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

about whether to head downstairs or just sprawl on the couch to watch an episode of Suits, my phone rings. It’s Mom, wanting to know if I remembered to call Ricky.

“I talked to him earlier, before Jason and I went out for dinner.”

“I wish he would visit more often. I feel like I hardly ever get to see Leah. Do you think he and Brenda will have any kids?”

I hate it when my mom does this. She’s always trying to gossip with me, like I’m one of her girlfriends, as if I have opinions about my brother and his sex life. “I have no idea,” I say to her, but what I’m thinking is: Maybe he’ll accidentally knock up Dee Dee and give you another grandchild that way. Would that make you happy? “Isn’t Brenda kind of old to have kids?” I venture.

“Old! She’s not even forty-five, is she? I know plenty of women in their forties who have had children. But she’s not getting any younger, that’s for sure.”

“Well, I guess you should ask them then. Because it’s not something Ricky and I really talk about.”

I know exactly where this line of questioning is headed. What about me and Jason? Am I going to settle down and start a family before it’s too late and my eggs shrivel up or do I plan on stringing Jason along indefinitely? “You’re not getting any younger either, Zoe.” Yeah, yeah. I could mention that I have a sneaking suspicion Jason’s getting ready to propose. Although, even then, Mom would likely have flashbacks to the whole Amir thing and wouldn’t really rest until after Jason and I had been proclaimed man and wife under the watchful eye of a hundred guests.

“How’s Parker doing?” Mom asks.

“I don’t know. This wasn’t Jason’s weekend. Ask me next Sunday.”

“He’s a nice kid. I wouldn’t mind having him for a grandson, you know.”

“Yeah, I know. I gotta go, Mom. I’ll talk to you soon, okay?” I don’t like cutting my mom off like this, but sometimes I just can’t get into it with her. After hanging up, I head downstairs and sequester myself in the tiny darkroom. It’s too late to work on any prints, but sometimes I just like puttering in the space. There’s no light source other than the safelight, so even when I’m not developing, the room is layered in shadows and dimly lit a muted red.

A series of grey-toned prints are strung across the drying line and I pull them down one by one. They’re all the same image: the pilings from the old bridge that used to span the Still River before the township built a new one with a pedestrian path. I shot the crumbling structures on a misty morning when they rose from the water like concrete ghosts. In some of the photos, a network of skeletal branches loom in the foreground. The effect is haunting. I’ve taken lots of shots over the years that I’m proud of, but these images are probably some of my best work.

I slip the prints into an envelope — I’ll decide later what to do with them, which ones to keep working on or to frame — then absentmindedly rearrange the bottles of chemicals on the wooden shelf above my long work counter. By the time I’ve wiped down the enlarger, including all the lenses, and dusted the storage shelves with a damp cloth, it’s late. I have to be up early for work, but as I’m lying in bed, thinking about the prints I still need to develop for Parker and how much it will cost to have them custom-framed in time for his birthday, I realize with a small jolt that he’ll be eight this year. In Dunford, turning eight is a big deal. It means you’re finally old enough to compete in your first official Dunford Classic, the town’s annual go-kart race. Jason isn’t originally from around here, so he might not understand the significance of the Classic, but I do.

EVERY YEAR, ON THE THIRD Saturday in May, the entire town shows up to cheer on the racers. Swarms of people line the perimeter of the course, a short section of downhill road starting at Pineview Lodge, Dunford’s one and only retirement home, and ending in front of the Pentecostal Church, where the parking lot is converted into a bazaar with vendors, hotdog stands, balloons, and carnival games.

My own eighth birthday fell two months after the Classic, so I had to wait almost a full year for my first race. One of my presents that summer was a board game called Sorry! and Mom told Ricky he had to play it with me. We set it up on the coffee table in the living room and I knelt on the floor across from Ricky, who was sitting on the couch. The first time I bumped one of his pawns back to the start, he glared at me, but in a teasing way. He was still wearing the party hat Mom had set beside our plates of cake.

“Oh, is that how it’s going to be?” he said after I’d issued my gleeful “Sorry!” and moved his pawn.

Partway through the game, he tossed his party hat onto the couch. On his next move, he landed on a slide and knocked off one of my pawns. “Not sorry,” he said, looking me right in the eye.

I tugged at the elastic chin strap on my party hat. It was digging into my skin. The pawn he’d just bumped was four spaces away from my Safety Zone. It would have been my first pawn home.

I was more careful after that. I made a point of being nice, of sparing his pawns if I had the choice. Ricky showed no mercy, and in the end, he won. “Sorry I beat you on your birthday,” he told me. Then he raised his hands as if to say he was helpless to stop himself.

He didn’t stay to help me put