Click

Chapter One

My Mom gets really lonely when her fiance is in New York for his work so I sleep in her bed with her. Our house seems so huge when it's just her and I. Mom likes to throw parties on the weekends and have friends over for lunch a lot but on a Wednesday night at 9:30 it's pretty lonely. When I was little- after my mom and dad split but before she met her finace- we used to have a big white dog named Norman. My mom called him Norm. Norm would sleep in my mom's huge bed with her when I still slept in a crib. She always needed someone or something next to her when she's alone in such a big house.

I remember being three or four and my mom being heart broken after splitting with me Dad. She made her best friend come stay with us. CC ended up sleeping in my mom's bed with her for almost a week before my mom would let her leave. After she was finally some-what over my dad, she had a few boyfriends. When I was in elementary school, she kept dating guys who never seemed good enough for her. They slept in her bed with her...but they didn't keep her warm. Whenever I'd ask my mom why she broke up with these guys that's what she would say.

"Honey, they slept in my bed...sure...but they didn't keep it warm. Your dad kept it warm. Norm kept it warm. CC kept it warm. You keep it warm," she would smile, "But this guy...he doesn't keep it warm." And her smile would fade. What I didn't understand then was that would she meant was they didn't keep her warm. They didn't make her un-lonely at night. Sometimes I would say, "But...Momma...if Daddy kept your bed warm then why doesn't he still sleep here?" I think I remember her saying something along the lines of, "He found another lady who could keep the bed warmer than I could."

Up until I was maybe nine, I would see my dad on weekends. He had a bunch of kdis running around, a pretty wife and a bunch of dogs. Whenevever I could spend the night with him, all I could think about was my mom's cold bed. Even at age nine I knew that my mom needed me and my dad didn't. My mom loved me more than anything in the world and my dad tended to ignore the both of us.

My dad would drop me off outside my mom's house on Monday mornings without even coming up to the door to say hi to mom. I would leave the car without saying "I love you" and run inside to where I knew mom was waiting to hug me.

One chilli Friday night when I was nine, my mom and I were sitting at the kitchen table and I was helping her run her lines for the movie she was in at the time. I do this all the time now, but it was harder to do then since I still couldn't read very well. I had never been to normal school and my tutor was pretty shitty so I didn't develop good reading skills until I was ten or eleven. When we finsihed 'reading' through the scene my mom goes, "You ready to go to dad's?" Like she always did,

"I don't wanna go," I said with a somber face.

"You don't want to, huh?" She smiled for some reason I didn't understand. She stood up and picked me up off the stool. She balanced me on her hip like she did when I was a toddler.

"No," I said, still straight faced,"I want to stay here and keep the bed warm for you." I was completly serious. I was sick of my dad and his fancy, happy life without us. Mom just laughed. She picked up the phone and dailed up my dad. Then she went into the other room like she always did when she was on the phone with him. I could still hear her.

"Brad? Hi, it's me," She said quietly. I pressed my ear to the door. "No...she says she doesn't want to come over." There was a long pause. "I don't know! That's what she said!" She was talking a little louder now. "Calm down, Brad. I'll ask her again next week but I doubt..." She trailed off. She sounded almost proud of me for not wanting to go to my dad's house. "Now you're going to tell some crap to a tabloid about this, aren't you?" She shouted. "I'll talked to you later...don't call here." Then silence. I didn't know was a tabloid was or what half the words she was saying meant or why she was yelling but I knew my mom and dad were never going to have an easy time 'sharing me'. I wanted to live with my mom all the time when I heard her crying from behind the door that night. I also knew I didn't want to see my dad anymore. My mom needed me.

I have a distinct memory of my mom throwing one of her annual Christmas parties the year I turned eight. My mom had put me to bed at 7:30- before the guests even started showing up. I lay in my bed for what felt like hours on end, waiting for my mom to come upstairs and kiss me good night. When she finally came into my room, I could tell that she didn't have a good time at her own party. I know now that it was probably because th whole house could be packed with poeple but just the thought of her sleeping in her bed alone that night made her lonely.

When my mom saw I was still awake, she sat on the edge of my bed and said, "Will you come sleep in my bed with me?" and I remember saying, "Yeah." Then she scooped me up and carried me into her room.