“Perhaps she doesn’t have your momma’s awesome eye–hand coordination,” I teased, lifting the controller in my hands.
“No. She’s just got a stick up her butt,” Ethan returned.
“Kid,” I said quietly, liking he was sweet and sharp but not ever wanting him to be nasty. “Be cool.”
“It’s true,” he replied. “Thirty minutes, Mom? That’s just mean. And Everest’s mom lets him eat sweets, get this, only on a birthday. His or his sister’s or his mom’s or dad’s, and it’s only ever cake. They have broccoli every night. Broccoli looks gross, smells gross, and tastes gross. But he has it, like, every night. He says he reckons if that keeps up, he’s gonna turn into a broccoli.”
At this news, I could see why Ethan’s sleepovers were popular; I always laid out a spread for his friends. And I wasn’t certain we’d ever had broccoli in our house since the day he was born.
I smiled at him, but the truth of it was, I should make my kid eat more broccoli and green beans and shit like that, and less Pringles, Oreos, and M&M’s.
I wondered what Peggy would do if she ever learned how bad I let my kid eat.
Shit, maybe I should take a turn down the veggie aisle, and not just to pick up wonton wrappers for those sausage things I liked to make during football games.
“See why they wanna come here?” he asked me. “Because you dress cool and act cool and you don’t make us put our pop cans on coasters and stuff. And if the Xbox acts up, you know how to get back there and wiggle the right cables to get it working. Teddy’s mom makes us wait until his dad gets home because she doesn’t know anything about the TV, at all. I mean, what kinda guy, kid or grown-up, wouldn’t wanna be with a lady who’s cool like you?”
God, he was going to make me cry and I wasn’t sure my tear ducts even worked anymore. They’d dried up after Lowe fucked me over. If the waterworks turned on again because my kid was being all kinds of sweet, it could be catastrophic.
In other words, I had to put a stop to this immediately.
In an effort to do that, I warned, “You’re earning me exceeding my quota of gooey this week.”
He turned fully to me, and I realized he was being very serious, or more serious than I’d realized he was being (and I’d already figured he was being serious).
He had something to say that meant something to him.
This meant I needed to shut up and listen.
“Well, whatever. Be gooey, I don’t care,” he declared. “But I’m not gonna be here forever, Mom. Five years, I’m gonna have my license and be on the football team. That means practice after school and conditioning and swimming on the weekends. And I’ll have a babe and I’ll need to take her out. I’ll be gone a lot. Then what are you gonna do?”
“Ethan,” I muttered, dreading that time, upset that he recognized that time would come and he worried about me.
“No, I wanna know,” he demanded. “I’m almost eleven. You think I don’t know how hard it is for you to look out for me? But you don’t seem to know I don’t need it. Okay, like, I get it that you can’t leave me at home alone at night and stuff like that. But I’d be good during the day. I could even walk home from school so Gramma or Vi don’t have to come and get me. It’s not like that’s crazy. Other kids do it.”
Other kids might do it, but they only had a couple of hours to look after themselves before their parents got home. I didn’t get home on early shifts until after eight thirty.
I was cool for a mom, I could see that, but that was too long for a kid Ethan’s age to be by himself.
“That’s not gonna happen for a couple of years, kid,” I told him quietly.
“Right, but you know I’m good, even if you’re not good with it yet, right?”
I could give him that for sure, so I did.
I nodded. “I know you’re good.”
“And, like, that’s gonna be the way it’ll be and then what for you, Mom? If I’m not around, who are you gonna be with? Who’s gonna be around to make you happy?”
God, my eyes felt like they were growing in my head, pushing the boundaries of their sockets, and it hurt like crazy.
“That isn’t something you need to worry about, baby,” I said, and his head jolted.
“If I don’t think about stuff like this, who will?” he asked. “Not you,” he answered himself and kept going. “It’s like you’re all about me, and that’s cool. That’s part of you bein’ a cool mom, you know, bein’ into video games and things like that, but also how you are lookin’ after me. But that’s all you are, Mom. You, like…work, then you, like…look out for me. And that’s it. I mean, Merry’s a super-cool dude and I know he’d be totally into you, but he wouldn’t think to ask because you’re all about lookin’ out for me. He knows he’d get shot down, so why bother?”
Yep, I was right. Even though he wasn’t entirely correct, still, my kid was too sharp for his own good.
“And Merry’s the only cool one left,” Ethan informed me gravely. “He’s really tall, and he’s totally funny, and he wears suits like they’re jeans. The girls at school who know him think he’s hot for an old guy. I mean, there’s Marty and he’s all right, but he’s also kind of a goof. And you deserve someone like Merry, not a guy who’s all right but also kind of a goof.”