Mikey and the Chickadee Ch. 17

"Give him a rest," my mom said finally as my dad had begun fashioning, with some difficulty, an inquiry into the specifics of his business.

"Fine," he said, smiling and gesturing dismissively at Mikey. "You're off the hook."

Mikey did look a bit relieved.

Near the end of the meal my mom tipped her glass directly up, finished, placed it down next to her plate and said, "I really hope you two don't lose contact when Wyatt moves away."

I swallowed my bite a little too early and said, "Mom. We won't."

"Don't worry," Mikey added quietly, "we won't."

She brought a hand to her mouth, as if she had spoken out of turn. "Just ignore me, both of you. I don't mean to meddle."

Later on, everyone collected in the living room, traipsing together through the second half of Cloud Atlas (we had missed most of the first half, but had all seen it before). I sat next to Mikey on the couch, a calculated several inches hovering between us. Stephanie tucked her knees to her chest at my right, engrossed in the final scenes, and my mom squeezed in with my dad between the arms of his giant old chair. We had passed around a bowl of popcorn, now leveled to reveal the pearl-slick amber of un-popped kernels.

"Mikey, it was a pleasure meeting you," said my mom, standing and stretching as the film ended. "I think we're off to bed, but please stay as long as you like."

"Thanks for having me. And for dinner," he said.

We all stood and my mom pulled Mikey into a hug. Unthinkably, my dad did the same and said, "Hope we get to see you again soon." I noticed now that even Mikey did not surpass my dad's imposing stature.

Once they had disappeared down the hallway, Stephanie announced that she had an early morning and should be going to bed soon, too.

"We'll walk you out to your car, if you're ready," I said.

As we made our way across the lawn I reached up, letting my fingers sift through the young, milky-white blossoms of the cherry tree.

"Mikey, I'm proud of you for weathering that interrogation earlier," said Stephanie.

"It really wasn't that bad."

"My mom...she worries about things, and she has a habit of prying. Especially when a situation confuses her. She needs to have everything worked out in her mind."

He shrugged. "It's okay. I don't blame her. Our situation is very confusing."

Stephanie smiled. "I'm sure you guys will work everything out."

"I'm still debating even going," I said suddenly. "Please don't tell Mom and Dad, though."

"I figured you still weren't sure."

"I guess it's mostly that I'm not sure if I want to keep doing what I'm doing, as a career."

She paused, folded her arms and leaned slowly against the sealed passenger window of her Camry. She looked briefly at Mikey, then back to me. "I might have guessed that, too. Look, Wyatt, I know that in the end, you'll do what's best for you. You'll look inside of yourself and figure out what that is. And you'll do it because you listen to all the valuable advice your big sister gives you."

Mikey laughed quietly.

"Thanks," I said.

Before driving away, she hugged both of us and said to Mikey, "Don't let my brother make you crazy."

He smiled a bit sheepishly.

Her car disappeared and Mikey and I stood alone in the mist above the front lawn. "I could go for a walk before we leave," he said.

"Sure."

We made our way down the middle of the street, wandering to the edge occasionally as cars glided past. We skirted a cul-de-sac inside the next block, where I had once sweated away summer days playing roller hockey with other kids from around the neighborhood. I pointed out a few scars still visible in the pavement. I showed him a well-tended hedge farther down the street, into which I wedged the Acura, on a rare snowy night during my senior year of high school.

"It had to be towed out," I said. "You can still see where it hasn't quite grown back, right there."

He laughed. "I did worse, back in the day."

We didn't speak for a while. I could tell that everything about the evening with my parents had been a lot for Mikey-not more than he could handle, I guessed, but a lot.

"Anything you want to talk about?" I asked him finally.

He hesitated before saying, "Just feeling a little strange, I guess."

"Yeah. I understand. Thanks for braving my family tonight."

"It was okay. Honestly, it's just hard not to, you know, feel like I'm your boyfriend when I'm around them."

"That's mostly my fault," I told him. "My mom asked, and I didn't say you were, but I also didn't really tell her you weren't."

"It's alright. Maybe you didn't know how to answer."

"I mean, I did. Before you met Marie and Sloan we made it clear, remember?"

He paused. "I don't expect you to always feel the that way, forever."

I didn't know how to respond.

"I'm sorry," he continued, "it's just that, even after all this time, I don't feel like I'm ready to have a-" He stopped himself, drawing in a breath. "I'm just not ready to call you my boyfriend."

I looked over at him. "What do you mean, 'all this time'? Mikey, you don't know how much you've changed-and in what, five weeks? Fuck, I didn't expect you to be ready for any of this."

We had long since circled back and I began to make out his car through the mist, huddled under the streetlamp at the edge of my parents' yard.

"I feel relieved now," he said, "and I hate it."

I asked him what he meant. He said he didn't know.