Trauma Read Free

while; then he gave up, too.
    â€œDid you really like it?” asked Bonnie.
    â€œHey, it was great.” She noticed that he had picked out all the raisins and left them around the rim of his plate.
    They cleaned up, scraping the remaining food into the sink. There was still quite a lot left in the pot, but Bonnie emptied that into the sink, too. She washed the plates in silence for a while. Ray stood beside her with a dish towel, waiting to dry them, tall, blinking, with coat-hanger shoulders and hair that always looked as if he had just woken up.
    He was seventeen years old, the same age that she had been when she had given birth to him. She found it almost impossible to believe. Had she really been that young?
    Tonight Ray was wearing his favorite T-shirt with LA CORONERS DEPT printed on it. Duke hated it, or said that he hated it. “I hate that. You want people to think you’ve got unhealthy interests, or what?”
    Bonnie stacked the plates into the hutch. “Yourfather’s so touchy these days. I’m beginning to think that it’s me.”
    â€œWhy should it be you? What have you done?”
    â€œTell me what I haven’t done. I’ve started the cleanup business, right? And I’m still holding down my regular job at Glamorex. You can’t blame your father for feeling a little inadequate, can you?”
    â€œHe could find a job if he wanted to. He doesn’t even try. Just sits on his duff all day watching
Days of Our Lives
.”
    â€œCome on, Ray. He hasn’t worked in over a year now. It’s not so much that he’s lazy.… He’s just kind of out of the loop.”
    â€œThat still doesn’t give him the right to take it out on you.”
    â€œI’m a big girl now, Ray. I can take stuff like that.”
    Unexpectedly, Ray came up to her and put his arms around her and pressed his cheek against her shoulder.
    â€œWhat?” she said.
    â€œNothing. I just wish that you and Dad could make up.”
    She found herself stroking his spiky hair. “We will. I promise you. We’re going through a difficult time, that’s all. Everybody goes through difficult times.”
    â€œBut it’s every day. It’s every single day.”
    Bonnie snapped off her bright yellow rubber gloves. “Never mind. How about a cup of coffee?”
    Ray lifted his head and looked up at her. “Do you mind if I ask you a personal question?”
    She laid both hands on his shoulders, smiling. “You can ask me anything you like. I’m your mother.”
    â€œDad—you know—do you still, like,
love
him?”
    Bonnie looked into Ray’s eyes and they were the same color as hers: palest faded blue—the blue of cornflowers found pressed between the pages of a family Bible.
    â€œThat’s a very complex thing to ask me,” she said. “And all I can say is … there are lots of different answers, and even
I
don’t know what they are.”
    â€œI knew you’d chicken out.”
    â€œOh, yes? At least I didn’t Mexican chicken out.”
    He came bursting into the bedroom at 2:34 in the morning, stinking of beer and cigarette smoke. She lay in bed pretending to sleep while he tilted and ricocheted from one side of the room to the other. His shoes tumbled across the floor and then—shackled by the legs of his pants—he fell full length onto the bed, right beside her.
    â€œBonnie …” he breathed. His breath was so rancid that she had to turn her face away. “Bonnie, listen to me. I love you. You don’t even know how much I love you. You don’t have any—
shit
!” he said, as he tried to kick his pants off his ankles.
    â€œ
Know
we always argue—
know
that, baby. But it’s not always me. Sometimes—sometimes it’s you. I mean you work all day and you work all night and you hardly even look at me and think, That’s my man. That’s my
man
.