Twenty-Something

	"Honey, I'm home!"  Parody of every 50's family sit-com, 
his childhood.  He followed the smell of dinner into the kitchen and 
froze, seeing her sitting there, an aura of gloom sucking the spirit 
from the air.
	"John just called."
	"Oh, yeah?"  Wary. "How's he doing?"
	"From El Paso."
	"From El Paso?  T'hell's he doing there?"
	"He quit.  He's on his way home"
	"He did what!!!????"
	"He said it wasn't working, he couldn't be creative.  He was 
being stifled.  Things weren't going his way."
	"What the hell, it's grad school.  It's not supposed to be a 
bed of roses!"
	"Don't yell at me, I know that."
	"Sorry.  It's been a long day and I'm shot."  He slid into a 
chair across from her.  "He can't be serious.  He's always wanted to 
be a writer.  That's what he's there for, in an excellent program.  
What did he say?"
	She shook her head.  "I talked to him for an hour.  You 
hungry?"  A demand, not a question.  "Let me get dinner."
	He watched her back, closed, shielded, while she dished 
food from the stove onto plates.
	"It will kill me if he comes home!"
	Not replying, he fetched a couple of wine glasses from the 
cabinet and poured them each a glass from the half-full bottle in the 
refrigerator.  She slid the plates onto the table and sat.  He raised his 
glass in a toast she ignored.  An irrational knot of panic coalesced in 
his gut.  They picked at the meal, not looking at one another.  
Finally, she fixed him with a stare.
	"He says he's been talking with his friends.  He wants to 
form some sort of group with them and write, play music, maybe 
get gigs."
	"Well, hell, he's got some talent for writing, but just because 
he can strum a guitar doesn't make him Michael Jackson.  That's 
crazy!"
	"I feel like I've failed," her voice bitter.  "He's got all my 
bad genes.  He's doing just what I did.  I can tell him and tell him, 
but he just won't listen!  He listens to his friends, but never to me.  I 
have no power.  No one listens to my advice."
	He was quiet awhile, pondering her sweeping indictment, a 
bitterness aimed not just at her offspring.  He tried to sort out the 
various threads of her pain.  "Don't be so hard on yourself.  You've 
been a great mom."
	"I've never done anything!  Look at me."  She swept her 
hand around the house, the hues of sunset filtering through the trees 
that shaded the windows, the vista of the lake.  "I'm stuck here in 
paradise.  Beauty all around, but I can't see it.  I only know that my 
wheels spin and I can't go forward and I can't go back.  He's doing 
the same thing.  He's throwing away all I've given him."  Her voice 
choked, near tears. "He doesn't understand."
	"Well, lots of people are successful writers without ever 
going to college, much less grad school.  Maybe he can do this."
	"He thinks he can just live here and have fun with his 
friends.  I know what he thinks.  He's talking about a hobby not a 
profession.  He can't tell fantasy from reality."
	He looked from her anguished face to the now-cold food on 
his plate.  He stabbed a lump of meat and shoved it into his mouth, 
chewing without tasting.
	After dinner, they sat on the deck in the warm air, fading 
light, nursing another glass of wine.
	"So what brought all this on now?" he asked.
	"He was failing a course."
	"Failing?! Jesus!.  How could he do that?"
	"He was supposed to be writing drafts of a short story.  He 
didn't turn anything in.  The instructor gave him a second chance 
and then told him that it was too late in the term and there was 
nothing he could do."
	"My god!  Why didn't he do them?"
	"He says he can't work that way.  That he forms the story in 
his head and then writes it in one pass.  He couldn't do it in 
successive steps.  It cramped his style and stifled him."
	"But this is a course!  You do what the instructor asks.  It's 
part of the process of learning rigor in writing or anything else.  You 
meet deadlines.  Doesn't he know a failure is a failure?  You can't 
run away from that."
	"He doesn't recognize that he hasn't produced.  He's failed 
and won't admit it.  He always has trouble finishing things.  And 
when he does, the results aren't always so great.  He has an over 
inflated view of himself.  He has lots of ideas, but I've read some of 
his stuff.  There are times the finished product, the execution, are 
awful."
	"I thought he said the classes were too easy, not challenging 
enough.  How can he be flunking one?"
	"He just won't do it their way.  He has delusions of 
grandeur about changing the system when he can't even 
successfully work within it."
	They lapsed into an uncomfortable silence, each thinking 
their own turbulent thoughts.  She broke the quiet first.
	"His priorities are all screwed up.  He gets distracted so 
easily, busy doing everything except what he ought to be doing.  He 
gets lost in the day to day confusion and can't see what's 
important."
	"There are so many ways to fail, so few to succeed."  The 
knot of worry cinched his midsection again. "He's so vulnerable."
	They finished the wine in the fading light and went inside 
when it was completely dark.  She bustled in the kitchen with the 
efficiency of long habit, cleaning up the leavings of dinner, loading 
and starting the dishwasher.  He did some paperwork brought home 
from the office.  He found it hard to concentrate amid the returning 
waves of anxiety.  Flashes of the young man, the beautiful, 
burgeoning boy-child, played in his mind.  The instinctive parental 
urge to support battled with a professional's standards of 
accomplishment, success.  
	After they went to bed,  she spoke at the ceiling, lying in the 
dark.
	"I wanted my son to be brilliant and successful.  He's 
throwing his life away."
	"Maybe he can get something going with his friends.  A 
support group or something."
	"His friends are as bad as he is.  All ideals,  no sense of 
reality.  They have no idea what they are getting into.  It's expensive 
to live here.  Apartments are expensive.  What is he going to do for 
insurance?  At least the school covers that.  These kids have no plan 
for the future.  Who are his friends?  A bunch of losers.  They have 
no credentials either.  He pictures this as some sort of paradise. It's 
no paradise.  There aren't enough jobs.  He has no training in 
anything.  He just doesn't understand there's a real world  out there.  
He couldn't even hold down a temporary job without needing a 
break.  What's he going to do  now that he really needs to work?  
He won't have time or energy to write.  It's grim all the way 
around."
	"It's a dilemma.  If he stays in school he may continue to 
just stumble and be miserable and cost money.  If he comes home he 
may do the same.  At least there he's among professionals, potential 
contacts.  He's giving all that up."
	"His thought processes are all screwed up.  He's leaving to 
do what?"
	"In principle, a writer can be pretty solitary."
	"If he'd work.  He doesn't finish things."
	"That's what scares me about this.  Not that he couldn't 
necessarily write here, get something going, but that he didn't have 
the gumption to finish what he started there.  How could he flunk a 
goddamn course?"
	"He's never applied himself to get grades.  Without good 
grades he has just shot himself in the foot.  I haven't been to writing 
school. I don't know what it's like, but success breeds success.  He 
has no successes to build on."
	"There's a loss of innocence here," he mused, taking a 
different tack.  "It's ours.  To recognize that our bright, beautiful kid 
is flawed, and to have to tell him so.  It's agony.  But  we have to be 
honest with him and give him our best advice along with our 
support."
	Eventually they drifted into sleep.  At some point he found 
himself roused.  Then he heard the toilet flush and realized that 
she'd gotten out of bed.  He heard her come back into the room and 
stand, looking out the window.  He could imagine the glint of 
moonlight on the lake.  He glanced at the bedside clock.  4:53.
	"Hey," he said, gently.  
	"You awake?"
	"Yeah.  You going to be able to get back to sleep?"
	"I don't know."  Abrupt.
	"How about if I make some coffee?"
	"Do what you want."
	He rolled out of bed and gave her arm a squeeze as he went 
by, but got no response.  He set the coffee maker going.  She came 
in as the aroma began to permeate the room.
	"I tried to do everything right for him, shield him from all 
the pain my parents caused me."
	He got up and poured two cups of coffee, put one in front of 
her and sat down, inhaling the rising steam, feeling its work against 
the hammer of sleep deprivation.
	"What happened to these kids fear of authority?" he asked.  
"Fear of failing?  You and I would never have thought of blowing 
things off they way they do.  They weren't 60's hippies, why don't 
they worry the way we did."
	"Not everybody did.  Look at your sister.  No one on your 
side has done anything.  What about your mother? She never 
worked.  Your father kicked around, changed jobs, spent savings."
	Stung, he lashed back.  "You don't need to drag my family 
into this.  I've worked, god-damn it!  You're only satisfied when 
I'm working.  What about you?  You haven't had to work, but I 
resent losing my wife to a kid who won't give up his mother.  You 
wait on him hand and foot.  That's why he wants to come home.  
You do his laundry, you cook his food.  You still cut up his meat.  
At least I cut up my own meat!"
	"You work so people will praise you.  You need people to 
tell you how good you are all the time."
	"C'mon!  You're hidden away in this house.  You have no 
idea how precarious I feel, that every day I'm masquerading at what 
I do, what I've done for twenty years, afraid that I'll be found out."
	"People have been so cruel to me.  I can't stand to go out 
there any more."
	He took a deep breath, and looked away.  Finally he said, "I 
don't know how I became a workaholic.  Finals were after 
Christmas in college, there were always problem sets due at spring 
break.  I never had a real holiday and got out of the habit.  Then 
we've put all our money into education, can't or won't afford to take 
a vacation."  
	He paused, lost in thought, and then continued.
	"Maybe it's a mistake for him to push on, putting more time 
and money into a losing situation.  Maybe he should make a fresh 
start now, rather than two years and $20,000 from now.
	"It's not the money.  All you do is bitch about the money.  
They money doesn't count.  I'd give anything if he would just work 
and succeed."
	He was too tired to fight.  They lapsed into silence again.  
The room slowly lightened.  The sun came up and spilled sparkling 
beams into the room.   He looked at his watch.
	"Did I ever tell you how sick I am of coming of age movies? 
It's an important time of life, but every generation goes through it. 
What about the trials of the fifty-year-olds who have to put up with 
it?"  He rubbed bleary eyes.
	She looked at him and smiled.  Then she stood and moved 
behind him, giving him a hug.
	"I've been terrible."
	"Just a mama lion protecting her cub."
	They simultaneously heard the scrunch of tires in the 
driveway.  He turned and they looked at one another, breaking into 
large smiles.  He rose, grabbed her hand, and they headed for the 
door.