I see her hand shift its grip on the door. She’s going to slam it shut.
That’s when I act.
That’s when I shove my crutch in the opening.
And push the door with all my might.
Chapter Eight
Blaze
The door is about to slam shut; this isn’t the first time my mother’s shut me out, probably won’t be the last, either. And this woman spits the kind of venom that kills me on the inside. I can’t fight her; from anyone else that language would get themselves shot but, from her, it reduces me, turns me in to the shrinking child that I used to be all those years ago.
Until Tiffany acts.
Crippled, fierce, stick-up-her-ass Tiffany Santos shoves her crutches into the opening of the door and forces it open with a mighty shove. And she doesn’t stop there.
She barges through the open door. I follow.
It’s a mess inside. Piles of boxes, mementos and garbage all stacked in hills of debris, filling the entire living room that, in all my childhood memories, was always kept pristine. This isn’t the house I remember.
“What the hell is wrong with you?” Tiffany snaps. “You’re fucking up your own life and you turn away your own son when he comes to help you? Jesus Christ, lady, you are messed up.”
My mom blinks in surprise. Then she screws her face up into something angry. “Do you know what he did? I loved him, worked myself to the bone to keep a roof over our heads after his father died, and I was so proud of him when he became a firefighter. And then he turned it all to ruin.”
“What does it matter? You’re in trouble, he’s here, I’m here, and you’re spitting in both our faces.”
My mom laughs. It’s sharp, grating, the kind of laugh that runs up and down your spine with menace. “He hasn’t told you what he did, has he?”
“It doesn’t matter what he did. People make mistakes. Things happen, or things happen to them, and sometimes it’s not their fault,” she says, and there is a second of silence while she steels herself. “What matters is that he is here and he is offering to help you.”
“He put people in the hospital because of his savagery. He went to prison. Through his own choices and his own staggering stupidity, he got sent to prison, lost his job, and nearly killed two people.”
“So what? I know Blaze—”
My mom laugh. “Oh, Declan has you using that gang name too, huh?”
“Shut your wicked old mouth, you bitch. I know Declan, Blaze, whatever the hell he wants to go by, and, even though he makes some incredibly dumb decisions from time to time, his heart is in the right place. But you? You seem like you don’t even have a fucking heart. You’re just some foul-mouthed old bitch.”
I step forward, put myself between the two of them. Even if she deserves it, Tiffany did just call my mom a bitch. “Hey, calm the fuck down, all right?”
“You will both get out of my house this instant or I will call the police,” my mom says.
“Oh, really? You’ll call the police? Sure, fine, do it,” Tiffany rages. “You want to know what’ll happen? They’ll come out here and they’ll remove us, sure, great, your petty old ass will win that round. But, while they’re making their report on what happened, someone will realize that you’re in massive fucking debt and you’re close to being evicted, or foreclosed on, and that’ll just speed up the inevitable. And then, you won’t just be a toxic old bitch, you’ll be a homeless, toxic old bitch.”
My mother’s eyes flare, her lip curls in a snarl, and she moves toward the old corded phone that’s mounted on the wall of our living room, navigating past a chest-high stack of magazines.
“I don’t care. I don’t want either of you two awful people here. If it costs me my home, that’s an insignificant price to pay to get rid of you. I’m calling the police. Now.”
She picks up the receiver. Her withered fingers start pressing buttons. And I lose it. Tiffany’s stuck her neck out to get us in there, she’s defending me, and now it’s my turn to act — I can’t let either of us be taken by the police. With one fist clenched, I charge forward and hammer the phone to bits.
My mother’s eyes go wide with shock.
“Put that shit away. Mom, your situation is fucked. Totally fucked. Hate me all you want, fine, I deserve plenty of it. I have never shied away from admitting that I fucked up and got my own dumb ass fired from the smokejumpers, but you need to own up too; you have yourself in one terrible mess with your finances and you need help. You’re drowning. Drowning so fucking bad that debt collectors called me; people who should’ve taken one look at my credit history and run for the fucking hills reached out to me. I love you, mom, and I’m trying to help. But you need to tell me: what the fuck happened?”
She takes some time to recover. Time to fight back the shock and tame the acid burning on her tongue. “I really don’t know, Declan.”
Tiffany comes closer, taking her approach easy and cautious, as if my mom is some kind of rabid dog. “Declan came to me about your situation because he knows I work in finance. I studied it at Stanford. He cares that much about you to look up a total stranger, someone he hasn’t seen in years, just because he is concerned about you.”
When my mom isn’t looking, I give Tiffany an appreciative smile. It’s a white lie — well, bigger than a white lie — but I’m grateful for it;
