Total pages in book: 117
Estimated words: 108342 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 542(@200wpm)___ 433(@250wpm)___ 361(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 108342 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 542(@200wpm)___ 433(@250wpm)___ 361(@300wpm)
He’d had a good sales day at work, and had been commissioned to create some metal cutouts for some guy who was doing a special, life-sized display of human silhouettes at the mall. He wanted them new but with a distressed look, scratched and dented. He’d never been asked to prepare such a thing, but it was doable. Still, nothing beat that time he was commissioned by some rich guy from Canada to create a special iron butt plug, so this was a breath of fresh air. He took the down payment and set up a schedule for himself to complete the work by the deadline. Business was good.
He reached over to his nightstand and pulled the old golden chain of the antique jade green lamp his mother had had for years while he and his brothers were growing up. Once he adjusted to the punitive brightness, he grabbed the quarter-full glass of warm water that sat near it and drank, disappointed in its piddly offerings. It was only a quarter full. He allowed the scant liquid to saturate his tongue and roll down his parched throat, while his mind drifted. When he checked the time again, it was 1:33.
He picked up his cellphone and dialed his mother’s old cell number, minus the last digit. The line had been turned off a long time ago. Then, he started to speak aloud as he always did when he pretended to call her.
“Hi, Mom… Just thought I’d give you a call.”
In his typical fashion, he imagined her laughing and saying, ‘You crazy man! It’s 1:34 in the morning! I thought you had an emergency!’
“No, just thinking of you… missing you. Things haven’t been going perfectly. Life ain’t perfect though, is it, Mom?”
“No, life is not perfect or easy, son.”
He closed his eyes and imagined her sitting in her favorite chair, her dark red wavy hair pulled away from her face in a loose bun, framing her fair complexion and bright green eyes. Mom was often mistaken for Irish and Catholic because of that, but her ancestry actually traced back to the Udmurt people in Eastern Europe—specifically the Udmurt Republic in Russia. His father was Russian, too, only his ancestors were from Novosibirsk. Mom had been pretty good about teaching him and his brothers the family lineage. Bloodlines were important to her, and she’d passed down that love for family, to him. He managed to hold on to the important bits.
‘How’s my boys? Your brothers? I hope you three are talking and taking care of one another. I haven’t seen them for a while.’
Mom always asked him about Dmitriy and Mark, despite her having spoken to them fairly often. He imagined she believed her three spawns still held secrets… just like they did when they were children. They were close, after all. Fought a lot. Made up a lot, too. Rough and tumble. He was the middle child. Mark was the eldest. The ‘oops’ baby. He and Dmitriy used to tease him about it when they’d get into a verbal battle, taunting that he and Dmitriy were wanted, but he was the source of shame.
When he thought back on it, he realized he and his brothers had been rather unkind to one another on a consistent basis, but at the time, all was fair in love, football, and war. The truth came about when they accidentally heard their grandmother chastising their mother while in a drunken rage during a Thanksgiving dinner: the revelation that her precious only daughter would have never married their father, who she detested, had she not ended up pregnant by him. After that little announcement, the cat was out of the bag, and as children do sometimes, none of them acted mature about the situation.
“Mom,” he leaned into his cellphone, and gave a deep exhale, “they are the same as they always are. Mark is still in New Hampshire with Lori. I talk to him a couple times a month or so, and Dmitriy is still himself. An asshole.” He chuckled. He always laughed when he called his younger brother that to his mother—not because it was necessarily true all the time, though often it was, but because Mom regularly agreed.
‘My boys are wonderful disasters. Successful all the same. Love you all very much.’
“We love… I mean, I love you, too…”
Mom would then steer the conversation to discuss whatever Dad was tinkering on in his garage. An old motorcycle. Some scrap he found on the curb on someone’s lawn, awaiting pickup from the sanitation workers. A clock that no longer worked that he believed he could bring back to life. She’d then graduate into a medical update for both of them. She was always fine, according to her, but there was of course the issue of Dad’s bad back and bum leg. Funny stories from church would follow that, usually about Mr. Burns’ toupee, and then would come the recipes she was thinking of trying—usually inspired from something she saw on television, on the Food Network. He’d half listen to that part about church and the recipes. Mom was a talker, and sometimes she made him want to return to his own life, away from the endless chitchat.