Free Eleven Twenty-Three by Jason Hornsby

another.
    “Something has been going on lately back here
in town. You probably don’t know about it since you’ve been
away—and I did want to talk to you about that later.”
    “Fantastic,” I mutter, sipping from another
glass and hovering over the kitchen sink.
    I look around. All of the dishes are put
away. Everything is tidy and resting in its correct place. The
roast is drying out peacefully in the oven. My mother’s kitchen—my
mother’s entire life—is a clean, well-tended museum exhibit, a
perfectly dead replica of a human home where everything stays neat
because no one is alive here to disturb it. A part of me wants to
burn this place down, just to see the change.
    “I’m only saying that you don’t have to
completely forsake America, son. You have a degree in History, in
case you haven’t forgotten. I’m sure you could find some worthwhile
career closer to home, if you’d just stop being pissed off at what
happened with the girl last spring—”
    “Before I left, I was a waiter at Applebee’s,
Mom. I had parents come in and eat at my table. Once I had
an old student and his jerk-off friends sit in my section, and then
the little bastards actually had the guile to ask me for Long
Islands, and when I asked if they were kidding, you know what they
said?”
    “Something mean?”
    “Yes, Mom. Something mean. They asked what it
mattered to me, since I probably got Olivia drunk right before I
violated her. That’s what they said.”
    “What do you want, Layne? Teenagers are
heartless little wretches. You know that.”
    “The point I am making,” I say carefully, “is
that things weren’t exactly peachy here when I left. China—a
country on the opposite side of the planet—just seemed like a
really good idea at the time. You know?”
    “I’m simply suggesting that maybe when
your contract is up, maybe you should move back to Florida and work
on getting your life together again. That’s all, son. I just want
my baby boy closer to home.”
    “Look, I don’t want to talk about the school
thing anymore, if that’s okay,” I declare, clenching the wine glass
and begging to God for one of the cigarettes that I know I left in
the car. My mother doesn’t know I smoke. “What else did you want to
talk about?”
    She rests her glass on the floor, and
Shelley, the Persian that sheds too much, pokes his nose down and
smells the basin. Mom begins to slowly, methodically pet him,
running her hand through his thick black fur just above his eyes,
down his back, and through the staticky raised hairs on his tail.
She hums softly to herself. As I watch her, I have to blink away
tears.
    “Mom?”
    She stares at the closed blinds covering the
window, as if she can see anything out there. For the first time I
realize just how dark it is in her living room.
    “Mom.”
    Even in the dank lamplight, I can see the
first tear run down her cheek and hang precariously from her jaw.
It suddenly becomes very important to me that that single drop of
sadness not let go, not ever fall to the floor.
    “Maybe you shouldn’t go to Dad’s funeral
tomorrow,” I say off-handedly.
    The tear falls to the floor.
    “No, no,” she says, shaking her head, tossed
back into reality. “I’m going. And you need to, as well.”
    “What did you want to bring up a minute
ago?”
    “I wanted to talk about what’s happening
across town,” she says matter-of-factly.
    “You mean here in Lilly’s End?” I ask.
    “Yes, here in Lilly’s End. Did you notice
anything strange today as you were driving in?”
    “It was…rainy. It looked a little beaten up
around town ever since Hurricane Brooke came through. But other
than that, no—”
    “Everyone has been very sick lately,” she
says, standing up and breezing past me to check on the pot
roast.
    I head back into the living room and sit down
on the couch, thinking about what she said. I look over at my mom
as she tries to manage dinner. When she opens the oven