Becoming P.T. Lyfantod - 6
A serial fantasy novel
What follows is Part 6 of Becoming P.T. Lyfantod
If you missed Part 1, start there:
Chapter Three:
The Loosest Ties
Two weeks after that night in Merry’s garage, when I’d been thinking I couldn’t possibly be any more miserable, I came home to find my mother in my mam-gu’s kitchen. Perhaps I should’ve seen it coming. After all, if my mother had a knack for anything, it was making my life worse.
When Merry decided to start seeing Tom, she’d single-handedly destroyed my social life as well. Iain had gone from angry to depressed. He wasn’t eating, he hardly spoke, and when he did, it was only ever to complain about Tom. After school—
“Why didn’t he just pick someone else?”
“What?” I looked up to find Rudy watching me from across the room, his back against the wall and his arms crossed over his chest.
“School’s full of girls,” he said. “One must be as good as another.”
“It doesn’t work like that, stupid,” Coira cast him a scathing glance. “He was in love. You don’t get to pick.”
I scratched my head. “Err. What she said. But don’t call him stupid.”
After school, on the days we didn’t have band practice, he went straight home, presumably to lay in bed and gaze at the ceiling. Stuart and I tried calling. Either no one picked up or Iain’s dad answered and said he wouldn’t come to the phone. We quickly realized there was only one person with any chance of cheering him up, and Merry might as well have disappeared.
She and Tom had started arriving to class together right on the bell and leaving again as soon as it rang. When they showed up for lunch, they sat with his friends on the football team, Iain staring across the room at their backs with a sort of aching expression on his face. And our Friday night games, not once missed for over a year, were canceled indefinitely.
Iain was a lost cause, and Stuart and I were frankly useless without him. Our lives became a joyless cycle of school, homework, and sleep. It was Friday again, and for the second week in a row I knew I’d be spending it, and the weekend, alone. Which is why, when I came home to find my mam in the kitchen, I lost it. Pretty much immediately.
“Did you throw something?” Rudy had somehow summoned a bead-sized spark. It glimmered in his eyes as he watched it roll around his palm. “Call her names?”
“I’ll tell you, if you let me.”
I didn’t notice my mam’s car parked outside our house when I walked up a little after sunset, home from the last band practice of the week, because I didn’t know what my mam’s car looked like. The smell of dinner wafted to me as I discarded my rucksack, shrugged off my jacket, kicked away my shoes, and yelled, “I’m home!”
“In here,” mam-gu called. She could at least have given me some warning. I barged into the kitchen expecting food, and there she sat, helping herself to a steaming bowl of mam-gu’s cawl, with a plate of onion cake, while mam-gu herself leaned on one hip against the counter, eating a cold-cut sandwich.
My mother.
She looked older than I remembered and not as tall. Unsurprising, since the last time I’d seen her was the day after my twelfth birthday. Not the day of my birthday. The day after. She’d gotten the date mixed up. I’d grown considerably in the last three years—at least in the vertical dimension. She had only grown older.
There were lines on her face that hadn’t been there before. Her once fiery red hair was fading to blonde. She looked thinner as well. Her cheekbones stood out in a manner I found unsettling. Despite being seated at the dinner table, she still had her coat on. As though she wanted to be ready to leave at a moment’s notice. Knowing her, it was probably the truth.
“Welcome home,” she said, smiling up at me.
Welcome home? I thought. Whose house did she think she was in? I ignored her. “What’s she doing here?”
“P.T.,” mam-gu warned. “Watch your tone. She’s your mother.”
I scoffed and pointed to the table, set for two, currently occupied by one. “Mam-gu, why are you eating cold turkey?”
“Your mother stopped by, and I only made so much cawl. We still abide by the rules of hospitality in this house. Now sit. Eat. Your dinner’s getting cold.”
I was determined to show my mother what it meant to be a good, reasonable person. “Here, mam-gu, you take mine. I don’t mind.”
“Oh, go on.” Mam-gu waved her sandwich at me. “Sit down, boy!”
Grumbling, I sat. I knew a lost battle when I saw one. My mother smiled again and gestured for me to eat. Contrariness dictated I refuse…but my growling stomach and mam-gu’s glare conspired against me. We ate in silence. I watching my mam through narrowed eyes, wondering what she was after now. She gazing back at me, attempting what she clearly imagined was a motherly expression. Mam-gu regarding the both of us like a bomb she expected to go off at any moment. The food, as always, was delicious. I resented my mother all the more for appearing to enjoy it.
“So,” I said, once it became clear that everyone was waiting for someone else to make the first move. “What is it you want this time?”
“P.T.!” scolded mam-gu, but my mother waved her off.
“That’s all right, Eira. He’s a right to be angry. I haven’t been around.”
“Last time you visited, you left with two thousand pounds more than you arrived with. Or was it three?”
“I came,” she said, leaning forward to look me in the eye, “because I wanted to take you out tomorrow. Spend a little time together. We could go for lunch. Shopping. Maybe to the cinema. It’ll be fun. Whatever you want. You know, mother and son stuff.”
“I’m good.” I stuffed as much onion cake into my mouth as would fit.
Mam-gu frowned and opened her mouth, but my mother held up a hand, never taking her eyes off me. “That’s all right. If you don’t want to go shopping, how about lunch then? Will you agree to that at least? A little quality time?”
I looked at mam-gu. Her expression told me exactly what she wanted me to say. I looked at my mother. All pleasant and reasonable. And I knew it was false. Beneath all her kind offers was the same person she’d always been. Unreliable. Selfish. Whatever she was up to, it had nothing to do with me and everything to do with her.
“Pass,” I said flatly. “And you needn’t offer again, because I won’t be changing my mind. Ever.”
Mam-gu gasped, and her hands dropped to her hips. “Puw Tywysog—” she began, in her “I am very disappointed with you” voice, but my mother stopped her again.
“It’s fine.” She pushed back her chair and rose. Her dish was still three-quarters full. “The offer stands. I’ll stop by round noon in case you change your mind. Thanks for the dinner, Eira, it w—”
“No,” I said, jumping out of my chair before she could beat me to it. “You stay. Eat. I’ve got homework. Anyway, I’m not hungry. I lost my appetite.” I spun, ran from the kitchen, and fled upstairs to my room. I slammed the door behind me, panting, then flopped down on my bed to stare at the ceiling. What was she after? Why come back? Why now?
Ten minutes later, I heard the front door. I got to the window in time to see mam’s car pulling away. I watched her drive off. Half of me wished she’d break her promise about coming back the next day. That would prove I was right about her. That she’d just come to feel better about herself, or…something. It wasn’t long before I heard mam-gu’s footsteps on the stairs. She entered without knocking, carrying my unfinished dinner. She set it down on my desk.
“I don’t—”
She silenced me with a look. “I think you ought to go tomorrow,” she said. Like I knew she would.
“I don’t want to,” I said pathetically. I was whining and knew it.
Mam-gu didn’t budge. “Your mother is trying to do right by you, P.T. I know she’s let you down in the past—”
“She’s after something.”
“Maybe,” she acknowledged, “but maybe all she’s after is a relationship with her son. Yes, she’s made mistakes. But that doesn’t mean she doesn’t deserve the chance to make up for them. People change, P.T. More often than you might imagine. Besides, it’s not as if she’s had an easy time of it herself, left alone, pregnant, at that tender age. Your father, wherever he is, is as much to blame as she is.”
“She could have at least tried. She could’ve stayed. There’s the other bedroom—”
“Of course you’re right. I know that, and so do you. But as you get older, you’ll begin to see that what’s obvious to you isn’t always obvious to everyone else. And your mother has a bigger blind spot than most, I’m afraid.” Mam-gu sighed and shook her head. “I know you don’t want to go tomorrow, and I’m not going to force you. But I will be disappointed if you refuse. It might not be fun. But you never know. She might surprise you. And if you do say no, and she decides that attempting to salvage a relationship with you is a lost cause and stops trying? Do you really want tonight to be the last time you see her?”
I swallowed around the lump in my throat. “No…”
“I didn’t think so. It’s settled then. You’ll go?”
“I’ll go.”
“Good. Now eat your dinner. You’ll never get to sleep with an empty stomach, and I didn’t spend all that time cooking to see it wasted. I heated it up in the microwave.”
“Thank you,” I mumbled and slid into the chair at my desk.
“Leave your plate in the sink when you’re finished.” She closed the door as she left. I had a spoonful of cawl halfway to my mouth when the door opened again. “Why are you home on a Friday night?”
I sighed and shook my head. “Girls.”
“Ah,” mam-gu said knowingly. “Well, don’t trouble yourself too much. Plenty of fish in the sea and all that. There’s pudding in the refrigerator, if you want it.” She closed the door again and left me alone. I sighed and gazed around my room. I had a queasy feeling in the pit of my stomach…but at least there was pudding.
