I want to believe

He sat on the kitchen floor in his ratty green terry cloth robe that has been with him through thick and thin. It’s 9 am and he has a buzz on, else he wouldn’t be up here chatting so animatedly with his mom. He tells me things I need to know, but would rather not hear. My girl was mad at me in England, I have forgiven his father too quickly, the basement is the wrong place for him to live. I knew all those things already. Does he want me to pack his bags and put them in his car? Stop buying him ciggs and food? Turn my back on love? He knows I can’t, and like some scene from Camus we sat there together, he on the floor, me in the chair, rehashing the muddle we have made of our lives. I tell him everyone does stupid stuff and that’s how the human race progresses, slowly and painfully. He tells me again that he doesn’t blame me at all for his lack of motivation. I want him to though, because I want my child to be perfect. If there is fault please let it be in me, not in my creation, my magnum opus. The truth is we are both flawed, and talking about it makes no difference. He knows that and tells me so often. I keep hoping that words will somehow cure him.

His basement room has a window where his brother put a tiny X on the lower pane with black electrical tape, a sign that he was ready to know the truth that was out there. I think he just might have been in love with Dana Scully’s red hair, but for a while he really wanted to believe. He finally wondered off when he realized the answer was actually “out there”, not in the basement. Now his bro waits just as uselessly for opportunity to knock on the window. I try to avoid the traps I so often fall into when we have conversations. He is the smartest person I have ever known, but here he sits in the floor with no occupation and more disappointingly, no passion. He was born an old soul and I wait impatiently for him to become younger. The clock says 11 and we are still sitting. Nothing has changed and nothing seems likely to, but I am always desperate for a conclusion. After all, I am a writer. The story must have a beginning, a middle, and an end that ties the whole thing up nicely. I have chores to do, places I need to go. None of them are more important than talking to my boy in the kitchen, but finally I rise to leave. He lets me hug him, an indulgence he has learned to tolerate because he knows it pleases me. Before we part I ask him a mom question. “Do you need a new bathrobe?” He raises his arms like wings and laughs, revealing the holes down the side of each sleeve. “Of course not Mom” he tells me sincerely, “ I mean, this is my robe.” He wears it like a uniform as he pads back downstairs.