Leo worked his jaw and wondered again why he bothered to come at all.
“Your father never should’ve died so young. None of this would’ve happened to me.”
“It’s time for your medicine, isn’t it? I’ll get it for you.”
“Who gives a damn? I should take the whole bottle. That’s what you probably want anyway. Then you’ll be rid of me.”
He escaped to the kitchen, leaving her to rant outside. Drawing in deep, heavy breaths, Leo hung his head. Goddamn it. Why do I do this shit?
You’re a good man, Leo. He heard his father’s voice in his head like he had all his life since the day he died. You have the heart of a lion. Fearless and protective. She needs you.
No, she doesn’t. She hates me.
She’s unhappy. Don’t turn your back on her.
Even though he’d only been a child when his father died, Leo could remember everything about him: the sandpapery roughness of his cheek when he’d wake up for the good-night kiss his father never missed; the smell of his Irish Spring soap and Aramis cologne; the hard, ropey muscles of his arms as he held Leo tight.
He sighed, shook out his mother’s medicine from the pillbox, poured her a glass of water, and returned to her. Leo knew the tears she shed were part of her illness, not regret over their lost mother-son relationship.
“Here. Take these.”
He handed her the pills, and she swallowed them, then grimaced as she raked him up and down with blue eyes exactly like his own. It was the one thing they shared. Other than that, he looked exactly like his father. “Why aren’t you married? You’re in your mid-thirties and you’ve never brought home a girlfriend.” Her right hand twitched. “The least you could do is give me a grandchild.”
Sick as his mother was, Leo probably shouldn’t have answered her. Coming out to his mother when she was acting like a petulant child didn’t bode well for an important conversation about his life. But they’d never had the typical mother-son relationship. Or any relationship at all.
“Because I’m gay.” Feeling anything but the nonchalance he pretended, Leo lounged against the deck railing and crossed his arms. “So if anything, I’d be bringing home a boyfriend.” He waited for her reaction.
He wasn’t disappointed.
Her eyes widened to round, almost comical circles. “Well, Robert always did say there was something funny about you. Different. We kept waiting for you to bring home dates, but you never did.” Her eyes narrowed. “I can’t believe it. You don’t look gay.”
That was the reaction he’d expected, and he burst out laughing at her ignorance. “What does looking gay mean?”
She shrugged. “I mean, you know…you’re into sports and go to the gym. You look like a man.”
“Gee, thanks,” he said, not holding back on the sarcasm. “But I am. All man and all gay. So sorry to disappoint you.”
“I’m used to it. Look at you, living in that crummy apartment. What are you? A super in some run-down building full of people on food stamps or Medicaid? You could’ve done anything, but you probably thought you’d inherit my money and not have to work hard. Why didn’t you try to do something better with your life?”
Leo vibrated with anger, but as he did with every other emotion, held it all inside. “I have a degree in civil engineering, Mom, and I own the building. I guess you don’t remember that? So I’m not so bad off.”
When he’d told her he had no desire to work in an office and instead wanted to buy and rehab buildings, she’d sneered at him.
“Do something to make real money. Build luxury homes, at least. You may look like your father, but you don’t have his business sense. He went where the money was. Who cares about those old, broken-down pieces of junk?”
Leo did. He loved ripping apart the old and making it new and fresh again. Once he saved up enough money, his plan was to rehab the one building he did own, then buy another and do the same. He and his friend Peter had talked about making a business out of it, going into a partnership together, and they were keeping an eye out for bargains. But he didn’t bother to explain that to his mother. She wouldn’t care.
And yet a gnawing piece of him still wanted to prove himself to her. But why? It bugged the shit out of him. Was he that desperate for his mother to love him?
She waved her hand in the air. “It’s not in Manhattan, so what good is it? Some crappy area of Brooklyn? Big deal. If your father hadn’t been so stupid and gotten himself killed, you could’ve inherited the business. That would be something to be proud of.”
Unwilling to listen to any more negativity against his father, he pushed his chair away from the table. “I have to go.”
Shaking and without saying another word, he left her on the deck and walked to his motorcycle. He passed his mother’s aide on the walkway, returning from her errand, but gave her only a brief wave, unwilling to stop and have a conversation in his rotten mood. Once seated on the bike, he lifted his face to the sun, letting it bake away his hurt. He was too old to let the sting of his mother’s words upset him.
And yet it did.
Maybe he was a loser like she said. He’d heard it often enough when Robert would knock him around.
Useless. Good for nothing. Won’t ever amount to anything. Leech.
After all, he was only the owner of a dilapidated building that always needed repairs. His plan to buy that second building was taking longer than expected, but even then, it wouldn’t matter to her. Nothing would ever be good enough. Leo clenched his hands into fists, breathing deeply. It didn’t matter what she said. He was going to do it.
***
As soon as he got home, he stripped to his boxers and put himself through a punishing weights routine, then pounded the standing punching bag. He’d taken up boxing in college to release all the anger and pain twisting his insides into knots. He was afraid if he didn’t, he might explode. He and Peter would spend hours in the gym, working the bags and learning moves from instructors willing to give them advice.
Exhausting himself until he was almost ready to pass out was the only way he could deal with visits to his mother. He knew he was a shit for losing his temper with her, but with every visit, he was finding it more and more difficult to summon up the smallest bit of love for the person who’d abandoned him in favor of a designer wardrobe and a fat bank account.
Once showered, his body aching but still humming, Leo walked the half a mile or so to the supermarket to get some beer for the ball game that night. It was a typical outer-borough neighborhood where you knew the local shopkeepers by name, and on warm evenings, many of them could be found chatting with people in the doorways or on the street. Tables and chairs were set up on the sidewalk in front of the small storefront restaurants, and Leo waved to a couple of men sitting with beers and platters of pierogi in front of them but shook his head at their calls to join them. Occasionally he’d hire them for odd jobs around the building when he needed extra help and though they tried to be friendly, he kept to himself.
He meandered up and down the aisles and tossed a couple of bags of chips into his shopping wagon as well as the beer. After seeing his mother, he wanted to release the pain of the present and decided to return to the past, when things between them had been good, so he picked up a loaf of bread and a block of cheddar cheese, thinking life would be so much simpler and better if everything could be fixed with a grilled-cheese sandwich, like it used to when he was a kid.