Along Came Trouble (Camelot 2)

“All I’m saying is you should give yourself a break,” Jamie said. “Do something fun.”

“I’m fine.”

“You’re pigheaded.”

“No, that’s you.”

He closed his hands around an imaginary neck and throttled her. She stuck out her tongue.

Last towel folded, she transferred the pile to the basket and stood, picking up her iPad. “I’m going to work now. Some of us have real jobs.”

“I have a real job,” he protested. “I have to rehearse with the dancers this morning, and then I’m flying somewhere for a thing.”

“A thing?”

“I don’t know. A couple appearances, an interview, whatever. And then two shows this weekend. I’m very busy, very important.”

“Yeah, yeah. You keep telling yourself that, Tiger Beat.”

Chapter Four

Caleb watched his mother extract a Mento from the package in her purse and frown at it before offering it to his nephew Jacob, who popped it in his mouth with a “Thanks, Grandma!” and ran off to tell his brothers.

“It’s really nothing,” she said to Caleb. “I don’t want you to worry about it.”

Dinner long since over, they lingered in his front hallway, conferring at a volume that was quiet only in comparison to the racket the rest of the family was making.

“Why don’t you just tell me what happened and let me decide?” He asked this question in a tone that mostly concealed his intense frustration with her. A small victory. Small victories were the only kind he ever scored in this ongoing passive-aggressive campaign she was waging to drive him up the fucking wall.

Six months he’d been back in Camelot, and still he and Mom did this polite dance nearly every time he saw her. Let me help you, he’d say. Let me take a look at that bill from the insurance company. Let me see that pile of work orders Dad hasn’t been able to deal with.

And she’d say, Oh, you’re too busy. Really, there’s nothing to help with. Have a seat, let me fix you something to eat.

The whole apartment complex could fall down around her ears, and she’d still insist there wasn’t a thing Caleb could do to help out. Which might be okay if she didn’t also, regularly and at great length, declare what a mess everything was, and how badly used she felt since his father’s stroke. It’s too much, she’d say. And then shove him away with both hands when he tried to take some of the burden off her shoulders.

His mother delayed her reply, surveying the open-plan living room with a pinched, disapproving expression. Dad leaned against the wall by the kitchen, tugging on his U.S. Army ball cap and spinning out some story about the annual Fourth of July fireworks that he’d already told twice tonight. Caleb’s younger sister, Katie, offered him a wan smile as she leaned against the wall beside him, arms crossed, listening.

The boys, Clark, Anthony, and Jacob, chased their barking golden retriever puppy in circles around the dining room table as Caleb’s older sister, Amber, laughed at something her husband, Tony, said and squirmed away as he tried to pull her into his lap.

You wouldn’t know from looking at his mother’s face how much she loved this gang of monkeys, but she did. Her heart was in the right place. If she remained above the fray, withholding and continually finding fault, it was only because she’d been raised that way. Her own mother was Lebanese, and all the women on Mom’s side of the family expressed affection through criticism and an obsession with appearances. Spotless floors and a neatly pressed shirt for the school dance said, I love you. Mom rarely did.

Nothing about her had changed since he was a kid. He knew it wasn’t fair of him to hold the way she was against her, but he couldn’t seem to help it. He was responsible for this boisterous, problem-plagued crew now—or at least, he was trying to be. She made it hard as hell for him to do the job he’d moved home to do.

“Well, it’s your father, of course,” she admitted, casting a baleful look in his direction. “He’s made a mess of things again.”

Caleb bristled, same as he always did when she started in on Dad. “What happened?”

“He took the master key out of the drawer when I wasn’t paying attention. By the time I found him, he’d left an open can of paint in one unit and done something to the plumbing in 4C that I’m going to have to call Kevin in to fix.”

Kevin was a local handyman and one of Mom’s favorite feints in the conversational swordplay she kept dragging Caleb into. He couldn’t understand it. She knew he wanted to help. She knew his father had taught him to do any sort of work that needed to be done at the apartments his parents owned. And yet she persisted in pretending she was planning to pay Kevin money she couldn’t afford for work her own son was perfectly willing and able to do free of charge. Every time, she made him pry the information out of her.

It was both insulting and exhausting, but all very polite. Which was his mother to a T.

At times like this, he missed the simplicity of the chain of command. It would improve matters a lot if he could just hand Mom her orders and be done with it.

Given the way things had been going,

she was far more likely to be handing him orders. But even that would be an improvement over the current situation.