Never Look Back. Robert Ross
for a moment—“obsession you’re developing about exercise. Your father and I think maybe you shouldn’t go every day—”
“I like going.” He stuck his jaw out firmly. “And besides, it’s not a bad thing to exercise. Isn’t that better than just lying around and getting fat?”
He smiled to himself. He knew his mother was terrified of losing her figure, but would never admit it. That would be admitting she bought into the “patriarchal, impossible standard of female beauty foisted on women by Madison Avenue and Hollywood.” She thought he didn’t know, but she took aerobics classes regularly in Boston. You’re a hypocrite, Mom, he thought. It’s not about me working out, it’s about control—you just want to control my life, and it kills you that you can’t. The older I get, the less control you have, and you just hate it, don’t you?
“It’s not that we think it’s a bad thing, Chris, but anything in excess isn’t good for you. You need more social interaction. You’ve been here all summer and you haven’t made any friends…” Her voice trailed off.
If you’re so worried about me not having any friends, why did you ship me off to boarding school?
Chris bit his lip. No point in bringing up that he’d had a lot of friends in grade school, but after being shipped off to prep school he’d lost touch with them all. And the kids at More Prep—he didn’t have much in common with them. They were all spoiled rich kids who spent their summers in Europe. If he’d known it wouldn’t cause a nuclear blowout, he would’ve told his mother: You sent me to More Prep so I would mix with a better class of people, but they’re worse than any kids from the city. They’re mean, for one thing, and selfish and spoiled and arrogant, and they drink and use drugs and treat girls like dirt—if you could just hear them talking in the locker room, you’d pull me out of there so fucking fast my head would spin. They make fun of me, and surely that can’t be good for the self-esteem you always seem to be so goddamned concerned about.
But he knew better than to say anything to her. His mother never changed her mind once she’d made it up. She knew what was best for everyone. Her whole life was predicated on being right.
The silence grew more pointed, until finally she threw up her hands and walked out of the room, muttering to herself. He knew she’d complain about him to his father, and Joe would just listen to her, the way he always did. Dad had obviously learned early in their marriage that there wasn’t much point in disagreeing with her.
Chris washed his face and pulled on a pair of crimson sweatpants with BOSTON COLLEGE in gold lettering running up the left leg. His parents had already left. The house was silent, other than the sound of the rain. There was another loud crack of thunder. He switched on the kitchen light and started a pot of coffee. There was a note on the refrigerator from his mother, in her scrawling script: Chris, honey, didn’t want to wake you up, we probably won’t be back until tomorrow morning, Love, Lois.
He sighed. Why can’t I have normal parents who just want me to call them Mom and Dad, like everyone else?
Joe and Lois considered themselves to be “enlightened parents”—which meant he’d always been able to call them by their first names since he turned ten. The rule about yelling was just another example. Nothing he ever did was “bad,” either—nothing was bad. Things were merely “inappropriate.” Once, when he was seven, he’d taken his crayons and started doodling on his bedroom wall. Rather than screaming at him—like other kids’ parents would have—they merely sat him down and reasoned with him. We don’t want to interfere with your need to express yourself creatively, Lois had said, it’s just inappropriate to color on the walls. Crayons are for use on paper, not walls—that’s the appropriate way to express your artistry. That way you can show your art to other people so they can appreciate it.
Of course, the “appropriate” punishment for him was to paint over it so the walls all matched again, but she’d given him a sketchbook. All the same, Chris never used his crayons again.
Lois also wanted him to be self-sufficient as an adult, so he always had chores. He knew how to do the laundry, how to cook, how to iron, how to dust and vacuum. “We’re a team,” Lois was fond of saying. “Joe and I make the money and provide a nice home for you, and you keep the house going for us so we don’t have to worry about that.”
Of course, when he was in the wilds of rural Connecticut at Thomas More Prep they had a maid come into the town house in Back Bay. Chris suspected Lois just didn’t want to be bothered with doing her own housekeeping. That’s what his grandmother thought: Why do you make him do all the housework, Lois? He’s just a child, let him have some fun! Chris had never seen his mother turn quite that shade of purple before, but rather than yelling she’d merely taken a few breaths and started mouthing her mantra about teaching him “responsibility.”
He walked into the living room while the coffee brewed and pulled the curtains on the big picture window to let in some more light. He started to turn away, when he saw something out of the corner of his eye that drew him back to the window.
“What the hell?”
He wiped some of the fog off the window to get a better look.
A figure was standing across the street in the pouring rain, staring at the house.
He opened the front door and stared through the rain.
“Jessie?”
It was her.
She crossed the street, came up the walk, and stood on the porch, shivering and dripping.
“Are you crazy?” Chris shook his head. “Get inside! How long you been standing out there?”
He shut the door behind her. She was dripping water on the carpet. “Come on, get into the kitchen.” There were dry towels in the dryer, he remembered, and hurried to get her one.
She accepted the big green towel from him. “Thanks.” Her teeth were chattering as she began rubbing her hair.
“You’d better get out of those clothes—I’ll get you something.” He went back up the stairs.
She’s crazy. She’s like so totally and completely crazy! Why the fuck did I let her in the house? What kind of weirdo stands around in the pouring rain like that!
He pulled a sweatshirt from his drawer and found another pair of sweatpants in his closet. He headed back down to the kitchen.
She was sitting at the table with a steaming coffee mug clutched in her hands. He noticed her nails were bitten down to the quick, and the skin around them looked chewed. “I helped myself,” she said. Her teeth were still chattering.
He handed her the sweats. “Here. Go change. The bathroom’s through that door.”
She gave him a ghost of a smile and disappeared into the bathroom. He poured himself a cup of coffee and sat down at the table. When she came back out, he looked at her. Her face was a blank.
“Don’t you have enough sense to get out of the rain?” he asked, fretting just a little that he was sounding like Lois.
She sat down and brushed a lock of wet hair out of her face. “I needed to talk to you.”
“How did you know where I lived?”
“Truro’s a small place. All I had to do was get off the shuttle at the post office and ask where the two profs from Boston College lived.”
“Why?” Chris looked at her. “Why did you come all the way out here to find me?”
“Chris—” she said, biting her lip.
“What?”
“Like it or not, you’re a part of this now.”
The hair on the back of his neck stood up. “A part of what?”
“All of this.” She looked at him. “Chris, I know you’ve been watching me all summer.” She scratched her arm absently. “I didn’t