The orange cheese ball crumbs, sprawled out on his carpet like dots on a Verizon coverage map, were a red flag. The yogurt-stained bed sheets, crumpled on the ground, evidenced his social decay. The mediocre synth constructions lingering on his computer, surrounded by half-slurped energy drinks, cemented 37-year-old Mark Matterby’s resignation from society.
“Knock, knock, knock, mister,” Ms. Matterby said.
“Who’s there?” Mark asked, knowing full well that it was his mother.
The silence that followed meant that she was in a bad mood that day. If he changed his delivery, she might be more receptive.
“To whom do I owe the honor of a visit?” he asked.
“You know full well who it is,” she said.
“Is it my dad?” he hazarded.
“Did my dad finally come home?” was a juvenile game Mark played. He’d been doing it since he was five, when his father left. His mother had told him that Daddy-O left to keep bees out in Connecticut. The rectangular state of Connecticut was hundreds of miles away, so it had always been impossible for Mark to visit his father. Hell, with Ms. Matterby’s income, they could hardly afford their rusting jalopy, let alone a plane ticket. Mr. Matterby couldn’t visit, even though he really wanted to––he said so in the birthday cards he sent every year. But the bees needed his full attention. Busy bees, as they say. It was very kind of his dad to send those letters.
Mark Matterby’s mother was a dour 65-year-old factory worker and she let Mark, her 37-year-old son, inhabit her basement. To be clear, “let her son inhabit” is a misleading description of how Ms. Matterby (the name remained despite having not seen Mr. Matterby in decades) kept her adult son in the basement of their two-story cookie-cutter. “Forced her son to inhabit” would be more fitting. Ms. Matterby coerced Mark to reside in his childhood home long after his childhood had concluded. She made his meals, she made his bed, and she paid his taxes. She wasn’t cruel to Mark; she loved him. She did everything in her power to make his life inescapably perfect.
Nevertheless, Mark was careening towards a midlife crisis at a fresh 37. Decades of hot meals pro bono, shelter from the elements non grata, and Wi-Fi free of charge had not honed Mark’s life competency. His mother had smothered him, crushed his spirit and rebuilt it with a refurbished sense of helplessness. Mark was, as it said on the W-2 form, dependent. At this point, he wouldn’t survive a day if Ms. Matterby released him out into the wild.
In any case, Mr. and Ms. Matterby were no longer married, and Mark’s hopeful jest about the prodigal father’s return bristled the hair on Ms. Matterby’s upper lip.
“Don’t do this with me,” she said.
Mark swiveled in his chair, keeping his eye on the door frame his mother filled. He set his feet down and stopped spinning.
“Why can’t I call dad?”
“He doesn’t have a phone.”
“Why can’t I send him an email?”
“He doesn’t have a computer.”
“Why can’t I send him a letter?”
“He has to take care of the bees, he doesn’t have time.”
Stumped, Mark returned to spinning. His life needed some WD-40. So did the chair’s swivel apparatus.
“I need to go to Connecticut. I don’t care if he’s busy keeping bees.”
Face dropping and lips pouting, she fell into his small couch. “Am I not enough? Is that it?”
“No, mom.”
“I only feed you, pay your rent, drive you to church—”
“That’s not what—”
“ No. You’re right. I should do more. You deserve better,” she said.
“Mom, you know that’s not true. I’m sorry,”
Mark would have to forget about his dad. He’d left her to raise a child alone, and she’d done it. She was Mark’s everything.
Ms. Matterby processed Mark’s apology. Crossed arms, rigid lips, and focused eyes staring at the framed family picture (from a happier time, when Mr. and Ms. Matterby had taken four-year-old Mark to Chuck-E-Cheese) told Mark that deep-seated issues were at play. He also had 30 years of his mother’s backhanded remarks to draw that conclusion.
She stood in silence. Mark had learned to be patient when this happened. Then, 10 minutes later, without a word, Ms. Matterby raised her eyebrows, turned and stalked out of the room.
Whenever his mom reprimanded Mark for wanting to know his father, he would play a violent game of Call of Duty. The game served as an outlet for Mark’s frustration and was his only source of consistent friendship.
“Silver Fox online,” Mark said into his plastic headphones, which protruded like a pair of earmuffs on a small headed toddler. He was joining a game of team deathmatch with his best friend.
“Sup, fucker,” came the prepubescent voice of xxx_beast69_xxx. Xxx_beast69_xxx’s real name was Jaxon Munch. He was Mark’s best friend and a twig among eighth graders.
“Sup, dude. You ready to play?” Mark asked.
Better to avoid chit-chat and get straight to shooting. He didn’t want to let on that he was fuming after a fight with his mom, although Jaxon, a moody teen, could relate better than anyone. Mark just wanted to shoot until the pain went away.
To emphasize that he was fine and nothing was wrong, Mark said, “Because I’m ready to play.” It sounded like he was talking through milk.
“Hey, fucker, are you okay?” xxx_beast69_xxx asked sincerely.
Jaxon’s friends were middle school boys, so he didn’t know how to talk about emotions. But Mark was his oldest friend––besides his church’s youth director, Derek––and Jaxon wanted Mark to think that he was mature.
Thinking fast, he tossed in a pinch of empathy. “It sounds like you got your panties in a bunch––my sister has those, so I get it.”
“Uh, what? I’m okay. Let’s just play.”
Was he okay? He thought being okay meant living free of charge with three warm meals a day, a room to himself, and his mom just a stairwell away. Now, he wasn’t sure. Propelling himself to the mini-fridge for a remedial Mountain Dew, Mark saw GarageBand open his laptop.
“Do you wanna hear my new beats?” he asked Jaxon.
Jaxon was something like Mark’s music mentor.
“Yeah, fucker, let’s hear that shit,” he squeaked into the mic.
“Hold on, let me shoot this camper first,” Mark said. The guy was hiding like a deer on the highway in the middle of the day. As he observed the motionless soldier crouched behind his cowardly rock, Mark saw the inexperienced player, maybe another twelve-year-old, sitting behind a monitor, oblivious to his virtual peril. The camper was stagnant. Mark almost wished he would do something. Get out of there. Get out of there. Then Mark shot him in the head.
“Okay, check this out,” he said, dragging a finger on the laptop's trackpad.
Other players in the game muttered their dissent. Mark held his microphone close to the speaker his aunt had given him many Christmases ago. It was the only speaker he had. He had asked his mom––she bought him everything––but she would not buy him a speaker. She hated music, said it was because Woodstock was her first music experience, and it hasn’t been good since. When Mark pressed for more information, she gave him one of those “because I said so” responses.
His aunt had given him her son’s old speaker when he tragically died in a laundry accident. Mark was sad about his cousin Jacob, but happy to have a speaker.
A high pitched screech escaped Jaxon’s body as he listened to the beat. The sound was like the cry of an eagle stubbing his toe on a turbulent bit of wind. Mark interpreted this as approval.
“This shit slaps, fucker.”
“You think so?”
“Shit’s good.”
“Wow thanks, I—” Mark began to say, but before he could finish, Ms. Matterby was knock, knock, knocking at his door again. Mark turned off the music, snapped his laptop shut, threw it, chunking the drywall as she opened the door.
“It’s not what it looks like,” he said.
Hands planted firmly on hips, frown turned tightly on lips, Ms. Matterby knew better. “Oh yeah? How about what it sounds like?” she said. “Because it sounds like you’re playing music.”
Mark had never been good at lying. Fibbing only made matters worse with his mom; it was her job on the egg line to decide which eggs were good and bad, so she always knew when Mark was rotten.
“It sounds like I was playing music, because I was,” he said.
If things went according to plan, she would say, “I’m not mad, I’m just disappointed,” like she usually did, and that would be that. Things did not go according to plan.
“You are no son of mine.” Her wide stance said she meant it.
The room was silent except for the computer’s whirring and the intermittent gunshots from below the desk, where Mark had thrown his headphones. He searched for a telltale sign that his mom was joking, but there wasn’t one.
“What do you mean?” he asked.
She didn’t crack. “How many times?”
“I know, but—” Mark said, before trailing off.
His rebuttals were pitiful. He felt the white heat of fear drip in his veins. The grubby undersides of his fingernails pushed into the wrinkle on his palm that said he would live a long life.
“But what? ” she said. The words were overflowing with disdain.
Mark stood from his swivel chair. It spun to the right, hit his knee and idled back the other way before he steadied it with a shaking hand. “I’m leaving,” he said.
...
It was Mark’s fortieth birthday. Upstairs, his mom made Mickey Mouse pancakes, Mark’s favorite. The saccharine smell of syrup snuck into Mark’s room, traversed his linens and climbed into his nose. Mark ran up the stairs, Hanes socks pulled out past his toes, plaid pajamas stained with cheese dust and contentment.
“Hey, honey,” his mom said in a chipper voice. She’d been very happy lately. Mark had given up video games and music for good. These days, he played Bananagrams with his mom and read old picture books she’d given him. Life couldn’t be better.
“Ready for some pancakes?”
Mommy Issue | December 2019