Free The History of Luminous Motion by Scott Bradfield

sandwiches in their rich brown bread the divided segments
always looked impossibly tidy and controlled on their clean white plates. “Sometimes
at night,” Ethel said, humming and staring out the back window while she washed
her hands at the sink, “Rodney’s father calls me from a long way away. He says
he wants to move back. He says he misses my cooking.” Ethel’s voice trailed off
aimlessly, like late night drivers descending off-ramps in search of a quick,
inexpensive meal. “I tell him I wouldn’t mind, if it was just up to me.” Drying
her hands on a thin patterned towel, Ethel gazed over my shoulder. Her eyes
looked so intent, I often turned to see what she was seeing. I suspected a
grown man had suddenly appeared behind me, perhaps a taller and more mature
version of myself, Ethel’s more substantial companion that my thin body merely
represented. “‘But it’s not up to me, Harold,’ I tell him.” Ethel was sculpting
soft white flower petals from the bodies of scoured radishes with a small sharp
paring knife. “‘We have to do what’s best for Rodney. We have to do what’s best
for our son, who’s been raised under very trying and unfortunate circumstances,
as I think you well know. It’s easy, being a father, to think you can just show
up when you feel like it. Children need someone they can count on, Harold. And
as much as I may want you back, I don’t think Rodney could ever count on you
again. You’d only disappoint him.’”
    Ethel
never disturbed or embarrassed me. I knew she had her own secret life to live,
just as all mothers live fair portions of their lives down there in dark secure
rooms and hidden gardens filled with strange plants and trees. I was simply
grateful for the time Ethel spent with me here on the outside while I learned
to prepare bases for soups and gravy, toss Caesar and fruit salads, cook purées
and stews. I fricasseed, baked, boiled and roasted. I cleaned chicken and fish,
basted lamb and pork, pressed my hungry hands into the thick dough of breads and
cakes and cookies and pastry. I loved Ethel’s warm kitchen and the heady smell
of bread baking while I waited for Rodney to return home and transgress with me
those other, colder kitchens where I was picking up handy appliances, kitchen
pots, pans and utensils and reassembling them in the hard irrefutable kitchen
of Mom’s silent and discriminating house. I wanted to build Mom a strong home
that would always be there for her and provide anything she might ever need. I
was beginning to realize that I would have to leave someday. I still loved Mom
more than ever, but I was learning that life carries us places, like rivers and
winds carry things, often against our will.

 
    RODNEY
MAY HAVE been only twelve years old, but he had big ambitions. “I need real
estate,” Rodney often said after his second or third drink. With our
merchandise gathered around us in the living room like a family at Christmas,
we were lingering overlong in a commodious four-bedroom Spanish-style home in the
foothills of Sherman Oaks. Outside the streets were filled with dry, amber
lawns and stark, shedding palm trees. Every once in a while a bright bluebird
flashed. “I need tax incentives, money market liquid asset accounts,
diversified stock portfolios, treasury bills, low-interest tax deductible
loans, property, houses, income property, cars, trucks, buses, planes. I don’t
need this. I don’t need this crap,” he said, making his customary gesture at
the huddling portable televisions, radios, jewelry and microwave and, still in
its original Sears packing case, an adjustable three-temperature electric
blanket which I intended to leave that night, like a meal or some religious
devotion, outside my mom’s bedroom door. “I don’t need a bunch of crap just
weighing me down. I need negotiable capital. I need security and a firm
financial investment base. I need money, property and women. I’m talking gash,
now. I’m talking