Post Grad by Emily Cassel

Author:Emily Cassel
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9780312596262
Publisher: St. Martin's Press

CHAPTER 14

My mom always made a big deal about Sunday morning breakfasts. When I was in high school, we’d all sit around the table eating eggs and bacon while my dad tried and failed to do the crossword puzzle, asking us at every turn to help him with clues. These days, though, Sunday brunch was a scattered affair, what with my dad off in the garage performing experiments on my car and my grandma upstairs composing and recomposing her will.

This morning my mom was nobly trying to make waffles.

“Hunter,” she said sternly, “you cannot ride the shoe when I’m trying to cook.”

My little brother looked up from below, where he was sitting on her foot and latching on to her leg like some overgrown tick. “Giddyup!” he howled.

“Jesus Christ.” She sighed, opening a cupboard door and then closing it again. “Oh—pardon my language.”

Hunter shrugged. “I don’t give a crap.”

She dumped water into a bowl of Bisquick. Hunter was still clinging to her leg. “I swear,” she said, “it’s just completely impossible. Ryden, you were a reasonable kid once. Can’t you talk some sense into this one?”

I paused in my ceaseless (and fruitless) perusal of the want ads and held out an orange to Hunter. “Here, little monster,” I said coaxingly. “Come get an orange!”

Hunter merely stuck out his tongue at me, remaining stubbornly affixed to my mother.

“He just needs tough love,” said my grandma, waltzing into the kitchen with a pair of Jackie O sunglasses perched on top of her blue perm. “Hunter, get off your mother’s foot or I’m going to eat your brains.”

Hunter looked at her with wide, horrified eyes and quickly obeyed.

“Well, that was effective,” my mom said mildly, watching him disappear into the living room. “Thanks, Maureen. That’s another year of therapy.”

Grandma stuck her finger into the waffle batter and made a face. “For him or for you?

“For both of us,” Mom said, waving Grandma away from the bowl. “As you can see, Hunter’s no picnic. He’s . . . different.”

“No shit, Sherlock,” my grandma said, coming to sit beside me at the kitchen table. “I am completely aware of that. Did you know that yesterday at the beauty parlor, he gathered up all the hair clippings, brought them home, and put them in a cardboard box with a blanket and a bowl of milk?”

My mom sighed. “He really wants a rabbit. But I’m not convinced he’s ready for the responsibility.”

“You’re always coddling him, Carmella! Do you want him to grow up to be an even bigger mama’s boy than he already is?”

“I don’t coddle him,” my mom protested. “And can you watch the volume?”

“See? Coddling him.”

“Actually, Grandma,” I said, putting a hand on her gnarled knuckles, “I don’t think it’s considered coddling that she doesn’t want Hunter to hear you saying bad things about him. I think it’s just, you know, humane.”

Grandma sniffed. “I don’t know what that word means,” she said. Which I’m quite sure was a lie.

“I’m just concerned about Hunter,” my mom said, pouring the batter into the waffle maker.

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