The Aggrieved Party

So-o Ben calls last night. Robin and I are holed up in my bedroom watching Law & Order.

I'm exhausted – it was a long day at the store plus there was the Robin Science Fair Project fiasco: Robin was supposed to be manning a table outside my store, soliciting random subjects for his research experiment ("What's the best way to get rid of the burn from hot sauce?")

Up at 5am. Clean house, cook dinner, do the prep for Robin's project (poster, data forms, assembling the test antidotes: water; lemonade – for the sugar; milk – because casein binds to capsaicin; orange juice – acid… What's a common household base? As it turns out, there's only one that's edible: milk of magnesia.) I don't have time to take the dogs to the beach.

Didn't get to the store till 11am. Lo & behold! there was a crowd of people lined up outside the door. "What time do you open anyway?" asks one guy. "I figured it was ten. But then when I got here, I didn't see any hours on the door."

I didn't have the guts to tell him: I open when I finally get here. Because, after all, I'm not Willie Wonka.

Business was okay. We were at the halfway mark for my projections at noon.

Around 2pm, Robin moseys down and he is sullen. He would prefer to be playing with his friend Halen even though the science project is due in exactly three weeks. Thus he has to be screamed at to help carry the heavy folding table out from the store and into the plaza, and he eyes the poster I'd slaved over, sacrificing my own sleep, with utter indifference. (I can hear myself in the Alzheimer's home now: "You never write! You never call!")

He sits outside, refusing to make eye contact with anyone in the crowd. Meanwhile the sky is clouding over, the wind is beginning to gust. He comes into the store, announces, "This is stupid, Mom. It's going to rain."

I am in my store geisha mode, dealing with five customers simultaneously. I can't scream at him without sacrificing credibility. ("So serene! She's like the Buddha of hot sauce!") so I flash him the evil eye. Yes, it's going to rain. Then it's going to be sunny again. That's been the pattern all day.

Ten minutes later comes a crash from outside and Teresa peeks into the store – blue green eyeshadow today, she looks like some kind of huge ambulatory parrot. "You have a situation outside, Patrizia –"

Poster which I'd propped on the table with jars of salsa had blown off the table. Robin is staring at the big glops of salsa on the pavement with a satisfied told-you-so expression.

"Clean it up and go home," I hiss. "I am really disappointed in you."

And his eyes mist over – he is the aggrieved party here. Who knows? Maybe he really is.

Well, I hated that salsa anyway. And it didn't sell.

The rains come down for half an hour. The tourists disappear.

And when the skies clear and the sun comes shining down, the day never really recovers its retail momentum. For one thing it is preternaturally cold. The heater in the store is broken, I don't have the money to fix it and I'm not sure I'd fix it anyway: it's electric, ineffective; I'd generate more heat if I just set fire to the bills in the cash register.

We do more sales but it's nothing like the morning and when I call home around 4pm to check on Robin, Halen is over, they're playing video games.

When I finally call it quits around 8pm, the store was only up to 80% of the day's projections. Well, shit, Scarlett, think I to myself. Tomorrow is another day.

Get home. Robin has eaten bagel bites for dinner.

"What about the lasagna I made you?"

He wrinkled his nose. "The top's all brown."

Well, so it it was. The cheesey goodness had browned which is the way I like my lasagna, but kids are fastidious about such things. One more disqualifying mark against me in the World's Best Mother Olympics.

"We have to talk," I said.

He shook his head. "Not now. Let's snug and watch TV."

"Do you know what I want to talk to you about?"

"Yeah, I ditched the science project so I could hang out with Halen. Let's talk later."

I was so exhausted, I agreed.

The phone rings. "That's your father, Robin," I say heartily. "Go talk to him."

Robin disappears into the other room. He comes back two minutes later and he's crying. "He wants to talk to you."

"What's the matter, honey?"

"They offered him the job."

I walk into my office. "Well congratulations," I say to the voice on the phone.

"Well, we'll need to talk about it," the voice says nervously. "I mean, I won't do it if – I don't see this as an end –"

"Don't be silly," I said. "This is something you've been manouvering after for months. Years, really. Now you can finally find yourself!"

"We'll talk. Really."

"There's nothing to talk about," I said. "Obviously if there had been something to talk about, we would have talked about it before you started the campaign to get a job that means leaving home eight months out of the year."

"But, I mean, I love you! I can't lose you! That's not what I want!"

"But it's what I want," I said.

Long pause.

"I feel like you just hit me," he said.

And I thought: like father, like son. No matter how much you both fuck up, somehow you're always the aggrieved party in the situation.

I've gotta break Robin of that habit. How? Therapy? I just don't know.