FRIDAY, AT SEVEN IN THE MORNING, Kyla, dressed in civvies--jeans and a RACE FOR THE CURE T-shirt--took husband Paul to PDX. He was outbound for an eight-day business trip. While he could have, that early, managed a cab, she volunteered. They hadn't had time, with the press of their jobs (he, a software engineer for Cirrus; she, HomeFinder Realty's top producer) to hash over what their son, Alex, had in the way of plans, or lack thereof, for the summer when he came back from U of O later that day.
Five hours after she hugged, kissed Paul good-bye at the Southwest gate for Albuquerque, Kyla told sixteen-year-old daughter Zoe, achingly thin like all her girlfriends, that she was gone to get Alex. She took Steve's cavernous Tahoe and drove the 110 miles from their Irvington Tudor to the yellow-striped loading zone in the shadow of a towering concrete dormitory on a May afternoon in Eugene under a blue, windless sky.
Kyla had cell-phoned Alex thirty minutes out of Eugene. Just now, he rushed down the sidewalk, blond buzz cut, shabby jeans, easily the winner of any moving-day-casual contest with Mom.
"Wow, am I glad you're here. I brought everything down the freight elevator and it's all in the lobby, as we speak now."
Kyla hugged Alex, felt almost teary at how much taller he was than she. It had not been that many years since the growth spurt. "So how did the final go?" She had cut out the phone calls after Alex's machine message proclaimed him in marathon study sessions for the biology exam the day before.
"Oh, okay. It was all multiple-choice and I never have a clue how I did with those."
"I'm sure you did fine. Say, we can get it all in here, don't you think?" Kyla eyed the garage-sized maw of the Tahoe, rear door open.
"Sure, why don't we lay the bike down sideways and put the garment bags, everything else on top?"
They ferried the moving cart from the dorm a few times. Then with Alex's accumulated belongings from one year at U of O on board, Kyla closed the door. "That's that."
"Be back, un secondo," Alex said, playfully pushing the cart up the sidewalk to the dorm, in what seemed an expression of carefree relief that he was going home.
Saturday morning, Kyla was up early. Alex was home again. She had a full day of houses to show and one couple was ready to buy.
Kyla cooked eggs and bacon and a sluggish Alex, wearing an old bathrobe, padded in, yawning.
"Where's Zoe?" she asked.
"Party girl, sleeps in."
"Then it's the two of us." She smiled--it really was her firstborn home again. "Here, all your favorites."
"Oh, Mother, you didn't have to--"
"Let's eat, I have to leave in fifteen minutes."
"And bacon! I told you I'm a vegetarian, didn't I?
She sipped her coffee, ignoring him. Alex had been a picky eater all his life.
"I'm sorry, meat is so gross."
Her eyes flared wide. She did a mental ten-count and kept eating.
Alex fussed with toast and butter and after the awkward silence, Kyla pursued idle chitchat--How'd you sleep? Like this break from studying? Then she left.
The rest of the day was all good news. Namely, an earnest money note a couple with a three-year-old boy in tow signed.
With such an embrace of good fortune, Kyla returned home and found Alex and Zoe in back. Alex slumped in an Adirondack chair, a vegetarian Diet Coke in hand. Zoe, on the porch with CD caliper earphones horseshoeing her neck.
Alex placed the can on the broad chair arm. "I tell you guys, Chase and I celebrated our six-month anniversary before I left?"
"Yeah, Chase, dreadlocks," Kyla said, remembering a disheveled character from a hurried visit to Eugene months before. "Anniversary of what?"
"Sex--what else?"
Zoe tittered. Alex grinned with obvious satisfaction.
"I'm concerned about you, Alex. I hope you're keeping your priorities--uh--in mind."
"I can't even think straight anymore. Ha, ha." Alex drank more Coke and seemed to delight in Kyla's awkward sensitivity. "Let's not slide into homophobia, Mom."
Zoe slipped on the earphones and pressed PLAY on the Sony--she knew well this argument--and seemed ready to open the screen door and go in the house.
Kyla gave Zoe no attention and ignored Alex's victimhood baiting. "Priorities, Alex. Priorities, two thousand a month keeps you in Eugene. So don't joke around. We just don't want to see you throw everything away."
Kyla studied Alex, looking for assent. She didn't see any. All she saw was the characteristic squinch in Alex's face, a telltale sign from almost toddler days that Alex was stuck in thought, couldn't decide what to say.
"We don't care what you study," Kyla continued. "We only want you to give yourself a future."
Alex started humming Elgar's "Pomp and Circumstance." He smirked, screwing up his face in silliness.
Zoe stopped her CD and bent forward. "Sorry. I'd like to stay, but, Mom, I gotta get going, I have to be at Cydney's tonight, remember? I have to get ready."
"Okay, have a good time," Kyla said as if she had heard the plan before.
The screen door spring creaked and Zoe left. Kyla restudied Alex. "I'm serious about this," she said.
"Sure, like that valedictorian bit, Give yo'self a future. People have been giving and giving me advice all my life."
"I told you, Alex, major in anything you want."
"But this pressure's crazy. Thousands and thousands of dollars, wrap up that education, young man," he said, doing his best to fake a basso profundo. "You've got thirty-six months."
Kyla looked away from Alex, as if she'd let him get over his peevish outburst.
"The way you guys talk," he continued in a soft voice, "it's like paying off some car loan. I need a timeout."
Alex was going to sit around the house apparently all summer and do nothing. He had no plans. She stared at him in disbelief and gaped at what illogic possessed him. "This is your break. Three months off, right now. What's up with you?"
"I was thinking maybe in fall instead of starting classes, I'd do something different."
"What? Stay here?"
"No, Chase was talking, we'd go off to Europe for six months. Good time to travel through France, Italy--the summer tourists are gone . . ."
"Okay, I'll level with you," she said steepling her fingers, gazing at Alex. "I'm a bit put out. And if Paul were here, I'd bet he'd say the same things, only more so. We wouldn't work as hard, schlepping around, if it weren't for you and Zoe and what you two might make of yourself with the right opportunities."
"But I want to be with Chase," he said softly.
"Not good enough. This sounds like you're quitting on school. What are you doing for money? Give that any thought?"
"Gee, always comes back to money, doesn't it? Don't worry, Chase's parents aren't strapped for cash." His face, mercurial as ever, switched from vulnerable to smirky.
"Don't think Chase's parents might not hear from us."
Alex glowered.
"Paul is not going to like this," she said.
"That's new?" He eyed what was left in the Coke can and then gave it a bottom's-up swallow.
"Listen, I won't mention it when he calls tonight. You'll have time to think it over before he gets back."
"So will you. You two better find some acceptance on this one." On the chair arm, Alex placed the Coke can on its side and with the edge of his palm crushed it to a U.
The rest of that evening they did not talk.
When Alex went to bed that night, he told her, in a voice of exhausted feeling, he would like to sleep in tomorrow morning. Kyla, sipping Scotch, did not take her eyes off Letterman and said, "Okay."
The Sunday morning routine was a refuge from the fallout of arguing with Alex. Kyla was up brewing coffee, snagging a weighty Oregonian off the mossy concrete front steps before eight. She hugged what felt like pounds of newsprint, sleeved in thin plastic, tied off at one end. While newspapers had to be dry, she hated figuring out how to extricate the jumble of daily tidings from its protective film. Paul always did that.
In the kitchen, she yanked open a drawer, rooted about for scissors among the miscellany of utensils. No scissors. A small chef's knife caught her eye. That had to do.
Drawer pushed in, cutting board out, stroking the knife edge across the butt end of the sleeved newspaper, a few disconnected cut marks. Did Paul ever sharpen knives?
The knife handle regripped, a stab downward, a pull backward, an opening in the plastic. Knife on the counter, clinched teeth, both hands in the opened plastic. The knife again, sawing at the opening. Success. The film came off.
She took the paper to the deck in back, where her coffee had gone tepid in the morning air. She fumbled the paper off the table and trudged back inside to microwave the coffee.
Already it was eight-fifteen. When Alex said he would sleep in, What did that self-righteous twit mean? Noon?
The microwave beeped. Kyla took the coffee and returned to mound the newspaper spillings on the deck table.
She turned automatically to the home listings, then fished out the Living section for her horoscope, but read nothing about what she was going through.
She did not look forward to telling Paul about Alex. He would warm up to the idea of Alex leaving school to travel with Chase no quicker than an iceberg. Just when they thought they had brought Alex along through eighteen long years, readied him to be a successful adult, this had to happen. The rocket blows up on the launchpad.
Kyla flipped through the paper, section by section, reading
nothing. Her head ached. She was thinking about Paul, Friday back from Albuquerque, he would submarine into a prolonged sulk about Alex. Not talking, not helping her. Between Alex and Paul, Kyla saw weeks looming of insufferable family tension. She sighed and stood up to return to the kitchen for more coffee.
Upstairs, noises came from Alex's room. Alex could be a light sleeper, but those heavy thumps? She left the coffee cup on the counter to check.
On the second floor, at the end of the hall, Alex's door was slightly ajar. Odd because Alex always kept the door closed when he was sleeping, did so ever since he was a child. Kyla took that portal gap as an invitation.
"Alex, you're not awake, are you?" Kyla asked not out of courtesy, but as a gambit to see what was going on. Obviously, all that motion was not sleeping.
"I'm busy," Alex said in a huff.
That two-inch gap of room view disappeared with a door slam.
It was Kyla's house, after all, and her son's privacy be damned, she was not about to back down from a door shut in her face. She stepped closer, had her hand on the door knob, but did not turn it.
"Alex, I don't want to start where we left off last night."
No response from the other side, just more tossing things around.
Kyla had not the faintest what Alex might be doing. "But you are going to have to sit down with Paul and me and discuss with us calmly and rationally what you're going to do about college."
Silence.
Then slapping sounds and steps and whoosh, the door opened, revealing Alex, holding soft luggage that bulged like beach balls.
"This isn't working, I'm leaving."
Kyla was paralyzed. Her son staring her down like she was a stranger, like he was nothing more than an overnight guest ready to resume travel.
"Just like that," she managed to say, her throat feeling dry. "Can't you stick around to see your father?"
"I'll call him when he's back." Alex sighed as if he were Atlas. "I hardly slept last night, I'm ready to leave." He hiked up the luggage like a march down the stairs would get him out that front door.
"If you're going back to Eugene, I can give you a ride."
"Thanks, but I'll use your phone and cab it to the Greyhound station."
With an intuitive sense her son was leaving the nest for good, Kyla reached for one of the bags and together they shuffled out the hallway, down the steps, across the landing, down the steps, and over the entryway to the sunroom where Alex phoned.
"The cab'll be here in fifteen minutes," he said. "That gives us some time to talk." Alex had that annoying smirk on his face.
With an index finger, Kyla gently wicked away at her eyes what might have soon been tears. She wanted to tell Alex that they, the family, would always be there for him. That this was his home. But that smirk, which probably Alex could not help, meant she could not say anything that was in her heart.
"I was just thinking," she said. "If you'd known you were going to cause all this confusion, it might have been better if you stayed in Eugene with Chase."
They both laughed. Kyla hugged her son like it had to be for the last time.