A Man Named Dave

in her arms when I was a preschooler. I had watched Mommy glow as she laughed, as Ron, Stan, and I vied for her attention. And now, with Mother hunched over and her hips molded to her chair, her past had caught up with her, like Father’s had years ago. Her life these days consisted of what she viewed from a television set. Her form of control was now a piece of plastic used to change channels to her world. Whatever light had kept her soul lit had been extinguished. Mother had become her own prisoner. Whatever harm I had just wished upon her moments ago could not compare to her self-created prison.
    Mother’s change of tone brought me out of my trance. “You may not think it by looking at me, but you and I are very much from the same piece of cloth.”
    I shook my head. “Excuse me?”
    Mother seemed to make an effort to control her sniffling. “You think life is so easy, well …” she huffed, “before I was pregnant with Ron … I had a miscarriage.” She stopped abruptly, as if for effect. Not knowing if she was sincere or again trying to feed off a tragedy, I wasn’t sure how to react. Suddenly her face turned dark red. “You think this entire planet revolves around you! David, David, David! That’s all I’ve heard about for years was David this, David that, ‘feed the boy,’ ‘don’t punish the boy,’ every day since the day you were born!” Building up steam, Mother pointed a finger at me. “And let me tell you something else: it was those teachers, those teachers at school, butting into my affairs! It’s no one else’s damn business! What happens in someone’s house should stay in that person’s house! But I tell you what: I taught that – that hippie teacher of yours, Ms Moss, a thing or two when I had her little behind removed from the school. She was out of there so fast, you’d thought it made your head spin.
    “You don’t remember,” Mother went on, “but when you were six, maybe seven, you were playing with matches one day and … you burned your arm. If I told you once,” she said, “I told you a thousand times. Anyway, one day you showed up with a few marks on your arm. And that Moss teacher of yours had the audacity to accuse me of… well, we both know what happened, don’t we?”
    “ Quite well,” I said to myself. Mother’s recollection was off by two years. I was eight when Mother held my arm over the kitchen stove. When she sent me off to school the next day, she claimed “the boy” had played with a match. Even back then, early on, everyone knew the reality of my situation. Somehow Mother must have believed she could not only hide the secret, but dispose of anyone who challenged her authority.
    “And that principal of yours, Pete Hanson, calling me every single day! It got to the point every time the phone rang, well, I just knew who it was. I dreaded picking it up. If it wasn’t one thing it was another, saying that boy of yours did this or that. How the boy got into a fight, pulled somebody’s hair, stole food, clothes, or whatever it could get its hands on. Every day. Well, it just got to the point that it drives a person to drink. It wasn’t me that was after you, it was those damn teachers! Always digging, always putting their noses in other people’s business. It was them!” Mother stated as if her life depended upon it.
    “You think you’re the only one with troubles!” Mother continued. “You have no idea what it’s like. It’s not easy raising four boys all alone, barely scraping by, having a husband just pick up and walk out on you. Believe me, I could tell you things about your father!”
    “Don’t!” I coldly interjected. Lowering my voice, I said, “He was your husband, and you couldn’t even step into the hospital once, just once, or have the decency to mail him a card. Of all the things –”
    “Well!” Mother said. “I’m not all that cold-hearted. He wanted me to … to take him back before he even checked into Kaiser Hospital. We even had lunch. He practically begged me.”
    “You love it, don’t you?” I blurted before thinking. I was so close to the edge, just a single breath away from opening up and really telling Mother off, but I kept myself in check. The last thing I wanted was to get sucked into one of Mother’s games. “His name was Stephen? ” I shook my head. “You must have known he was reaching out to you. You knew he was sick and you made him beg?”
    “Oh, please! Enough with the dramatics. I told your father, and now I’m telling you: I wouldn’t have taken him back for all