I found my mother stretched out on the living-room sofa, with Muffit curled up at her feet, watching the latest episode of Doctor Who, one of her many televised addictions. Neither of them heard me come in, so I set my Armada controller box on the stairs and then just stood there for a moment, watching my mother watch her show.
Pamela Lightman (née Crandall) was the coolest woman I’d ever met, as well as the toughest. She reminded me a lot of Sarah Connor or Ellen Ripley—sure, she might have a few issues, but she was also the kind of single mom who would strap on heavy artillery and mow down killer cyborgs, if that was what it took to protect her offspring.
My mother was also ridiculously beautiful. I know people are supposed to say things like that about their mothers, but in my case it happened to be a fact. Few young men know the Oedipal torment of growing up with an insanely hot, perpetually single mom. Watching men constantly flip out over her looks before they’d even bothered to get to know her had made me faintly disgusted by my own gender—as if I didn’t already have enough psychological baggage strapped to my luggage rack.
Raising me all by herself had been difficult for my mother, in lots of ways that probably weren’t obvious to most people. For one thing, she’d done it without any assistance from her own parents. She’d lost her own father to cancer when she was still in grade school, and then her ultra-religious mother had disowned her for getting knocked up while she was still a senior in high school and then marrying the no-good Nintendo nerd who’d defiled her.
My mom had told me that her mother only tried to reconcile with her once, a few months after my father died. It didn’t go well. She’d made the mistake of telling my mom his death was “a blessing in disguise” because it meant that now she could find herself a “respectable husband—one with some prospects.”
After that, my mom had disowned her.
I secretly worried that one of the toughest things for my mother was the simple necessity of being forced to look at my face every day. I looked just like my father, and so far, the similarity had only seemed to increase as I got older. Now I was nearing the age he’d been at the time of his death, and I tried not to wonder how awful it must be for my mom to see her dead husband’s doppelganger smiling at her from across the breakfast table every morning. Part of me even wondered if that might be why she’d become such a workaholic the past few years.
My mom had never played the part of the lonely widow—she went out dancing with her friends all the time, and I knew she dated occasionally, too. But she always seemed to end her relationships before they got serious. I’d never bothered to ask her why. The reason was obvious—she was still in love with my father, or at least with the memory of him.
In my younger years, I’d drawn a kind of perverse satisfaction from knowing how much she missed him, because it was proof my parents really had been in love, but now that I’d grown up a little, I was beginning to worry she might stay single forever. I didn’t like the idea of her living here all alone in this house after I graduated and moved out.
“Hi, Mom,” I said, speaking softly so as not to startle her.
“Oh hey, honey!” she said, muting the TV and sitting up slowly. “I didn’t hear you come in.” She pointed at her right cheek, and I dutifully went over and planted a kiss there. “Thank you!” she said, ruffling my hair. Then she patted the couch beside her and I sat down, pulling Muffit onto my lap. “How was your day, kiddo?” she asked.
“Not too bad,” I said, punctuating the lie with a casual shrug to help sell it. “How was your day, Ma?”
“Oh, it was pretty good,” she replied, mimicking my voice—and my casual shrug.
“Glad to hear it,” I said, even though I suspected she was fibbing, too. She spent her days taking care of cancer patients, many of them terminally ill. I wasn’t sure how she ever managed to have a good day at that job.
“You’re not working late tonight?” I asked. “It’s a Christmas miracle.”
She laughed at our old family joke. Everything was a Christmas miracle at our house, all year round.
“I decided to take a night off.” She swung her feet off the couch and turned to face me. “You hungry, babe? Because I’m craving cinnamon French toast.” She stood up. “How about it, kid? Feel like having some breakfast-for-dinner with your mom?”
Her question made my spider-sense tingle. My mom only offered to make me breakfast-for-dinner when she wanted to have a “serious talk” with me.
“Thanks, but I had pizza at work,” I said, inching backward. “I’m kinda stuffed.”
She moved between me and the staircase, blocking my escape.
“You shall not pass!” she declared, stomping her foot down theatrically on the carpet.
“Your vice principal called me a little while ago,” she said. “He told me you ditched math class early today—right after you tried to pick a fight with Douglas Knotcher.”
I looked at her face and fought down a wave of anger, instead forcing myself to see how worried and upset she was, and how much she was trying to hide it.
“I wasn’t trying to pick a fight, Mom,” I said. “He was tormenting this other kid who sits near me. He’s been bullying him for weeks. And I ran out of there because it was the only way to stop myself from tearing Knotcher’s head off. You should be proud of me.”
She studied my face for a moment; then she sighed and kissed me on the cheek.
“Okay, kiddo,” she said, hugging me. “I know it isn’t easy being stuck in that zoo. Just tough it out for a few more months and then you’ll be free. Captain of your own destiny.”
“I know, Ma,” I said. “Two months. I’ll make it. No worries.”
“Remember,” she added, biting her lip. “You’re not a minor anymore.…”
“I know,” I said. “Don’t worry. Nothing like that will ever happen again, okay?”
She nodded. I could see that she was thinking about the Incident. The Incident that I’d just promised her, for the thousandth time, would never happen again.
Here’s what would never happen again:
One morning, a few weeks after I started seventh grade, I was walking past Knotcher and a few of his friends in the hallway when he smiled at me and said, “Hey, Lightman! Is it true your old man was dumb enough to die in a shit-factory explosion?”
I’m not paraphrasing. That’s a direct quote. There were eyewitnesses.
The next thing I remember, I was sitting on Knotcher’s chest, staring down at his motionless, blood-drenched face, amid a cacophony of screams from our classmates. Then I felt a tangle of strong arms around my neck and torso, pulling me up and off of him—and found myself wondering why my knuckles were in agony, and why Knotcher was now curled in a bleeding heap on the waxed marble floor in front of me.
Afterward, they said I attacked him “like a wild animal” and beat him unconscious. They said I kept right on beating him, even after he went limp.
Apparently it took two other boys and a teacher to finally pull me off of him.
Knotcher spent a week in the hospital recovering from a mild concussion and a fractured jaw. I got off pretty light, considering—a two-week suspension and mandatory anger-management therapy the remainder of the school year, along with the nickname “Zack Attack” and a permanent reputation as the class psycho.
Far worse than any of that was the terrible ten-second gap the Incident had left in my memory, and the question it’d forced me to ask myself nearly every day since: What would I have done if there had been no one there to stop me?
Knotcher had probably seen a scan of my father’s old newspaper obituary online. It was one of the only results that came up when you searched for his name. That was the way I’d learned how he’d died. My mother and grandparents had kept the details of his death from me while I was growing up—and I’m thankful they did, because that obituary had haunted me since the moment I’d first read it. I still had every word memorized:
Beaverton Man Dies in Wastewater Treatment Plant Accident
Beaverton Valley Times—October 6, 2000
A Beaverton man was killed at approximately 9am Friday in an accident at the city’s wastewater treatment plant on South River Road. Dead is Xavier Ulysses Lightman, 19, of 603 Bluebonnet Ave., an employee of the city of Beaverton. The Washington County Coroner pronounced Lightman dead at the scene. Lightman was working near a storage tank when an undetected methane leak rendered him unconscious. Investigators surmised a spark from an exposed electrical circuit ignited the gas, and Lightman was killed instantly in the subsequent explosion. A lifetime resident of Beaverton, Lightman is survived by his wife, Pamela, and son, Zackary. Funeral arrangements—
“Zack, are you even listening to me right now?”
“Of course I am, Mom,” I lied. “What were you saying?”
“I said that your guidance counselor, Mr. Russell, left me a voicemail, too.” She folded her arms. “He said you missed your last two career counseling sessions.”
“Sorry—I must have forgotten,” I said. “I’ll go to the next one, okay? I promise.”