After they’d spent precious hours running like ponies and grinding red clay into the seats of their blue jeans sliding down the hill, Bo asked his mother, “Can we do this again tomorrow?”
The wild-haired girl, three inches taller than her son despite being only a few years older, answered him with patience. “Probably not. If I had been a better saver, we could, but no. This is why you must save up now. Trust me, you’ll be glad you did when your days turn hard.”
She chose her words carefully whenever she explained things to him, now that he was old enough for banking.
“Eat your grilled cheese sandwich. I fried the bread with lots of butter, so it’s greasy and full of wonderosity for your tummy! I think,” she said, checking the fridge, “yes, we have sweet baby gherkins!” She unscrewed the jar lid and plopped two fat ones on his plate. Mom knew what he liked.
“Awesome!” he shouted, crunching one with his mouth open, spraying pickle bits everywhere.
Her smile faltered as she talked about her own mother spoiling her with special treats from her magical kitchen. Pappy would swoop in and swipe some. It made him so – All of a sudden, her eyes moistened. Girl-Mom said Grammie’s funeral shattered Pappy. She wanted to cry too, she said, but could not. Then, weeks later, she cried and could not stop. “I wish my mom was here in this kitchen with us, three small children laughing and getting into trouble. She’d have loved that.” Mom wiped at her eyes before any tears could escape.
Bo gave her a moment then asked, “When can I see you again, Mommy?”
“Soon, Bo. Soon.”
Bo looked disappointed for a moment. He loved his mother when she played with him this way. He wished Dad would join in, but Dad had to go to the hospital. Dad wasn’t sick; that was Mom. Dad was quiet when he was home. He didn’t talk about Mom, and he refused to play with her when she was home from the hospital and little. He said it was… how did he say it? “Paying for daydreams, but, if it makes you happy, darling…” So, they saw very little of Dad.
Bo missed Mom on the days when she was only big in the hospital being “very sick.” His dad said Bo would visit her there soon, but that he shouldn’t think about it, “shouldn’t remember your mother that way.” How could Bo not remember his mother one way or another? It made little sense.
He would remember his mother after today, just the way she was: right there in their kitchen, stretching herself as tall as she could to reach into the high cupboard and get the Oreos. Of course he would remember this moment; just as he remembered her visit last week, when she was a young woman fresh out of college, talking a mile-a-minute about all the things she’d just learned; or remember the week before when pubescent Mom giggled about her tiny new breasts, “so cute and firm.” He didn’t understand her shameless, pink-cheeked whimsy, but she was happy, and that made Bo happy too.
“I wish I’d saved more of these, Bo.” As she said it, his mother’s face darkened just a shade, with the kind of expression that didn’t belong on the face of a girl of twelve. “Save. Save. Save. You’ll thank me later. Oh, but there I go again, wasting today on thoughts of tomorrow! I have three more hours left. Finish your sandwich, and we’ll run down to the pond and catch tadpoles. I won’t be around, but you can watch them turn into frogs. It’s gross – perfect for a boy!” She poked at his side and made him squirm and squeal, and she joined him in making silly, kid noises.
They spent the next hour catching tadpoles in a bucket and decanting them into the old aquarium in the garage. The hour after that they devoted to smashing toy race cars into each other. The third hour, they sat on the back porch holding hands, drinking Cokes, burping, and staring at the sinking sun. It was a perfect day.
On Mom’s advice, Bo banked a whole week. To his disappointment, when he looked in the bathroom mirror, he couldn’t see any difference. He was hoping he’d find a mustache, but no. He was still nine-and-a-half, no mustache. His mother had told him this was the best way to save, a little at a time. “You’ll be happy one day,” she said.
Bo’s father made him breakfast – a Pop-Tart and some orange juice. “I have to head out, kiddo. I just talked to Maria,” he said, holding up his phone, “and she’ll be here in a few minutes. You be good to her. No back-talk.”
“I don’t like Maria. She never plays with me like someone my age.”
“She can’t, Bo. She grew up in a poor family. I explained this all to you.”
“I know, you gotta have money to do banking.”
“Yes, uh, that’s about right. Look, I gotta get to the hospital. The doctors say –” His father stopped himself and stood there silently with his eyes closed. Dad looked like he hadn’t slept well. He always looked tired these days. Bo wished Dad would use his kid days. He wished he’d stop worrying about money and doctors and dumb grown-up things. Dad said that growing up his parents only had a little money, so he didn’t have “much time to kid around.” Bo got the sense Dad didn’t like banking, but he always told him, “We have the money, Bo, so you can save up like Mom did. It’s your choice.”
His father hugged him very hard and very long, then left and drove off. Bo spent the day with Maria, who made him work on fractions. He hated fractions. He just wanted to go out to the garage and see whether his tadpoles had turned into pollywogs. He wondered whether rich frogs went back to having little stunted pollywog limbs some days. He hoped they did. He’d find out.
Bo missed his mother. His father was taking a “sabbatical” from his job at the college. They were living on savings. That meant his father could go to the hospital to visit Mom every day. It also meant his father could enjoy his yucky drinks every night in front of the big screen, watching his favorite vacation mem-vids of him and Mom in Ecuador, Morrocco, and Queensland. They’d loved to travel when they first got married.
The next day, Bo’s father took him to the hospital to see Mom.
She was thin, very thin. Things stuck out of her arm and her face looked narrow and sad – sadder than he could ever remember her. Bo couldn’t see the little girl in her at all.
His father stopped a doctor passing in the hall, and they traded hissing words. Bo didn’t understand all of it. He caught “are you sure all this projection and recall isn’t making her worse?” and “working the way it was intended” and finally, in tones even more hushed “not much longer now” Bo tried and tried not to remember that last bit.
“Just for a moment,” Dad said. “She’s awake.” He was glad his father had told him that, because when he looked, he wasn’t sure. “Tell her that you love her, Bo. Tell her nicely, like a good boy. ‘I love you, Mommy.’”
Bo didn’t want to say the words. He didn’t know why. He certainly did not want to get any closer to the woman in the bed. Every step closer screamed, Mommy looks wrong! This wasn’t the girl who taught him to tie a necktie, or the fresh-faced woman who explained to him that what women really want is someone who’ll listen and that he needed to learn to do that when it came time for him to date, or the wet-eyed twenty-something who tried to explain that funerals were a farewell party for people going to a better place. This was NOT Mommy!
“Go, Bo. Please. Just get close and say, ‘Love you!’” His father was on the brink of panic.
Bo was already closer than he wanted to be. “I love… you… Mommy.”
His mother’s eyes focused in that moment. Her face turned ever so slightly in his direction. The barest flicker of a smile lit her face, the barest semblance of the Mommy he loved to play with. Then she closed her eyes.
A monitor on the wall bleeped, and a nurse came in. The monitor was one of two very different kinds of devices in the room. The other, a slender passbook sitting open on a bedside table, showed two bright tally pages. The page on the left in amber showed a low number. The one on the righthand page had a 1 glowing in Incredible-Hulk-green. The nurse checked both devices, looked at his father, and told him and Bo it was best if they left for now.
That night, Maria watched him while his father stayed at the hospital with his mom. Bo looked at his own banking passbook, the one his parents had bought for him. The left page was blacked out. They’d set it so he couldn’t check that number. The right page showed a green 17. He had 17 days saved up. For reasons Bo could not put into words, he felt that was a very small number.
He picked up his passbook, decided on a number, and keyed it in just the way they’d taught him.
The next morning, his father stopped by for a shower and change of clothes. He didn’t bother shaving or tucking in his shirt. He was just headed out the door when Mom arrived.
There she was, in the living room, Mom as a nine-year-old girl.
“Lana?” His father struggled for the word, as a diver trapped under the ice might suck in a last pocket of precious air. He stared at her, through her.
"Don,” she cried, hugging him about the waist.
He stood, blank-faced, his hands hanging awkwardly by his sides. “I never knew you like this.”
“It’s so wonderful to be nine again, just when I needed it most. I always imagined I’d end up spending these days alone, skipping rope and picking daisies. Instead, all I want is to share these days with Bo.”
“I’d hoped, maybe you would have saved a day from when we –”
“It’s my last day. I saved this day just for today. The three of us can –”
“No! I have to be with you – with you at the hospital.”
Bo watched Dad leave as if ghosts were chasing him.
His mother turned to him. “What would you like to do today? Would you like to check on the tadpoles?”
“No. That’s silly,” Bo said. “Kid stuff.”
She looked him up and down. “Good thing we’re kids then, right? Let’s do nine-year-old stuff.”
“I’m eleven.”
“Bo-Bear, you’re nine. Well, nine-and-a-half. I think I know my own son’s birthday.” Her pretty blue eyes shaded over with concern. She looked at him more closely. “Wait. Your face! Your pant cuffs! Are you taller? It’s so hard to keep track when I keep changing height. Bo – Bo-Bear, what have you done?”
Bo hesitated, then explained that he had squirreled away a big chunk of his childhood so he could enjoy it when he was old. He said, “We’ll have loads of time to play and do fun stuff, go for hikes and play games and... and please don’t call me Bo-Bear.”
Mom’s jaw dropped open in a way that the jaws of seven-year-old girls did not. “Honey, don’t forget the tadpoles. You can do all those other things, and you will. I can’t be with you for that. You need to find someone…” The words choked in her throat. After a moment, she said, “someone your… own age.”
Maria came by and took them out for pizza but mostly left them to themselves. The morning cloud passed, and they spent the day talking about dinosaurs, and Mom taught him to make a big wet fart noise by pressing the palms of her hands against her mouth and blowing. He laughed until he thought he’d pee himself. It was magical.
Just before she left, Mom asked Bo, “You know what? Don’t bank too many days. Maybe even hit clear. I’m not sure how that works, but maybe…” She paused, drawing in a deep, jagged breath. Mom took her boy’s hands, smiled her biggest smile – she was missing a front tooth – and looked into his eyes. “Spend your days, Bo-Bear. Every one. Burn em bright as the sun!”
Her face beaming at him turned his insides all funny, a lot happy and a little sad, but it was a perfect day.
One of his very best.
***
As Bo grew into a teenager, his father never showed up as a boy or teen or young man to play with him. Dad showed up often, as Dad, and did what he could to fill the void in both their lives. He said he’d cleared his banking account. He would never say what numbers were on the amber left page or the Hulk-green right; insisted he never even thought about glowing numbers. Bo thought carefully about that while looking over his own passbook.
Sometimes, they would eat grilled cheese sandwiches and watch the mem-vids from Queensland. Dad showed Bo the time Mom got to hug a koala. The newlywed couple acted like they had a baby, bouncing it and dancing around in a circle to some unheard melody. In that special moment, she was a happy woman-child.
“That’s you when you were a baby koala!” Dad teased him.
Bo and his dad chuckled at the silliness, and, from some secret place within him, Bo could hear Mom laughing along.
###
Thanks for checking out my little story. I hoped you enjoyed it. If you did... please take a look at my novels. Here's a couple you might enjoy!
https://www.amazon.com/Goody-Celeste-Chris-Riker/dp/1665307072/
https://www.amazon.com/Alexander-Butcher-Chris-Riker/dp/B0D6PT9KX6/
