Surge

10

LeavingMaeve behind so soon after getting her back again had me considering the definition of a promise. I wanted so badly to call up my mom and tell her I couldn’t make it. Had I actually promised I’d come? No, I’d simply said I would.

If Maeve hadn’t offered to come up, too, in a couple of days, I might have paid someone else to rip off my mom’s kitchen wallpaper. But being patient would be worth it. If I was going to be with this woman forever, and I was, it was good to have my ladies get to know each other better.

My mom had offered to pick me up, but airport parking was half the price of a taxi, so I caught one, and when I arrived, my mom opened the door in a pair of overalls, dust on her face, and her glasses perched on her head.

“My boy.” She swallowed me up with her arms.

I embraced her, too, and particles from her hair went up my nose.

She peeled away. “Come in, come in…” She closed the door behind me. “Sorry to throw you in the deep end, but I made a reservation for us at Spoon tonight, so we only have a few hours before we need to get ready and go. You okay to get started? I’ll make you a drink while you change.”

“You didn’t have to do that, Mom. We could have ordered pizza or something.”

“Don’t be silly. If I have a chance at a hot date these days, I take it.”

I blew a soft laugh out of my nose. “All right. You probably already got dust all over my leather,” I joked, wiping off my sleeves.

She rolled her eyes. “Do you even have something to wear for a project like this, Calvin Klein?”

“Yeah, I bought a boilersuit.”

“You didn’t!” A wide smile stretched her face.

“I didn’t. I have some old jeans and a t-shirt moths got to. I’ll be right back.”

I got changed and joined my mom in the kitchen. Her idea of a drink was a can of soda she’d set on the side for me. When Mom was focused, she was fo-cused.

She scraped at the wall and didn’t even look up at me as I walked into the kitchen.

“Scraper’s on the counter,” she said.

I grabbed one and got to work. At least that was the only word I could find for what I was doing. Five minutes in, and I’d made the progress of a caterpillar in a horse race. The shit was stuck on with a gallon of glue. “They never show this kind of thing on the DIY shows. Isn’t it supposed to peel off all at once?” I scraped another couple of inches off the wall. “How many square feet are we dealing with here?”

My mom pretended to calculate in her head. “We’re doing well. According to my numbers, we’ll only be here another month or two.” She rubbed her forehead with the back of her hand. “I had no idea this wallpaper was even here. There must be ten layers of paint on this paper?”

I scraped another section, feeling victorious watching more than an inch come off. “Least it keeps my mind off the case.”

“Why do you think we’re doing this job now, honey? I saved it for a rainy day.” My mom smiled, wiggling a scraper at me. “You’ve been pretty quiet since you arrived. You’re not going to leave me in the dark and make me worry, are you?”

“Ha. Not like you gave me any time to talk when I arrived. I’m just free labor to you.”

“True.” She laughed. “Not the free labor part. Sorry. The time to talk. Go on, honey. I’m all ears and a captive audience.”

I wondered what my mom would say about Jay. She was probably more like Maeve than like me when it came to being Zen. She had a zero tolerance policy when it came to disloyalty. But she’d also seen Jay and I as kids, in better times when he’d been an amazing friend to me. And though my mom had already told me I had to cut him loose, she still spoke to Mr. Fry once in a while.

The countersuit was potentially a kick in the teeth. Unnecessary roughness.

“It turns out I’m not the one who needs to worry in all this,” I offered. “I might have a way to roll back the clocks on this whole thing.”

My mom had her face really close to the wall, concentrating on a stubborn spot with way too much glue. “Go on…”

“Apparently, because I ran all of the band’s finances, booked all the gigs, and everything was paid to me, that could be cause for ownership over copyright. Which would mean we could even sue him for selling my songs to that shady producer in the first place. I’d get out of this lawsuit with more than I entered with.”

She put her hand on her hip and blew a strand of hair out of her face. “Hang on, though. Didn’t you both write the songs?”

“Not really.”