Sometimes Shelley was starkly aware that she wasn’t the boys’ mother. Something was going on between Bob and Clay, and the other two had taken sides. Now they were practically at war, and Shelley didn’t know what to do. The boys wouldn’t talk to her, and Kevin was too busy with the new label rep to realize what was going on. The boys had hissed twin-speak arguments between takes and avoided each other the rest of the time.
Shelley sat in the corner with a stack of magazines, wishing she could be more useful. On the road she could dig in with the crew and help get the show on its feet. Here she wasn’t mother or musician or anything remotely useful, and for one moment she wished she was one of those wives who was content to spend a day at the mall with her husband’s credit card.
She wished the boys trusted her with something more than checking their homework.
The engineer called Dan in to lay down vocals, and Shelley checked her watch. She’d been sitting in the same corner for two hours straight. No good. She stood up, taking the time to indulge in a yawn and a stretch. That was when she noticed that Bob and Clay were missing.
“Scott,” she said. He was sulking over his guitar. “Where are your brothers?”
He muttered, “Níl fhios agam.”
“English, Scott.”
He lifted his head. “Oh, sorry Shelley.” He glanced at the beanbags where the matching set had been also sulking, and he shrugged. “I don’t know.”
She smiled tightly. “Thanks.” Time to hunt, then. They knew better than to wander off. She ducked out of the room and into a hallway. On the way in she’d spotted a couple of vending machines, and she wouldn’t put it past a couple of hungry teenage boys to go in search of junk food despite their fathers’ orders against it. Given how they were feuding, however, she doubted that they’d gone searching together.
Shelley rounded the corner, and she saw Clay standing in the doorway of a side room, frozen. The expression on his face was faintly heartbroken, and then he wrenched himself back, eyes shut tightly as if to block out what he’d seen. After a moment, he straightened up, turned away, and marched toward the vending machine.
Something tightened in Shelley’s chest. He wasn’t her son, but she hated seeing him hurt. She crept toward the door to find out what he’d seen.
He’d seen Bob and Carolyn in each other’s arms, kissing.
(427 words)
1 comment:
Twist the knife! This post was full of passion and pain. I bow before your writing genius. I can feel it and I can hurt with them. You have truly brought these characters to life for me.
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