MetroCard to get through the turnstile drives Mom batshit. She blows two minutes running the card through the slot too slow, then too fast, while a line builds behind her. I give the people waiting an empty look until they go to another turnstile.
“Haven’t you ever used a credit card before?” I ask her.
“Don’t get smart.”
On the train, she suggests we go to the studio later. “Wasn’t you all livin there for a while? Are people in there?”
“No.”
“Maybe we should go over to clean. So you can work there again.”
“It’s not around here. It’s in another neighborhood called Bushwick.”
“Where’s that?”
“Too far. Leave it alone, please.”
“Well, I don’t see no sense in paying rent on a place and then not having—”
“I said no,” I shout. The car goes quiet. A couple of kids climbing on and off the seats stop to stare.
At the park, she starts wheezing at the quarter-mile mark. We make it to the duck pond before she lights a cigarette and holds up her hands, saying, “All right. I give up. I’m tired. I’ll pay for a cab. Where’s a cab.”
We don’t speak on the way home. She looks out the window, mouth pinched. We pass brownstones, cyclists. She grips her purse, knuckles pale.
I hear her in my room that night, Doral smoke curling from under the door. I don’t know who she’s talking to. Kent, maybe Shauna. It’s not a conversation she wants me to hear. But I can hear it anyway, catch her say, wavery and close, “She scares me.”
—
My buzzer sounds. Mom goes to the box, presses the talk button, says, “Hello?” like she’s answering a phone, then pushes listen like I’ve shown her. Turns to give me a triumphant look.
“Sharon?” It’s a guy. Young. His voice is on the verge of cracking.
“Who is it?”
“Mom, you still have your finger on listen.”
“Oh.”
“Sharon. Dude,” the voice says.
I go to the window and look. It’s Tatum and Ryan: one still bald, the other still overwhelmingly dreadlocked. Tatum sees me first. Slaps Ryan. They yell.
I run down the stairs, throw the door open, and they pile on. It’s instantaneous—for two guys I barely know, I’m so happy to see them, I feel my throat go heavy, and I embrace them, letting them cover me up.
—
“We quit our jobs,” Tatum says.
“We want to be animators,” Ryan adds.
“Yeah.”
“Ted was pissed.”
Tatum reaches out and flicks Ryan on the back of the head. “Fucktard,” he whispers.
Already they’re filling my living room: their boy smell, their messy, smeared luggage. “It’s okay,” I say. “You can mention Teddy. I’m not going to get upset.”
I hear Mom hesitate, then she sticks her head in, all smiles. Ryan and Tatum may be suspicious, flannel-sporting, flat-in-the-accent, smelling-faintly-of-ganja boys, but they are still boys, and for her, that makes them the center of this particular four-person universe. She loves them unexpectedly and immediately. “Boys, we got that funny pop from around the corner.”
“She means coconut soda,” I tell them.
“Awesome.”
“We’d love coconut soda, Mrs. Kisses.” Ryan twiddles a dreadlock at her. Mom beams and claps her hands together.
“So this makes sense,” I tell them. “You guys did a lot on Irrefutable Love, so there’s one credit for your résumé. Weren’t you VA majors in college?”
“I was VA. The Tater was film.” Ryan stretches his legs, looking around. The room has been cleaned. I am dressed—it’s sweatpants, but it’s something. I’m glad for these things, now that they’re here.
“That sounds like the right combination. So what made you decide to come up here?”
Tatum clears his throat. Ryan scrubs a place on his arm, squinting.
“Mel?”