Free We Are Water by Wally Lamb

And whoever’s looking at it is guilty, too. You have two sisters, Andrew. This junk is an assault on them and me and every other woman, including the ones in this picture.” He mumbled something that I didn’t catch. “What? I didn’t hear you. What did you say?”
    “I said they posed for them, didn’t they?”
    “Yes, they did. Probably in exchange for drugs. Or because they’d get beaten up by their pimps if they didn’t. This is violent male fantasy, Andrew. Do you think women want to have guns stuck up inside of them?”
    “Okay,” he said. “You made your point.”
    But I was just getting started. I waved the two “cowgirls” in his face.
    “Do you think women really have breasts this size?”
    He shrugged. “Some,” he said.
    “Ha! Guess again. These poor girls have had their breasts sliced open and sacks of silicone put in so that men—and boys —can drool over them. Do you know what happens when that stuff starts leaking inside a woman’s body? I’m ashamed of you, Andrew. And if you ever bring this kind of garbage into my house again—”
    “ Your house? I thought it was our house.”
    I rolled up his dirty magazine and whacked him across the face with it. “Don’t you dare smart-mouth me, Andrew Oh! What do you think your father’s going to say when I show him this ‘reading material’ of yours?”
    The shrug again. “He’s probably not going to go mental about it like you’re doing.” The next thing I knew, the wrench he’d been using on his bike was in my hand. I took a swing at him and missed. He froze for a second or two, shocked. Then he shielded his head with his arm. “Jesus, Mom, stop ! You’re my mother , for cripe’s sake!”
    I dropped the wrench. Watched him run down the driveway and out into the road. “And from now on, put your dirty socks in the hamper!” I screamed. “And don’t stick anything inside them except your big, smelly feet!” That was when I realized old Mr. Genovese across the street was standing in his doorway, watching. Fired up still, I shouted over to him. “Mind your own business! Shut your goddamned door!” Lucky for him, he did what he was told.
    Fueled, still, by self-righteous anger, I pounded back up to Andrew’s room, lugged those three garbage bags to the landing and flung them down the stairwell. Dragged them out to the car, drove to the dump, and took enormous pleasure in heaving them onto a mountain of trash. By the time I got back home, I had cooled down. I decided not to tell Orion about Girl on Girl after all, and I was grateful that Andrew didn’t tell his father that I’d swung at him with the wrench—something I now felt ashamed of having done. But I have to admit that, in the aftermath of my having cleaned out his room, I enjoyed it whenever he asked me about his stuff.
    “Is my Alonzo Mourning jersey still in the wash, Mom?”
    “Nope. It’s at the dump.”
    “Mom, do you know where that blue notebook is where I’m recording my weight-lifting routine?”
    “I guess it’s probably sitting over in the landfill.”
    “Mom, Mrs. Kilgallen’s ragging me because I haven’t handed in my copy of Heart of Darkness . You didn’t toss that out, did you?”
    “If it was on your bedroom floor, I did.”
    “Mom, that was school property . What am I supposed to tell Kilgallen?” I advised him to tell her he’d go to the bookstore and buy her a replacement copy. “Can I have the money for it then?”
    “Not from me you can’t. Use your own goddamned money.”
    Poor Andrew. I was always harder on him than I was on his sisters. Maybe his being “too busy” to fly up here for the wedding is payback. Maybe I’m getting exactly what I deserve. . . .
    Unlike her brother, Marissa, our free spirit, is all for Viveca’s and my upcoming wedding. Her mother marrying a woman: she thinks it’s hip. And I’m a little concerned about the attention Viveca’s been giving her. They chat on the phone. They’ve gone out a