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Order this writing that appears in the one-of-a-kind anthology The Limits of Imagination the Down in the Dirt January - April 2024 issues collection book		get the 422 page January - April 2024 Down in the Dirt 6" x 9" ISBN# perfect-bound paperback book:

Just Read the Script

Mat Waterman

    I finally get out of my giant oven on wheels most call a car. Black, with black interior, black leather seats, and no air conditioning. Driving home for twenty minutes like that in the middle of June isn’t pleasant. My skin is warm and sleek from sweating.
    Mom is sitting in her lawn chair in the garage with the door open. She has yet to look up from her phone as she sits there, cell phone in her left hand, the remaining half of her cigarette in her right. I stop ten feet outside of the garage so that corrosive, nasty smoke doesn’t make me gag, polluting my nose and burning my throat, or give me lung cancer. Occasionally, I remind Mom that one in three people get lung cancer from secondhand smoke alone. She has six kids, so she’s willing to jeopardize at least two of them! Not enough to make her quit. Even though she swore the day of the adoption was her last day smoking – about six years ago.
    “My appointment was scheduled for six weeks out,” I tell her.
    She doesn’t look up from her phone. “Why so far?” She’s probably texting or scrolling Facebook.
    “Earliest I can get in, they said.”
    Mom and I have struggled to get along since I was a teenager. I wish it wasn’t so. It’s not her fault we took in my cousins after her brother went to jail. It’s not her fault Dad had the freak accident that almost killed him, giving him permanent nerve damage. But it’s gotten so hard to say anything to her. Every time, the arguments are roughly the same. As if we’re at a table read, reciting lines of a script, repeatedly. What is her fault is all the nasty things she says, how she’s made me rageful, violent. She’s what the damn therapy appointments are for. At least, that’s what I think when I’m caught up in the moment, full of anger and frustration.
    “Plenty of time to get a job in the meantime,” she says.
    My chest expands as air fills my lungs. The metal legs of a chair making that awful scraping sound as I slide it along the concrete to sit down rattles from my hand to my ears. The sun beating down on me still feels like I’m a lizard in a vivarium, but I’m already sweaty, so what the hell? The air escapes my ribcage in an exacerbated sigh. This is the first page of the script. Try as I might, whatever sentence comes out next is just the next line.
    “As I’ve said, Mom, I have a process.”
    I feel my breathe begin to shorten. I have tried so hard to understand her perspective. Get a job, learn responsibility, build my own life, pay my share, be an adult. She bought a house at nineteen, over thirty years ago. That’s just not something nineteen-year-olds can do anymore! I’ve tried explaining to her I’ll be no less miserable with a job than I am now. That’s why it’s been so hard to get one, let alone keep one. It always feels like there’s something underneath these arguments about jobs and economies and times and life.
    Now is the part of the script where we’re both heated, hands waving, voices raised. She storms off inside, and I follow her into the kitchen, having not had enough, holding my breath to avoid the smell of lingering cigarette smoke. The stomping feet on tile and hardwood thunders and shutters through the kitchen and dining room. The wooden dinner table, cabinets, and the countertop box us in less than twelve feet from each other. Fluorescent light falls onto me. The brisk rush of cool seventy-degree air wafting into me as I enter the house gives me a shiver. Even though I’ve gotten better at choosing the hills I die on, I’m still dying on way too many hills.
    “I don’t understand, Mom! What do you want from me if not for me to be happy? I’ve told you; I have to do this my way. Otherwise, I’ll just be wasting my life living it how you want me to.” God, how many times have we rehearsed this scene?
    “It’s not about what I want; it’s about the reality of life, son!” She replies.
    What does that even mean? How are we so similar, yet we just can’t understand each other? It must be something wrong with me. After all, I’m young. She’s older, wiser, more life experience. What a load of crap.
    “I do want what’s best for you! You know, if it were up to your dad, we would’ve kicked you out years ago. So, you’re welcome,” she said.
    I’m hot all over again. But this time, the heat is under my skin, not outside. My heart is already thumping out of my chest, I’m still failing to steady my breathing, and the adrenaline is coursing.
    But then, something unexpected happened. Something off-script. I felt beyond the anger, beyond the frustration, and was left with hurt, confusion. And finally, clarity. Enough was enough. No matter what the rest of my family said, I owed this woman nothing. This life is mine to own, and not hers. I can either retaliate, repeat this spiraling cycle, again, or I can take this stupid script, and tear it to shreds with my own two hands.
    I turn right around, abandon this house, the air conditioning, the script, this woman, and leave. Back into the garage, out across the driveway, back into my oven on wheels. Key in the ignition, start it up, shift to reverse, and pull out into the street. Put the oven in drive and press my foot on the gas. I can feel the engine rev in my seat.
    There were more pages, more lines. More buttons to push, sore spots to poke.
    But I’m done. I hope.

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