“Don’t do!”
“Do do, and now.”
“Aaaaaagh!” he’ll shriek then tell himself, mimicking me, even to the tone: “Don’t scream, there’s no reason to scream.” And he’ll run away to the bathroom, or his room, slamming the door either way. Cue the sound of either frenzied peeing or frenzied dancing, and we’re off to the races.
That’s a good day, by the way. Typical. The kind of day when, if he notices how much he’s driving me nuts, he’ll sometimes suddenly appear by my side and kiss me—knock his mouth against my elbow or my stomach, face-first, like a pecking bird. Then grin and sing out some nonsense phrase (“I didn’t mean to burp!” “Koo-do!” “BAD ROBOT!”) before scurrying away again, like he’s the Road Runner and I’m the Coyote.
Taking him to Mom’s breaks that up, though, leaving him off-balance. It’s not that he doesn’t like it there once he’s there, or that he doesn’t like her; he loves her, unreservedly. But there can be weeks on end during which he refuses to express that in ways she’s willing to accept, and that’s when things tend to get testy. “He doesn’t want his old Nay-Nay anymore, I guess,” she’ll remark to me, and I’ll feel the urge rise in me to snap: Yeah, that’s right—I’ll just work on training him to say the right things when you press his buttons, shall I, like a parrot? Because that’s the most important thing, not teaching him to self-regulate, or making him use his words; we need to get across to a kid whose entire vocabulary is made up of Disney dialogue how essential it is that he not only feel grateful, but also act grateful. To at least get him to say “I love you, Nay-Nay,” even if we can’t make him act like he means it. . . .
Oh, and I know how I sound when I blurt these things out, I absolutely do—which is why I struggle not to. Especially when the very next thing that always occurs to me is: But why should you get what I don’t even get, most days? What makes you so special? You’re my mother, not his.
Yeah, that’s never a conversation much worth having.
Spinning and spinning, trudging and trudging. I took his hand, trying to urge him along, and he fought me; I held on like grim death, not quite dragging him. By the time we reached Mom’s building, my shoulder was in an uproar. She let us in, he rushing past her with barely a glance to try and monopolize her computer, only kissing and hugging her when she extorted it out of him; I lowered myself onto her couch with a grunt, rolling my neck, unable to bite back further noises as things cracked and strained. “You look like you’re in pretty bad straits,” Mom said, to which I just half-nodded, unable to shrug. “Seriously, are you okay?”
“Much as I ever am, sure.”
“Well, that’s a pity.”
“Probably, yeah.”
“I just mean that it seems like you should be getting better, doesn’t it, considering how long it’s been going on? All . . . this.”
“Mmm, uh huh. And yet.”
(Thinking: Sorry if it offends you how I’m always in pain, Mom; life’s like that, at least for me. Can’t do much about it except what I’m already doing, in between all the other shit on my plate, but from now on I’ll do my level best to try and make it a bit less obvious.)
“You’re in a bad mood, too. How’d that last thing you were doing go?”
“It went.”
She gave me a shrewd look, but didn’t press, for which I was grateful. “I just wish you were getting paid for all your hard work, Lois,” she said, eventually. “That’s all. Given the effort you put in . . . and what it seems to take out of you.”
“Well, me too, Mom, but it’s an investment. Like when I started out—remember that? You prove yourself, do something for nothing, then trade up. . . .”
“That was a long time ago.”
I sighed. “What goes around comes back around. Blame the economy.”
“Interesting times, in other words.”
“Exactly.”
A few minutes later, she offered to take Clark overnight, thus freeing Simon and I up to go out on one of our increasingly infrequent “dates.” I accepted, then texted Simon, telling him to meet me at her place after work. We spent some time after that trying to explain what was going to happen to Clark, which was an exercise in frustration, as ever—he refused to even acknowledge it right up until the moment Simon appeared, at which point he suddenly announced: “Daddy, Mommy, Clark—we’re a happy family! And now it’s time to go home.”
“No, bunny. You’re staying at Nay-Nay’s, remember?”
“Don’t remember!”
“Yeah, we already talked about this. You have to stay.”
“You don’t have to stay! You have to go!”
“Nope.”
“Don’t, don’t, it’s heinous! CEE ESS EYYYYE!”
“Look, man, it’s gonna happen no matter what you say, so just roll with it, okay? Have a good time with Nay-Nay and we’ll see you tomorrow, do you understand? Do you? Clark! Look here, here. Do you understand me?”