Suzie’s House 126: Unbiased Opinion

“Mom, can I talk to you?” Ben grabbed her sleeve when she started to go out of the kitchen with the social worker, Gene, and Lisa.

“Oh, um…” She glanced from him to the others. “Sure, Honey. Gene, would you mind seeing Kathy out?”

“Sure thing, Mrs. Hammacker,” Gene said, and kept going.

Lisa stopped to look at him, and he thought she might hang around, but she went with Gene instead. Maybe she went because she thought he wanted her to. He hoped that was all, but probably she would rather be with Gene.

“What’s the matter, Honey?” Mom said, making him remember what he wanted.

“Mom, about the story I wrote….” He started off good, but he wasn’t sure where to go from there.

“Yes?” She waited patiently.

The thing about Mom was she was always patient with him. She was always like the perfect mom. Sometimes he couldn’t stand it; like her being so nice was a burden or something. Sometimes he was scared she wouldn’t always be that way, like some weird force in the universe might turn her into Dad. Right now, he wasn’t sure which way was worse. He felt raw, exposed, rejected because Gene didn’t want him to help any.

“Lisa and Gene are right. I wrote it as a story for a story writing assignment.”

Mom nodded like she’d known it all along.

“But the thing is, it’s all true. I swear it is.”

“I’m sure it is.”

“Don’t humor me!” Ben didn’t mean to lash out. He was as surprised as Mom looked. But he couldn’t keep himself from grumbling. “You’ve never read it, have you?”

“No. I only found out about it a few minutes ago. Would you like for me to read it?”

Ben sort of shrugged, more in one shoulder than the other. He couldn’t make himself look at her, afraid of what he might see there.

“All right. I’ll read it now.” She sat down at the table where the story was sitting in a pile.

While she read, he wandered around the kitchen, filching a cookie here, pouring a glass of milk there. He sat down and stood up again half a dozen times. He was more nervous now than when he’d given it to the principal.

When she was done, Mom folder her arms across the top of the pages, pressing them into the table with her elbows, and gave him a serious look.

“This is all true?”

“I think so. Everything Mrs. D says I heard her say one place or another. Some of the stuff about Gene’s dad I’m just guessing.”

Mom nodded slowly, looking at nothing in particular.

“So… so, what do you think?”

“I think,” She straightened up, and looked him in the eyes, “that you have something special here. It’s good. It’s very good. But I also think you can’t do anything more than this for now, because this is really about Gene’s life, and he’s already said he doesn’t want to deal with it.”

Ben swore, and thumped the table with his fist. “I don’t get him. How can he be like that?”

“It doesn’t matter. What’s important is that we let him have his way in this. Promise me you won’t try to force him, Ben.”

He didn’t want to promise, but what did it matter? He already knew he wasn’t going to do anything because he’d already tried everything he could think of and none of it worked.

“It’s so unfair,” he said to himself.

“I know, but…”

“I promise,” he interrupted her, holding a hand off to stop the lecture before it got started. “I won’t do anything.”

Mom reached across and took her cup of coffee from where she’d left it when everybody else left the room. She took a thoughtful sip. He waited for her to say something more, but she didn’t. He was going to have to ask.

“So, um, about the writing…. Is it, is it good enough?”

“Good enough?”

“To get published.”

“Oh. Oh, I don’t know. I don’t read a lot of fiction. If you really want to know, why don’t you ask our neighbor, Alice Audrey? I hear she has a book published, or going to be published soon. I’ll bet she’d be glad to help you out.”

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