Mama's Boy - Part 2

ProetryPlace Blog 19             

    MAMA’S BOY (End of Part One)

    His smile and inner tranquility were gone—pushed suddenly and brutally aside.

MAMA’S BOY (part two)

  Masters was unmarried and unattached, a loner since childhood. On his tenth birthday his mother walked out on him and his father. His father followed suit six years later, and Jim had not heard of them or from them since. The Marines had taught him how to fight and kill until they found he had lied about his age and drummed him out. The rare people in his life now didn’t get close to him. Men ignored him or disdained him. The women, prostitutes or desperate one-nighters, never saw him twice.

    As a young student, Jimmy Masters fought frustration and endured the ridicule of classmates. His bright, intuitive child’s mind was not a match for the “book learning” his teachers demanded. No rescuer appeared to share his lonely battle.

    Jimmy held the schoolbook out towards his mother and pleaded, “Mom, I don’t get this.”

    “Read the book again, Jimmy. It’ll come to you.”

    “No Mom, I really don’t get it!”

    “Damn it, Jim! Would you stop! Don’t you see I am busy with my hair and nails?”

    Nora Masters watched her small son shuffle from the room. She knew he would not cry and almost laughed with relief when she heard the book slam against the wall and thud to the floor. For a moment before she turned back to the vanity mirror, she felt a twinge of regret. Little shit. He’ll get over it. He’ll be fine, she reassured herself.

    She watched the woman in the mirror brush her shoulder-length auburn hair and expertly apply eye shadow and bright red lipstick. Satisfied at last, she rose and quickly turned to her closet to select which dress she would wear for her date tonight.  

    Can’t still be here when Mory gets home, she thought.

    Jimmy sat at the kitchen table, staring at the book page until it blurred and finally went blank. He watched his mother brush into the room. He pretended to read until she nudged

his shoulder and handed him a scribbled note. Heat up the tuna casserole in the fridge for supper when your father comes home. I will be out late.

    “Now you’ve got my note, Jimmy. No excuse to forget.”

    Even before the note, her brightly flowered dress and painted face had told him that she would be leaving, leaving him alone again. He rose to embrace her. “Please, Mama, don’t go,” he whispered, knowing even then she would not change her mind and stay.

    Nora Masters pushed her son away. “Jimmy, don’t. You’ll mess me up with your huggin’ and kissin’. Now do your homework.” She hurried to the door and left without a backward glance.

    Alone, Jimmy pulled the dish of leftovers from the refrigerator and spilled its contents on the kitchen floor. He dropped his mother’s note onto the mess and mashed it with his foot. He left a trail of tuna footprints leading to his bedroom. By the time his father returned, drunk or sober, he hoped to be asleep. Only in sleep would the pain leave him.

    “Fuck you,” he said, “fuck you,” and punched the pillow while hot tears fell from his eyes. “Fuck you. Fuck you!”

    To be continued.

Richard Allen Anderson     < : - 0     http://richardandersonblogs.blogspot.com