Mom, Casey, Zac, and I found ourselves in the kitchen later that afternoon, catching up on current events and recent history. Taylor and Natalie left a little while after breakfast, saying that they needed to get some stuff around the house done. They left Ezra with us, which had become a common occurrence ever since Chris showed up, but we didn’t mind.
“How is the music going?” Mom asked, sounding genuinely interested. We hadn’t talked to her about it ages. We used to tell her everything that we might have planned or things we thought about planning, but didn’t. Any minor detail, she would know five seconds after we did.
“Well,” Zac said with a lopsided grin. He looked at me for an answer.
“We’re just doing random stuff for now. We don’t have anything concrete planned,” I answered, hoping it would be enough to suffice her curiosity.
“No studio work?” Her eyebrows were raised, meaning she wanted a straight forward answer and no hop-scotching around it.
“Not yet,” I told her. “We’re…”
“Writing and stuff right now,” Zac finished for me. “Building up the new material so that we have something to work with once we get in there.”
Mom nodded, seeming pleased with the answer.
“And you,” she said, directing her look at Casey. “Didn’t you…”
“I worked for the newspaper,” she said, nodding. “They worked with me to make it easy for me to go to school, take care of Chris, and work all at once.”
“I can’t imagine doing all that would be easy, no matter what job you have.”
Casey smiled sincerely, reflecting the one Mom had on her face. “I try not to think about how hard it is. That only discourages me.”
Mom nodded, approvingly. “You’re a strong girl,” she said. “Always have been.”
It was then that Casey looked down at the table and started playing with the placemat. She felt uncomfortable, and it was easy to tell.
“How’s Jess?” Zac asked. “I haven’t talked to her in a while.”
“Good,” Mom answered quickly. “Justin and Sean keep her pretty busy.”
“How old is Sean now?” Casey questioned.
“Ohhh…” mom said, thinking, squinting her eyes a little as she did. “Four months? He was born in January, so it would be a little over four months.”
“Aww,” Casey cooed. “I remember when Chris was that little.”
“I remember when all my kids were that little,” Mom agreed with the same look on her face.
“Have you seen Dad?” Ezra came into the kitchen with Chris right behind him. Ezra stopped abruptly in front of Casey and Chris nearly ran into the back of him.
“Did you look under the couch?” Casey offered.
“Actually, I think I saw him in the bathroom this morning behind the toilet,” Zac told the boys. “I’d look there first.”
“If he’s not there, look under all of the furniture,” Casey added as the boys hightailed it out of the kitchen in search of the missing turtle.
Once our attention was off of the boys, it went back to mom, and the confusion on her face was priceless. Ezra came in looking for Dad, so she must have assumed, as anyone would, that he was talking about Taylor.
“Dad is a turtle,” Casey explained, noticing the same look on Mom’s face. “We went to Central Park a while back, and the boys found a turtle, and Chris named it Dad.”
“He named it Dad?” Mom’s eyes had turned from confused to curious in a matter of seconds.
“Yea,” Casey agreed and then shrugged. “He wanted to name him Dad, so I let him.”
“That’s…interesting,” mom concluded.
Casey smirked. “He’s an interesting kid.”
“I wish you guys would have been around more as he’s been growing up,” Mom told her sadly.
“I know…” Casey said, regretfully. “I just…” She cut herself off.
“You know, you had everyone worried sick last time you left.” Mom reprimanded softly. I looked at Casey, and I felt bad for her. She looked like she felt bad, and I’m sure she didn’t mean to worry anyone. She probably felt trapped.
“I’m sorry,” she apologized to Mom.
“You just left in the middle of the night and didn’t tell anyone you were leaving,” Mom continued with her lecture, making Casey sigh.
“You left in the middle of the night?” Zac asked Casey.
She shrugged, not looking up at him.
“Hey,” I said, trying to smooth things over with everyone in the room. “I’m sure she had a good reason.”
“Yea, if you think going back to a bad relationship is a good reason,” Mom said curtly to me. “You’ve always been good at getting yourself into bad relationships,” she said, directing her cold tone toward Casey.
The three of us sat motionless, stunned at the bitterness of Mom’s words.
“Two of the best things in my entire life have come out of those ‘bad relationships,’ as you call them,” Casey defended herself. I knew Chris was one of the things she was talking about, but I couldn’t, for the life of me, figure out what the second thing was. “Bad shit happens, but something good always comes out of them,” she continued.
“I just wish you’d be smarter about who you give your heart to,” Mom jumped in. “You’ve never really been a good judge of character, always picking the boys that hurt you.”
“I can’t help who I fall in love with,” Casey said through a shaky breath. She was looking straight at Mom. I knew Mom’s words could sting, but I never thought she’d ever direct them at Casey.
“Out of both of my boys that were so into you, you picked the one that hurt you the most. I never understood that.”
I sat in awe that Mom had just said what she said, but Zac didn’t waste any time in defending Casey.
“Mom,” he cut in sharply. “I’m right here. If you want to cut into somebody, cut into me, not her.
I was staring at Mom, but when I looked over at Casey, she was watching me. I offered a sympathetic smile, but it came out as more of a pathetic one. She turned her gaze to Zac who had just stood up for her, and then back to Mom. None of us said anything for the longest time. I, personally, didn’t know what to say. I felt like I was stuck in the middle of something I didn’t belong in, and yet, I felt like I needed to be there for whatever reason.
Casey was the first to stand up and leave the table with the excuse that she was going to go check on the boys. I could see in her eyes that what Mom said had hurt her. None of us said anything until she was clearly out of hearing range.
“I don’t know what you’re problem is,” Zac started in on Mom, “but you need to get over it.”
“Talk about making her run,” I agreed. “That’ll push her away faster than anything.”
“She just makes stupid mistakes,” Mom said, defending her words.
“And I was one of those,” Zac argued. “But the past is in the past and right now she’s about to have a baby and the last thing she needs is to be running. To be homeless or with that asshole.”
“If she goes back to that man then that’s her problem,” Mom argued. Her eyes were on fire, but I had no idea what had set them ablaze. Last night she’d been so loving and so warm. And today…all she wanted to do was tear her down.
“If she goes back to that man because of you, I’ll never forgive you,” Zac told her seriously. I could feel the heated fury in his voice.
“Don’t say things like that to me, Zachary. I’m still your mother.”
“But you’re wrong.” I was proud of the way he was standing up for not only himself, but Casey as well. It was something I hadn’t seen him do in a long time. “I didn’t want you to come in the first place for fear that it would make her run. And now look, it’s like you’re trying to push her away.”
“I’m not trying to push her away,” she said, raising her voice. “I love her just as much as you do.”
Zac shook his head. “Obviously not.”
“I’m just trying to get her to realize the mistakes she’s made,” Mom continued defending herself and her actions.
“She knows her mistakes,” I informed her. “I don’t think you did anything good for her with that debacle of a lecture.”
Her eyes turned towards me sharply. “I was not lecturing her, Isaac.”
“Then what was it?” Zac asked. “Because if that wasn’t a lecture I don’t know what the hell it was.”
“I was pointing out that she needed to be more careful in the future.”
“She’s doing good for herself now, Mom,” Zac told her, his voice softening. “The first step was getting away from the bad relationships and she’s done that. She got Chris and her baby to be out of that situation.”
“And she came here. She came to us,” I added.
“Which means what?” Mom asked in a doubt-filled voice.
“It means,” Zac started slowly and clearly, “that she didn’t want to keep going to people and running from place to place. She knew we could, and would, take care of her.”
“Did she say that?” Mom asked defensively.
“No,” I said, “but…”
“Maybe she was only planning on being here for a few days then,” Mom interjected, “but for whatever reason, she ended up staying longer.”
“She stayed longer because she knew we could take care of her,” Zac told her. “She’s thinking about her kids. If it was just her, I honestly don’t think she’d still be here.”
“Well, at least she’s thinking about her kids. She’s never thought about herself,” Mom said.
“Mom,” Zac said firmly. “Stop talking. Until you have something positive to say about any of us, just stop talking.”
“I just…”
“Stop,” Zac cut her off curtly. He stood up, never taking his eyes off of her. “We don’t need your negativity.” He stalked out of the kitchen without saying another word.
Mom looked at me pathetically with hurt in her eyes. “What’d I do to deserve to be talked to like that?”
I raised my eyebrows in shock. Was she really asking me that question?
She looked at my expression and shook her head. “I think I deserve more respect than that. Raising all you children. Under such circumstances, no less.”
I shook my head in disbelief, standing up. “You have to give respect to receive it,” I told her as I walked out of the kitchen, leaving her sitting there alone.
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