Conversations With Dead People
Moist hasn't been in this house since he was twelve; that's the first sign, to him, that something's going on. The second is the smell of cookies. His mother kind of gave up on baking when Moist was ten, he's never known exactly why.
When his mother finally comes into the kitchen, she looks more than a little like hell warmed over - noticeably thinner than the last time he saw her, and her hair is sparser as well as silver.
"Hey, honey. You finally dried up some."
"Yeah, no thanks to you. I... guess the humidifier finally caught up to you too, then." It's not really a question; he knows the stereotypical look of a cancer patient when he sees it. And she may not be quite that bad, but the signs are still there.
His mother nods. "The last I heard, your father was still all right."
"Of course. Why should the one person who was actually willing to take a chance on dubious Soviet nuclear technology suffer from it? It figures."
"Sweetheart, you shouldn't be so hard on him--"
Moist sighs. "Why not? He wasn't the one who got stuck to the flagpole every recess for four months. He wasn't the one who kept getting denied a good home because of mold problems. He wasn't the one who couldn't get a job for years. He wasn't the one who ended up living in a fucking half bathroom for eight months."
"I didn't... I wanted to make it better. I really did."
"Then why did you stand by and let him - do what he did? Turn the thing on, go on all those business trips in the first place, any of it?"
She sort of purses her lips and turns her attention to the oven, at first, and doesn't say anything until she's removing a tray of cookies (snickerdoodles, from the looks of things).
"Your father... is a very forceful personality," she finally says. "He said he'd found a way to make our lives better, and if I didn't like it, I could leave. But... I never felt I had that option. I never finished college, and what I did wouldn't have lent itself to a very good life, for me or you once you were around. I wanted to give you the best life possible."
"Then maybe you should have taken the out when he gave it to you."
"Well, it's water under the bridge now. So to speak." She scoops the cookies onto a plate, and sets it on the table between them. "Perhaps we all could have done things a little differently, but what's done is done. I'm sorry we hurt you. Peace offering?"
Moist hesitates. "You know it's not really that easy."
"I know. But it's all I can do, right now."
He hesitates a little longer, but decides, what the hell. There's no point in waking up pissed off about something that's not going to suddenly never have been, just because they both wish it hadn't.
"All right."