3 a.m. (Henry Bins 1) by Nick Pirog

Author:Nick Pirog
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: 'short story, funny, political thriller, washington dc, nick pirog, thomas prescott, kindle single, henry bins'

CH:02

The last memory I have of my mother is on my sixth birthday. I remember being excited because she missed the previous two. The moment I woke up, I searched the room for her, but it was only my dad standing over me.

“Where’s mom?”

“She’s . . .”

This sentence always ended the same.

. . . working.

My mom had the most boring job in the world. Or at least, when I was little, I remember thinking a geologist was the most boring job in the world. But that was because I viewed her job — rocks — as competition. Why was sandstone more important than me? What did quartzite have that I didn’t? It wasn’t until I grew up, learned that my mother wasn’t spending those three-week to three-month long stretches looking for rocks, that I understood. She was looking for oil. Companies paid her a lot of money to do this, which allowed my dad to stay home, earn a modest living as a technical writer and care after me.

“. . . right there,” he’d finished.

My mother came into the room holding a birthday cake. The cake was of Snoopy and it had a big blue number six candle on it.

I can still see the look on my mother’s face. Her sharp and angular features — nearly the opposite of my father’s — were a billboard of her Czech heritage. She had piercing green eyes — little pieces of jade, she’d called them — that must be what mood rings were made of.

Today, they were somber.

I wonder if she knew then that she was leaving. Leaving us.

After I blew out the candles, and ate nearly half the cake, my parents brought in my birthday present. Or should I say, wheeled it in.

A bright red Huffy.

I couldn’t have been happier.

“Dad, can you teach me now?”

I just assumed my dad would teach me how to ride a bike. He was the one who spent twenty minutes a day reading history to me, or quizzing me on spelling, or making me practice my cursive or long division. Then another twenty minutes teaching me how to throw a baseball, swing a golf club, do a handstand, cook an omelet, play Gin Rummy, and every other life lesson.

“You know, your mom is the bike riding expert in this family. Maybe she’ll teach you.”

My dad must have already known.

If she didn’t already sit him down and say, “Jerry, I can’t do this anymore. I can’t handle seeing my son only awake for an hour a day. This isn’t what I signed up for. I’m leaving,” then he’d read it in those jade eyes of hers.

“I do ride a mean bike,” my mother said with a smile.

My mom spent the next thirty minutes teaching me how to ride a bike under the streetlights of the small cul-de-sac where my dad still lives today.

I didn’t realize it then, but when my mother let go of the seat of my red Huffy, let me balance all on my own, it wasn’t just the bike she was letting go.

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