Chapter 34 Chicken
Richard could see the mild disapproval in his mother's face from the moment she stepped into their home. She had been reluctant to visit at first. His mother did not care for conflict or uncomfortable situations, and his extra-marital home with Lupe was the definition of uncomfortable conflict. But after many reassurances that Lupe would not be there as she was busy putting the finishing touches on her shop to prepare for its opening tomorrow, she reluctantly agreed.
"This is… charming, I suppose. It's not much like your old place, now is it? But that was awfully big, too big for the two of you." His mother's gaze lingered on the new radio set. "That's nice. You're not hurting for money, are you?"
Richard shook his head. "No, moving here has taken a huge financial burden off me."
"So you aren't paying the rent on your old apartment anymore?"
"No."
His mother paused to think about this. "Where is Dorothy staying then?"
"I don't know. It's not my problem anymore."
"I don't approve of you abandoning your wife, Richard, no matter how much you fancy your new sweetheart," his mother quickly informed him, clearly awkward in sharing her opinion. "It's very poor behavior."
Richard was also equally uncomfortable sharing his feelings with his mother, but he realized if he had all along it wouldn't have gotten to this point. "There was much I didn't tell you about Dorothy, mother, this isn't only because I met another girl, this has been a long time coming."
Over coffee he explained to her the cruelty and coldness that had been the hallmark of his marriage with Dorothy. It was excruciatingly honest and personal and by the end of it they were both squirming with embarrassment about his issues and problems with Dorothy laid bare.
His mother slowly sipped the dregs of her now-tepid coffee. "Why did you never tell me any of this?"
"What difference would it have made?" Richard stared into his empty cup.
"And Lupe? She makes you happy?"
Richard nodded but didn't look up from his cup. "My leg didn't matter to her. I got the surgery for her as much as I got it for myself. When I looked at my life and I just saw a lifetime of Dorothy stretching out in front of me, I just…" he trailed off and sighed. "I focused on work instead of myself and my own body. But knowing that things could get better made me want to take the risk of this unknown surgery."
His mother frowned. "Littlest, she might just be after your money. You know that, right?"
The thought had gone through his head many times. He usually dismissed it, but he wasn't love drunk enough to completely disregard it either. "Of course. I'm not stupid. I don't think she is. After all, look where we are living." He gestured to the modest two-burner stove and small sink.
"For her lot this is a mansion," his mother argued.
For what she lets me do to her in bed I don't give a damn what her real motivations are. But that would be so very, very embarrassing to say in his mother's company. "I cannot live my life believing that every woman who is interested in me is trying to get to my money. Which isn't too much at the moment anyway, at least not in cash. Besides, she has her own business now, she's got ambitions to look after herself, she's told me as much."
"Hmm." His mother sounded skeptical. "Are you planning on marrying her?"
"Dorothy isn't going for a divorce and I believe you'd be even more scandalized if I were a bigamist. Personally, I don't care, I'd marry Lupe in two shakes of a lamb's tail regardless of whether or not Dorothy signs a piece of paper or not, but I don't think Lupe would care for that. Women don't like to be in second place when it comes to their men, do they? I've learned that much about them at least."
"So you're content to live in sin then?"
"Do you reckon God can even see us down here?" Richard joked and lit a cigarette.
His mother also stared into her cup. "I had hoped that I had raised you better. I don't mean you leaving Dorothy, it sounded awful. But living with someone you've known only for a few months? It's very common. No, worse than common. Common people have better decorum. It pains me to say it, but it's what white trash does."
Richard laughed at her petty concerns. I could croak at any moment, I haven't got months and years to court her. But telling his mother this would only cause her pain. "Things are different down here, we've got to account for that."
His mother sighed again, clearly still disapproving. "There was something else I needed to talk to you about. Your father is in a real state over your refusal to design the firearms he wants to build."
Richard had been anticipating this. Doubtlessly his father had been whining about it to his mother for weeks now. "I know. He voiced his displeasure with me."
"Ah, good, I was worried this was an issue of communication," his mother said with a conciliatory smile. "So, when will you start designing the weapons he wants?" It was a foregone conclusion that Richard would cave.
"Never. Before you launch into your reasons why I should, look around you. I am willing to take a serious step down in lifestyle. If father wants to cut me loose and buy me out as punishment for disobeying him, let him. I'll sort something out, I'm very good at what I do. It's not worth it to me to make more money than I really need if it means something I design may kill an innocent person. I don't want to do it. And save your breath about turrets, I know they have the potential to kill, but you've got to go looking for trouble to find them," Richard explained, bored and frustrated by having to explain himself multiple times. "Father knows this, I've explained it to him."
She sighed sadly. "Please don't be difficult, littlest. You leaving the company would trigger an irreparable rift in our family."
"I don't want to leave the company, not at all. But I'm going to design the firearms. He's welcome to hire someone else to do it, but I'm not going to work on them."
"You know how your father gets. You can't put him up against a corner like this, he'll get mad and when he gets mad he lashes out. Just make the guns, littlest, is it so hard? Don't force your father to retaliate."
Richard shook his head. "I'm not going to get pushed around anymore, not by my wife and not by my father." Or my mother.
"Think about Rollie," his mother urged him, trying a different tact. "How is he going to feel if he has to pick between you and your father? And me? How am I going to feel?"
Richard bit the inside of his cheek to keep from telling his mother that it wasn't really his responsibility to keep her and Rollie's spirits up. "I suppose fairly poorly, that's how you'd feel."
"Exactly. And also, look at this place. That rug, my goodness, it looks like it's made of rags-"
"It is, it's called a rag rug, Lupe made it from an old bed sheet she found in her shop."
His mother looked shocked. "That's very… frugal of her, but don't you want to get her nice things? Don't you want to move back to Adranos Place? Elpis Close smells like dirt!"
He nodded. "Yes, there's a little farm operation on the rooftops a few blocks over. I like it, actually, reminds me of the Eden we were cast out of."
"You say you love your new sweetheart, but you're content to let her live like this?"
"It's not bad at all, mother, honestly. I don't miss the silver forks and the porcelain plates and the velvet curtains and all that nonsense. The ones we have get the job done just the same."
"What if one of you gets sick? That can devastate you financially," she desperately argued.
This gave him pause but didn't weaken his resolve. After all, what was the point of living if he was going to be having an internal crisis about it? I'm going to sell my stake in Stone and Sons, he resolved right then and there. That's got to be worth a couple of million. We'll invest it in something together and I'll start my own business.
"True. I will think about it. There was something I'd hope you help me with." Richard got up and opened the icebox. "Since Lupe is busy at her shop I was going to fix up supper, so I bought a bunch of food and it wasn't until I got home that I realized I don't know how to cook."
"Did she put you up to this? It's not very masculine of you to cook supper," his mother huffed.
Richard sighed. "No, I was going to surprise her. She usually cooks." But not that well, he added in his head. He wasn't about to start outlining Lupe's faults.
"What did you get?"
To answer that Richard proudly held out a dead chicken, head and feathers still attached. His mother hadn't been raised poor, but not wealthy enough to have a cook so she should have some idea of what to do.
"Oh, littlest, you're in over your head," his mother said and pulled a single feather from the breast of the bird. "Why didn't you buy it plucked and gutted?"
"Is that an option? I just told them I wanted a chicken and this is what I was given." Richard gave the bird a bit of a shake. "It's fresh, I watched the guy snap its neck right in front of me an hour ago."
"First take the feathers off, then the head. Then scoop out the organs and make gravy out of them. Then stuff the cavity inside with onions or lemons or carrots, something like that. Then you cook it in the oven for an hour or so until it's done."
Richard stared at the bird's corpse. "And, um, how do I make gravy?"
His mother sighed heavily. "You shouldn't be doing this, it should be your wife, not your sweetheart that you live in sin with, or your servant. You shouldn't trouble yourself. Now, how about this? You design the guns your father wants, you make lots of money, you offer Dorothy respectable alimony, you marry Lupe immediately if you are certain that is what is going to make you happy, you move back to Adranos Place, and you hire someone to cook for you?"
Richard plopped the bird down on the counter. "Think of all the money I can save if I learn to cook for myself." And Lupe. It's hard to believe I would be worse at this than she is.
"Your father and I worked very hard to give you and your brother the best life possible, and you're going to throw it all away for some… upstarted maid? Littlest, please think of your family before you toss your life away."
"I'm doing no such thing. If you and father have a bad reaction to this, well, that's out of my control." Rollie couldn't give a damn either way. Rollie was a good brother. He began to yank out fistfuls of feathers. "Is there anything I can do with these feathers, by the way?"
His mother ignored the question about the feathers. "What has gotten into you? You're like a whole different person now!"
"It's this slug. It gave me back my leg and my balls," he flippantly commented.
"Richard! Language!" His mother was clearly offended by his extremely mild language. "My goodness. This place is bad for your moral fiber! Rubbing shoulders with workers all day has rubbed off on you!"
"Not to mention fucking the maid," he muttered under his voice. "That's been a pretty big influence on my life lately."
His mother gasped. "I cannot believe what you've become! Utter profanity! And horrible behavior! You should never, ever… with the maid!"
"I did, and I will continue to do so. And I think I will stay here, at least for a while. And I'll learn how to make supper." Richard brushed some feathers off his hand. "Oh, and Lupe isn't a maid anymore, remember?" Except for when… he couldn't bring himself to even think about it in front of his mother.
"You need to clean up your act, Richard, lest you fall into ill repute and degeneracy. It pains me to see you go down this path!"
"What is so awful about this? What is so unforgivable about living in a modest home and taking care of my own needs?"
His mother was rendered momentarily speechless by his backtalk but regained her footing soon enough. "It's not what we raised you for! You are supposed to be better than this! Better than rag rugs and enameled tin cups and walking up two flights of stairs to get into your own home! It's heartbreaking!"
Richard kept his eyes on the chicken and his ever-rising frustration in check. "That's a bit much, don't you think? Wasn't it heartbreaking enough when I damn near died in the war and came back mangled and in pain? You consider this heartbreaking? I am with a woman I like in a comfortable home, not so jabbed full of morphine I can't see straight or laying in pain in a hospital bed."
"There is physical ill health and moral ill health. Unfortunately, you have traded from one for the other," his mother informed him.
Richard heavily sighed and kept at the chicken. "I'm happy. Let me be happy."
"You're not happy. You think you are, but you aren't. You will realize it soon, I think, and hopefully, you will not have done too much damage."
I am going to do plenty of damage, just you wait and see. "How do I make gravy from the insides of this chicken?" Richard tried to change the subject.
"You do not need to know!" He heard her rise from the table. "You'll excuse me, but I have another appointment this afternoon nearby."
"That could have gone better," Richard mumbled to himself after she hurried out the front door. For a few moments he considered backing out of his fresh resolve to sell his share, but found his backbone again. I'm not going to get pushed back into dinner parties and chandeliers just to spare someone else's feelings. He ripped the last of the feathers off the bird.
He held the chicken out and frowned at it. "I really should get a cookbook," he said to himself. Lupe was doubtlessly going to be busy at her shop often.