Mother

Yet another uneventful day passes in the Cornish town of Plymouth. A gorgeous sunset could be dimly seen from the musty windows of an ordinary town bus. An old lady reads in tranquillity a worn-out book. The contents didn't matter at all to those tired blue eyes. She already reached the age when she would do things just for the sake of remembering days of delight and peace long ago in the past. With a tired sigh, she put the book in her grey knitted bag, thanked the driver and left the bus. Her tiny figure found herself again in the same lively street, filled to the brim with cheery children running around and bustling flowers. She seemed to pass unnoticed through the rows of the tidy brick houses, all screaming for attention with their ornated high green fences and fretting birds. This riot of colours and sounds made her already grouchy mind go bonkers. She stopped right in front of what would seem an outsider, a bloody intruder in this whole vomit of vanity and wealth. The dim grey cottage with its unkempt garden spoke volumes of the sullen old madam. The sheer amount of weeds could strangle a cow in their tight grip. The rusty door moved and revealed a living room with a troubling amount of wooden carved shapes on the shelves, armchairs and even the floor. One could feel as the falling dust boiled at the sudden rage of the morose lady. In a mere moment, the oak stairs started screaming and squealing in revolt under her furious march towards the attic. After banging the door for nearly a couple of minutes, the creature made its appearance. Long coarse black hair covered his cloudy green eyes. His skin was covered by a thick layer of dirt, which stench could make anyone's nose flare up from repugnance. The man of short stature stood there motionless, in fear of his distressed mother. The lady pushed aside her son, looked around the mess in the room, the sickening mess of dirty laundry, spilt food and the ungodly amounts of manga and novels scattered around the floor.

The house trembled as she hissed at the lousy boy:

"Why you can't listen to me a bit, Remus... I asked you one thing, to go and pack all your dad's sculptures. I put all of them in a room just for you. It seemed simple enough, but not for my dear Remus. Everything for him is a bloody challenge! Cleaning his laundry, oh no, he is not grown up enough."

"Mother, I... " His shoulders slouched in defeat.

"Don't stammer, you foolish boy. Hmph, what is this hogshit you have been swimming all this time? Aah? Come to me, Remus. Why are you retreating like swine for the slaughter?"

The lady started looking inquisitively through the mess on the floor. Taking every dirty piece of laundry, empty can of noodles or soda can and throwing it aside. Amidst this disorder, she found a very intriguing object. Remus took the article in a flurry from her hands, a feat unimaginable to the size of his belly. She squinted her eyes with a hint of disappointment in her glare.

"Seriously, Remus? Even to cartoons?" The boy promptly hid the object under his black hoodie.

"Ehh, you will be a 22-year-old man in no time. Yet you still fool around." The lady sighed in defeat while straightening up again and resuming the same stern look from before.

"Go and take a shower, tidy this bloody room already and pack those sculptures downstairs!" Remus crouched and started gathering the trash from the floor in deafening silence. The lady looked at him with a growing sense of pity and said with a tinge of affection:

"I understand what those things meant for you, Remus. But it's time to move on. I can't anymore." The boy grumbled under his nose while avoiding her gaze:

"You are not the one to speak, reading his favourite book day after day." Remus could see as her eyes were watering in pain. The lady stirred tried to make up a response, but she was soon retorted with frostiness by Remus.

"Don't you dare lie. You never once in your life enjoyed Dumas."

"Remus, I ... I need to move on. It has been 6 years already, my darling. You will leave this house in one, two or maybe three years. Then I will be all alone with nothing but my horrific job and leftovers of the past."

The boy remained stoically silent in his downcast diligence. The former moroseness came back to her wrinkled face. She sighed in resign and murmured softly:

"Remus, finish your chores and come to dinner."

She got up and stared pleadingly at her darling boy one last time, gripping the old door, waiting for words to help her bridge the painful growing gap between her and precious Remus. The stairs croaked yet the words never came.

Mother has never really recovered after my father's death. I remember the day as if it was yesterday, a sunny summer day, with the ocean breeze ravishing Plymouth's residents. Mother, as per usual, worked her long shift hours as a nurse. In the meantime, the 14-year-old I was goofing around with my buddies, teaching them to sculpt. My father was supposed to come that day and help me out, but in the end, he never came.

He died from a heart attack. We always knew that he had some serious problems with his heart. But we wouldn't have expected how he'd end. He never actually brought much on the table, except some little earnings he had from his sculptures. Mother worked a lot of extra hours just to make up for his lack of involvement. Still, she never actually cared that much about the money, as long as he was there.

And his death made my mother closer than ever to the edge of a cliff.

An old wall clock could be heard doing its daily job as the savoury smell of curry and roasted beef spread through the home. Remus stared at the cardboard boxes, stuffed with what used to be his childhood. The series of wooden sculptures carved under the strict tutelage of his father stood there desolate, a memory ready to be given away. He gripped with vehement protest a cute fox, obviously carved by the little hands of an unskilled child. After promptly hiding the toy, his fit of nostalgia was broken away by the voice of his mother. Remus was met with his favourite dish, a beef lasagna with a good amount of curry sauce. The pungent curry with the mild savourous smell of lasagna mixed quite well. His friend Jaimie would jerk every time at hearing about this weird recipe. The Heinz curry sauce was, however, a must in their family, despite the wild protests of their visitors. This dinner would have been as any other if not for the tough spat they had earlier.

The lady still broke the silence by nagging her son a little more.

"Did you finish doing your laundry and cleaning your room?" Remus rolled his eyes and nodded curtly.

"What about the carvings?"

"Everything is done and dusted, mother." He spat while slamming the fork on the oak table. A brief truce was kept while cutlery moved furiously on the plates.

"You are unjust with me, Remus. I am in no smaller pain than you, but it must be done." His glare softened mildly.

"Ahem, I am sorry for today. My failure at the exams had been bugging my mind for quite a while." "You know even Hitler was not accepted at the art school, even though some critics say nowadays that his paintings were quite good."

"Mom, you are not helping..."Remus sighed, his mood lightened by the persistent humour of his mother. The lady put her fork down and clutched her son's hand with affection.

"Everything will come along, son. Give it time." His mom stood up and patted him on the back, trying to encourage him somehow. The familiar sound of the water moving through the faucet's rusty pipes gave a sense of serenity to both mother and son.

"You know, when you think about it, this is a good opportunity to work upon yours and Jamie's cartoons."

"It's called manga, mom." Remus sighed in futile desperation towards his mother's ignorance of things of culture.

"You know, I might make you watch one of those cartoons sometimes in the future."

"Don't joke around, come and help your mother wash the dishes." The wrinkled hands of the lady scrubbed any trace of grease with due diligence.

"Everything will get better, you know, Remus."

"Of course."

"I mean it. You will get accepted into university. I will finally save up enough money for that flower shop I've dreamt about and finally quit that exhausting job at the hospital. We will be so happy then." Remus went and put the leftover lasagna in the fridge.

"We need to change for the better, Remus. "She sized her son up for the moment and noted while pointing at his belly:

"You've gotten pretty fat lately." The look on his face made her giggle with delight.

"In all seriousness, you shouldn't let yourself fall in this sort of state. You've been even poorly sleeping lately." Remus just waited for the final verdict to come by and accept it with due obedience because his mother has always been that sort of lady.

"We will go and take a fresh breath of air at least once every day. You know, walk along the shores and other stuff. It gets quite lively down there during the evenings. Plymouth is Britain's ocean city, after all." The sheer amount of despair on Remus's face would have been quite a sight to behold.

"I have an idea. Let's start with today!" His mother's face bloomed with joy at her own ingenuity.

"You will go by yourself though, I am a tad too tired after work. You have slept till evening, either way, a good refresher would not hurt." Remus stared for a while at the radiant face of his mother and sighed in defeat.

"You continue to amaze me every day, mother."

"Heh, I know. Don't forget your coat. It gets pretty chilly in the evenings, although it's summer."

"I love you, mom."

"I love you, son."