A Stranger at the Table

Mum and I sit at a round, white table most nights. We’re up late tonight. Long past dinner. Way past Scooby Doo.

My sisters are asleep, and I should be too. But I’m here instead. In the burnt orange kitchen of a sad gray house on a flat brown street. Somewhere in Dallas.

Mum hasn’t spoken for a while, but she’s moving; her eyelids lower and lift. A tacky tongue moistens her lips.

Beyond her, our reflection floats in the sliding-glass door. We look like ghosts sitting beneath a wicker lampshade dangling from a loopedy-loop chain. Our vinyl seats remind me of a tablecloth you might see in an Italian restaurant, except our cushions are checkered yellow and white, not red.

“Your father would be disgusted.”

There she is.

“He’d be disgusted with you more,” I say right back. I sound croaky-tired, from all the talking most likely, or because I’m twelve now. My voice is starting to crack.

Mum’s fuzzy eyes size me up.

“You’ll never be a man,” she says. “And you’re fat. What the fuck do you eat?” I file her comment away with the other things she might be right about.

“You’re not a mother.”

Her chest balloons. She goes red. Then she speaks.

“I. Am. Your. Mother.”

That’s how it goes, Mum and me.

She takes a sip of vodka, then lowers her glass hesitantly, like a helicopter attempting to land.

“Be careful,” I say. “Don’t spill any.”

“Do you even shave?” she asks. “Proper boys shave. Here, let me feel.” She reaches for my chin, expects me to meet her halfway. I don’t.

“C’m here!” she urges, fingers wiggling.

She sounds sincere. But I know better. She wants more than my chin. The last time she came at me with that hand looking like Mum but all bent out of shape, I ended up naked in the street. The time before that, she threatened to use a secret gun on us all.

“I’ve got one,” she insisted. “When you’re asleep. All three of you dead.”

That’s where it ends. But this is where it always begins. Here, at this table. I scoot my chair back a foot.

“Who shaves when they’re twelve?”

Her arm stays outstretched, fingers static now, spiking between us.

Her sloshy eyes wander.

She wants something. A cuddle, maybe. Not like she cuddles my sisters on those rare happy days, cheeks pressed together, laughing. No, my hug is different. She makes me massage her shoulders, brush her hair, then stroke her legs all the way to the top. I do until I won’t. Then she’s chasing me through the house, grabbing whatever she can. I wind up squashed behind the couch. Both sisters screaming.

“It’s late,” I tell her.

Her gaze turns fierce. Alarming. At odds with the sad face around it. She jabs the air, presses invisible buttons.

“I. Am. Your. Mother.”

I want to shake the words loose, have them said and done because they've stopped making sense.

“Who do you think you are?” she says, relaxing her arm.

We fall silent again.

Mum continues to stare at me, like an arm-wrestler refusing to lose. Staring back isn’t awkward when she’s like this. She could be a cat. Or the wall. I want my expression to scream at her, though. I want to tell her that lover-boy Jim chose his wife instead of her. That she made a monumental mistake moving us halfway across the world to this godforsaken American desert just for him.

She knows.

I notice a fleece of peachy fuzz below her ear. It makes the whole of her seem so much softer than she’s become. I sniff the air between us in search of her breath. There it is, warm and boozy. Sweat and Calandre are mixed in there, too. Once upon a time, it was only perfume. Back when she was beautiful.

I relax my features. Perhaps she’ll see the younger me who used to hold her hand. The son she was amused by because he was bright. She liked that about me once.

She remembers.

It isn’t just me etched into my face. She sees Dad, too, I bet. It’s hard to tell if she misses him as much as I do—misses him at all. Jim’ll be there. Her American hero. Dripping with charm, then dropping her slowly. And Grandad. He’s everywhere she goes, hating her one way or another. Three grown men reflected in my schoolboy face. But it’s only me sitting here with her now on these sunshiny seats.

Not them. Just me.

She rearranges herself entirely, as you do at intermission, collects her thoughts, sips her Smirnoff, then glances at her ankles.

“You don’t have a girlfriend.”

She doesn’t even bother to look up at me.

I hate it when she weaves something awkward through a matter of fact. Comments like those are like walking into cobwebs. It takes me a minute to pick it all apart. I prefer crystal-clear meanness because I know how to be mean right back. I can’t argue with this.

“When are you going to bed?” I ask, steering her away from anything to do with me.

“None of your business. You go to bed.”

She fumbles with a pack of cigarettes, fingers sliding hopelessly over the cellophane-covered box. I take it from her, try jerking a cigarette out like a man in the movies. One does.

She grabs it and lights it fast.

A cloud of smoke billows toward the sliding-glass door. I know not to bring up the gun, but it’s on my mind. It’s always on my mind. Looming. I need her to fall asleep first. And she will.

Usually, she lowers her head onto the table and stays that way until morning. Sometimes, I help her to bed. I relax when that happens. A different room makes a difference. She’ll mumble her nonsense down the corridor. Vicious kisses. Sloppy hands. A buckling wreck.

Sometimes, I do as she asks because I’m too tired not to. I settle into her warm, clammy grip and wait for the night to be over. I always wake up in my own bed, though, my fingers and pillowcase smelling of her.

Mum looks out beyond the patio and sucks hard on her cigarette. A red-polished fingertip glides across the pack lying nearby. It traces the outer edge of the giant blue-and-orange bullseye printed on the box. I'm reminded of one of those birds that circles overhead. High in the sky. Circling something.

A second plume of smoke pours from her mouth, riding the back of a sigh. Mum’s body slumps ever so slightly.

“Why don’t you love me?” she asks no one. Anyone. Me.

If she only knew how much I still do.

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First published in the Funny, Not Funny, Shaking the Tree – Volume 7 – San Diego Memoir Showcase Anthology in 2026.