Mothers and Sons

I continue reeling from the break-up after dinner. My fingers are itching, inching closer to my phone. I want to text her. I need to text her.

Rude to text at the dinner table, though.

With her fingers, my grandmother motions me closer. Smelling vodka on her breath I hear,

“I still haven’t accepted your mother’s friend request.”

My uncle’s doing the dishes, the water slipping over them. I don’t care about the fact that she hasn't accepted my mother’s ill-fated attempts to add her ex-mother-in-law on Facebook but I’m surprised she’s bringing this up at all. I hear my father grunt as he picks up a bag of trash outside. It’s cold today and I don’t think he’s wearing a sweater.

I wonder, very briefly, if it’s cold where she is.

The water continues to run. It’s been ten years since the divorce and some of us are still tiptoeing around certain eggshells. I don’t know why. Thinking it’s more than “about time” to let bygones be bygones I tell her not to worry about it.

“But should I accept it?”, she slurs.

“My Dad has her.”

“Oh. He does?”

“Yeah, he has her.”

“Oh.”

My uncle breaks away from the dishes and starts to talk to her, so I walk out onto the porch. Leaning against the railing, I light a cigarette. I hear footsteps behind me and someone places a beer on the railing. Dad. I tell him what my grandmother told me and he laughs.

“Still tiptoeing, huh?”

“Still tiptoeing.”

I take a couple sips of the beer. Cold. He sees me pull out my phone and says nothing as he walks back into the kitchen, but the pitiful smile he gives me tells me everything he wanted to say. I see a missed call from my mother so I call her back, instead.