The Reluctant Jesus: A Satirical Dark Comedy Read Free Page B

my life. Who would not be enjoying life after spending their first twenty-four years living in close proximity to their mother and then suddenly becoming free of her?
    I kept Mother at a distance. I did occasionally visit my parents on a Sunday, but only on special occasions. When I did, she overfed me and asked the same question a million times: “When are you going to find a nice girl and settle down?” and the obligatory “When you going to make me a grandmother?” and the inevitable “Why don’t you visit more, call more, and invite us into the city for lunch sometime?” Anyway, she had her space, and I had mine, and Dad plodded along, trying to keep her happy— which, I suspected, he did to a certain degree. Therefore, I attempted to limit my contact with Mother to phone calls. Usually once a week was more than sufficient, so it wasn’t a shock that she had called. No, it was the events after the call that shocked me.
    “Hello, Mother, how are you?”
    “Hello, dear, is this a good time? I hope I am not disturbing you.”
    “No, Mom, I am really not that busy. How’s Dad? How are you? Is everything ok?”
    “Yes, dear, everything is fine.”
    “Well, that’s good to know,” I replied whilst reading an incoming e-mail. “You don’t usually call me at the office; are you sure everything is ok?” I inquired, trying to sound at least a little concerned, when in truth, I suspected she was calling to berate me for not calling more often.
    “Well, you could call more often. It’s not like its long distance,” she said in her most whiny voice. But something was different. She sounded different; kind of subdued, and I suppose a little muted.
    “Listen, honey, I, well, I mean, we, your father and I, need to discuss something with you, something rather delicate and personal.”
    She often called me “honey,” and I hated it. “Honey” was a term men in the sixties called their wives. I always felt there was something horrifically incestuous about Mother calling me “honey.” When I was at Yale, she would sometimes go grocery shopping without me to allow me the opportunity to study quietly on my own, and on her return from the store, laden with a bag of groceries, she would yell, “Honey, I’m home!” when entering the apartment. It made me cringe just thinking about it. It was like a perverted, incestuous episode of I Love Lucy, her favorite show, which she always insisted I sat through and watch with her, despite the fact that I found it not the least bit amusing. She would refer to me as Ricky and call herself Lucy as she laughed aloud at the crazy antics of the Cuban bandleader and his daffy wife. Believe me, it was the closest thing to Hell I had ever encountered.
    “Well, that’s fine, go ahead; I am all ears,” I said with the phone tucked under my chin whilst I inspected a set of plans and drawings sprawled on my desk.
    “Not over the phone dear. I, I mean, we, think it would be better if you came over to the house this evening after work, and we could all sit down and discuss it. I don’t like talking on the phone, you know that,” replied Mother, and again her voice sounded muted almost subdued. There was something obviously not right. I could tell. Mother was never this way; she was demanding, obnoxious, loud, and brash.
    I must point out that I did not know my mother did not like to talk on the phone. She seemed to be an expert at talking on the phone. Indeed, I had always considered talking on the phone was one of her hobbies, as she did it often, and her comment about not liking to talk on the phone was a veiled attempt to try and cajole me into something we both knew I wouldn’t want to do. Secondly, the mere thought of traveling across the city to visit my parents that evening was out of the question. I was a man of routine, and whilst I did not wish to sound callous, I did have more important things planned, mostly revolving around an evening of watching television, probably