The Whore's Child by Richard Russo

him.” What was right in front of him, lately, was my mother, trying to pick a fight. Adjusting the rearview mirror so she could see herself, she ran her pinkie across her eyelid; her eyeliner was kind of heavy, and it made her eyes look Egyptian. There’d been other changes these last few months. She was growing her hair out, letting it go straight like the girls on TV. “As far as he’s concerned, I’m taking you to school.”
    We were sitting at the town’s only traffic light, and the hardware store was half a block up the street, a phalanx of bright red lawn mowers lined up in front. It was early April and there was still snow on the ground, but my father liked to encourage people to think spring. Studying the front of the store, I didn’t have to look over at my mother to know she was looking at it too, as if daring my father to emerge. “Green,” I said when the light changed. The car behind us honked before my mother could step on the gas, so she stayed right where she was, rolled down her window and stuck her arm out above the roof to offer a gesture I wasn’t supposed to see. We sat right there until the light turned yellow and my mother punched us through just as it turned red, leaving the driver behind us to sit through another whole sequence. “Sit there, asshole,” she said, smiling into the rearview mirror.
    â€œYou’re swearing a lot this morning,” I pointed out.
    â€œWhy shouldn’t I?” she said. “It’s a free country and I’m a free woman.” When I didn’t say anything, she continued. “It’s not only a
free
country, it’s a
big
one. Big enough for us to get lost in. We’re bound for freedom, sweetie.”
    She was urging the car up the long hill that would lead us out of town and down along the coast to Portland. She had it floored, but the Ford seemed reluctant, and the engine was making a sound like there were marbles inside. “Downshift,” I said.
    She did and the car responded. Then she looked over at me. “You think I’m following
your
instructions all the way to California, you got another think coming, buddy boy,” she said.
    â€œI’m the navigator,” I reminded her. “You can’t do this without me.”
    But I could tell she’d lost interest in the conversation. At the top of the hill, I couldn’t help turning around and taking one last look at the village below, at its three white church spires, the blue harbor, the Camden hills beyond.
    â€œPeyton Place,” my mother snorted, because our town was where that movie was filmed. “What a goddamn laugh.”
    Blowing town was my mother’s idea, but right then it seemed an answer to my prayers, for I had fallen in with bad companions and was trying to impress them by acting crazier than they were. Craziness was something they understood and apparently admired, which was a revelation to me. Whenever I behaved like a lunatic, they clapped me on the back and congratulated me, and I liked their approval. These were the same young thugs, after all, who’d cornered me in the boys’ room, back in the fall, two of them pinning me against the wall while the third peed on my chinos, turning them dark brown at the crotch and down both inseams. Then, for the rest of the morning, I was pointed out in the halls as a seventh grader who still wet his pants. To be admitted into their fraternity was more than just gratifying. These boys had taught me a deep human truth—that it was far better to be admired than peed upon.
    Although not that much better, as I learned over the long winter months. My strategy had been to ingratiate myself further by performing small acts of insanity designed to capture their imaginations. One Monday during fourth period, having forgotten my lunch money, I dined exclusively on ketchup packets, consuming a whole tub of them for the entertainment of my lunch table.