“That’s my boy my boy,” she said, “back in college…at the wedding…in our first house…” Photos on shelves, tables, walls of her and her boy before he cut his hair for the corporate pie. Photos of their four-legged children, Yummy and Bear, their tails wagging and tongues extended; of their climbing two story windows, bleached birch floors and heart-shaped pool.
“We love it,” she said, “me and my boy boy boy boy …” bounced off the walls, the sun’s diamonds piercing the water as the ghost cowboy in the painting above the over-size mantel tipped his hat and lowered his eyes.
His face flushed. Don’t call me my boy in front of her, mommy. I could see this is what he was thinking, safe now in their grand playhouse. Safe again in cut off blue jeans and t-shirt and bare feet. Free of the straightjacket suit he wore minutes before, too big for his still-boyish frame. Free from impersonating an adult who had to pay for the mortgage to keep his wife and barking children alive and well in the illusion to which they were accustomed.
I hadn’t heard from them in years – then, there he was, my boy, in the newspaper I was holding. I much preferred the photo I remembered – his hippie hair and impish grin -- over the one beneath the headline: Murder-Suicide in Upscale Dallas.
Jerelyn, I'm so delighted to see you posting! I have missed your wonderful poems and stories. I must say, this one is very dark and hard-hitting. It unsettles, and will linger on my mind, the mark of excellence in any work of fiction.
Jean
South Baltimore serves as the backdrop for this gripping story of three brothers leading very different lives but joined forever by the secrets of a painful family past.
