My stepdad fired me after thirteen years so his son could have my job.
“I’ve got my own boy to think about,” he said, while I stood there wondering how to feed mine.
I cleared my desk and left.
Months later, my stepbrother arrived for an interview without knowing who’d be waiting.
My son was six, and his school had already sent home the payment reminder I’d been avoiding.
That morning, I’d told him we’d take care of it when I got paid.
So, yeah.
There was a bit more riding on that job than whether Dad liked me.
I’d started at sixteen, hauling flooring samples through his shop after school and vacuuming before I could go home.
Donald had married my mother when I was eight.
By the time I could work, he’d stopped calling the spare bedroom mine whenever we argued.
“Food costs money, Ricky,” he said.
“You want to keep eating here, you contribute.”
I washed dishes at a diner on weekends, too.
Apparently contributing had several shifts.
When somebody called out at the flooring business, I covered whatever I could.
When a delivery arrived wrong, I stayed while Donald argued with the supplier.
Then I helped load the replacement.
By twenty-three, I had a crew depending on me and customers calling my phone instead of his.
He started introducing me as FAMILY when he wanted somebody to trust us with a bigger contract.
I liked hearing that.
I liked it enough that I usually forgot how he talked once the customer left.
By then, Kian was in my life, and a steady check mattered more than winning an argument with Donald.
My girlfriend, Brittany, kept telling me I could ask for more.
“Ask him what he’d pay somebody else to do it,” she said.
I never got around to that conversation.
The morning everything changed, Kian and I had squeezed together on her couch for a picture before I left.
He kept poking his tongue through the gap where his tooth had been.
Brittany told him to smile normally, which naturally made it worse.
I had that picture on my phone when Donald called me into his office.
His son had been back for a few weeks.
Jalen had lived with his own mother after his parents split, and most of what I knew about him came through Donald.
A new school.
A degree.
Some plan that always sounded better than whatever I happened to be doing.
When he returned, Donald walked him around the shop while I waited for approval on a delivery.
“We’ll get to yours,” he said.
Jalen hadn’t even taken his coat off.
My mother, Colette, had an answer ready when I mentioned it later.
She peeled an orange and dropped the peel into her palm.
“He’s missed having Jalen around. Give him that.”
“I haven’t asked him to send Jalen away.”
“Then don’t make it awkward.”
Right. My specialty, apparently.
At work, I explained our schedules to Jalen because Donald asked me to.
I showed him which customers needed a call before we arrived and which suppliers wouldn’t accept returns without the delivery slip.
Donald called it TEMPORARY help until Jalen settled in.
Then he called me into that office.
He didn’t offer me a chair.
“We’re ending your position,” he said.
I still had the delivery slip he’d asked me to bring.
“Ending it how?”
“Jalen will handle the crews.”
The slip bent between my fingers.
Donald reached for it, so I gave it to him.
“He’s QUALIFIED, Ricky. He’s got the education for this.”
“And I’ve been doing it.”
“That’s not what we’re discussing.”
He checked the slip while I stood there, as though this was taking longer than he’d allowed.
I asked whether he was moving me back onto a crew.
“No. We can’t carry the extra salary.”
Extra.
I’d been necessary when somebody needed a ride before dawn or a customer wanted an answer after dinner.
Now my whole paycheck was extra.
“I’ve given you thirteen years,” I said.
“And he’s my son.”
I waited for him to add something.
Donald put the slip beside his keyboard.
“I’ve got my own boy to think about.”
“Kian needs me working.”
“You’ll find something. You’re used to getting on with things.”
I asked whether I could finish the jobs already assigned to me.
He said TODAY would be my last day.
“Let me make this simple. HE GETS YOUR JOB.”
That finally did it.
I stopped trying to find the version of this where he’d made a mistake.
I cleared my drawer, left the customer numbers where he’d asked, and told him I hoped it worked out.
Brittany answered before I reached my car.
I got as far as “He gave it to Jalen” before I had to stop.
She let me sit there with the phone against my ear.
Then she said, “Bring Kian over when you collect him.”
Donald owned the place I rented, too, so going home meant walking past his truck.
On the fourth evening, Brittany moved her things out of a drawer and left it open.
“You and Kian can stay here,” she said.
“Properly. Stop packing a bag every morning.”
I tried to tell her I didn’t know when I’d have another check.
“I heard you,” she said. “The drawer’s still yours.”
I applied to a competing flooring company in Beloit before I could talk myself out of it.
Their manager asked about the jobs I’d handled, then called the references I supplied.
By the end of the meeting, he’d offered me an installation supervisor position.
The pay was higher than I’d dared put on the application.
I read that part again.
Then I asked what happened when a crew ran late and I had school pickup.
“We arrange coverage,” he said. “Put the time in your calendar.”
Like that.
I spent the next few months expecting somebody to take the offer back.
Instead, they gave me grocery-store refits and clinic contracts, and asked what I needed to get them finished.
When something went wrong, I could say so without getting a lecture about gratitude.
My mother met me for coffee after I’d settled in.
“You seem happier,” she said.
“I don’t check who’s calling before I answer anymore.”
She turned her cup by the handle.
“Maybe leaving was what you needed.”
Leaving.
I let her keep that word because I didn’t want to spoil the afternoon.
Reports about Donald’s business started reaching me through suppliers who dealt with both companies.
A crew sent to the wrong address.
A customer waiting on material nobody had ordered.
Then a supplier asked whether we were taking on contracts the old company couldn’t finish.
I said he’d need to speak to our office.
I didn’t call Donald.
When our department advertised an opening, screening applicants became part of my week.
I was going through the online queue when I recognized the next applicant and stopped scrolling.
Jalen.
He’d listed the job Donald took from me as his current position.
Under availability, he’d selected IMMEDIATE.
I opened the application again to make sure I hadn’t read it wrong.
Then I put him through the same screening as the other candidates.
His appointment landed that afternoon.
I was behind the interview desk when he entered, checking his cuffs before he lifted his face.
His hand stayed on the chair.
“Ricky?”
I left his application open between us.
He glanced toward the doorway, then back at me.
“You’re the person deciding whether I get hired?”
The passenger seat
“I’m doing your interview. My recommendation goes to the manager.”
I pulled the chair out for him.
“And I’ll tell him we’re related before anything goes further.”
Jalen sat, then stood again to straighten his jacket.
I’d worn my work shirt to my interview.
Apparently the cuffs were an optional part of getting employed.
“Does Dad know you work here?”
“He’s known for months.”
Jalen looked past me.
Through the window, Donald’s truck occupied two spaces near the entrance.
My mother sat in the passenger seat.
I moved the application aside.
“Your ride?”
“He wanted to come.”
“Both of them?”
“Colette said we could all talk afterward.”
My mother hadn’t mentioned coming. We spoke the evening before.
She’d asked whether Kian still needed the next size of sneakers.
I put my phone facedown.
“We can talk about family after work. Right now, tell me about the crews you’ve supervised.”
Jalen rubbed a mark on his application printout with his thumb.
“Before we start, Dad said you might have the wrong idea.”
“About the position?”
“About me.”
Outside, Donald got out of the truck and checked our front door.
My mother stayed where she was.
I wanted to lock it.
A mature response from a man trusted with clinic contracts.
Instead, I pulled the interview questions back in front of me.
Jalen leaned forward.
“He said once I got you alone, you’d understand.”
The key with the tape
The last time Donald wanted me to understand something, I’d been returning my rental key.
It had green tape around the top.
Kian called it our green key, as though we owned enough property to require a color system.
Four evenings after the firing, I set it on Donald’s workbench.
My mother came with me to check the rooms.
She opened the oven, which hurt my feelings a little.
I’d lost my job, not started roasting tires.
“No damage,” she said.
“Then I need the deposit.”
Twelve hundred dollars. I’d saved it before we moved in, mostly by taking weekend jobs nobody wanted.
Donald opened a drawer.
“We’ll settle everything together.”
“There’s nothing else to settle.”
He closed the drawer.
My mother took the receipt from my hand and copied the amount into the notebook she used for household expenses.
She wrote down everything.
If Donald bought two washers, those washers entered the family history.
“I’ll remind him,” she said.
I folded my receipt and put it back in my wallet.
Behind Donald, his boat sat on its trailer.
I’d helped replace the floor the previous winter.
He’d offered to pay me, then called it a family project when we finished.
Family projects had an excellent labor rate.
He caught me looking at it.
“Another payment and she’s mine outright.”
“Good. Mine’s twelve hundred.”
My mother touched my elbow.
“Ricky.”
That was usually the end of a conversation.
My name, said like I’d spilled something.
Before we left, I asked whether I could collect the photo albums from my old bedroom.
“Leave them,” she said. “You can get them whenever.”
I did leave them.
School pictures, pictures with my mother before she married Donald, the first picture of me holding Kian.
I took the key off my ring in front of her.
For months afterward, the deposit stayed on her reminder list.
Donald always needed another week.
Now his truck was outside my new office.
My phone lit up beside Jalen’s application.
A message from my mother.
Please come over tonight. We need to get this settled as a family.
The twelve hundred dollars suddenly seemed like the cheapest thing they were holding.
Question four
Jalen did well on the questions about delivery schedules.
He knew which suppliers required the original slip for returns.
He knew to call the clinic before sending a crew through the patient entrance.
I’d taught him those things.
On question four, I gave him a job with a moisture reading too high for the flooring specified.
“What do you do?”
“Ask the customer whether they want to proceed.”
“And if they say yes?”
He looked down.
“I’d check with whoever handles the warranty.”
“Who handled it where you were?”
“Dad.”
I wrote that down without comment.
He pointed at my pen.
“That sounds bad when you write it.”
“It sounds like your answer.”
He laughed once. Then he tried again, this time describing the tests he’d ask the crew to repeat.
That answer went down, too.
I could give him an interview without either handing him my chair or dropping it on his foot.
Thirteen years at Donald’s had apparently prepared me for both.
When we finished, I explained the next stage. Work references.
Another conversation if the manager wanted one. No promise from me.
Jalen stayed seated.
“You’re really going to make me go through all that?”
“Everybody does.”
“Dad said you owe him a little consideration.”
“For what?”
“He got you started.”
I put the cap on my pen.
“He also got me stopped.”
Jalen’s mouth moved, but nothing came out.
The door opened before he tried again.
Donald stood there with my mother behind him.
He’d come through reception and walked straight down the hall after seeing Jalen through the glass.
“There you are,” he said. “Quite the setup.”
“This is an interview.”
“We’re family.”
My mother held her purse against her stomach.
“Donald, let’s wait outside.”
He stepped farther in.
“I just want to know whether we’re wasting our time.”
“Jalen will hear through the same process as everyone else.”
Donald looked at him.
“What did I tell you?”
Jalen folded his application.
“He’s been fair.”
That surprised me enough that I nearly thanked him for describing fifteen ordinary minutes.
Donald put a hand on his shoulder.
“We’ll talk tonight.”
I stood and held the door open.
My mother stopped beside me.
“Don’t bring work home with you,” she said.
I looked at Donald, who was standing in my workplace.
She looked away.
Jalen waited until they were ahead of him.
“I figured you’d be less angry by now.”
“Why?”
He put the folded application into his jacket.
“Because you got your money.”
Eighteen thousand four hundred
Brittany came with me that evening.
Her sister, Ashlee, stayed with Kian at our place.
I wanted to go alone.
I also wanted to arrive with a rehearsed sentence that would make Donald admit everything and my mother put her arms around me.
Brittany said she’d drive.
That was the more useful plan.
Donald had arranged chairs in the living room.
He took the armchair he always used.
My mother sat beside the cupboard where she kept her expense notebooks.
Jalen stood near the window.
I stayed standing, too.
“What money?”
Donald pointed to a chair.
“Sit down. We can do this properly.”
“What money did Jalen mean?”
My mother looked at him.
“Donald?”
He rubbed his forehead.
“This is exactly what I wanted to avoid.”
Jalen took out his phone.
“The money when you left. Dad said it would help you get set up somewhere else.”
“How much?”
“Eighteen thousand four hundred.”
I looked at Brittany. She had both hands around her car keys.
We’d counted coins for Kian’s school payment.
She’d covered it, and I’d repaid her from my first check.
The two of us had stood in her grocery aisle arguing about whether I needed lunches for myself as well as for my son.
Apparently we’d done all that with eighteen thousand dollars tucked somewhere inconvenient.
“I never got that.”
Donald shifted in his chair.
“You were paid throughout your employment.”
“That’s not what he said.”
Jalen turned his screen toward me.
A transfer. His account to Donald’s. The week Donald fired me.
The note beneath it said: Ricky transition.
I read it twice.
“You gave him this?”
“He said it was my part of taking over.”
“What part?”
Jalen’s face changed.
“I was buying into the business. Dad said some of the money had to go toward getting you out.”
My mother stood.
“Getting him out?”
“He wanted his own thing,” Donald said. “We discussed that plenty.”
“No,” I said.
“You complained about money. About hours. About every little thing.”
“I asked whether I could finish my jobs.”
Jalen looked between us.
“Did you get any of it?”
“No.”
Donald rose from the armchair.
“Don’t let him turn this into something ugly.”
Brittany stood beside me.
“What did you think we were eating those first weeks?”
He pointed at her.
“You weren’t there for any business arrangements.”
“I was there when he couldn’t pay for his boy’s school trip.”
My mother pressed her hands together.
“I thought that was before everything was sorted.”
“Nothing was sorted,” I said. “I’m still waiting for my deposit.”
Donald reached for his phone.
“I’ll get the figures.”
Jalen moved toward him.
“You said he wouldn’t leave without it.”
“I said there were costs.”
“You said Ricky wanted cash.”
Donald went into the kitchen.
Nobody followed him immediately.
Jalen held the phone so tightly that the screen went dark under his thumb.
He woke it again and kept the transfer between us.
“I used most of what I’d saved,” he said.
I wanted to ask why he hadn’t called me.
I wanted to ask whether he’d enjoyed sitting in my chair.
Instead, I asked what Donald had promised him in writing.
“Nothing. He’s my dad.”
From the kitchen came the sound of a drawer opening.
Donald came back with a pad, but no receipt.
He wrote my name across the top.
The chair by the cupboard
Donald tore the sheet off and put it on the arm of his chair.
He’d written the amount beneath my name, then the word received.
“All we need is a record that the family obligations are settled.”
I stared at the page.
“You want me to sign that?”
“It’s a starting point.”
“For what?”
“For moving forward.”
He was trying to make a shopping list out of eighteen thousand four hundred dollars.
Jalen reached for it.
Donald pulled it away.
“Let me finish.”
My mother sat down again.
“Maybe we should all take a minute.”
I took out my deposit receipt and laid it beside Donald’s paper.
“That one I signed. Twelve hundred. You still have it.”
He didn’t look down.
“You stayed in my property below market rent.”
“At the rent you asked.”
“I gave you a chance to earn a living.”
“And paid me for the work.”
“Some people might remember that when a family member needs help.”
There it was. The interview.
Donald turned to Jalen.
“I told you he’d make this personal.”
“You brought it here,” Brittany said.
My mother put a hand up.
“Please. I can’t hear with everyone talking.”
Donald waited until she lowered her hand.
“There’s no work booked after next month. We can either keep tearing at each other, or Ricky can help his brother get a position.”
Jalen dropped into a chair.
“You said we were waiting on two quotes.”
“We are.”
“You said there’d be work.”
“There will be, somewhere.”
I knew that somewhere. I was standing in it.
Donald faced me.
“Give him a decent recommendation. Tell your mother we’ve settled things. I’ll return the deposit. Everybody gets to get on with their lives.”
“And this?” I pointed at the page.
“Nobody’s asking you to take it to an accountant.”
Brittany picked up her purse.
“We’re leaving.”
I didn’t move.
My mother was looking at the receipt, then at Donald’s page.
The figures were right in front of her.
She’d kept track of my rent for years.
“Mom. You know what I earned. You know what was in my account when I moved.”
“I don’t know everything between you two.”
“You came through the house with me. You wrote the deposit down.”
“I know.”
“Then say that.”
She looked at Donald.
He sat back, as though he’d done his part and was waiting for her to manage the child.
“I can’t keep doing this, Ricky,” she said.
“Doing what?”
“Having every visit turn into an argument.”
Brittany put her keys into my hand.
I could have gone.
I could have left the receipt, the money, all of it.
My new paycheck covered the things we’d been afraid of.
But Jalen still had his phone open.
And my mother still wouldn’t look at the piece of paper she’d helped me keep.
“Did you see him give me any money?” I said.
She rubbed her eyes.
“Donald told me there was an arrangement.”
“Did you see it?”
“No.”
Donald slapped his palm onto the chair.
“Enough.”
My mother stood so fast she knocked her purse over.
She left it on the floor and went upstairs.
For a few seconds, I thought she’d gone to get her notebook.
She returned carrying the photo albums.
The top one had a broken corner I’d taped when I was a kid.
“You asked for these,” she said.
“Months ago.”
“You might as well take them.”
I held out my hands because she was holding them toward me.
There was me at eight. Me before Donald.
Me holding Kian, terrified I wasn’t doing it right.
“Are you telling me to go?”
“I’m saying I need some peace in my own house.”
Donald looked at Brittany.
“You see what this does to her?”
Jalen stood, but my mother shook her head.
“Not tonight. Please.”
I put the albums under my arm.
My old bedroom had stopped being mine whenever Donald got angry.
Now my mother was handing me the rest.
“Sunday, too?” I said.
She pressed her lips together.
“Let’s leave it for a while.”
I got as far as the front door.
Then Donald said, “Take your paper. There’s nothing here we owe you.”
My mother’s notebook
I went back for the deposit receipt.
I wanted to put it in his mouth.
I put it in my wallet instead. A disappointing evening for everyone.
My mother was gathering her purse from the floor.
“You wrote it down,” I said.
“Ricky, please.”
“Get the notebook. You don’t have to believe me. Read what you wrote.”
Donald stood.
“We’ve finished.”
“Then she can read it.”
I put the albums beside the door. Brittany stayed there with them.
My mother opened the cupboard.
Donald took two steps toward her.
“Colette.”
She pulled out the notebook.
The green key’s return was there. The date. No damage. Deposit due: $1,200.
She ran a finger under the line.
“Yes,” she said. “That’s what I wrote.”
Jalen came beside her.
“Look at the week before.”
Donald reached for the notebook.
My mother held it against her chest.
“Why?”
Jalen brought up the transfer again.
“That’s when I gave him the money.”
She opened to the previous page.
Her finger stopped.
Donald said, “Separate matter.”
My mother looked up at him.
“The boat?”
He reached again. She turned away.
In the margin, she’d written the remaining balance and the date it was cleared.
$18,400.00.
Jalen bent to read it.
My mother kept the payment confirmation folded behind that page.
She unfolded it and handed it to him.
The money left Donald’s account the day after Jalen sent it.
“You said you used savings,” she said.
“It was my money once it went into the business.”
Jalen looked at me.
“You didn’t get any of it.”
“No.”
Donald pointed toward the window, toward the garage beyond it.
“That boat’s an asset. It’s still here.”
“So was I,” Jalen said.
My mother sat down with the notebook open across her knees.
I took Donald’s unsigned page from the chair and placed it beside the payment confirmation.
Nobody needed me to explain the two amounts.
Donald looked from one son to the other.
“After everything I spent raising you, you want to talk about who owes who?”
The boat keys
Jalen put his phone away.
“Give it back.”
Donald stared at him.
“You don’t just pull money out of a business because you’re upset.”
“You paid off a boat.”
“It’s worth more than the balance was.”
“Then sell it.”
Donald laughed.
Nobody joined him.
He turned to my mother.
“Tell him. We talked about this being something for retirement.”
She kept her eyes on the notebook.
“You told me Ricky had enough to get started.”
“He did get started. Look at him.”
Donald pointed at my work shirt, with the new company’s name over the pocket.
“He’s doing better than any of us. And somehow we’re all supposed to sit here and apologize.”
Brittany came back into the room.
“Show him your phone, Ricky.”
I knew which picture she meant.
I opened the selfie from the morning I was fired and set it beside the papers.
Kian’s missing tooth. My arm around him.
Me smiling before work because I still thought the day would be ordinary.
Brittany pointed at the date.
“That afternoon, I bought groceries for them. Four days later, I made room in my house. Ask me whether he had eighteen thousand dollars.”
Donald waved her away.
“You chose to do that.”
“Yes.”
She didn’t add anything. She didn’t need to.
My mother touched the edge of my phone.
“Why didn’t you tell me it was that bad?”
“I did.”
She started to answer, then closed her mouth.
Donald went to the doorway.
“I’m not doing this in my own living room.”
Jalen stepped away from the door so he could pass.
“All right. I’ll go with you. We can get pictures of the boat.”
Donald stopped.
“You’re serious?”
“I want my money.”
“You want to leave me with nothing?”
“You own the shop. You own the rental. I want what I sent you.”
“I gave you a position.”
“You gave me his position and said he agreed.”
Jalen pointed at me.
“I didn’t ask him. I should’ve asked him. That’s mine. The money’s yours to return.”
Donald looked at my mother.
She stood with the notebook in her hand.
“Get the keys.”
For the first time that evening, he lowered his voice.
“Colette. Think.”
“I am.”
“You think he’ll come around more if you take his side? He’ll be busy. He’s always busy.”
I nearly said something about who kept me busy for thirteen years.
My mother got there first.
“He came here tonight.”
Donald sat down again.
He tried the money next. Selling in a hurry would cost him.
The boat needed cleaning. He had expenses. Jalen could wait until spring.
Jalen kept saying the same thing.
“I want it listed.”
Then Donald tried me.
“You know what family does when things get difficult.”
I slid my deposit receipt toward him.
“Twelve hundred.”
“For God’s sake, Ricky.”
“Not from his money.”
My mother brought Donald’s phone from the kitchen and set it on the chair beside him.
He unlocked it.
His first offer was six hundred.
I didn’t answer.
He looked at Brittany, then at Jalen.
“The whole amount,” my mother said.
He made the transfer while we stood there.
My phone lit up.
$1,200.00.
I checked it, put my receipt away, and picked up the photo of Kian.
Donald held his hand out toward Jalen.
“Come on. You’re my boy. We can work something out.”
Jalen didn’t take it.
“You can sell the boat.”
Donald covered his face.
My mother cried then.
Properly cried, with her notebook still open and no way to pretend the figures meant something else.
She came to me.
“I sent you away,” she said.
I couldn’t make that easier for her.
“Yes.”
“Bring the albums back inside.”
“I’m taking them home.”
She nodded and moved aside.
At the door, Jalen caught up with me.
“About the interview.”
“It stays an interview.”
“I know. I wasn’t going to ask.”
Donald came behind him.
“So you get to sit in judgment now?”
I picked up the albums.
“No. I get to leave.”
Wednesday’s trailer
Donald listed the boat the next morning.
Jalen sent me the pictures. I recognized the floor I’d put in.
Donald had included a close shot of it in the listing.
Still getting work out of me.
He asked $24,000. A buyer offered $21,500 after coming to inspect it.
Donald called Jalen to complain about the offer.
Jalen said he’d come over to help clear the boat out.
He asked me to come, too.
I went on Wednesday after work. Brittany picked up Kian.
I put the arrangement in my calendar, exactly as my manager had told me to do.
My mother stood in the garage holding a box of Donald’s things from the boat.
Donald wouldn’t look at me.
The buyer checked the lights on the trailer.
Jalen waited with his hands in his pockets until the payment was complete.
Donald held his phone for a long time.
“All of it?” he said.
Jalen nodded.
“Eighteen thousand four hundred.”
The transfer arrived while the trailer was still in the driveway.
Jalen showed me the screen.
The cents were there, too. Zero. Donald hadn’t rounded down for fatherhood.
The buyer pulled away with the boat.
Donald followed it to the end of the drive and stayed there until it turned the corner.
He had $3,100 left from the sale.
After the deposit he’d returned to me, the two amounts he’d kept had cost him $19,600.
Jalen took the shop key off his ring.
“I’ll finish the jobs on my schedule,” he said.
“Then you’ll need someone else.”
Donald looked toward the empty space beside the garage.
“You’re throwing away your future.”
Jalen set the key on the workbench.
“I’ll keep the house key if you want.”
Donald didn’t answer.
Jalen left it on his ring.
My mother followed me to my car.
She held out the notebook page recording my deposit.
She’d written returned beside it.
“Keep it,” I said.
She folded it and put it in her pocket.
Then she asked whether she could see me on Saturday.
“At our place,” I said. “Just you.”
She agreed without asking me to make one exception.
The couch
On Saturday, my mother arrived carrying the sneakers she’d asked about.
She checked the size with me before taking them out of the bag.
A small thing, but she’d come to my home and asked instead of deciding.
Kian was with Brittany in the other room, making the box from his new puzzle more difficult than the puzzle.
My mother sat on the couch.
“I’m sorry I handed you those albums.”
I put them beside her.
“You don’t have to stop seeing me because Donald’s angry.”
“I know.”
“And don’t call it leaving my job again.”
She nodded.
“He fired you.”
I sat down.
She cried a little more. I let her.
Then she asked whether we could look at the pictures.
Kian came in when he heard us laughing at my school haircut.
He climbed between us and studied the photograph.
“Who did that?”
“Your grandmother paid somebody.”
My mother put her hand over the picture.
“We thought it looked nice.”
Kian looked at her with the kindness of a six-year-old who had found an adult making no sense.
Brittany brought my phone over.
“Same couch,” she said. “We ought to get another one.”
My mother moved out of the frame.
Brittany stopped her.
“Stay. If Ricky wants.”
I moved the albums and made room.
Jalen’s application was still going through the hiring process.
Whatever happened there would happen on his work and his answers.
He’d sent me one message that week about something else.
Do you know what Mom paid for that haircut?
My mother had sent him the picture.
I showed Brittany. She laughed hard enough to lower the phone.
Kian pushed his tongue into the space where his tooth was growing in.
“Normal smile,” Brittany said.
He made it worse.
My mother laughed. I put my arm around my boy and pulled him close.
“Take it like this,” I said.
If this one got to you, send it to somebody who’s had to make a home beyond the one they grew up in.
For more stories about family members putting their own interests first, read My Husband Asked His Mother To Collect My Chair and My Son Set My Case Beside the Exit. There’s also My Ex Took My Car Key While I Was Still Wet, another tense family showdown.
