Chapter 2
Miles
Monday
I sat on the grass, not knowing what to do with myself on that Monday afternoon, watching a man — who was now my new neighbor — pacing back and forth with plants and bags of dirt.
We lived in the city until four days ago.
Living in the city meant living in constant movement.
Discovering a new tapas restaurant every month.
Going for a drink somewhere when you don’t want to stay at home and ending up at a concert.
Taking part in a workshop at the last minute.
Hopping between exhibitions on free museum nights.
Not that I would do all that, but it was nice to have the option to.
I liked strolling through the illuminated streets and seeing every corner full of life. There was always a lot going on in the city. It kept my mind busy.
I liked that.
I understood that my mother wanted to move away from what life had been like in the last couple of years, after separating from my stepfather.
She worked at the same company as him. Until a few days ago she was actually his secretary.
But I expected her to move to a different department, not kilometers away from him.
And I didn’t understand why that distance had to mean living “in the middle of nowhere,” words I muttered when we arrived at the front gate of my grandparents’ former house, the place my mother had declared as “our new home” in a sea of emotions, tearful eyes, and without any prior family deliberation.
I never got to meet any of my grandparents.
Unfortunately, none of them lived very long.
Sometimes I’d ask my mom questions about them, we’re a small family of two, I’d like to know more about the people who were part of it.
But my mom always left the conversation undeveloped.
I picked up on a few sentences here and there that her father fell ill very young, and that she admired her mother a lot.
I was sifting through this memory when I noticed the ramp next to the stairs at the kitchen exit. A ramp suitable for a wheelchair.
I had never been to this house before. It had no special meaning or memories for me. I was four hours away from the place where my memories were.
I had already reflected within my thoughts on various options for my life.
I had just turned seventeen years old, and being seventeen meant being old enough to drive, grown up and independent to make decisions.
But not yet having a source of income meant remaining dependent and actually ending up with not many other options.
My mother repeated that I should skip the “tempest in a teapot”, because the new house was “just over four hours’ drive” from the city where we used to live.
But for me that didn’t change the routine I’d landed in a few days ago, of waking up to the new view from my bedroom window: the neighbor’s chicken coop.
Of sitting here on the grass not knowing what to do with myself, and of my friends not being able to just call me to meet up in 15 minutes for the “evening plan”.
I got up and entered the house through the kitchen door, where my mother was tidying clothes, surrounded by cardboard boxes and stuff that almost made it impossible to see the wooden floor.
“Mom, can I steal your car?”
“Well, hello to you too!” she answered, while opening and closing drawers. She had gone to the supermarket and spent the morning running errands, and considering I didn’t get out of bed until 1 p.m. I still hadn’t seen her that day.
“Hey,” I said, with a low tone.
“You’re very grumpy,” she said, without taking her attention away from the pans she was now lining up in a cupboard above the sink, which instead of dirty dishes had dirty, dusty boxes stacked up. “You should go unpack the boxes I left in the living room.”
We hadn’t brought much from Wayneth. Just a few boxes we carried with us in the car.
“Mom…” Staying home to unpack was the last thing I wanted to do at that moment, “I just want to go for a drive. I’ll do all that when I come back home,” I said, grabbing her car keys right there on the counter.
“There’s not much to see here in the neighborhood so I’ll be back soon anyway.
” I knew my tone wasn’t exactly nice, and I had never spoken disrespectfully to my mother before, but I just felt so upset about these last days.
“Miles,” my mom closed the last drawer and looked at me.
“I think that you’re a little lost, son.
I understand that you don’t like the change, but I think you’ll soon realize how much good it will do you.
A different place could be just what you need to discover yourself and your future.
” I looked away from my mother, I couldn’t agree, but I didn’t feel like arguing either.
“And I apologize for how quickly everything happened, but I don’t apologize for my decision. ”
“We could at least have decided some things together,” I replied, already letting irritation get the better of me.
My mother took a deep breath in and out, and I knew she wouldn’t be in the mood to argue. She never was.
“This is going to be good for you, son. It’ll be good for you.”
“Stop saying that! Are you trying to convince me of that? Or trying to convince yourself so you feel better?” I didn’t let my brain reflect on the words before they came out of my mouth in rocket-fire mode. I couldn’t contain it. But I knew that tone would no longer be acceptable.
Maybe that was what I was looking for. For something that would not be acceptable.
“Miles.” My mother’s eyes went from calm to serious, very serious. There were a lot of words hanging in the air that neither of us said. I sensed that she was sensitive to the idea that I wanted to call her selfish without actually saying the word.
Did she feel it? Selfish?
“Take my car,” she said. “I want you back in two hours, maximum, and straight to the living room to help me with those boxes.” My mother’s words were still gentle, but her voice was now stiff, it seemed to cut like glass.
I turned toward the kitchen door. I could feel the atmosphere turning reactive. Anything else said on impulse would be a bad idea. “Thank you. I’ll see you in an hour and a half.”
You couldn’t say my mother and I had the best relationship, but I had just turned my back on her. I didn’t do that.
A weight settled on my chest as soon as the slam of the door echoed behind me. I was feeling her fragility.
No one had told me the full story. My mother said that my stepfather had ended their relationship.
She’d never been lucky in love. My father abandoned her when I was almost one year old. I didn’t mind knowing that I was an accident that happened between two young adults, but I did mind thinking about my mother alone and the image of a self-absorbed father who never came back.
Many years later, after fleeting boyfriends whose faces I no longer remembered at all, Ben showed up in our lives. I had a father figure for five years, and my mother finally had a kind, serious boyfriend.
But that was no longer the case.
I got into the car, not knowing where I was going.
I left the neighborhood, passed a children’s playground, and looked at the houses. No tall buildings in sight. Everything was very white, very rural. Nothing glassy or even remotely modern. It was, in fact, a different landscape.