// Exercise 42
Lindsay stood in her boyfriend's living room and watched the patches of sunlight spread evenly across the floor like squares on a checkerboard. His mom sat at the kitchen table, a coffee mug in one hand and a pencil in the other. Between sips, she lightly marked the crossword puzzle in front of her, her eyes narrowed in concentration. She looked small and harmless sitting there in her light pink dressing gown, her bare feet grazing the kitchen tiles; a far cry from the intimidating woman who had never made Lindsay feel good enough for her son.
“Mornin',” Jed mumbled as he padded into the kitchen, still sounding half-asleep although he’d clearly just showered. His hair, sandy-colored when dry, was wet and strikingly dark at the moment, clinging to his forehead in a way that made him look years younger than his actual age of twenty-five. He rubbed his eyes with his fists as a ten-year-old might and sank into the chair beside his mother.
“There’s cereal in the cupboard and waffles in the freezer,” she commented without lifting her eyes from the puzzle. Jed shook his head and instead poured a generous amount of coffee into the spare mug that was placed in front of him, waiting for him. If Jed took after his mother in any way, it involved his complete ignorance of and dislike towards cooking, even when it came to something as simple as a waffle. As far as Lindsay knew, Jed’s father cooked all of the meals at home. But since he was currently out-of-town on a business trip, she wondered how Jed and his mom fared at mealtimes. Did they order out every single night? Did they starve?
A silence stretched between the two family members, broken only by the occasional pencil scratch coupled with Jed’s foot tapping mindlessly against the table leg.
“Mom, there’s something I-,”
“How do you say ‘vegetable’ in Spanish?”
They spoke at the same time and both seemed flustered by the collision of a serious proposal and a trivial question.
“It’s legumbre, I think,” said Jed, but his mother didn’t pencil in the word. Instead she lifted her eyes to meet her son’s.
“What were you going to say?”
“It’s…it’s about Lindsay,” he said hesitantly, confirming Lindsay’s own belief that she was a touchy subject in her boyfriend’s household.
She pursed her lips and held Jed’s gaze, silently prompting him to continue.
“We’re moving in together.”
His mother’s response was entirely non-verbal; she stood from the table and walked to the sink with her coffee mug and spent the next few moments running the tap and furiously scrubbing the mug with a frayed, dull yellow sponge.
“I know you aren’t that fond of Lindsay, but let’s face it, Mom, when have you liked any of the girls I’ve dated?” He turned in his chair and watched her rinse out the mug, watched her pretend to be busy to avoid participating in the conversation. “Anyway, we’re renting an apartment together, so I’ll be moving out of here at the end of the month. Probably for good. I just thought I’d let you know.”
He stood and set his own now-empty mug on the counter, his mother’s back still towards him.
“I think she’s the one, Mom. I really do think that,” Jed said quietly before leaving the room, his footsteps loud and resolute, as if compensating for his voice.
A few minutes passed and she finally turned away from the kitchen sink, her eyes following the path her son had just taken. There was a barely perceptible smile on her thin, chapped lips.
From the other side of the room, Lindsay smiled back.