Neil had nodded slowly and said nothing for a few minutes. He’d waited until she started eating her dinner again before he said, around a mouthful of warm mashed potatoes, “Well, I’m not more advanced ineveryway. You’ve got the cooking thing down.”
It had been a huge concession for him, and he’d known that she knew it. It had been an apology of sorts, and she’d clearly known that, too. Her lips had quirked up and she said, “And you can’t heat a pot of beans to save your life.”
Neil had smirked.
She had shaken her head. “If you paid attention to cooking the way you pay attention to your experiments, you’d be just fine.”
“Thanks…Mom,” Neil had said and cleared his throat.
He’d never called her Alice again outside the confines of his own head. He figured Joshua would be proud of him—not only for making a choice to do something that was no sweat off his back and which clearly meant a lot to her, but also for actually loving the woman. Alice was, all in all, a good mother, and Neil enjoyed being around her, which was saying a lot.
Now, though, at the not-so-tender age of not-so-fifteen, Neil was leaving home, and Alice seemed to be having a hard time handling it. In some ways, he didn’t understand why. It wasn’t like he made life easy for her. From the time he was quite small, he’d been instrumental in ostracizing her from any kind of community. It hadn’t been on purpose. Being him just seemed to do it.
He was different this time around. Even in his prior life, he’d been difficult to know and like, but now it was like all of his impatience, irritability, focus, and social awkwardness had been distilled by lost time and rage. He was no one’s idea of a fun person to be around.
But Alice was still young and beautiful, in Neil’s admittedly biased opinion, and he saw his moving out to be a good thing for her. Maybe she could date again. Find someone to build a life with. Hell, it wasn’t even too late to have another child—maybe the next one would be normal, and be the kind of kid that Alice deserved. He wanted that for her.
At the same time, Neil knew he’d been Alice’s whole life from the moment he was born. She’d worked to give him the best education she could until he’d gotten his first scholarship to university classes at the age of twelve. And she’d done it all alone.
Her parents weren’t dead, but they might as well have been as far as Alice was concerned. She’d told him the year before, on a rainy, drab Christmas Eve when she’d had a little celebratory wine as they opened presents—renewed subscriptions to medical and engineering journals for him, and a microscope for her (okay, it was for him; he was a terrible son)—about how her folks had been addicts. Her earliest memories were drenched in the scent of marijuana, but it had progressed from there to much harder drugs over time.
“And then, when I was nineteen, I met Marshall Green,” Alice had said, toying with a ribbon from the wrapping. “He was handsome, and he promised to take care of me. I moved in with him as fast as I could. And I was pregnant with you before he left for his first tour in Afghanistan.” Alice had sipped her drink and sighed. “He was a good man, your father.”
Neil had rolled his lips in and bitten back the reply that Gerald Russell, the man who’d died in a car wreck in Boston nearly forty-five years ago, was his father. Neil had only seen photos of Marshall and a few video clips, but he fully remembered Gerald’s sharp nose, quick wit, and long fingers that shuffled cards and drilled him with questions about the rules of gin rummy. But he was glad to carry Marshall’s last name now, instead of that asshole Jim’s. That was another thing Alice had done for them both after they’d left—erased Jim’s name from their legal documents.
After a few quiet moments, Alice had sighed and said, “Parents. Can’t live with ’em, can’t be born without ’em.”
Neil had nodded. “Some aren’t too bad, though.” He’d wanted her to know how he felt. It could’ve been worse: At least she loved him and let him do what he wanted with his life. And he loved her, too.
Alice had shrugged. “You probably had it better last time around.”
It was the first time she’d ever mentioned Neil’s family from his prior life. He’d thought about telling her before—about the wealth, the house, the travel, and the boats. The loneliness, the pressure, and the loss. The fear he’d felt when his parents had died, and he’d been left alone with all that money and all that responsibility. But he hadn’t. It’d seemed like something she didn’t need to hear. But there were so many things that he remembered that he’d never shared with anyone. Part of him longed for her to know.
Watching Alice twist the ribbon around her finger again, he’d decided it was time. If she thought they were better than her, then that, at least, was something he could set straight. She was the parent who’d loved him unconditionally.
“Why don’t you ever ask about them?” he’d asked.
“About your parents from your life before?”
“Yeah.” He had licked his lips quickly, surprised by the zip of nerves.
“It makes me feel guilty,” she had said, swallowing another mouthful of wine. “I mean—if she was great, better than me, why would I want to hear that? And if she wasn’t…then why would you want to tell me? It’s better left in the past, isn’t it?”
“She wasn’t better than you,” Neil had said. “And she wasn’t worse, either. She was just different.”
Alice had shrugged.
“And she had to put up with a lot less, too. I didn’t have all of these pesky memories last time around. I was an actual child then, not a freak.”
“Neil,” she had started, but he put his hand up.
“Don’t, Mom. It’s fine.” He’d stood, went to her chair, and knelt in front of her. “I just want you to know. She wasn’t better than you. If she’d had to deal with me, the way I am now, she’d have probably murdered me in my sleep.”
“You don’t know a mother’s love,” Alice had said softly.
“I know your love,” Neil had said. “And even though everything about being stuck here in this body wanting something I don’t think I’ll ever have sucks. You don’t. You don’t suck, Mom, and I love you.”
“Ah, Neil.” She’d laughed, tears shining in her eyes. “Ever honest. And I love you, too.”
