At Wit's End - Excerpt

“Mom?” The screen door bangs, announcing Nathan’s presence almost as quickly as his bellow does.

“Yes, I’m in the living room.” Sharon sets her magazine aside as Nathan comes around the corner holding a bag of Tupperware containers he’s bringing back from the frozen dinners Sharon has given him over the past few months.

Nathan gestures with the bag and is about to ask, “Where do you want these?” but something in his Mom’s demeanour gives him the impression that the liquor cabinet has been opened a little early today. He instead comes up with, “What’s that?” using the bag to gesture at the coffee table bearing a tumbler with ice and caramel-brown, carbonated liquid.

“It’s a Coke,” Sharon replies with a barely veiled lack of patience and an ample amount of condescension.

“What kind of a Coke, Mom?” Nathan’s chest and shoulders let the air out of themselves in a way that looks both browbeaten and passive-aggressive.

“Regular Coke. I never did like Cherry Coke, and the diet stuff is poison.” Trying to look natural, Sharon begins gathering and straightening the pile of reading material she has accumulated next to herself on the couch.

“Mom!” Nathan gives his best exasperated voice. The impatience he conveys is the same kind his mother felt so many times when roles were reversed and the information being provided was deliberately off-track. Nathan recognizes the irony perfectly but will not back down.

“Alright, Nathan, you’ve dragged it out of me. It’s pure, satisfying Coca-Cola that has been polluted by demon water. Before your very eyes, I will transform from the fine, upstanding citizen you have come to know and love and change into a wanton woman without regard for social mores or responsibility . . . Of course, mine has been a rather slow path to depravity, given that I started drinking in the nineteen-sixties and still managed to hold together a household and a job until just a few months ago.” Sharon stands up from the couch so Nathan won’t be looking down at her.

“Oh for Pete’s sake, Mom! I only mean that it’s four in the afternoon, and if I’m any judge of alcohol tolerance, I’d say that was at least your third drink of the day.” Nathan isn’t skilled at confrontation. He’d rather avoid it at all costs, but he and Anna are concerned about the effect too much spare time is having on their mother. As the first few months of retirement went by, the drinks seemed to get earlier and earlier in the day, and slowly more numerous.

“Well, you’re not a good judge. I am, in fact, only just starting this second alcoholic beverage of the day. I’ll have you know I had a perfectly horrid afternoon learning bridge with Mary. This little bit of license”—Mary picks up the drink and gives Nathan a small salute with it—“is my reward for maintaining a cheerful disposition through the whole thing.”

“You hate bridge.” Nathan snorts. “There is no way you maintained a cheerful disposition through the whole thing.”

“I did so, or at least near enough. Now, if you will strip off your judicial robes and stop your diatribe for the afternoon, I could use a hand getting dinner on.”