Public Relations

Chapter 13: Brett

In hindsight, it was dumb.

Not only was it dumb, but it was emotionally charged, which is scientifically tested and proven to be the perfect recipe for disaster. 

By the following Friday, I'd only received business communication from Mia for about a week. I'm not sure what I was expecting, exactly. Mia doesn't seem like the apologetic type - save for the one time she did the other week. For the most part, she's the kind to pick it up and move along, to welcome herself back into your world with gentle, wordless apologies, like your favorite coffee or snack when she shows up to the meeting.

At least, that's been my experience in the few times when she needed to apologize for an ill-advised move or a forgotten deadline. Never something like a personal tiff.

As the sun peeked in through my blinds on Friday morning, with nothing in my inbox from Mia aside from a generic mail merge, I was starting to go crazy.

I moped around my house for the day, feeling angry at how large and empty the space was, how it's the antithesis of the cluttered, cozy home I grew up in, how much my sister would hate it. Contempt sat low in my gut, clawing at the rest of my organs with razor sharp nails. I was bleeding fury - fury at Avalon and Tony and Mia and every person who had concluded the type of person I am based on a video from someone they didn't personally know. I was a shaken soda can sitting inconspicuously in the fridge, daring someone to drink me. 

I called my therapist, but she couldn't get me on the calendar until the following week.

Then I called my mom.

"Brett!" she exclaims, as cheery as ever. "How are you, my love?"

I'm sat on the backyard furniture, overlooking the water trickling into the pool from the miniature waterfall on my left. It was a cloudless day, something thick and warm in the air. The breeze floated through the few trees I have on the property, rustling their leaves lazily. I kicked my bare feet on the pavers underfoot.

"How are you, Ma?" 

"Don't you skip over it, Brett. How are you? Have you been eating?"

This gets me a laugh. I could imagine the pandemonium that would ensue if I dared to answer no. Ready-made meals would be delivered to my door with express shipping, almost certainly with a loving but threatening note attached from her or my aunt. "I've been eating plenty." I pause, inhale. "I've been better though."

My mom made a tsk sound, like smacking her lips or clucking her tongue. It barely made it through the tinny reception of the phone, but her intentions were clear. "Tell me what's been going on."

And so I did.

My mother - bless her - is not a woman with a deep understanding of technology, let alone the social environments that exist within it. I detailed the conundrum, confessing my sins of punching the douchebag (and making sure to include how much he deserved it), followed by the videos from Avalon. As I spoke, I couldn't help but notice how detached I sounded from it all, how apathetic and disinterested, like I was speaking about someone else.

And my mom, ever in tune with her maternal instinct, called me out instantaneously. "What are you not telling me?"

A plane passed overhead, and I narrowed my eyes at its contrail, white and puffy in an endless blue sea above. I imagined that they'd just taken off, heading somewhere more interesting than L.A. 

"What would I be hiding from you, Ma?"

"Brett," she said, deathly serious. "I'm not a moron. Don't play me for one. Is it a woman?"