a/n: Thank you for the kind reviews, here is the next installment.
I'm justa spinning my yarn here...don't mind me at all.
The Story of the Second Son chapter two
This time they sat together in a coffee shop in Brooklyn, his old stomping ground. They each sat with a small white coffee cup in front of them. It was mid morning but they were still rubbing the sleep from their eyes.
He loved to watch the steam rise from his cup. He put his hand on the table and started to play with a corner of his untouched napkin. Her hand came to rest over his and steadied his hand. He stopped and looked up at her.
"Tell me another one, please." She stroked the top of his hand with hers.
He watched the steam rise off his coffee for a few moments more then began.
"I used to shoot off words at my father, he shot back with silence. That hurt worse than anything he could have said. The indifference and apathy towards what was going on in my life is what struck me, never his hand.
I was about nine then, my mother started to hallucinate about that time. At first it wasn't anything alarming. We would be standing together in the kitchen, my mother and I, and she would ask me.
"Bobby do you smell that wonderful pumpkin pie? Smells delicious don't it?"
Now I knew there was no pie, I couldn't smell anything at all, but I told her that yes it did all the same.
See, those were harmless but then she started to talk to people that weren't there. My brother and I would be in bed, I wouldn't be asleep, I never was a sound sleeper and I would hear my father's car outside. My mother didn't so she just kept on talking to no one. No one I could hear anyway.
I guess my father heard too, he wouldn't come in; instead he would stop and listen outside the front door. It was always late when he came home and he would hear his wife laughing and carrying on with someone in his house. You would almost think he was losing it too, he swore he smelled men's cologne other than his own. But he never said anything to my mother, oh no. Instead he rushed right back out to his car and drove off to spill his jealousy into the first willing or easily persuaded body.
I could smell them on him the next morning at breakfast. Mother seemed none the wiser. I never told her. I doubt she didn't know though. My mother is a very smart woman, the smartest most beautiful, charming, caring person I've ever met.
She kept me company on days when none of the others kids would play with me. When dad would rather play catch with Christopher than me. She worked in a library and she got me started on reading all the time.
Some of her old friends from when she worked at the library still ask me how she's doing when I go in. They've known me since I was old enough to read.
Overall I'd say the good memories out way the bad with my mother.
My father started to go out like he did all the time, whether or not he thought she was still cheating, I don't think it made much of a difference. Somewhere along the line they drifted apart, my mother and father. He blamed himself because he didn't know how to help, he kept distant from us because he just didn't understand how to take care of us, and frankly I think he had lost interest in ever having a happy family again.
I turned eleven and a week after my birthday I was sitting outside a courtroom, it was over for good. After that it's like he never existed, well pretty much. He would come about once a month, at least he did till I was about 16. For fives years he tried to be dad still but he could never get the hang of it. He couldn't hold a job, he was alone and he pretty much refused to pay child support. He was perpetually in a crisis and he liked it that way. He wouldn't allow himself to be happy and he wouldn't allow himself to be normal again. Whatever normal is anyway.
Mom started to get more and more confused. She would leave the oven on, forget to close the fridge. Some days I found her out on front stoop just staring off into space. I'd just bring her back in, turn on the TV for her and go out to roam the streets.
I used to think I drove him away, at first, and then I thought mom did it on purpose to punish me and Chris. When I turned sixteen I started to find my own identity, things started coming together in my head and suddenly I had all the answers. At least that's what I thought at the time. Then I met Lewis.
But that's…for another day."
They finished their coffee and strolled out of the diner towards wherever. It was a Sunday and they had nothing to do but nothing at all.