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Dad went out early to go fishing with Rob. Kris would be dropping by later to chat with Mom. But for now, Mom had the cabin and her delinquent twins all to herself.
Mom made a pot of coffee and set three mugs on the table in the kitchenette. She was sitting still, staring at her hands, when Seay came down. She calmly greeted him.
Her grown boy shuffled by, clearly selfconscious of his morning wood, dimly aware of her intent to tear him a new one, but obviously cradling a distended bladder. She waved him onward to the bathroom. He pissed loudly while she sipped her coffee and waited. On his way back through the kitchenette, as if he were simply going to head back up to bed, she asked him to sit.
He asked if he shouldn’t just at least run up and grab Tracy, first. But Mom said no.
“I want to start with you,” she explained.
Seay wasn’t sure how to respond to that.
Mom reached over and poured him a fresh piping hot cup of whatever coffee they sold at the gas station. Maxwell, perhaps. It smelled better than it tasted. “Come sit.”
Seay had to sort of let go of something inside him as he approached. The coffee did at least look enticing, even if everything else about Mom’s interrogation mode was unnerving.
Seay dropped quietly into his chair, and did his level best to savor his first sip.
“You went out without permission,” Mom started right in.
Savoring, denied.
“You came back late. Way late. Well past your curfew. And you reeked of alcohol and marijuana.”
Seay slouched tensely.
“Yes, you are sorry, I can tell,” Mom tapped the table once gently but adroitly. “But I don’t want a mea culpa here. I want facts. Talk.”
“We goofed,” Seay said. “I know better. Tracy just we just I just wanted to… to… “
Mom was giving him a withering look.
“… I don’t know,” he said. He lost his train of thought.
“You don’t know, huh?” Mom said, her one upturned eyebrow unconvinced. “I think I know precisely what you wanted. You wanted to act like an idiot. You wanted to let your sister talk you into doing something completely stupid, that could have put both of you in serious danger I mean, not at least TELLING me you were going out? And and Jesus, Seay, I mean seriously. At least just keep me informed. Do you not realize how important you guys are to me? How much I WORRY if you go missing in the middle of the night?” She slapped the table. She even sort of startled herself. She cleared her throat. “Sorry. Where was I?”
“Shshe put us in… danger?”
“Right,” Mom nodded. “Nno. Wait. Not right,” she shook her head. “You BOTH put yourselves in danger. Don’t try to put this all on Tracy.” Mom pointed a long, knowing finger at him. “She may be the brains of the operation? But you’re the conscience, Seay. You KNOW better.”
“Pleeease don’t talk about my brains right now,” Tracy groaned, arriving at the top of the ladder with a serious case of bedhead and a visibly acute migraine. She kneaded at her temples. She glowered at the ladder she was about to have to negotiate.
Mom paused their conversation.
“Well, look who’s up early!” Mom chirped.
Tracy feebly, clumsily reached the main floor.
“Don’t mind me,” she said as she shuffled past. “I’m not here. I just need to puke.”
“Lovely,” Mom said. “But if you could join us for a minute on your way back to bed? I’m sure your brother would appreciate the company.”
Seay gave his dreary sister a woeful look.
Tracy grunted and coldly shuffled on. She shut the bathroom door behind her. Moments later she was belching and puking and spitting directly into the big, echoic cabin toilet, and Mom picked back up where she and Seay had left off.
“So, tell me what you aren’t telling me. I want to know where you went, what you did, and who with.”
“Whwho with?” Seay faltered. “I mean, it was jjust Tracy and me, you know? Hanging out and being idiots together.”
“Uhhuh,” Mom frowned. “Bull. Care to revise that statement, or shall I do it for you?”
“UHuhmm, what?”
“And here’s a hint,” Mom brought her face just ever so slightly nearer to his. Maybe only an inch. But her approach felt severe. “You don’t want me to do it for you.”
“Wwe got a couple of ccollege kids to buy us hard lemonades,” he blurted. “And a porn. A, uhuhm, a porn magazine. Actually I bought it. I was old enough. But that was a separate purchase. And I left it in their car by accident. So. I guess it’s gone. Shoot, I could have probably just not mentioned it.”
“Right,” Mom rolled her eyes. “Go on. I need more than that. I don’t care about the porn. Who were these college kids whose car you were driving around in?” And suddenly Mom’s face slackened. She put her hand on Seay’s. “Tell me there wasn’t anyone drinking and driving.”
“THthere wasn’t!” Seay spluttered before even stopping to recall whether that was true or not. Had Blaze been drinking and driving? He had certainly smoked and drove. But that wasn’t Mom’s question. Wait. What was Mom’s question again? Had Seay answered it? Was his suffering over yet? Could she take her hand off his?
“Why don’t I believe you?” Mom scowled. She genuinely scowled. This normally indefatigably sweet woman. “You’re lying to me.” She let go of his hand.
“I I…” Seay stammered. He threw up his hand in either surrender or selfdefense. He wasn’t quite sure. “I ddon’t know what to tell you,” he said into his coffee mug.
“Look at me,” Mom said.
Seay looked up from his black reflection. Mom didn’t look angry. She looked distressed.
“Did you let someone drive drunk last night?”
“I I I don’t know,” Seay froze. “Mmaybe?”
“Don’t you give me that. Did you see them drinking anything?” Mom pressed.
“I I … Yyes. Ththere was a sports bottle. Full of something. I don’t know. They were both drinking from it.”
Mom’s mouth hung open a second. Then it shut. She took a centering breath and gathered her next words carefully.
“Never,” she said, practically shaking. “Never, ever. Do you ever. EVER. Do that again.” Her voice started to crack. “Do you understand me?”
“Yes!” Seay said desperately.
“You could have died,” Mom said sternly, biting back a piercing anxiety that audibly crackled her jaw.
“Wwe didn’t mean to get so swept up. We were just… “
“Okay, okay. EASE up on the poor guy,” Tracy begged as she came trudging back out of the bathroom. She belched into the crook of her arm. She left the door mostly shut with the ventilation fan running behind her. She signaled her mother and brother not to go in there for a minute. “I’m here now. You may begin the whipping proper.”
“Sit,” Mom commanded.
Tracy was already pulling out the chair. She poured her own cup of coffee. She sipped it gingerly. “I’m going to regret trying to drink this,” she sighed.
Mom was glaring at her.
“Go ahead,” Tracy said. She gestured at Mom to proceed.
Mom’s face flared red. But she kept a polite calm about her. She nodded, pursed her lips in thought, and took her time deciding how best to begin laying into her idiot daughter this time.
“After you two have finished sterilizing your room up there,” Mom said with a smile, “and I have approved of the job you’ve done ” Oof. That was the hard news, right there. Mom’s standards were pathological. ” I will expect you both to enjoy the rest of your day sequestered to this cabin, wherever you want so long as I can see you.”
“What if we have to pee?” Tracy pouted.
“You may have privacy in the bathroom,” Mom conceded. “But I reserve the right to make you uncomfortable. Vacation is over. You are not to leave this cabin, together, or separately, or under any circumstances whatsoever barring serious injury.”
“Ah, so you’re saying there’s a way,” Tracy forced a smirk. The coffee was not hitting well.
“And you can forget about ever seeing those college kids again,” Mom added. “What were their names, again?”
“We we haven’t said,” Seay mumbled.
“Oh, excuse me,” Mom acted the ditz. But she was never good at it. “Then please. Do tell.”
“Don’t,” Tracy said. She gave Mom a look that was inscrutable to Seay. “We don’t have to.”
Seay sat there like a deer in headlights as the women on either side of him locked looks.
“Seay?” Mom said gently, and returned her gaze to him even as Tracy glared on. “Tracy doesn’t speak for you. Would you like to tell me who bought you guys alcohol and then drove you around drunk last night? Or would you like me to think of another way I can worsen you and your sister’s punishment?”
Seay gulped. He glanced from his sister who gave him a surprised, dismayed look, as if he should have no need to look to her in this nobrainer Kids vs. Parents scenario back to his mother. And it was the latter face he ultimately, in equal parts dire earnest and lemonsour brain fog, found more compelling.
“They’re names were Blaze and Michelle. Blaze ddrove. Michelle brought the, um, the weed. I think.”
“I don’t care about the weed,” Mom said, dismissing it with a wave. “But thank you for coming clean. You have chosen wisely.”
“Fricking NARC,” Tracy gaped in disbelief. Her head pounded. Her belly roiled. Yet it was her brother’s treachery that sickened her the worst.
“That will be quite enough, young woman,” Mom snapped at her.
In response, Tracy sat forward and promptly vomited into her coffee mug. It sort of ‘plorped,’ overflowed, and splashed hot coffeevomit onto her fingers. She yelped and dropped the mug. It cracked and splatted on the kitchenette floor, signaling with abrupt finality the conclusion of their reaming.
Mom hollered, aghast.
Puke and coffee wafted up. It was a rancid moment. Seay’s innards writhed with uncertainty. Then Tracy excused herself once more to the bathroom.
They couldn’t help but listen. The door was not soundproof.
Tracy puked and puked until she couldn’t anymore, but then continued to gag and dry heave and spit long eggy webs of caustic stomach acid. She tore a sheaf of toilet paper. She blew her nose. She spat again into the toilet. Her guts just couldn’t say for sure whether they were done with her. She tried once more to finish. She wrung a merciless series of hard noises out of herself.
Seay, in a moment of hazy anxiety, got up to get paper towels and the broom and dustpan. It felt sensible and right. Mom stopped him mideffort.
“Leave it. I’ll get this mess. You go get started upstairs.”
Seay nodded diligently. Honestly, he was glad for the excuse to leave the kitchenette. He handed Mom the dust pan. And the broom.
“You still want this?” she asked.
He accepted his coffee mug.
He felt guilty that his body wasn’t reacting to the coffee like Tracy’s was. They’d drunk the same amount. They’d made the same mistakes. It didn’t feel fair.
But it did smell good. And it was warm to hold. Mom gave him a small, sort of wry look as he turned to excuse himself.
“Don’t clean the whole loft all by yourself,” Mom said. “Leave something for her to do. So she can get to it later, when she’s feeling better.”
“Save some of the fun for her,” Seay said. “Check.”
“Not fun. Punishment,” Mom corrected. “Don’t you dare enjoy this.”
But she smirked as she said it. They both knew Seay loved cleaning. Tidying. Putting things right. It was where he found his Zen. Order was a fundamental constant of his character. That he may in fact be growing into an unpredictable human all his own, complete with runaway good looks and a tendency to miss the forest for the trees, was a truth she was unready to reckon with today. Because as much as was still feasible, she really did hope to keep the remainder of her vacation at the lake a vacation. She needed it. The chore of reckoning could wait for the long drive home.
Tracy sobbed quietly from inside the bathroom, bringing Mom back to attention.
Mom finished cleaning up the broken mug and its mess. She took the stinky trash out. When she came back in, the smell hit her anew, and she opened a window in the kitchen. She went and slid the back door open just a crack, too. A crisp lakechilled breeze stirred the blinds. Mom clutched her robe a little tighter. Her own odors wafted up from inside. Oof. She needed a shower. She smelled like Dad.
She went and knocked lightly at the bathroom door.
“Trace, hon?”
“Please,” Tracy croaked, “not right now.”
The kid sounded genuinely unwell. Mom let herself savor this karmic assist for just a moment. Then she let the maternal instincts kick in. “Can I please come in?” she asked carefully. “I know you don’t feel good. I won’t stay. I just want to give you a hug and remind you that I love you.”
Tracy groaned. She wobbled to her feet and numbly unlocked the door. She let Mom into the atrocioussmelling room. She shut the door behind her.
“I don’t want to stink up the whole cabin,” she muttered by way of explaining their nowshared confinement.
“Aw, honey pie,” Mom said, and pulled her malodorous kid into a hug. “I’ll be sure and grab you some Listerine.”
“Could you?” Tracy sobbed into Mom’s robe’s deep, warm, coffeesmelling fluff. Despite her face being buried, Mom could still understand her daughter just fine. Her whole body was attuned to her kids.
“Of course.”
“Thank you.”
“My poor baby.”
Mom stroked her daughter’s long, sinewy back. Gosh, she’d grown. She was an adult. Mom had two adult children.
“I’m so sorry about last night.”
“I know you are,” Mom sighed. But then she shrugged. “And I know you aren’t.”
“I swear, I don’t mean to be such an idiot.”
“I believe it.”
“But I can’t help it! It’s like it’s in my DNA.”
“Hey,” Mom frowned. “Leave your dad out of this.”
Tracy cackled into Mom’s boob. Mom smiled, too.
And they hugged for a little while longer. Then Tracy needed to go lay down. Mom helped her to the sofa. She brought her Listerine in a little wax paper cup. She watched the girl swish, gargle, and spit back into the cup. Then she took the cup and discarded it. She came back a minute later with a glass of water, no ice, and a slice of apple on a napkin. She made Tracy take a sip and a nibble in front of her.
Then she went to take her muchneeded shower. As she turned to leave, Tracy muttered something. Mom didn’t quite hear it. Frickawhatnow? When she asked Tracy to repeat herself, she said she hadn’t said anything.
She’d definitely said something. But Mom let it go. For Mom, letting go was paramount to a good shower.
Mom got the shower going, and while it warmed up she sat miserably on the toilet and peed a long, painful pee. She washed her hands and looked at herself in the mirror. She still looked good, she supposed. But all she could see was time. The mirror quickly fogged up.
When she couldn’t see herself anymore, she hopped into the shower. The water scalded at first. She tweaked the lever. She waited outside the cone of boiling spray, tweaking the lever again and again, until it was no longer intolerable to her fingers. Then she stepped in. Her hands cupped the water against her solar plexus. She checked in with herself. Perfect heat was streaming down her frontside. It was thawing her spirit. She was becoming okay. She was perhaps still less okay than she would like to be, but she was becoming more okay. She released a small, pentup sigh that kept releasing and releasing until it turned into a long, low groan. She spun slowly and warmed her backside next. She relished. She swooned. She dissociated.
It had somehow made sense to Mom at the time to leave the bathroom door wide open while she bathed. To air the stench of vomit, maybe? To keep an ear on her sick kid? Name a reason. But it had made sense at the time.
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