The Good Son by Carolyn Mills (free e reader txt) 📗

My street is only one block away and already I’m lonely. I know that when we get to my house, Jason will come inside just long enough to grab his things, then he’ll drive away and I’ll be left alone inside my empty bungalow.

And Ricky, goddamned Ricky, will probably be out celebrating his birthday with Brenda, pretending he isn’t thinking about Dee Dee the whole time.

So, for tonight, I will carry the weight of that indiscretion for him too.

CHAPTER THREE

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AFTER OUR DAD DIED, RICKY starting getting into all kinds of trouble. Mom refers to this period as his “acting out” phase, and when she talks about it now, she makes it sound like it was all a bit of a joke, but I remember loud confrontations between the two of them that were anything but funny.

On one afternoon I was sitting at our kitchen table with my Rainbow Brite colouring book when the phone rang. Mom hurried over and partway through the conversation, something in her voice made me pause in my colouring and watch her. She had closed her eyes, like she was so tired she was going to fall asleep right there, leaning against the counter. After she hung up, I sat there, waiting for her to look at me and smile and go back to normal. But she didn’t.

She picked up an empty glass from the counter and slammed it into the sink. The sound of breaking glass sent a spasm of fear down my spine and I started to cry. She looked at me then.

“It was an accident, Zoe,” she said. “You don’t need to cry.”

I wanted to believe her, but watching her pick the shards of glass out of the sink made my stomach hurt.

When Ricky got home from school, he tossed his backpack on the floor and started down the hall toward his bedroom without saying a word to either of us. Mom called him back using all four of his names.

“Richard Joshua Martin Emmerson, you come back here this minute!”

He turned around slowly and made his way toward Mom. I scuttled past him into my bedroom, but even from behind the closed door I could hear the angry accusations ricocheting off the walls of our living room. I couldn’t make out very much of what they were saying, but I remember squeezing my eyes shut at the sheer meanness in their voices.

“You think I’m acting crazy?” I heard Mom shriek. “Who do you think is going to pay for the damage?”

I couldn’t hear Ricky’s reply.

Mom said something in a low, menacing tone and whatever it was it set Ricky off.

“Why are you such a — a witch?” he shouted. “Why do you always have to make such a big deal out of everything? Just leave me alone!”

“You don’t even care, do you?” Mom yelled, right before I heard the bedroom door next to mine slam.

I peeked out of my room and saw Mom leaning forward, one hand on her chest. Her eyes were closed again and she was biting her lip. She stood, shoulders hunched, for a few seconds before straightening up and taking a deep breath.

I found out later from Ricky what he’d done. He’d written the word SHIT with a thick black marker on the wall in the boys’ bathroom. And he’d smashed one of the mirrors above the sinks with his foot.

“Why did you do that?” I whispered.

“I was mad.”

At the time, I couldn’t comprehend that kind of violent anger. That urge to strike out, to cause damage, to hurt someone or something.

I BECAME A PLEASER. AT home, at school, anytime I was around other people, I went out of my way to be helpful and polite. It’s possible I was just a nice kid, but I seem to remember making a concerted effort to be good, to not cause any trouble.

Once, at recess, I picked up an empty juice box and a Kit Kat wrapper that was blowing around on the tarmac. When I carried them over to a garbage can by the door, Mrs. Smith, my grade two teacher, gave me a beaming smile. “Why thank you, Zoe!” she said. “We could use more helpers like you!”

The next day, on my way outside for recess, I reached into one of the garbage cans in the hall and pulled out some crumpled wrappers and a damp Kleenex. I quickly stuffed them in my pocket, planning to repeat my little garbage hero performance when it was time to come inside.

As I was straightening up, I heard snickering behind me. “Garbage-picker! Garbage-picker! Zoe is a garbage-picker!”

Ashley Ridowski and Jennifer Palmer were both pointing at me, their faces scrunched up with exaggerated disgust. I stared at them, my mouth hanging open in an ‘O’ of surprise, then turned and fled. Later, at home, I pulled the wrappers and the soggy Kleenex from my pocket and dumped them in our kitchen garbage under the sink, where no one could see.

RICKY’S SHENANIGANS, AS MOM NAIVELY refers to them now, only got worse when he went to high school and started hanging around with Darius. The two of them were trouble. I never liked Darius, not from the first time I met him. He had greasy hair that hung in his eyes and this hunched way of walking that I’m sure he thought was cool, but that really made him look like he was too lazy to stand up straight. Mostly Darius ignored me when he was at our house, which was fine by me because I didn’t like talking to my brother’s friends.

I woke up one morning to the sound of Mom crying as she asked Ricky over and over, “What were you thinking? Oh Ricky, what on earth were you thinking?” I couldn’t hear his reply, so I imagined him shrugging at her the way he so often did when she wanted an explanation. His reaction to pretty much everything at that time was casual indifference. Shrugging us off.

I