Chapter 4 Adventures In Chaperoning
ADVENTURES IN CHAPERONING
A WESTESS STORY
WESTON
My brother Henry has always been there for me.
Even at times when I didn’t want him to be there.
That’s just how it is with little brothers.
Once you’ve got them, there’s no getting rid of them—for better or for worse.
Growing up together, we had a healthy mixture of both.
Good times and bad times. All three of my brothers had an incredible knack for being a pain in the ass when they wanted to be, but still—I would have killed anyone who tried to hurt them.
We’re all three years apart, but Henry was the one who showed up first and made me a big brother, so naturally, we wound up closer to each other than anyone else.
There was a time when I felt like the center of Henry’s solar system—wherever I went, he followed.
It was like his entire world circled around what I did.
And there was no better feeling than that: to be your little brother’s hero.
It stayed that way even after I lost my legs.
He was there when I pulled an idiotic skateboard trick to impress my friends and ended up hurting myself.
He was there after the amputation, looking at me like he’d just watched Superman get run over by a bus.
He was there when I almost fell down the stairs on my new prosthetic legs, and suddenly our roles were reversed—he was the one holding me up.
Maybe it was trauma bonding. Or maybe it was just plain old brotherhood.
Either way, Henry has always been the better version of me.
But I’ve never been jealous of him for getting better grades, winning Mom’s favoritism, being unofficially crowned the “golden child” of the family.
Honestly, I’m glad he’s the favorite. Takes the pressure off me to be good all the time.
But being the golden child comes at a cost—the cost of Mom’s Concern.
I say “Concern” with a capital C because it’s not the average concern you’d feel for an injured dog or an old lady who looks like she can’t cross the street on her own.
No, Mom’s special brand of Concern for Henry goes beyond the borders of parenting and into the deadly quicksand of mollycoddling.
He didn’t used to mind it back when he was younger and mollycoddling had its benefits.
The slightest runny nose and she’d let him stay home from school.
The smallest scrape or bruise and she’d bandage him up.
The first hint that he wanted something and she’d try to fulfill it—just to make him happy, because Henry rarely asked for anything.
There are some undeniable benefits to having a mom always there for you. Someone to wash your underwear. Cook your favorite foods. Give you birthday gifts and hugs and make you feel special.
There are also some undeniable downsides to having a mom always there for you.
Like when she tells embarrassing stories about you in front of your friends.
Or randomly knocks on the bathroom door to ask if you’re okay in there.
Or tries to stop you from doing anything potentially dangerous but absolutely necessary to maintain your reputation as a cool guy.
In some ways, I feel like I skipped the awkward transition from being Momma’s little boy to being my own man.
Maybe it was because I lost my legs right around that age and had no choice but to rely on my mother until I got back on my feet—literally.
She held my hand in the hospital, read books to me in rehab, helped me take showers until I learned how to do that by myself.
I guess that’s one bonus of going through something super traumatic—less traumatic things are suddenly not traumatic at all in comparison. The amputation forced me to grow up fast. Henry, on the other hand, still hasn’t shaken his status as Momma’s little boy.
And now that he’s fifteen, I think the downfalls are starting to outweigh the benefits.
This becomes obvious to me one morning at the breakfast table when Henry asks me if I’d mind giving him a ride somewhere tomorrow night.
He says it because he thinks Mom is out of earshot, flipping pancakes in the kitchen, but apparently, he hasn’t learned one crucial thing about our mother: she has the hearing of an elephant—with hearing aids.
“Where do you need to go tomorrow night?” she calls from the kitchen.
Henry slumps in his chair, tipping his head back. “Just… to the movies. With a friend.”
“What friend?”
He looks to me, an unmistakable plea from one red-blooded man to another. But I don’t know who this friend is or why it has to be a secret from Mom. So I just shrug and mouth the word, “Lie.”
Deception is always a surefire way to weasel your way out of an awkward conversation with the woman who raised you.
But Henry only scrunches his eyebrows and turns up his hands like his brain stalls at the mere idea of telling a lie. I step in to help him by answering his question.
“Yeah, sure. I’ll give you a ride. No problem.”
“What. Friend.” Mom steps into the dining room, frying pan in one hand, spatula in the other. She’s giving Henry the stare—the one that makes you feel like you’re being held by the back of your shirt over a pool of quicksand.
The quicksand of mollycoddling.
Henry takes the honest way out, as usual. “Vivi Reynolds.”
Across the table, Aiden bursts out laughing and jeers, “Oooh, Henry has a girlfriend!”
“Shut up,” he snaps, throwing a balled-up napkin at Aiden as his face turns red.
Aiden volleys the napkin straight back and starts crunching up another one to use as ammunition. Mom usually shuts down any use of projectiles at the table, but right now she’s hung up on the last thing Henry said.
“Vivi Reynolds? And who else is going with you two?”
Henry sighs, looking down at his plate. “Nobody. Just us.”
“Better sit in the back of the theater,” Aiden says with a laugh, “so nobody will have to watch you sucking each other’s faces!”
I kick him under the table with my prosthetic foot.
“Ow!”
Mom flops pancakes onto our plates, passive-aggressive and silent. Henry watches her out of the corner of his eye, his face still flaming red from Aiden’s jokes. No one says a word for a minute.
Then, finally, Mom speaks. “I don’t know if it’s proper for you to go out all alone with Vivi. How old is she?”
“Sixteen.”
“Well, how did you two become so close? You’ve never mentioned her before.”
Of course he didn’t. A potentially romantic relationship with an older woman isn’t exactly the kind of subject you chat about with your mother. Especially not at the breakfast table.
Henry shrugs and plays it cool. “You never asked.”
“Well, why don’t you tell me a little bit about her?”
I come to the rescue. “Mom, he’s old enough to go on a date with a girl. It’s just the movies. Who cares? Henry, pass the maple syrup.”
Mom stands there for a moment with her frying pan, watching her baby boy transform into a mysterious stranger right before her eyes. Henry passes me the syrup and continues eating his pancakes, not looking at Mom.
I wonder if she can see how much he’s dying inside, or if moms are immune to secondhand embarrassment.
“Alright,” she relents with a sigh. “But I want you back home by eleven, alright?”
“Yes, Mom,” Henry grumbles.
The conversation seems to be over. Case closed. But I can tell by the way Mom slides her gaze from Henry to me that she’s not going to forget about it that easily.
Mom ambushes me in the garage that night as I’m doing rounds on the heavy bag. I’m covered in sweat, locked in the zone, ’80s rock blasting so loud from the radio, I don’t even hear her come in. I flurry the bag hard and fast as the song comes to an end—out of breath.
That’s when Mom clears her throat. “Sorry to interrupt.”
I spin to face her as I pull off my gloves. “Here to train with me?”
She laughs and rolls her eyes. “No.”
“Come on, it’s fun. I’ll show you how to knock someone on their ass.”
“Listen. I want to talk to you about something serious.”
I wipe my sweaty forehead with the crook of my elbow. “Something serious? Sounds more like Henry’s kinda thing.”
“It’s Henry I want to talk to you about,” Mom says, instinctively tidying the workbench where Dad has left tools scattered around. “And I have a favor to ask of you.”
Oh boy.
“Does this have to do with his date tomorrow night?”
Mom puts up one finger. “Don’t—don’t give me that face. I’m not being overprotective.”
“Yeah, you are.”
“I’m just concerned about him.”
Concerned. With a capital C.
“How come he’s never talked about this girl before?” Mom frowns, crossing her arms over her chest. “For all I know, she could be…”
I wait for the punchline, eyebrows raised. “What? A prostitute?”
Mom clicks her tongue. “Weston—”
“A drug addict? A stabber? What do you think is gonna happen, Mom? They’re going to the movies together. Big deal.”
“It is a big deal. This is Henry. He’s never shown an interest in girls before.”
I smirk, throwing light punches at the heavy bag. “Not that he’s talked about, anyway.”
Just like that, Mom’s Concern doubles in size.
“Look, he’s fifteen years old, Mom. Give him some room to breathe. You never worried about me going out with girls.”
“Yes, well, Henry’s not like you.”
“Because he has all his limbs intact?”
Mom sighs, giving me a look like that’s not what I meant and you know it. “Because he keeps everything to himself. Unlike you, I don’t know what’s going on in that head of his. And don’t you think he was acting a little strange about this Vivi girl when I asked him about her this morning?”
“I think he was dying of embarrassment and didn’t want to talk about any girl he has a crush on.” I shrug, rolling the ache out of my shoulders. “It doesn’t mean she’s a seductress or something. There are just certain things a guy doesn’t want to talk about with his mom.”