Fluidity

Chapter 1-3

My mother, the infamous Evelyn Parsons, was on the phone when I walked into the house. She looked great dressed in a plumb-colored track suit and a white T-shirt. I was pretty sure she had a track suit in every color under the rainbow. Her dark brown hair, the same shade as my own, had been recently cut and styled and her nails were polished in a color that matched her track suit.

She looked at me and told whomever she was speaking to that I “just walked in.” Then she told the other person that she’d talk to him or her later.

“Who was that?” I asked. Her failure to respond answered the question for me. “That was Chris, wasn’t it? I don’t like you two talking about me behind my back.”

She sighed and rolled her eyes. “No one’s talking about you behind your back. Christopher just called to see if you’d made it here yet.”

My mother had insisted on calling Chris by his full name, and when I’d asked why, she’d told me, “He looks like a Christopher, not a Chris.” Whatever.

“Why does he even care if I made it here or not? He put me out on the street.”

“He didn’t put you out on the street. Your old room is ready and waiting for you upstairs.”

“Great. Now I can cry myself to sleep on my old sheets.”

“Scott—”

“You have no idea how upset I am over this whole thing, Mom. Chris tossed me aside like a bag of trash. We were together for four years!”

“I know, but I tried to warn you. When you first started seeing him, I told you this might happen.”

“Right. You told me he was out of my league, which, by the way, was a really shitty thing to say to me, Mom.”

“I was just…what do the kids say? Keeping it real? I never meant to hurt you, Scott. I said what I did to help you.”

“Yeah, thanks. I appreciate it.”

She sighed. “I blame myself for this. I spoiled you as a child and now it’s come back to bite us both in the ass.”

My mother launched into her tale of joy and woe surrounding my birth, a story I’d heard far too many times and could practically recite verbatim.

My older sister Leah and I were born seven years apart. My parents had tried, and failed, to have another child after Leah was born, but they weren’t able to, and then, seven years after they’d pretty much given up hope, I’d come along. The miracle baby had been born. My parents (my mother mainly) saw my birth as something miraculous, and as a result, spoiled me crazy. Very little had been denied to me as a child. If I’d cried and wanted to be picked up and held, I was. If I’d wanted a new bicycle, I got one. If I’d wanted another slice of cake, it was given to me. Little Scott Matthew Parsons lived high on the hog for many years. It wasn’t until I was a teenager that my father had stepped in to try and put the brakes on my spoiled behavior, but it was too little too late. Even at fifteen, I was still my mother’s miracle baby and she wasn’t about to treat me any differently. But all of that changed after Leah got married and had kids. My mother shifted her attention from me to her grandchildren. Then I was pushed even farther aside when my father died of a heart attack during my last year of college. I’d realized then that I needed to step up to the plate and be the responsible adult my father had wanted me to be. I had to be my mother’s shoulder to cry on rather than the other way around. The miracle baby had to grow the f**k up, and I’d tried. I was there for my mother and my sister as much as I could be. I didn’t always succeed in being a reliable adult, but I did make an effort.

“Is this your way of telling me you don’t want me here?” I asked my mother.

“No, of course not. This is your home, Scott, and you’re always welcome here. I just wish I’d raised you to be more responsible.”

“I’m responsible!”

“No, honey, you aren’t. You have a hard time running your own life because you’re accustomed to having someone take care of you and that’s my fault.” She shook her head. “I never should have spoiled you the way I did. I know that now. I should have raised you the way I raised Leah.”

Yes, Leah. I may have been the miracle baby, but she was the true favored child. She was the one who did well in school, became a pharmacist, married an anesthesiologist, birthed two wonderful children, lived in a beautiful house in Glenview, and did everything right while I f****d up at every turn. I’d barely scraped by in school and it had taken me five years to get my BA. Then I’d worked a series of low-paying jobs before finally landing my current position as a coordinator for a charitable organization that coordinated the distribution of food to several local food banks. Working for a non-profit was like taking a vow of poverty, but I enjoyed my job and I was good at it. Even though I wasn’t making a lot of money myself, I was a pro at squeezing money out of other people.

“I’m sorry, Mom, but marrying an anesthesiologist and living in the suburbs with two kids is never going to happen for me.”

“That’s not what I meant and you know it. It takes two people to make a relationship work. You can’t leave all of the heavy lifting to one person.”

“What’s that supposed to mean? You think I didn’t carry my weight with Chris?”

“Scott, come on. Do you think I’m stupid? Do you think I didn’t know what was going on with you and Christopher? Stevie Wonder could see what kind of arrangement you two had. He was your…sugar daddy!”

Hearing my mother refer to Chris as my “sugar daddy” should have made me go ballistic, but she’d spat out the words with such disgust that I ended up laughing instead.

“You think this is funny?” she asked.

“No, I think you’re funny. Sugar daddy? Really, Mom?”

“Yes, really. You were a kept man.”

“I was not. I work for a living, you know. Just because Chris paid the bills doesn’t mean I didn’t contribute to the household in other ways.”

My mother raised an eyebrow and said nothing. I knew what she was thinking. She thought I paid for my room and board with my ass. She’d never say it, but she didn’t have to. It was written all over her face.

“I’m not a prostitute, Mother.”

“Scott!” she gasped with fake indignation.

“Come off it, Mom. I know that’s what you think. I’m just ‘keeping it real.’” I even threw in the air quotes, knowing she’d hate me even more. But before she could launch into yet another criticism of me and my life, I told her, “What you fail to understand is that Chris and I loved each other and we had a real relationship.”

“I know you did.”

“Then you should also know that I don’t deserve this kind of treatment from him. I could see it if I’d been a bad boyfriend who cheated or something, but I wasn’t.”

“Scott—”

“I loved Chris more than I loved myself and it still wasn’t enough.”

“Scott—”

“He never loved me the way I loved him. I realize that now. I should have seen the signs, but I didn’t because I was blinded by love.”

“Scott!” my mother finally yelled.

“What?”

“I have something to tell you.”

“I can’t take any more bad news today, Mom, so if you’re dying or something, tell me tomorrow.”

“I’m not dying and it’s not bad news. It’s good news, actually. You know when Dennis and I went to Vegas last month?”

“Yes. Did you win big and not tell me?”

“I won a little scratch, but that’s not the good news.” She took a deep breath and exhaled. “Dennis and I got married.”

I stared at her for a few moments. “What?”

“We got married. We hadn’t planned on doing it, but we talked and decided to go ahead and get hitched. Isn’t that great?”

Was it great? I wasn’t sure. Maybe it was. If my mother was happy, then I was happy for her. She’d been a widow for more than ten years since my father’s heart attack, so I was surprised to hear her announce she’d remarried. She and Dennis had been seeing each other for the past year and, while they seemed to be serious about each other, I just didn’t see marriage entering into the equation.

“This is a surprise,” I said. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I wanted to, but I’d been talking with Christopher and he told me about the problems you two were having, so I figured I’d wait until things settled down before I said anything.”

She showed me her new wedding band that I’d failed to even notice since it looked a lot like her old one. As much as I wanted to light into my mother for discussing my relationship with Chris behind my back, I didn’t. I suppressed my anger and kept my focus on her and her marriage to Dennis. “You still should have told me. Does Leah know?”

An uncomfortable expression covered my mother’s face before she nodded. “Yes.”

Of course Leah knew. Why wouldn’t she? As usual, I was the odd man out. I bet even Chris knew about the wedding. Everyone was probably in on the news except for me.

“Well, congratulations,” I said, giving the best fake smile I could muster.

“Thank you.”

“Are you planning to take Dennis’s name?”

“Yes. I haven’t done anything to change my name officially from Parsons to Brennan yet, but I will. I hope you understand. I feel it’s important to take my husband’s name just like I took your father’s when we got married.”

“Sure.” Even though it made perfect sense for my mother to take Dennis’s name as her own, I felt a twinge of sadness over losing yet another Parsons to marriage. When Leah got married, she dumped the Parsons name in favor of her husband’s, and now, with my mother’s second marriage, Parsons was falling by the wayside yet again. I was about to be the last one in our immediate family who still had the name. Too bad I wasn’t planning on having any children.

“So, are you and Dennis living together now?” Glancing around the room, I didn’t see any evidence that he had moved in. Everything looked the same as it always had. I knew Dennis owned his own home somewhere on the North Shore, but I’d never been there. I really didn’t know much about my new stepfather. He and my mother met through an online dating site for “mature” singles. I knew he was widowed and retired, but had no idea what he did for a living. I seemed to recall my mother telling me he had children, but I’d never met any of them. I didn’t even know if they lived in the area. I’d been too wrapped up in my own life to get mixed up in my mother’s or her boyfriend’s.

“No, we’re not living together…yet. Dennis still has his house in Wilmette. For now, we just go back and forth between his house and mine. We haven’t decided what we’re going to do in the future.”

Hearing this made me perk up. Maybe Mom could move in with Dennis and leave the house in Evanston to me. Then I could live alone and have the garage to myself.

“One of us should probably sell so we don’t have to maintain two households,” she continued.

Suddenly, my optimism turned to pessimism. Sell? That would be terrible. If my mother sold her house and moved in with Dennis, where would I go? Even though I didn’t know Dennis well, I highly doubted he’d want his thirty-five-year-old stepson living under his roof. And what if Dennis decided to sell his home and move in here with my mother? That would be a disaster, too. Living back home with my mother was humiliating enough without adding a stepfather into the mix. I imagined him trying to undermine me, smiling in my face while stabbing me in the back with subtle hints to my mother that I needed to be put out.

Living with her wasn’t ideal, but at least I knew she wouldn’t pressure me to leave or charge me rent while I was here. I just needed time to save enough money to get a place of my own. I didn’t envision myself staying with her forever. I figured I’d be out of her hair (and she’d be out of mine) in six to eight months tops.