I shiver when my cell phone vibrates from Mom’s calls; my brother’s calls more often make me nervous.
“Oh, no. What happened to Joe now?” sort of thinking.
This time they teamed up, called from Joe’s number and put me on speaker phone.
In the spirit of anti-hypocrisy, I accepted my mother’s invitation to my brother’s house for a “family call,” during Fourth of July weekend.
I reminded myself this is not a meeting of The Endless, however ominous Mom made it seem by adding that my sister, who lives in Canada, planned to join via Microsoft Teams. Had Mom not also mentioned her desire to play a board game, I might have been more worried about the circumstances for the call.
“Joe’s making lunch,” Mom said.
I gathered this was Mom’s way of reaching out like she promised at the end of my Mother’s Day lashing out.
I still didn’t want to go.
I meant it when I exploded into text and angrily expressed how I still feel ignored and insignificant, but now she is ignoring her grandchildren, too. That hurts even more.
But seeing her makes my stomach lining prick like a startled hedgehog. I cannot bring myself to look at her and I actively avoid hugs.
It feels like it’s 109 degrees outside as the kids climb the wide wooden stairs with signs of rot. Joe’s front yard is mowed and free of clutter, and I think, “He’s growing up and taking care of his property,” but his red sedan in the driveway wears a stripe of white paint across its dented bumper. That lets me know he’s still drinking.
Mom’s cream-colored Pekingese, Paige, yaps at a high pitch and darts toward the front door like a dust ball in the wind.
Both the 12 and 14-year-olds are taller than 5-foot-2 Mom now.
She says she’s shrinking.
I take a seat on the sofa as Mom and Joe try to figure out Teams on her laptop. She thinks her webcam is broken.
I realized Joe had an energy drink in hand because he was still drunk from the night before.
He slurred a reference to “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas” and I smiled.
“Those of us who’d been up all night were in no mood for coffee and doughnuts. We required strong drink.”
My brother is still a lot of fun somewhere inside, beneath the damage that spills out when he drinks too much, which is too much.
My 14-year-old fixes the setting and connects Mom’s laptop to the call with my sister, whose youngest child is cuddled in an orange blanket in her lap. The other two hide behind the screen, but I hear them saying hello.
Joe exhales a cloud of white vape that sours the air around the front door. After two puffs, I ask him to smoke somewhere my children weren’t breathing.
“It’s my house; I can vape wherever I want,” he counters, and I concede.
“Yes, you can,” I say, “but I’m asking you not to blow smoke of any kind toward my kids.”
We were all ready to give the code word and leave.
“No drama” is the rule I set when we agreed to armor up the kids in love and move toward the verbally abusive onslaught of our extended family.
Without more arguing, Joe opens the sliding glass door and blows out as hot air crawls in and sticks like humidity.
Joe takes my 12-year-old son to the countertop and encourages him to cut and steam broccoli.
Standing in front of a cutting board, looking at the vegetables, my boy looks confused. He didn’t know anything about using a steamer. His mother isn’t fancy like that.
As my brother wobbles in and out of the kitchen, huffing cooking directions and puffing on his vape, Mom jokes about Joe’s love for Gordon Ramsey’s “Hell’s Kitchen.”
I show my son the steamer and explain how I think it works, while giving my brother a look that said louder than my voice, “teach him.”
Then, I return to the sofa, where Mom talks over my sister. The laptop is connected to the large-screen television.
“Hello, can you hear me?” she projects her voice.
The internet lag creates a moment of silence between question and response, but the quiet creates anxiety and Mom doesn’t wait long enough.
My sister smiles to tell me she simply can’t get a word in. Neither can her children. Neither can I.
What hurts is that I still don’t believe Mom cares. She is nervously trying to make conversation to make up for lost time, but it’s time she doesn’t really want back.
“I’m sure she’s lonely,” I think as I listen to her complain.
“I’m 73 now,” she baits me for attention. “It’s tough getting older.”
I turn my focus elsewhere and she yells out, “Where’s lunch?”
Between stirring the sauce and setting up the board game, we all agreed to listen to my daughter sing.
“Oh, wow, you should go on ‘American Idol,’” Mom praises as she walks away mid song.
I’m reliving my childhood, dancing in front of the television desperately seeking attention.
It’s my kids’ turn now, I say to myself.
“Let’s all listen to this song – you know ‘The Little Mermaid’ right?”
Look at this stuff, isn’t it neat…
My girl sounds like a goddamned angel and I share with Mom how the school principal emailed me to say how amazing my daughter sang at the fifth-grade talent show.
Joe brings Mom a drink. “You want one?” he asks. I laugh to myself because, really? It’s 1 p.m. on a Saturday and I am driving my kids around. I can wait a few more hours for hard liquor. I have enough of my own demons to drink with.
The constant invalidation is almost comical at this point. I do a decent job of shutting up and listening when in their company – to protect my children.
Joe gaslights my son about cooking pasta.
My kids have the self-confidence and awareness to handle themselves when comments get nasty.
They stick up for each other.
“Because I’m mean,” Joe says in a brief bit of drunk sincerity. I didn’t catch the whole conversation, but it was validating to hear Joe blurt out the truth.
Like tides in a hurricane, Mom and Joe turn their criticism from one family member to another.
Family get-togethers are the final exams for “Don’t let it get to you.”
My 14-year-old ends her concert and turns around to see if anyone was watching.
She walks around the couch and says, “blackbird.”
I tell Mom and Joe we are leaving but I don’t betray my daughter.
“I have to grocery shop and …” I trail off as I pack up the game we didn’t play.
The guilt Mom tried to trip me with caught my kids’ attention, though, and we agree to return the next day to play “Risk.”
My son insists we listen to “Highway to Hell” by AC/DC on the way back.
Why go back?
“We don’t want Mama to feel sad,” they say.