Petty Rage by Thandiwe Mpofu
Chapter 9
NOAH
Past
DANGEROUS K: Are you ghosting me these days? Didn’t know you were this petty.
ME: No. You know I’m fucking petty. You just didn’t think I’d be worse than you. Anyway, I’ve been busy.
DANGEROUS K: Ever since that football game and the truth about Astraea’s past and who her father isn’t, you’ve been… distant. Why?
ME: Drop it.
DANGEROUS K: Is it because of your father? Did he do a number on you too, like King’s father did on him and I’m guessing Emmett’s?
ME: We don’t do fathers here.
DANGEROUS K: Clearly. But why?
ME: Fucking drop it. Have I ever asked you about the devil?
DANGEROUS K: What?
ME: You talk in your sleep. Remember?
DANGEROUS K: When do you watch me…
ME: I watch you sleep every fucking night.
DANGEROUS K: Noah!
ME: And because of that, I figured you’re keeping a fucking big secret, aren’t you? You’re not who you say you are, are you? Otherwise, why the fuck would you be asking about our fucking sperm donors?
Present
One phone call can change your fucking day, or it can fuck up your entire life and I’m about to fucking find out which is which.
But honestly it doesn’t fucking matter because a single text from my mother shifted my world on its axis.
I don’t even bother listening to Dave’s fucking call. I just get dressed and leave Emmett, but the tension in me has only been increasing.
Since the moment Emmett told me about the phone call, my knuckles have been fucking white. I’d give Casper a fucking run for his ghost money.
I’m pacing up and down this fucking stuffy, dusty office with grand bookshelves filled with faux books.
The entire set up is a little too pompous and too much for my taste but fuck that, that’s not why my heart is racing like there a stampede of wild animals.
On a day like this, I’d usually be out somewhere, well on my way to getting thoroughly shitfaced.
But instead that fucking call happened, and then I read the letter my mother had waiting for me right in front of the house!
Dear Mr. Noah E.J. Montreal,
I thought this might grab your attention. I’m requesting an audience with you and your mother, Mrs. Christina J. Montreal, at this address on this day, the 13th, at noon. Please be punctual and discreet.
Regards,
Mr. H. Briggs
The note was brief, straight to the fucking point and fucking mysterious. It didn’t tell me anything at all and that’s why I’m fucking anxious now.
Tick.
Tock.
Tick.
Tock.
Why do these old fucking law firms even keep grandfather clocks in the fucking waiting room? It’s archaic and speaks volumes on their inability to fucking keep the damn time.
“Noah,” my mother, everyone’s favorite ex-star and forever hugger—seriously, she needs to learn about personal space and stop showing pity to strays—says. “If you’re going to give yourself a heart attack, at least do it when you’re far from me. That way when I get the call, I’ll just tell them I have no idea who that is.”
“You’d reject me as your son?” I say, faux hurt in my voice as I clutch my chest.
“With the way you’re dressed?” I look down at my bandana thrasher jeans that I paired with a random hoodie and my Balmain sneakers. “Absolutely.”
“What? What’s wrong with my outfit?”
“Jeans?” she says, with her nose turned up at me in disgust.
“I’ll have you know, these are Amiri Appliqué Jeans in aged black. Italian.”
“Boy, you haven’t worn anything that isn’t designer since you were born,” she scoffs, rolling her eyes. “All I’m saying is, who wears jeans to a formal meeting?”
“Uh, who the fuck has time to wear a suit? I’m not here to impress these dickwads.”
“Noah! Language.”
I mumble a quick apology. She shakes it off but still, I can’t hide my annoyance.
“You say that now but aren’t you the one who just got accepted to five top law schools in the country?” she asks, a hint of hurt in her voice.
Ah fuck.
“You know?”
“Of course, I know,” she says, looking at me with those huge wide eyes filled with hurt. “I’m just confused as to why you didn’t think of mentioning it to me. Or picking up your phone when I call. Or at coming home to see me.”
Fuck.
It’s a double homicide.
I go to sit next to her on the couch, but she swats me away. That’s her tell. She’s pretty pissed at me.
“Standing will suffice for you, don’t you think?”
“Mom, come on!”
“Besides, I don’t think you can afford to sit that tush down. What with those already distressed Amiri Italian tight ass jeans,” she says sarcastically.
“Language,” I counter.
“I’m a grown up!”
“So am I.”
“When you want to be!”
Well damn.
I sigh, looking down at her, trying my hardest not to smile.
Christina Montreal is a class act. She’s beautiful, sharp as a whip, and she knows how to dig into me—like one other person I thought I’d one day introduce to my mother as mine, but she screwed me over so that ship sailed and sunk.
After all that my mother has done, there’s still no one quite like her. My non-forgiving tendencies? Yeah, well, I got them from my mother.
“Come on, Mom,” I start, trying to keep the annoyance of this day out of my voice by keeping it low and soft. “You know I was going to tell you about the acceptance letters. You’re the first one I always tell my good news.”
And the last one who heard about all the bad shit, and recently, it’s been a lot of that on my plate.
“I just feel like you’ve been pulling away from me lately,” she finally says after a while. I sigh heavily.
My relationship with my mother hasn’t always been like this.
At one point, my one goal in life was to keep her laughing.
If I talked fast and kept the jokes flying—no matter at whose expense—then she was more likely to stop crying from misery but from humor.
Then there was the seemingly endless grieving period that neither one of us talks about.
We don’t talk about the different ways we both chose to grieve.
We never mention the months we spent apart with her overseas and me wrecking a path of destruction in this town, with no contact whatsoever.
We don’t talk about her closet drinking or my excessive, public drinking, partying, fucking or the mess I create all by myself.
There’s never any mention of her wailing in the middle of the night or my deep-seated insomnia that has plagued since the day I found Craig.
Instead, we chose to move on, sweep it under the rug like it never happened.
I guess in a way, it made it easier to have the relationship we have now. She’s my biggest cheerleader and she knows when not to push me. But I know my silence has been hurting her.
“Mom, I’m not pulling away. You know I’m just… growing up.”
“And doing a bad job at it. Seriously, you still don’t know how to do your own laundry?”
“You know, you really should quit talking to Emmett, he’s a terrible gossip.”
“Well, how else would I know that you almost burned down the penthouse trying to make freaking toast?”
Fucking Emmett!
At least the fucker didn’t tell my mother about how high we both were that night, facetiming King who looked like he was just a flight away from murdering us on the spot but fuck him.
“Besides, I like that you boys are watching out for each other after all that crap from before,” she says softly. “How is he?”
“As well as can be expected.”
Cat’s out the freaking bag about Emmett’s heart condition but at least my mother isn’t hovering. That was a sure way of pushing that brute away.
She looks away, sipping her tea like she’s back in one of the sunrooms at one of her European mansions.
“A lawyer, huh?”
“I’m still debating it.”
“What’s there to debate when you applied to five schools?”
I’d actually applied to ten, but that was beside the point.
“It’s just a gamble, Mom. It’s neither here nor there.”
“That is such a lawyer-like response!” she exclaims with a laugh. “At least that quick tongue will have something to do. Pissing people off all the way out of hell.”
“Now that isn’t such a bad idea.”
We fall silent.
That’s the thing about humor and banter. It does some lifting—but never the heavy lifting. No matter how long you laugh, or how long the bubbly feeling stays in your chest, at some point, there’ll be a lull in the fun and the gloom will move right back in.
Case in point… this silence.
After reading to her text, I had to rush back to Westbrook Blues where surprise, surprise, my dearest mother was waiting, a dazed look on her face.
I glance at her now. Her facial features are tight with tension again. For someone who had a pretty impressive career behind a camera, her acting skills are shit right now.
But then again, what do you expect from a mother who just heard that there’s something about her dead son she needs to rush down to some office to hear?
“It’s all going to be all right,” I hear my mother say softly. I guess she’s trying to reassure us both, but it’s shitty job and she knows it.
“It’s all going to be all right, huh?” I walk over to her. “Is that tea drugged?”
“Noah—”
“I wouldn’t put it past them. They all look like dealers, even the fucking receptionist.”
“Noah, she must be at least fifty years old.”
“Who says fifty-year-olds don’t like to get high? Doesn’t it help with pain from old people diseases?”
“Old people what?”
“Diseases, Mom, catch up. You know, the arthritis shit. The gallstones, the liver failure.”
She shakes her head slightly, a small smile on her face.
“And what happens when I reach that age? Are you saying I’ll get all that mess?”
I shrug. “I don’t know. You’ll be in a home either way.”
She gasps, slamming the dainty cup of tea into the saucer. “A home?”
Her shrill gasp makes me want to laugh, but I stay put. It’s not easy riling my mother up—and it has consequences—but why the heck not?
“Yup! I was actually thinking of the one in Utah.”
“Utah?” she screeches, looking like she’s about to throw up.
“Yes. Or maybe Oklahoma, or if you’re really against those two, I’ll send you to Virginia.”
Silence.
I give her time to digest, but I don’t break character.
“So, you’ll send me to an old people’s home? Me? Your best friend?”
“Yes.”
“I birthed you into this world, then I breastfed you and raised you! Now you’re telling me when I’m fifty you’re sending me to a home?”
“What’s wrong with a home? I’m sure they have cable.”
“Noah Montreal!”
“It’s because I’m your best friend that I’m doing this. And it’s not like I didn’t give you options, Mom.”
“Oklahoma, Utah and Virginia?”
“You’ll be the biggest star they’ll ever see before they cross over, that’s a bonus isn’t it?”
“Who the hell raised you? Somebody needs to come get their ungrateful kid because I know I raised my kid right.”
“Come on, Mommy,” I say sarcastically, hugging her to me. “You have to admit, it was fun while it lasted but you’re going to a home.”
She slaps me upside the head. I can’t help but laugh, the look on her face the highlight of my morning.
“That’s not funny!”
“You think I’d ever get rid of you? No fucking way!”
“Language!”
“Seriously, you already know I curse…”
“Watch it.”
“Yes, mother.”
Just then the door at the other side of the room opens and in comes some older black man with grey hair, a five-thousand-dollar suit and designer glasses to go along with his entire set up.
I guess he’s the top dog here, walking with a forced spring in his step.
Well, there’s another candidate for the home in Utah. He should let that unnatural stride go.
Fuck, I really need to let these distractions go. This is too important.
“Mrs. Montreal and young Mr. Montreal—”
“What the fuck took you so long!” I demand.
“Oh God, here we go.”