We hadn’t made it very far at all. In fact, we were only right down the street from my apartment complex at the local Amoco station, fueling up for the trip that was ahead of us.
I was gassing up my truck and Meg had both our hoods up, checking fluids. As Meg was busying herself with hood duty, Jeff was had the air hose and tire gauge out, quickly moving from tire to tire. I was proud of us all.
Thus far we’d made it a block without attracting attention to ourselves or maiming
each other with squeegees.
Actually, it was quite the opposite. We moved with the grace, speed and efficiency of Richard Petty’s pit crew.
It was still dark out and there was a cool gulf breeze moving in from the south. It was a great day to be alive, a good day for travel. In a very brief instant a wave of nostalgia swept over me as I remembered the family vacations of my early youth and the excitement I’d feel the night before. I had that giddy feeling at that moment as I stood there watching this motley
crew I had somehow managed to assemble.
As I could still feel the pot running amok in my head, I almost dismissed the feeling. But no, there was something to this. For a brief instant I almost got teary-eyed as my chest started to swell. It was a great day to be alive, a good day for travel.
I made a promise to myself at that instant that come hell or high water, I wasn’t going to let these ingrates, my new-found traveling companions ruin my day or my buzz. Fortunately, for most of the trip Jeff and Meg would be separated as we were, after all, taking separate vehicles. This could only be a good thing. On the way to the gas station he’d flashed open a cigarette pack which was stuffed with about nine or ten fat joints.
We were good to roll, provided he didn’t slip into one of his introspective metaphysical funks. Jeff was rolling up the air hose as Meg let my hood drop. She was pulling a medium-sized Igloo ice chest from the hatchback of her Z-28 when Jeff looked at her with a hint of disapproval.
“What are you doing?” he asked her.
Oh shit, here we go, I mused. So much for peace and good vibrations.
“What does it look like I’m doing fat boy?” she shot back.
Jeff threw up his hands and said, “Fine, I’m not going to say a word. But don’t try calling us on the cell phone when the Mississippi State pigs, pull you over and throw you under the jail for DUI.”
“For someone who wasn’t going to say a word, you sure did just say a mouthful fat boy,” she said. “Besides, if I get pulled over I’ll just blow him if I have to.”
“You do have a pretty little mouth on you,” Jeff said in a fake hick accent. “Shit girly, you might even get lucky, only get dragged into the woods and raped with a night-stick. Damn Mississippi pigs would be chuckling all the way back to the donut shop.”
“Really,” I said. “Honestly Meg, blow a cop? Even you’re above that aren’t you?”
“I blew a cop once,” she said, catching Jeff and I off guard.
“You what?” Jeff asked.
“You heard me fat boy, I blew a cop,” she said. “It was during Mardi Gras. I was only 16 or so. I was wasted. I had liberated my parent’s car while they were on vacation. I would have been in deep shit, so I blew him.”
“And he forced you to do this right?” I asked.
“No, he was pretty adamant about hauling me to jail. I offered. He was about to cite me with bribing an officer or solicitation for prostitution or something. My luck, I would get the righteous cop.”
“He must have not been too righteous if he let you blow him,” Jeff said.
“All men are pigs, cops are no exception,” she said. “And weak. There’s not a man alive that can resist a blow job.”
It was a warped viewpoint of sorts, but it rang true. Indeed, what man could resist a blow job? Especially from a younger, probably more attractive Meg, spoiled and wasted in her stolen parent’s car, begging not to go to jail.I could almost hear her pleas.
“Oh please officer, I’ll do anything. I’ll suck your cock, that’s right, I’ll suck your cock and let you shoot your come all over my face. God I’m getting so hot thinking about it. I can’t wait to taste you, feel that big strong cock get hard in my mouth.”
I finally shook my head, clearing the cobwebs and the deviant dialogue.
It was this kind of thought that did in the forces during the Trojan war, in the name of Helen of Troy. The song of the sirens that led men to painful, agonizing deaths as their ships smashed upon the rocks.
I must have been looking at her oddly because she finally asked, “What?”
“Nothing,” I said.
“No, it’s something, what?” she persisted.
“I’m just trying to digest all this,” I said.
“I don’t see what the big deal is Storm God,” she said. “It was just a blow job, nothing less nothing more. A blow job doesn’t mean shit. It’s not love, it’s not even sex. It’s just a blow job. I blew you didn’t I?”
It was a low blow. But, as per usual she’d made her point with stunning clarity.
“It must not have been that great, I don’t remember it,” I said.
“Touche,” she giggled. “Now if fat boy over there would just learn to play
like you do, we’d all be better off.”
He visibly bristled at the remark but he let it slide and we went into the store to handle up and buy whatever it was we’d need for this journey.
Fortunately Bob was working. Bob was the local, friendly, gay convenience store clerk. He saw us as we all stumbled in and he chuckled.
My oh my look what the cat dragged in. Hey Miss Thing,” he said as he gave Meg a big hug as she squeeled and giggled.
Oh baby, you smell good today,” she told him.
It’s Brut,” he said. “Grrr. I was feeling manly this morning. Are you with this guy,” he asked her, pointing to me.
It took a second, but I realized Jeff had ambled off into a corner and was peering into the cooler.
“Hi Bob,” I said.
“Well, I’ll be damned,” he said. “The two biggest trouble makers I know have found each other. It was only a matter of time.’
“Yeah,” I said. “Misery loves company.”
Bob suddenly leaned forward and whispered, “Is he with you also?” as he peered over at Jeff, who was still hiding in the corner of the store.
“Yeah, he’s my roommate of sorts,” I said. “Oh Christ, what has he done? Has he broken or stolen anything?”
No, he’s just a big dick-head,” Bob said.
“Tell me something I don’t know Bob,” I said.
“He’s always wandering up here at night on foot, always smashed out of his mind. He’s got the table manners of a fucking linebacker,” Bob said. “He comes up here about three or four nights a week, always buying single beers, hot dogs and whatever he can shove in his mouth. God, I wouldn’t even fuck him with your dick Bret.”
By this time Meg had wandered off to the beer section.
“Bob, has anyone ever told you you have a colorful way of putting things?”
“Only my mother Bret, you’re starting to scare me,” he said. “So he’s your
room-mate is he. I thought you were of a higher caliber than that.”
“He’s not all bad, we’ve just been having a Jim Morrison party month,” I said.
“I hear you, how’s the leave of absence treating you?” he asked.
“Well, I’m no longer making drunken passes at my publisher’s daughter,” I said.
“How’d you hook up with crazy over there? She’s a nice girl, means well, but she’s a fucking lunatic,” he said.
“Kind of like Jeff,” I said.
“Oh he’s awful,” Bob said. “He’s so rude and so arrogant. He struts in here like he owns the place. I made him leave a few nights ago, he was being abusive to the customers. He made a big scene, called me a fucking fag.”
“Bob, you are a fucking fag,” I reminded him.
“I know that, but he’s an awful, awful man. He’s utterly loathsome,” Bob said.
“And those are his good qualities, so you kicked him out did you?” I asked.
“Absolutely, look at him now all sober. He’s been standing by the Coke cooler now since you all walked in, like I won’t notice him,” Bob said, giggling now.
“How would you like to make an extra ten bucks and a fat joint?” I asked him.
“I’m good on both fronts,” he said. “My boyfriend’s sister, speaking of lunatics, flew in from Hawaii the other day, brought some killer stuff with her. Why, what do you have in mind?”
“I just want you to fuck with him a little,” I said. “It would serve him right. Real Hawaiian shit you have do you.”
He quickly bent down unrolled a baggie and broke me off a big hunk of bud.
“Here, I’ll pay you just to have ten minutes alone with this schmuck,” Bob said. “You’re high now aren’t you? Is Jeff high too?”
I nodded and Bob chuckled insidiously.
“What’s his last name?” Bob asked. “I’m going to act like he dropped something.”
“Perfect, it’s Ackel, Jeff Ackel,” I said. “He lost his checkbook about two weeks ago. I’m going to go shop.”
I walked over to the chips aisle and Jeff motioned for me to come over. There was a sense of urgency in his movements.
“What?” I asked.
“What’s up with the fag, you guys dating now?” Jeff asked.
“What? It’s just Bob. Everyone knows bob. Everybody loves Bob. You’d have to be a cretin to not get along with Bob. Bob likes everyone,” I said before slipping away.
I walked up behind Meg, and for reasons unknown to even me, rubbed her shoulders and asked her if she’d found what she needed.
“I want to bring this whole fucking cooler with me, all the beer, all the Gatorade, even the packs of cold cuts,” she said.
“You okay?” I asked.
She placed a hand over one of my hands, which was still on her shoulder.
“I’m just a little unnerved,” she said. “Lost in the convenience store. We really should stop somewhere on the way out and have a Bloody Mary or two. I’m a little scared. Yeah, we talk shit and downplay things Bret, but you really were in a bad way the other night. I almost did call 911.”
“We’re all good now,” I said, kind of shaken by this testimony of hers.
“Besides, Bob is about to royally fuck with Jeff. What do you want?”
She handed me several jugs of Gatorade, a few bottled waters and we each
grabbed two suitcases of Budweiser and ice.
As we walked up top the register, Meg said, “Hey fat boy you coming or what,
we don’t have all day.”
He was trapped now. There was nothing he could do but walk up to the
register. He grabbed a half-gallon of milk, a bag of Doritos, a blueberry
muffin and a 12-pack of Miller.
He met us at the register, keeping his head turned the other way in a painful attempt not to have to make eye contact with Bob.
Bob rang me up and then Meg.
Jeff approached the register like a cow headed for the slaughter chute. Bob was very nonchalant though. He rang Jeff up with little to no ado. About mid-way through though, Bob stopped and said, “I need to see some ID.”
It was classic, in many ways. But most of all it was a classic affirmation of everything that is good and righteous in America. This was going to be a showdown of David and Goliath proportions. On the one hand, you had small, gay Bob while on the other you had Jeff. Despite his many good points, Jeff is, in many ways, everything that is ugly, crude, brutish, sexist, racist
and homophobic in America. He is the 1990’s answer to Archie Bunker, but with a criminal record, a head full of pot and the dim recollection that he had somehow made himself of enemy of this little gay clerk.
Jeff fumbled for his wallet, knowing damned well he didn’t have a drivers license.
“You’re Mr. Ackel right?” Bob said. “Jeff Ackel.”
It was almost painful to watch Jeff’s slow, fumbling response to Bob’s casual name dropping.
I could only imagine the hellish things that were running through Jeff’s stoned brain. And, if I must say, Meg and I did a very good job of acting like we had no idea what all the confusion was about.
“I lost my license,” Jeff finally mumbled, scratching his head and looking
away.
“But you are Jeff Ackel right?” Bob asked.
Looking downward Jeff finally confirmed he was, indeed, Jeff Ackel.
“Well, Mr. Ackel, I need to see some sort of picture ID, I think I have something of yours, you dropped a checkbook here a few weeks ago,” Bob said, so casually, so smoothly, that the untrained eye would never realize he was only setting Jeff up for the kill.
Relieved, Jeff used this as an ice breaker.
“Oh man, thank god you found it, I have been looking all over for it, haven’t I Brett,” he asked me, for quick support.
“Oh yes you have, you’ve been looking all over,” I said.
“I’m so glad you found it,” Jeff said, as Bob took his money and handed him his change.
Then there was nothing. Silence fell over the place. It was long and uncomfortable. Jeff just stood there, lost.
Bob nodded his head and said, “Mr. Ackel, I still need to see some sort of picture ID before I can give you this checkbook.”
“I don’t have any ID, but Brett can vouch for me,” Jeff said, beginning to grow impatient.
“I understand your frustration but really, I cannot give this to you without picture ID,” Bob said.
Fuck that,” Jeff finally said, starting to lose it. “You’re the one who knew my fucking name.”
Oh, I know who you are now,” Bob said, shaking his head in a sagely manner. “You’re the little fucker that was accosting customers in here last week.”
The look of sheer, frozen terror in Jeff’s eyes was priceless.
“No, you don’t remember me,” Jeff said.
“I sure do, I told you if you came back in this store I’d call the cops,” Bob said, picking up his cordless phone.
“Come on man, I’m sorry,” Jeff said. “I must have been wasted.”
“You called me a faggot,” Bob said. “No wait, you called me a fucking faggot.”
“Well, look at you man, you are a faggot,” Jeff said, cringing as the words came out of his mouth.
Even Bob was besides himself by that one.
He rolled his eyes and said, “That’s not the point. The point is I’m sick of you and the breed of men you represent, with your big egos and small penises. Ugly, stupid, inbred men that think they can bully the world at their own whim. Well I’ve got news for you, the buck stops with Bob. Yeah, Bob the little faggot. Just say no to big bully assholes like you. Now get
the fuck out of my store and take that drunk and that whore with you.”
Jeff was speechless.
“Fuck it man, keep the checkbook, the account’s overdrawn anyway,” Jeff said as he ambled out of the store.
“I owe you big man,” I said to Bob.
“Yes you do,” he said. “Where are you all going this damned early in the morning anyway?”
“Florida, I picked up some freelance work,” I said.
“And you’re traveling with them?”
“Looks that way,” I said.
He broke off another chunk of the Hawaiian and slid me a pint of Seagrams.
“It’s on me, you’ll need it,” he said. “Be careful with those two nuts.”
We jettisoned off of the onramp, onto Interstate 12, west at close to 70 mph. Another half-mile and we were going 85 and still lagging behind Meg. Jeff was smoking a joint and sipping a Miller as Rolling Stones Greatest Hits blared from my tape deck.
Only moments before, Jeff was still caught in the furious grips of rage and paranoia, cursing me out for plotting with the fag. However, once I smacked him across the face and told him it was all in good fun and that he truly was lucky Bob had a warped sense of humor and didn’t call the cops, Jeff calmed down.
“I’m still not fucking happy about it, he can’t keep my fucking checkbook, little Nazi faggot.”
“You moron,” I had to explain. “He never had your checkbook, that was me.”
“You’re a bad man,” he’d said. “You’re still cursed. You and that fucking albatross shit and your house of squalor. I should have my head examined, traveling with you.”
“My sentiments exactly,” I said, ejecting the Stones tape and replacing it with Kiss Double Platinum. The drum roll and then first strains of the guitar of Strutter filled the car. Jeff guzzled his beer nonchalantly, not caring that it was dripping from the corner of his mouth and down his chest.
“Hand me a fucking brew you pig,” I yelled over the music.
He just looked at me and said, “Yeah,” before smiling and handing me the joint.
“No, you imbecile, give me a beer,” I reiterated.
“Fuck that man, you don’t need to be drinking,” he said. “Just suck on that joint.”
Which I did. His sudden no-alcohol policy made little to no sense under the circumstances. Sure, the idea of a field sobriety test administered by any pig, in any state, wasn’t a pleasant thought. But, in my tenure at the paper I had covered a few DUI checkpoints. And while I knew I wasn’t able to feign sobriety in times of rampant drunkenness, I knew the legal procedure.
Don’t do shit. That’s right, if a state trooper pulls you over and asks if you’ve been drinking, don’t say squat. Don’t say, “Oh officer it was just two beers.”
No, two beers in the lexicon of a state trooper means you’ve been on a five-day drinking binge, with no end in sight.
No. The best thing to say is nothing, only the minimum- name, insurance and drivers license. At that point it is best to advise the cop then and there that you refuse to take any tests unless you have the presence of an attorney, provided he hasn’t asked if you’d been drinking.
I’d read a wire report about some poor fool that got pulled over in Arizona Before the pig could even ask him for drivers license and registration, this fool began jabbering about wanting an attorney if he was suspected of DUI.
Naturally, this sap was only being pulled over because he’d lost a hub-cap back at the 38-mile marker and the cop was just trying to be helpful. Shortly after going into a long tirade about wanting an attorney, the fool reached into his pocket, tossed a baggy of pot onto his hood and confessed, “Okay, dammit, you have me you fucking cop piece of shit.”
I could only hope, that between Jeff and I, we had half of a half of the brain cells the Arizona guy had.
However, Jeff’s no-drinking policy had me pondering the intelligence quota in the vehicle. It’s okay if the driver smokes five joints and snorts coke, which I hadn’t gotten into yet, but it was a very bad thing for the driver to drink a beer. It made no sense. And, for the record, I was none too thrilled about him latching onto the whole “bad man” thing.
I’d hoped that the whole matter of the curse, possession and the topic of bad men had ran itself out in his head. But no, it had become like a mantra, a catch phrase for him. Every time I did something he didn’t approve of, he used it.
“Oh, that’s evil man,” he’d say in the same, drippy, almost Hispanic tone of voice he’d used that night. “You’re an evil man. You really are cursed.”
It was if one of his synaptic gaps had misfired, not unlike a sparkplug. Now, as a result, every now and then I’d get commentary from Pancho Villa, rather than the old faithful Jeff I’d known for so many years. It was a disturbing thing.
Of course, the Storm God episode didn’t help my credibility either.
Or maybe that was the ticket. Every time he’d kick in too hard with the evil man shit, I could start reciting lines from the Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner, talk crazy storm and doom shit.
I had the upper hand here.
“I said, give me a fucking beer you asshole,” I yelled again.
He handed it to me and yelled, “Don’t blame me if you go to jail.”
I took the beer and handed him the joint.
Suddenly he was seized by an epileptic fit of sorts, he began flailing his arms, tossing an empty beer bottle out, and the zoning in on the radio.
“I can’t take this shit, fuck Gene Simmons, he might have fucked Traci Lords with his big tongue when she was 13, but I’m over it,” he said, as he
ejected the tape and hurled it out of the window.
He began pushing buttons on the radio but after about four or five stations he hurled himself back into his seat again wailing.
“Where’s the summer tape?” he asked accusingly. “Did you leave it in the fucking radio by the pool?”
“Why do you think I’d be so fucking irresponsible? Do you want to walk to Florida?” I hollered over Sublime.
“What is this fucking idiot doing?” he finally said, nodding towards where Meg should have been had she probably not been five miles ahead of us.
“Shit, I told her we had to exit in Slidell, that we had to go see my mom.”
Some how, I had forgotten this sordid detail, but we had a meeting ahead of us with Miss Martha, Michael’s mother. She was holding on to about three of Jeff’s paychecks, some for debts owed to her by her darling son, the rest money we needed for this journey.
I was just about to tell him to call Meg on the cell phone when it rang.
“Hello,” he yelled. “What the fuck are you doing? What, no we’re not going to Mississippi yet you fucking retard. I have to stop in Slidell..Aww fuck you, yes, I have to get a check from mommy, my own paychecks. You don’t understand that concept though because you only take cash for ass fuckings right? Oh wait, no it was blow jobs.”
I’d packed my dress clothes in the hatchback of her car. If we lost her, I’d have to show up at the job in khaki’s, sandals and old button-up satin shirts; which was fitting. Why not show up at the new gig looking like Don Johnson after a rough night on the Keys, cavorting with drug runners and drunks?
I was driving, I was hitting yet another joint and the more Jeff talked to her I realized our lines of communication were wearing thin.
“Give me the phone,” I yelled at him, lurching for it as the truck swerved.
“No,” he said. “I’m not done with this bitch.”
Jesus, I thought. I had to get the cell phone from him before he hurled it out of the window as well.
“Give me the fucking phone you swine,” I said as he was bending down to grab a beer.
I jostled it out of his hand.
“Hello? Meg?”
It was dead.
“You fucking idiot, she’s got my clothes,” I said.
“I’ve got clothes at my house you can wear,” he said, tossing back another giant swig of beer. “Fuck her, we’re better off without her, let her go get her fucking boat.”
Even I was astounded. He’d sold her out a lot quicker than I though he would. From hearing his professions of love for her only a few mere days, or was it hours, ago, you’d think them inseparable.
It was about that time that the phone rang again. I quickly grabbed it before he could make a lunge for it.
“Hello?”
“What Slidell exit, Pear River, Slidell? I’m turning off now?” she asked. “He is such a fucking cocksucker, tell him when we do go meet his mom I’m going to embarrass the living shit out of him.”
“No, don’t take that exit,” I said.
“Too late, I’m already going towards Front Street,” she said.
We were still eight miles back, before any Slidell exit.
“You been there before?” I asked her.
“Yeah,” she said.
“Go to Gause then,” I said. “You know where that is?”
“Yes, but then where?”
“Take aright by Exxon, then down to Crossgates,” I said.
Jeff was still in heavy protest when I hung up.
“I can’t believe you told her where I lived,” he said. “Fuck, there goes the property value.”
The rest of the journey to Jeff’s mom’s house was a harried, speed-driven
exercise in futility if ever there was one.
“Floor it man, we have to beat her there,” he said urgently and repetitively. “There’s no telling what she’ll do or say once she gets there. My mom has high blood pressure, she’s menopausal, she doesn’t need this shit. One wrong thing could push her over the edge. And Meg is one very large wrong and bad thing.”
I blew him off for the most part. There was no sense in getting pulled over
for careless operation before we even crossed the state line.
As expected, when we pulled up to Jeff’s house Meg’s car was parked out front. No sign of Meg or Miss Martha. This could only mean one thing; that they were inside. As I turned the ignition off Jeff just stared dumbly at the house.
Sweat was rolling down my face and the bastard wouldn’t talk. Suddenly gripped in the face of potential confrontation, I suddenly began to realize how much weed we’d smoked. Three ugly fat roaches in the ashtray.
Christ, we were toast.
“Say something you ugly fucker,” I said to him.
“We can’t go in there,” he said first. And then, “Where’s the coke?”
“She’s got it all I think,” I said.
He was frantically scavenging through his pockets and finally pulled out a small cellophane. He grabbed an empty CD cases and dumped a little out.
“Drastic times call for drastic measures,” he said, before snorting two lines.
He handed me the case and I quickly inhaled, knowing even then that this wasn’t going to help the situation. We sat there for a few seconds in the mid-morning heat before Jeff finally said, “Okay, we can do this.”
As he opened the front door of the house the cold rush of air conditioning and the fresh smell of pine loomed up to greet us.
Meg and Miss Martha were standing towards the rear of the dining room near
the doorway to the kitchen.
“There he is, the road warrior,” Miss Martha said.
I began walking towards her and Meg as Jeff took a quick detour to the right into the hallway to his bedroom.
“That’s a fine how do you do Jeffrey,” she said loudly and sarcastically. “I
don’t even get a hello mom anymore.”
“I gotta take a shit, mom,” he said, as his voice trailed down the hallway.
“Lovely,” she said, rolling her eyes. “It’s good to know I raised you right.” As an afterthought she whispered, “He knows better. He wasn’t raised in a barn. He’s always going for the shock value though. At what age do pre-teens grow out of that again? As if. Christ.”
Her gaze fell on me, dissecting me like an insect. It always seemed to be like this. Jeff coming home trashed, Jeff going out to party with his friends, Jeff getting fired from his job. It seemed as though that whenever Jeff was at his worse there I was; skulking behind in short order.
We were a regular Mutt and Jeff. And because I was older, no matter how much
the instigator her darling son was, I was always held accountable. Silently, of course, usually with a cold stare or facetious comment or two. But the implication was there.
This more or less changed though about three years prior when I became editor for a university publication and landed the news job. It’s amazing what professionalism can do to a person. Now I was the friendly reporter. Most of my social calls to Miss Martha usually ended in her giving me the latest town gossip, some of it newsworthy, most of it not.
“And how are you doing?” she finally asked.
“I’m doing good, how are you?” I asked her.
“This is my other son,” she said to Meg. “The good one. He probably ate more meals here in 8th grade then he did at his own house.”
“Yeah but Jeff paid us back in full in high school when we used to skip school,” I said.
She lightened up a little bit.
“These two guys here, you can’t help but love them,” she said.
“Oh, I know,” Meg said, very sincere and chatty, as if she’d been hanging out in country club lounges and antique shops with 40-year-old women all her life. “They’re both really good people. And now from seeing where they grew up I know they came from good homes.”
Miss Martha bought it hook, line and sinker, thanking Meg profusely.
This was too much for even me to handle. Meg was socialized. In the apartment hallways of greater metropolitan Hammond she could hang with the best of the college flunkies and drunks. But look what happened when you brought her to suburbia to mix with the civilians. It was terrifying in its own right.
But also convenient. I had no idea what she drank or smoked on the ride over, but I knew it was something. Her skills would come in handy, especially during hotel check-ins and press registrations.
Gone was the haggard Meg who had hung with us and got slammed. To look at
her now, the was the epitome of angelic grace, even dressed down. Even in cut-off jeans and a tee-shirt, to look at her, you’d never believe that only a few nights ago she was attacking us both with kitchen knives.
“So are you still up for brunch and those bloody Mary’s?” Meg asked her.
It was about that point that Jeff’s voice boisterously boomed from the kitchen asking, “Mom, what do we have to eat?”
She didn’t let up on the guilt though.
“Do I get a hug and a hello or do I have to beg for it in front of your friends?” she asked, semi-serious, but mostly for dramatic effect.
Jeff burst through the door, almost knocking Meg over, his mouth stuffed with a hunk of cheese.
“Hi mom,” he said, giving her a big hug. “I love you.”
“Oh kiss up now,” she said jokingly. “You just need money.”
“I have to go get my shit out of Orlando don’t I?” he asked. “And they’re my checks.”
“With expenses deducted,” she said.
Jeff suddenly looked worried and she laughed and said, “It was only about $260. Money for the day I loaned you the VISA for the jacket. But then there were some pay-per-view credits to the bill.”
Jeff started giggling.
“You think it’s funny but I blamed your dad first,” she said. “The Other Side of Chelsea, Oiled and Slick, Shaved..Christ Michael, you get the picture.”
“It was probably late, I was drunk and horny,” he said, again looking for that shock value.
“The really sad thing is that, at first, I thought your father was becoming interested in something other than work and early retirement,” she said.
Sometimes the honesty in the house of Jeff could be too brutal. To me, it was no big thing. I’d grown accustomed to it over the years. But for Meg, it was another story. With shaky moral conversational ground at hand, you could see it in her eye she wasn’t quite sure what to say.
“There’s always Viagra mom,” he said.
“Christ Jeff, that’s no way to talk to your mother,” she said.
“That’s why I don’t live here mom, because there’s always a double-standard,” he said, as he ventured back into the kitchen and then re-emerged with a piece of fried chicken.
“There’s no double standard,” she said.
“Did you not just tell my friends you hoped Dad had ordered pay-per-view porn because it would increase his sexual interest?” he asked.
“Not in those exact words,” she said, flustered.
“But you said it right?” he asked. “And who taught me to question things like this along these lines, Mom?”
After a terse silence she smiled proudly and finally said, “At least I see your Jesuit education hasn’t completely failed you. I didn’t fail you.”
“Mom, how many times do we have to have this discussion? You didn’t fail
me,” he said.
Even for Jeff’s house, the conversation was dipping into inordinately private conversation between mother and son. Nothing he even mentioned during our most severe of drinking bouts.
Meg suddenly looked at me uncomfortably and I shrugged my shoulders. I was still stoned. Now I was dumbfounded. He hugged her again and asked her how much money he did have.
“You still have about $2,400,” she said.
I almost said something. For weeks we’d been living in squalor, at my expense. Funds from Jeff were rare and it pissed me off that mommy dearest was sitting on his nest egg over here.
He must have read my thoughts because he looked at me and said, “What? This money has to last me until God only knows when I get my next job.”
Meg chimed in with, “Look at the time, are we still going to go get Bloody Mary’s?”
I thought for a second that Jeff and Miss Martha were both going to turn around and tell her to get a bed at the Betty Ford clinic.
However, it was my own voice that found itself in that tense moment.
“Bring $800,” I said. “$100 for the price of what I’m charging you to drive down there to get your shit, which is a third of what it would cost if you rented a U-Haul round trip and the rest for three months of living rent free.”
I didn’t mean to say it. It just came out. But when I did Miss Martha looked at Jeff and said, “I raised you better than this. Jeff, really. How long do you think you can mooch from people?”
He began to cut her off but she raised her arm.
“Tell it to the hand, Jeff,” she said.
She grabbed her purse, sat down and started taking inventory.
“First off I don’t have that much cash,” she said. “I only have $700. So you get $200 and Bret gets the rest.”
It was more than any of us expected really. Except for maybe Jeff.
“How am I supposed to have fun in Florida mom?” he asked.
“You lived there for eight months last year,” she said. “If you didn’t have fun there then it sounds like a personal problem.”
She doled out the bills and then looked at me, and then Jeff and finally Meg and said, “Next time you’re here why don’t you just ask for the vodka and the Bloody Mary Mix. Hell, do what Jeff does and just go make yourself a drink.”
The attack came with such force, so out of nowhere, that Meg’s knees almost
buckled. She excused herself and quickly walked outside, careful to close the door very gently.
“Yeah mom, that was called for,” Jeff said.
“Please, a mother knows these things,” she said. “Where’d you find this one? At a bar? At the pool? She looks strung out. She acts like a freak. She’s very polite but I used to go to functions with these kind of women. Back-stabbers. I’m just glad she has her own car.”
“Okay,” Jeff said. “She’s dead weight. We’re trying to lose her but she latches on.”
“What do you think of the situation,” Miss Martha suddenly asked me.
“She’s got a few screws loose, but I don’t think she means any malicious intent,” I said.
“So she’s your squeeze?” Miss Martha asked me.
“Mom, she’s not with either of us,” Jeff stepped in.
“I don’t trust her,” she said. “I’d let her pass you on the interstate, or you pass her and lose her. But she’s trouble. A mother know these things.”
“It’s all good,” he said, rising and hugging her. “I’ve got this money-hungry fool to look after me.”
“And you,” she said.
Oh God, here it was, the curse, the threat, the damnation. I was ready for her to tell me that even if we both died in a fiery blaze on the interstate she’d haunt me, even in Hell. But it didn’t come.
“I watched your dumb ass grow up too and have spent too many hours on the phone at 4 am with your mom when we both though you and Jeff were either dead or in jail,” she said, hugging me.
“It’s okay, Miss Martha,” I said. “We’re only going to Orlando. Jeff lived there.”
“Lose that bitch,” said before finally closing the door.
As we walked to the truck, Meg asked, “What was all that shit about? She didn’t like me?”
I was on the verge of conjuring some excuse when Jeff finally said, “No she doesn’t. Bloody Mary’s at 10 doesn’t appeal to her any more than cat shit on the rug at any time of the day. If you’re coming, just follow.”
Before he wasn’t even done, just as a precautionary measure, I walked to her car and reclaimed my clothes.
“You selling me out too?” she asked.
“Nope, just like my clothes with me,” I said.
She was pissed.
“Then you’d better keep them with you, because if I see them in my way, I’ll
cut them with scissors,” she said, before starting her car and peeling out from the driveway.
By the time I got into the truck and started the engine she was gone.
Jeff giggled and said, “It took Mom to do it but that troublesome bitch is gone. I think we do need to stop on the way out. Grab a tequila shot and a Bloody Mary. A margarita, where’s the Jimmy Buffet tape?”
“She still has my cell phone number,” I said.
“We’re on the road now. No service zones. It’s a no-man’s land,” he said. “That bitch is gone, gone in the wind.”
Somehow I knew differently, but I wanted to believe otherwise, so I let it go.
