The Smallest Parallel

Chapter 6

Geoffrey walked towards his apartment door, wondering who would visit at this hour. He understood that Maggie wouldn't return home for a few hours and that he was meant to catch up on his mundane, day-to-day office work while she was away.

He pictured her, standing on the platform at the pub where she attended a weekly poetry reading. He wondered which poem she would read tonight. She rarely shared her poems with him in anticipation for the day he would come to her with a true interest and finally ask her to read one of them aloud. Geoffrey felt incredibly guilty for not allowing himself to love Maggie as she deserved. She was a kind and spirited girl, but he found that he couldn't understand her crooked reasoning and her unfocused life. He had felt similar frustrations over his relationship with Marguerite, but he knew that Marguerite's personality was genuine. Everything about Maggie felt staged.

He unlocked the door and pulled it to him. A ghost stood in the doorway, her small shoulders accentuated by padding and her ice blond hair tied into a tight knot behind her head. Geoffrey's mother looked and presented herself the way she always had. Her tight-lipped and sympathetic smile said nothing and everything all at once. Geoffrey felt as if his chest was contracting.

He looked at her plain face and blinked once to make sure that she wasn't a figment. She grabbed his hand and squeezed, greeting him the only way she knew how.

"Hello, Geoffrey. Did you get my card?"

Geoff welcomed his mother into the house, still shocked that she would visit him after an extended period of time as a stranger. She set down her large, sensible purse on the kitchen counter and lit a cigarette. She had taken up smoking a few years ago in an attempt to calm her nerves. Of course, it only gave her deteriorating lungs and an incessant cough.

"I haven't seen you since your uncle's funeral, and I've been worried due to the fact that you haven't returned my calls. You know that I've never asked anything of you Geoffrey, and I'm growing quite annoyed with being ignored. I don't recall doing anything that would upset you."

She stared at him blankly with her cold and tired eyes. She always knew how to hide her true feelings behind a dull and manicured facade. She always kept her eyes forward and never revealed much of what she was thinking. Geoffrey never truly knew how his mother was feeling, for it never showed on her face, but he was aware that this time of year always forced her to reminisce about his father and the grave circumstances surrounding her loss. Geoff wondered if she, too, imagined scenarios in which Christopher hadn't been drinking that night. He imagined them all the time when he was in the mood to fill his head with unrealized dreams.

"Why are you here mother?

"I called your therapist..."

Geoffrey cut his mother off with a deep sigh, turning away from her and exiting the room. She remained at the counter, cigarette in hand, shaking.

"Miriam, you can't just waltz back into my life and show concern for me when you've had no problem ignoring me for most of my life."

"Geoffrey," she whispered, "I am your mother, and I have never blatantly ignored you. I've kept my distance because I understood what was best for you."

He heard the desperation in her voice.

"You can't just decide that you know what is best, mother." Geoffrey lowered his voice, desperate for some understanding on her part. "Why didn't you call me?"

"You don't make it easy," she sighed, her eyes appearing hollower than they ever had. "I called your therapist, and he told me that I was right to be concerned, but he refused to give me anything else. I couldn't just allow my son's mental health to deteriorate as I sat idly by. I'm sorry I've been absent, but please don't isolate me."