Chapter 4 Adventures In Chaperoning #2
I watch this painful realization slowly sink in, darkening my mother’s eyes.
It’s times like these when I know exactly what she’s wishing: that she had four daughters instead of four sons.
It seems like the older girls get, the more they spill their guts to their mothers—if Tessa is any indicator of female behavior.
Men, on the other hand, need their space.
The social distancing begins at birth and just gains momentum as the years go on.
Henry is slipping out of bounds, and Mom isn’t ready to let go. But there’s nothing I can do about it, so I just shrug and put my boxing gloves back on.
“In that case, I need to ask a favor of you.”
Apparently, I spoke too soon. There is something I can do about it. And that something looks like a bad idea glinting in Mom’s eyes.
“What kind of favor?” I ask, bracing myself for the answer.
“Well, you said you’d give Henry a ride tomorrow night,” she begins slowly, crossing her arms over her chest. “I was wondering if maybe you could just… keep an eye on him.”
“You mean… chaperone him?”
“No, obviously not. He wouldn’t need to know you’re there. I thought you could take Tessa out, and just… happen to go to the same places Henry takes this new girl of his.”
“You mean… stalk him.”
Mom sighs, tipping her head back. “No. It wouldn’t be stalking for you to wind up in the same restaurant or movie theater, close enough that you can see what he’s doing.”
“That is the literal definition of stalking, Mom.”
“Oh, stop it. He’s your brother. Aren’t you concerned about him?”
“Concerned?” I almost laugh at the second appearance of that word. “No, I think if I were him, I wouldn’t want my big brother stalking me or chaperoning me or ‘keeping an eye on me’ on my first real date with a girl I liked. Can you even imagine how humiliating that would be?”
“He wouldn’t be humiliated if he didn’t know you were there.”
I shake my head, throwing combos at the heavy bag. “I can’t do it, Mom.”
“Then I will.”
I whirl to face her. “No. No, no, no, you can’t—”
“I’m not going to stand by and let him go off alone with some older girl I’ve never even met before. Who knows what they might get up to. Who knows if they’re really going to go to the movies or if that’s just an excuse.”
I’m not even the one being chaperoned/stalked, and it makes me cringe to imagine it: Mom hovering just out of sight, spying on Henry’s every move—sitting at the back of the theater or in the margins of a restaurant. It’s not just embarrassing. It’s… emasculating.
But there’s no way to explain that to Mom, who still sees Henry as her little baby. So instead, I do the only thing I can think of to save my brother’s manliness.
I lie.
“On second thought, I think I should… do it.”
Mom tilts her head to the side, suspicious of my tone. She has a nose for bullshit—especially mine. “Are you sure? You’re not just saying that to make me feel better?”
“No, I will. I’ll do it. I’ll take Tessa out on a date, and we’ll just…
happen to go to the same places Henry goes.
And we’ll stay out of sight, and I’ll make sure he doesn’t get into any trouble with this girl, okay?
You don’t have to worry about any of it.
” I tag a convincing smile onto the end of my pledge to soften her up.
Sure enough, it works. Her shoulders relax, and her eyes brighten. “Thank you, Weston. I know I might seem overprotective, but… I regret not being more protective of my boys in the past.”
I know exactly what she’s thinking when she says that.
“Past is in the past, Mom. You couldn’t have stopped me from doing dumb shit when I was younger. In fact, I probably would’ve wanted to do it more if you’d told me not to.”
She laughs a little, but there’s a glint of tears in her eyes as she walks over and hugs me.
“I love you,” she whispers, her voice all watery—which makes me feel bad for lying about stalking Henry on his date. But I make it up to her by kissing the top of her head and patting her back with one boxing glove.
“Henry will be fine, Mom. I promise.”
The following morning, I give Henry a ride to school.
I can tell something is eating him by the sheer number of times he sighs and messes his hands through his hair.
With anyone else, I’d wait for them to speak first. But my brother is the type who will keep everything bottled up if nobody comes out and formally invites him to get it off his chest.
So about halfway to school, I break out the trusty bottle opener.
“Go on, spill it.”
Henry turns to squint at me. “Spill what?”
“Whatever’s been making you sigh and fidget for the past half hour.”
“We’ve only been driving for ten minutes.”
“Is it about Vivi?”
Henry slumps in his seat defeatedly. “It’s about Mom. Don’t you think she’s kind of… overreacting?”
If only he knew about the deluxe version of her Overreaction that I listened to in the garage last night.
“Yeah, well, you know Mom. She’s always worried about everything.”
“But she’s not like that with you,” Henry volleys back. “You and Tessa get to go out wherever you want, whenever you want, and she never tries to stop you.”
I shrug. “That’s just because I’m the oldest. And she knows I’m a lost cause. You’re her favorite.”
“I don’t want to be her favorite. Not if she’s gonna treat me like a baby.”
Ah, the universal struggle of boys on the cusp of manhood and mothers on the cusp of losing their boys to manhood. The last thing I want is to be caught in the middle. In fact, I think I’d rather be caught in the middle of a dodgeball court. Without my prosthetic legs on.
“Look, Henry, Mom will always be Mom. You just gotta tell her what she wants to hear, make her happy, and then go do whatever you want. Within reason, obviously. Don’t go jumping off a bridge after Vivi or something.”
Henry rolls his eyes. “You’d do something dumb like that before I would.”
He’s right—I thought as much myself last night in the garage.
Out of all four of us, Henry is the boy most likely to succeed and make his mother proud.
I don’t know where all this suspicion and Concern is coming from all of a sudden.
Some of us are born to get in trouble; others are not.
Clearly, I belong to the former category.
But Henry is about as squeaky clean as a bottle of hand sanitizer dipped in bleach.
He wouldn’t get into trouble if it held a gun to his head and demanded he surrender himself to it. He’d sooner be shot.
And that’s why, tonight, Tessa and I will not be stalking my little brother on his first date with Vivi.
We’ll go somewhere totally different, stay out just as late, and I’ll come back home with Henry at eleven o’clock, and Mom will rest easy thinking that her favorite son’s innocence hasn’t been lost.
“So,” I say, rapping my fingers on the steering wheel, “where are you taking Vivi?”
“To the movies,” he replies. “Maybe we’ll go out for pizza first. I don’t know.”
“What movie are you going to see?”
“The new Star Wars one.”
I nod, slowing for a stop sign and noticing how Henry is still fidgeting relentlessly even after spilling his guts about Mom. Something else is eating him. The bottle isn’t empty yet.
This time, I wait. And after a minute, he can’t keep it in any longer.
“Wes?”
“Yeah?”
He messes up his hair again. “Well, I was just wondering… how do you…” The rest of the sentence gets stuck in his throat, and he sighs. “Never mind.”
“Come on, what is it? You can ask me anything, man.”
Apparently, it’s the kind of question that makes your face turn red just thinking about it. Henry struggles to put it into words.
“How do you… kiss a girl?”
I bite back a laugh as I turn to look at him. “You’ve never kissed her?”
Henry shrugs. “I mean, we’ve kissed, but we haven’t… you know.”
“Made out,” I supply.
“It’s not that I want to make out with her,” Henry says defensively. “It’s just, I want to… y’know…”
“Make out with her.”
My brother heaves a sigh, crossing his arms over his chest. “Well, it’s just that I know she’s dated older guys, and I want to be able to… do it right. Like, how do you know if a girl wants to make out with you?”
“Uh…” I laugh, caught off guard by the bluntness of his question. “I don’t know. You just kind of… read the terrain.”
“What’s the terrain? Her body?”
I shrug one shoulder. “Yeah, I guess. Sort of. If she starts leaning into you, putting her hands on you… it’s a sign that you can keep going.”
Henry nods eagerly, looking about ready to start taking notes. “And after that? Like, how do you know you’re kissing good? What do you do with your tongue? Do you breathe through your nose or your mouth?”
I grin. “Believe me, once you’re kissing her, you’re not going to be thinking about whether you should breathe through your nose or your mouth.”
I immediately think of Tessa—and how good it feels every time she melts into my arms, her lips moving under mine and her fingers curling through my hair.
I usually let her take the lead, and sometimes she surprises me with a love scratch on the neck or a gentle bite on my lower lip.
God, I wish I could drive to her house and make out with her right now.
“And what happens after that?” Henry asks, pulling me out of my thoughts.
“After what?”
“Kissing. I mean, that’s just first base, right?”
“Well, when I was your age, first base was holding hands.”
Henry scoffs, crossing his arms over his chest. “If you don’t know, then forget it.”
“Of course I know.” I flex my fingers around the steering wheel, playing it cool.
“After that, you… start touching her. Not in a creepy way, but like… playing with her hair. Holding her waist. Pulling her closer and seeing how she reacts. If she doesn’t push you away, you’re good.
If she crawls into your lap, then you’re really good. ”
“Uh-huh. And after that?”
There is no “after that”—at least, not for me and Tessa.