Page 50 of Bobby Green

Dammit, Reg—how am I going to do this if I can feel shit again?

“VERN?”

Bobby yanked his attention away from the far horizon and focused on his plate. Mom used old china, the kind with wreaths of wildflowers under a crackled finish, when she was serving something special.

“Sorry, Mom,” he said, taking a bite. “It’s really good. I’m just—”

“About a hundred miles away,” his mom said, smiling faintly. “Seriously—I called your name three times.”

Ugh. “The guys at work call me Bobby.” He grimaced apologetically. “You know, ’cause Roberts?”

His mom recoiled. “Well,I’mstill calling you Vern,” she said, sounding affronted.

Good call, Mom.It would have been awkward to have his mother call him by his porn name.

“That’s fine. I’m just thinking… you know.”

“No,” she said quietly. “I don’t know. Explain.”

He grimaced. “Do you want to live here forever?”

Her eyes opened. “Do you want to take me away from all this?” She sounded half-kidding, but also a little wistful.

“If I could…,” he said haltingly, “if I could get us a nice apartment in Sacramento, someplace near where you could get a job, would you work there? Could we… I dunno. Never come to fuckin’ Dogpatch again?”

She didn’t reprimand him for his language—but then, she never had. “I wouldn’t mind. But Vern, don’t you want to save that sort of thing for your girlfriend?”

He groaned. “Mom….”

“You’re not breaking up with her, are you?”

“Well, not now,” he mumbled. “But… I’m not sure if, well, being in two places is exactly….”Conducive.He knew the word. He didn’t like sounding too smart in front of his mother. “Good for a relationship. It’s… it’s hard enough when you’re right there with them, across the couch, you know?”

“Vern, do you have another girl?” His mother looked concerned, and he didn’t blame her. “I didn’t raise you like that.”

“No other girl,” he said, sighing. She hadn’t mentioned boys. Or hookups. Or women who made his penis hard and helped him ejaculate for the job. There had only been two of those—might not ever be more—but he had to think of them in a way that didn’t count. “Just… Mom, would you hate me if, if maybe I was a little different than you thought I was?”

“Like smarter than your grades?” she asked grimly. “Because we covered this through high school.”

He grimaced. Hadn’t gotten the best grades. Swim team, wrestling, partying out by the swimming hole, finding a job—anything sounded better than sitting down and doing math and English when kids like him didn’t go to college.

In a million years, he didn’t think he would have realized the joy of random paperbacks, passed around by friends, to be read and discussed like television shows that no one had time to watch, but it was too late now to go back and take English again. Besides…

That wasn’t what he was talking about.

“I mean… like, settling down with a nice local girl and having babies,” he said, because that was a start.

Her expression lightened around the eyes, so much so that she looked years younger, young enough to be Bobby’s mother, young enough to go have another life besides this one.

“Oh, Bobby. Why do you think I wanted you to do better in school so bad? I mean….” She shook her head. “My whole life, I thought there was something bigger than hanging in a small town and having a kid. Not that I wasn’t happy to haveyou,” she hastened to say, “but your dad….” She looked at her hands and swallowed. “Sometimes I think the reason he was so angry, and drank so much, was that he wanted out too. But he just… he didn’t want to make the sacrifices, you know?” She closed her eyes. “Making your life work the way you want it to—you’ve got to give some things up.”

“Oh,” Bobby said, thinking he understood very much. “So… like giving up the person you care for the most, because they’re not who you’re supposed to have.”

“No!”

Bobby looked up from his dinner—which was still tasty cold, thank God—because his mother was seldom that vehement. “No?”

“No—I’m talking, like giving up a night of beer with your buddies to stay home and be with the person you want to be with more. Fixing your house instead of partying. Working instead of calling in sick. Those are all acceptable sacrifices, you understand?”