Excerpt: Jon of Arc

Sleep fell upon Jon like giant hailstones, bashing his thoughts, feelings, and self-confidence with wave after wave of congealed misery. After three hours and thirty-five minutes of the abuse, he dragged himself out of his California King bed and meandered toward the shower. Had he made a mistake? He knew that he was going to miss Gina, or at least aspects of her, and he worried that perhaps he didn’t make the best decisions on no sleep and stressed out from too much school work put off for too much time.

Her cute nose and hypnotizing eyes danced in front of him, berating him for making such a stupid mistake. This wouldn’t do. He was going to have to force himself to concentrate on all her faults. That’s the only way to properly get over someone.

As the hot water pounded him in the face, he thought about all of the things she did to piss him off. She flirted way too much. “It doesn’t mean anything,” she’d said when he’d finally gotten her to admit to it, but Jon hadn’t seen it that way. He wondered why it had bothered him so much, started thinking that it was because that when he flirted, he meant it, and decided to stop that line of thought for the moment. No use worrying about his own faults right now.

Then her annoying quirks began flowing into his mind in time on tempo with the pulsating water washing over him. She made the most nerve-grating baby voice when she thought she was being cute. She would have one drink of anything and then stumble around the rest of the evening as though she were drunk. She left her shampoo and conditioner bottles on the side of the tub after her shower. She couldn’t find get anything from the meticulously arranged medicine cabinet without creating a veritable disaster area. She didn’t close the inside wrapper on the cereal boxes. She’d leave half-empty Coca Cola cans inside the fridge. She never could remember where she’d left the remote control. She’d spend hours on the phone talking to Midge or Jana or Brenda or Charlotte and then not remember where she left the handset.

And she loved his mother. That was the one that annoyed him the most. He couldn’t even say he loved his mom. He’d definitely never heard her utter those words to him and he’d never been asked to say them to her. She wasn’t mean, per se. Or rude, exactly. She wasn’t abusive or hateful or thoughtless either. She just wasn’t close. She was more like a rich aunt that wanted an occasional kiss on the cheek and expected people younger than her to call her ma’am. That was part of it too. All of his friends called their mom, “Mother,” or “Mom,” or even “Mommy.” From as far back as he could remember, he was required to call her ma’am.

He was four years old. Well, four or five anyway. He’d been outside with Stevie Wilson, playing with Matchbox cars probably, and Stevie’s mom had come to get her little boy.

“OK, Stevie, we have to get going now,” Stevie’s mom said, bending down to talk directly to him.

“Can’t I stay an play a little longer?” Stevie pleaded.

“No, you can’t today. We have to go and pick your father up from work.”

Stevie pouted for a moment or two but ran into his mom’s arms when she held them out to him. “OK, mommy, I just need to get my cars.”

Mommy? That had been the first time Jon had heard the word. He’d heard mom before, but not mommy and he loved the sound of it immediately. As soon as Stevie and he had separated their cars out he ran all the way home, dashed through the front door and up the steps to his mother’s office, and burst into the room.
“Mommy! Mommy! Me and Stevie are done playing.”

He had heard her sigh but other than that she didn’t respond at all.

“Mommy, mommy! Did you hear me?”

Slowly and methodically she raised herself up from her grey, leather office chair and stood looking at him above the surface of her giant, cherry wood desk. Her face was red and he remembered thinking she looked kind of like the sun coming up over the old abandoned lot on 4th street. She stood still as a winter dawn and just stared at him for what felt like forever at the time. Finally, she said, “Ma’am. You’ll address me as ma’am if you expect me to answer you. I’m not mother or mom or even worse, mommy. Have I made myself clear?”

“Yes,” he barely squeaked.

“Yes what?”

“Yes, ma’am.”