A Mother to Embarrass Me

I wasn't even all the way home and I could hear it. Music. Old-timey music. Music that a lady almost forty would listen to. It was the Beatles, their “Twist and Shout” song, blasting so loud from my house that in my imagination I could see the curtains straining at the screens to get away from the sound.

I heaved a sigh and shifted my pile of library books from one hip to the other.

“Mom,” I said under my breath. My voice came out a growl.

Here it was, the second day into summer vacation, and already there was trouble with my mother.

I turned the corner onto Maple Drive and looked in the direction of my place.

And that's when I saw him. Quinn Sumsion,
probably one of the best-looking guys I know. Probably one of the best-looking guys
anyone
knows. He walked toward me, his younger brother, Christian, in tow. They bounced a yellow-and-purple basketball between them, taking turns.

All of a sudden my books seemed sweaty and heavy. My face turned red. I wiped at my brow with my free hand and pretended I had never been more interested in a purple-and-yellow basketball.

The three of us were close enough now that I knew if I looked straight into his face, I'd see how blue Quinn's eyes were. I couldn't look, though. I mean, there was that basketball. And the music blasting from my house. And all these books I was carrying.

“Hey, Laura.” It was Christian. He gave me a small smile, his braces catching just a glint of sunlight, then passed the ball to his brother.

“Hey,” I said. I allowed myself a peek at Quinn. I moved a bit to the right and, without meaning to, stepped off the sidewalk with one foot. Three books skidded from the top of my pile and landed faceup on the sidewalk. One was called
The Dummies' Guidebook to Falling in Love.
I sucked in a breath of air through my nose and resisted the urge to kick this traitor book into the gutter, or to cover the title with my foot.

“Oopsie,” I said. I hadn't thought it possible
for my face to get redder than it was. Why oh why couldn't something different have fallen? Why not
Lord of the Flies?
I went into a crouch and tried to pick things up. Christian bent too and scooped the books together, then heaped them back on for me.

Quinn bounced the ball, and from where I knelt I saw dirt puff up from the ground like a tiny explosion. “You gonna read all summer?” he asked. But he didn't wait for an answer. “I can't believe anyone would waste a summer reading.”

“I read every summer,” I said, not looking at him. My gosh, he was talking to me. To me!

“My brother—the big fat brain,” Christian said. He tried to steal the ball from Quinn but missed, and his hand swiped at air.

“College coming up,” Quinn said, twisting from Christian. “I want to have some fun before I start grinding away at learning. I want to rest my brain.” He dribbled the basketball, allowing it to bounce in a figure eight while he stepped around it.

You are the cutest thing I have ever seen in my life
, I thought. My brain shouted these words. I could have stood there all the rest of the summer, holding my ninety-pound stack of books and staring at Quinn Sumsion.

Quinn nodded a little, almost like he knew my thoughts.

“I can hear your mom's working,” he said.

“Uh,” I said. I think I might have said more, at this one chance to talk to him, but right then, at that very moment, Mom began to yodel. It's this thing she does with her voice every time she sings with an old-fart song like the one that was on now. She finds a harmony and sings it louder than anyone without a microphone should be able to do.

“Twist it, baby,” Mom sang. “Twist it this way and that way and this way. Come on, baaa-bee. Shout, shout, shout.” She was making up her own words. She always makes up her own words.

I couldn't look at Quinn when the yodeling began. I couldn't even look at Christian, and he and I have been friends since third grade. All I could do was pin my sights on my front door, which stood wide open, and walk fast toward home. “Gotta go,” I said.

I planned on jerking that Beatles
Anthology
CD out of the player and slinging it to Kingdom Come, a place my father is always talking about.

“A little game later?” Christian asked me. From the corner of my eye I saw him steal the ball from Quinn, who put his hands in his pockets like he meant for that to happen. Then Christian twirled the ball, trying to make it spin on his finger the way those guys on TV do.

“Sure,” I said. “Maybe. I gotta get this stuff home.” My voice came out almost whiny, the way it sounds when Mom gets on my nerves and
I want her to stop something. Lately that's been everything she does. She embarrasses me more than should be allowed. This was a perfect example.

I pushed past the Sumsion brothers and, with my face burning with shame, tried to run the half block home, which isn't so easy when you're carrying as many books as I was. Lucky for me nothing else fell, including myself.

“Hey, Laura,” Quinn called again.

I turned, slowing my flight, hoping my face didn't appear as bright as it felt. I tried to swallow a big glob of spit as Mom belted out, “Do it, do it, do it, sweet thing.”

“Tell your mom she's got a great set of lungs.” Then he laughed.

I nodded a little and opened my mouth to answer him, but no real sound came out. I tried to hold my head high as I left. But I couldn't. It was like I felt myself folding up: my shoulders moving closer to the books, moving closer to my stomach, moving closer to my toes. I was curling up like a potato bug.

“Mom,” I whispered toward my belly button. “Mom.” Only what more could I say after that? I needed a plan. I needed control. I was on the front porch now, the wraparound porch that reminds Mom of Florida. I needed the music off to think.

I pulled open the screen door and closed the
solid wood door behind me. Maybe that would block some of the sound. I peeked out the side window, allowing only one eyeball to look. Christian stood gazing at my house. Quinn walked down the street away from his brother. Away from me. Away from my heart. I fell back against the wall and clutched at my chest.

“Oh, I love him. I love him,” I whispered. At least I think I whispered those deep and pained words. Really it was hard to tell, what with the music so loud.

This music! I made my way to the stairs. I took them two at a time up to my bedroom, where I piled the library books next to my desk.

Mom must be in her front-room office, probably drawing. She always listens to music this loud when she's designing something. Or else she was sculpting in her studio. The “work” Quinn had suggested.

There was a moment of silence when “Twist and Shout” finished. It seemed the whole house breathed a sigh of relief. I know I did. No more music, maybe. I wrinkled my forehead, hoping. Then came the huge sound of someone snapping his fingers and Billy Squier was singing, Mom accompanying him, to “Rock Me Tonight.”

I slammed my door hard. The bedroom floor vibrated with what Mom called one of her favorite dance songs.

“Jeez, Mom,” I hollered through the closed
door. “Give it a rest. The least you could do is listen to good stuff.” The stuff that was on the radio. The stuff
real
people listened to. But she didn't hear me. How was it possible with Billy Squier nearly rocking our home off its foundation? Wasn't it bad enough that I knew all the olden-day singers because of her? I was probably the only kid in the world that did. It wasn't fair.

I went over to the window and looked out at the back two acres that we call our land. This two acres, no, all of Mapleton, Utah, didn't seem big enough to hide Mom.

I had to think of a way to change her.

On the nightstand next to my bed was a slip of paper. I had lots of these, which I would later staple onto a page in my journal. On them I wrote lists. One list was of my favorite books (that one was really long), one was of who I thought was cute (that one was short—Quinn Sumsion), one was of dreams of what I'd do if I had two million dollars. I started another. “Things to change about MY MOTHER.” I underlined it three times and had about ten exclamation points following the title.