Unnatural Read Free

parlor A Cut Above; she does my hair. Her daughter, Jeralyn, is in your grade.”
    Michael had no idea who Jeralyn Garrison was, so he lied again. “Oh yeah, I think so.”
    “Where’d you get this?” His mother held up a Union Jack bumper sticker.
    “I found it at the Sears auto store when I was there with Grandpa. He told me I couldn’t put the British flag on his Ranger. I told him I had no intention of doing that; I bought it ’cause I liked it.”
    Michael saw the familiar glaze come over his mother’s eyes. He remained silent because he knew that if he kept on talking, if he asked her a direct question even, she wouldn’t hear him. She was in the room, but her mind wasn’t. Her heart might not be in the room either, but his mother rarely talked about what lay in her heart, so it was hard to tell about that. When she placed the bumper sticker gently back on his desk and turned to face him, he was compelled to speak despite knowing it might be futile.
    “Do you ever miss London?”
    Grace looked at her son. He doesn’t look a thing like me, does he? I don’t have blond hair, my skin isn’t so pale, my eyes aren’t green. If I hadn’t been there when the doctor pulled him out from inside of me, I would never believe this person was my flesh and blood. But he was, he is, she thought. In some ways, he’s all I’ll ever be able to truly call my own.
    “No,” she lied. “I told you before, it’s a crowded, loud city. Dirty, no space to breathe, no clean air. I can’t believe you remember it; you were only three when we left.”
    “I don’t really have memories, but impressions. I don’t know, I just get the feeling that I would like it.”
    He doesn’t even sound like me, Grace thought. He never does. He says things that just don’t make sense, that make me question why I ever became a parent, why I ever wasted my life raising him. “You mean you just get the feeling that you’d like it better than here.”
    And the change had begun. Michael saw his mother’s lips press against each other to form a smile that meant to convey anything but joy, her head tilt to the right, and her eyes fill with disbelief. Their roles had reversed. She was the emotionally reactive teenager and he was the insightful parent. Experience had taught him this conversation would not be any different from any other conversation he’d ever had with his mother about London or what their life was like before she brought him to this place, the place where she grew up, or what theirlife could be like if they moved back. Nothing important would be disclosed, nothing important would be shared between mother and son. And so he just went back to reading.
    His mother paced the width of the room, once, twice. She hated when Michael asked about London. For her it was another lifetime ago, a mistake. No, not a mistake entirely.
What should I call it?
she thought. She couldn’t come up with a word. As always, the mention of London and her past made her fidgety, confused. The only thing she was certain of was that it was part of her past and that’s where it should remain. Yes, it should remain buried and silent. Because when she thought of London, all she thought of was him, Michael’s father. The man she ran away with and the man she eventually ran from. The man she once loved and would always love. The man she never wanted to see again. “Do me one favor,” Grace said before leaving her son alone. “When you get married, be a better husband than your father was.”
    A cold sensation of fear trickled down Michael’s neck and found its resting place on his heart. It squeezed, it constricted, until Michael could hardly breathe and had to consciously put down his book and gasp, gasp for a breath that should have come easily. But his mother saw to it that it didn’t. She had to mention marriage and becoming a husband, didn’t she? If Michael didn’t know better, he’d think his mother was punishing him for bringing up London. And