Chapter 3
“Can you help me find my keys?”
Mom paces the living room, picking up errant socks and looking under piles of unopened mail.
She’s tall and thin and freckled like me with the same enormous unibrow, though she waxes the middle of hers.
Her hair is thick and wavy and brown like mine too.
Today it’s pulled back in a clip with strands flying out.
She’s dressed in her new striped sweater with the cat hair cleaned off.
She starts a real day job at a tax office today, a full-time one with a salary and good benefits.
I sit up, still on the couch, still in my undershirt and jeans. “Mornin’.”
“Sorry.” She blows me a kiss. “Good morning, beautiful.”
I pull her keys out from between the couch cushions under me.
“Ugh. Thank you.” Her face lights up. “Oh my God. How was the show?”
“Good!”
But it must not sound that way, because she looks concerned. “Was it?”
She’s holding a mug I gave her for Christmas that says: HELLO MY NAME IS CHAD AND I’LL BE YOUR COFFEE MUG TODAY.
“It was! Or, I was good. But…” Is it so bad to say how I feel and let my mother care for me? “Afterwards I went back to feeling depressed.” I think of the words I wouldn’t allow myself to say in the parking lot. “I just wish I knew how to feel okay.”
Her eyebrows flick but her eyes don’t move. She’s a statue of herself.
Red alert. I watch her closely and mentally start counting. If I can count to ten before she responds, then I know she’s officially zoning out. And I know I need to do anything to snap her out of it.
One.
When Mom was my age, she lived in her car and skipped school to make rainbow bracelets she sold at concerts.
I don’t think she asked my dad to be in my life.
She says when I was born I gave her a routine.
That she didn’t always know how to do things for herself, but that she could do them for me.
She said she wanted to give to me what her mother never gave to her.
Two.
I don’t know why I was so scared to be without her as a little kid.
When she dropped me at daycare, I screamed until she came back.
So she stopped bringing me, or they stopped accepting me.
I didn’t do preschool. On the first day the teacher told Mom to leave so I would learn I was safe without her, but when Mom left, the teacher closed us all in a pitch-black bathroom for an active shooter drill.
I begged Mom not to make me go back, and she listened. She didn’t make me go.
Three.
She took work with flexible hours and an openness to a five-year-old dressed as a cop.
She groomed dogs, she knitted scarves, she babysat.
She listened to podcasts about building wealth.
When I slept, which I’m told I never did, I slept beside her.
We lived in studio apartments above people’s garages until we moved into the real house next to Tony.
Four.
The first time I saw Mom zone out was in that house.
She’d picked me up early from kindergarten because I’d made myself vomit so I could get picked up early.
She was sitting on the couch like she was watching TV but without the TV on.
I did a dance to get her attention, and she said, “Sorry, I guess I’m tired.
” She was tired like that for weeks, until we couldn’t pay rent and we had to move.
Five.
But I learned something.
Six.
One night when I was nine and we were living in a condo in a nice neighborhood, Mom was filling out an application for a small business loan that was denied as soon as she submitted it.
I could see her face starting to fade, so I told her how that weekend I’d beaten Tony in the championship-belt wrestling match by blinding him with the Pale Shine, my signature move where I lift my shirt to bounce the sun off my chest. I demonstrated the move under our floor lamp, and she laughed.
The next day she got a job at a food store, and soon another one at a shoe store, and we stayed in that condo the rest of the year.
Seven.
Sometimes I was the one who needed the laugh.
Being in a new school every year was a crash course in which versions of me people didn’t like.
Which turned me into versions I didn’t like.
Silent Sean, Whisper-Screaming Sean, Snap-and-Scratch-a-Bully’s-Face Sean.
But every night Mom would lie beside me and tell random stories, like how she accidentally went the whole day with a sticker from an apple on her pants.
And I’d laugh and the next day at school would be good.
Eight.
Houses and apartments had mold or weird landlords, and I broke down in classes and begged Mom to pick me up, and she worked until she crashed and zoned out, and we moved again and again.
We moved ten times in ten years, all around Long Island.
I don’t know if we weren’t good at taking care of ourselves, or if the world wasn’t good at taking care of us , but once I told a school counselor I hoped there was a heaven so one day Mom would get to relax.
Nine.
No matter what happens, though, if we can make each other laugh, we’ll be okay. That’s why I want to be a comedian. Everyone’s life is hard. The world is weird. I want to help us forget the stress for a minute and feel good.
Ten.
I jump up. “I didn’t tell you what happened last night!”
Mom slowly turns. “What happened?”
I didn’t lose my virginity!
“A woman came up to me after the show and said I reminded her of her son.”
“Aw.” She gets fake-tough. “Didja tell her you don’t need another mother?”
“I shook my fist and said, ‘Stay away, nice lady. I already got a mom.’?”
She laughs, but only once. “That’s very sweet, though. I’m glad she got to see my amazing little boy.”
“You just gave me my new stage name.” I do casual jazz hands. “The Amazing Little Boy.”
She laughs again and goes to the kitchen to put her mug in the sink.
Physical movement is a good sign. But my relief that she’s okay is replaced by frustration with myself for almost dragging her into my dark mood.
I worry that’s what I’m really like if I don’t keep myself in line: a black hole that sucks other people into its nothingness.
And makes Mom’s life harder than it already is.
And on her first day at a real job she’s excited about.
This is the longest we’ve ever stayed in the same house. It’s also the nicest house we’ve had since being next to Tony. I don’t want to leave. I don’t want everything to change again.
“I’m feeling great about my next set!” I shout. “I’m already getting new ideas!”
“Does this mean I’ll actually get to come to one of your shows soon?”
“Soon!” My heart races as I look around the living room, trying to think of how to make it better for her. I fluff the pillows on the couch. I tidy up our shoes near the door. I push the crumbs off the coffee table into my hand and put them in my back pocket.
Mom rushes in, checks her phone, and does a silent scream. Sometimes she does things that are just like me. I don’t know which of us learned it from the other one.
“It is time,” she says in a robot voice. She touches her thumb and pointer to my cheek and makes a kissing sound. “Love you.”
“Wub woo.”
“My beautiful child.” She shuffles to the front door and turns. “What would I do without you?”
I want to cry.
I bat my eyes. “Who, me?”
She smiles. “I love you, sweetheart.”
I block the words before they enter my ears, I don’t know why.
I watch her get in the car and drive away. I do love her. And if keeping her happy—if keeping us here—means keeping myself cute and silly, that is exactly what I’ll do. I like being cute and silly. It makes me happy to make her happy.
So why am I still standing in the living room zoning out?