Chapter Twenty-Six: The Argument Resumes

The next morning started out very well, initially. I had no problems sleeping, and had enjoyed being back in my own bedroom, on my comfortable mattress and pillow. I still had some twinges of apprehension about Mom, but was feeling generally optimistic that we'd be able to work things out. I even managed to get down the stairs for breakfast without too much trouble, but my spirits started to sink as I sat down at the table and took in my parents’ expressions. Dad’s tight jaw and the frown-lines in his forehead that meant he was frustrated, but trying to control it. He greeted me absently and then left to get his briefcase from his study. Mom was sipping from her coffee cup, wearing the pinched look about her mouth that warned me she was in a bad mood. She gave me a brief nod and an effort at a smile, then turned to frown at Dad as he came back downstairs. They must’ve had an argument. Great.

Dad gave me a brief embrace, his expression lightening a little as he said, “See you tonight, son,” but the front door shut behind him with a bit more of a bang than usual. I caught a glimpse of the overcast sky and felt a blast of heat sweep through the room. The newspaper was lying on the table, as usual; I glanced at the weather section and saw that the temperature was supposed to hit ninety-five, with severe storms forecast for the afternoon. Not a very cheerful outlook. I folded the paper, then quietly helped myself to cereal and juice. After considering for a moment, I cautiously tried some scrambled eggs, figuring they fell into the ‘semi-solid’ category. Mom didn’t stop me; in fact, she didn’t even notice. She was reading another section of the paper, still frowning. The air of tension was strong and I felt uncomfortable, so I ate as quickly as I dared. The sooner I got done and back upstairs, the better I’d feel.

Joe trotted downstairs a few minutes after Dad left and grinned when he saw me. He took his spot beside me, heaped his plate, and started in, apparently oblivious to the mood hanging in the room. I finished eating long before he was, and against my better judgment, lingered at the table for the sake of company. He asked how I was feeling and I told him ‘Much better’; then he asked where Dad was and I explained that Dad had just left. After that, the only sounds were his utensils against his plate, the rustling of the paper, and the quiet clink of Mom’s coffee cup whenever she put it down on the table.

When Joe was done, we both took our dishes out to the kitchen, as usual. I saw Joe glance over his shoulder toward the dining room; his smile had vanished and I knew he’d caught on to the lingering air of tension. “I think they had a fight,“ I murmured in his ear, and he nodded, frowning. “Dad had that frustrated look, before he left.”

“Mmmm.” Joe nodded again and then we both went out to finish clearing the table. Mom ignored us as we took care of the dishes, but as we were heading for the stairs, she put down the newspaper.

“Hold it, both of you.”

I recognized the tone at once; it was the voice she uses when we’re in deep trouble. I turned to face her, feeling resentment stir in the midst of my dread. She obviously meant to bring up the argument, as I’d expected. And equally obviously, my hope that we wouldn’t get into another shouting match was badly misplaced!

“Let’s hear it.” Mom was eyeing us both with a grim expression.

Joe and I traded confused glances. “Hear what?” I asked.

“Don’t give me that! I’m not putting up with any more secrets, Frank.”

“What secrets?” Joe demanded, his voice as perplexed as his face.

“This case of yours!” Mom snapped.

“We’re not on a case,” I replied, bewildered. “How could we be? I’ve been in the hospital-”

“I know where you’ve been!” Mom cut me off. “I want to know about the investigation that put you there! Did you expect to just walk off and leave me in the dark yet again? It is a bit late to think about ‘sparing me any worry’, as you call your habit of lying to me. I thought I’d made it clear that I wasn’t going to stand for any more untruths and half-truths.”

For a moment, I just stared at her, unable to get my brain into gear. What a change from the kind and caring attention she’d been giving me in the last weeks! Joe gave himself a brief shake, then said curtly, “We’re telling you the truth, Mom, we’re not on a case. Haven’t been since we got home from Vermont. If we’d taken one, we’d have told you, like we always do.”

“I bet,” my mother retorted sarcastically. “Just like you always tell me everything that happens. You never keep anything secret from your mother, do you?”

“Mom-”

“Of course, why didn’t I see it? This was a purely random thing, someone just walked by and pulled out a gun-”

And now we know who Joe gets his talent for sarcasm from.

“Actually, that was almost exactly what happened, except it was a car that pulled up beside me and the passenger that started shooting,” I told her.

“And you expect me to believe that?” Mom shouted, standing so fast that I thought her chair was going to go over backward.

“I was standing at a stoplight!” I shot back, my voice rising. “I wasn’t paying attention, I had no reason to be alert or watch my back! I didn’t even get the license plate number- and you know I wouldn’t be that un-alert and clumsy if I was on a case! If I’d been expecting trouble, I would noticed it a lot sooner, and I would’ve gotten clear as soon as the guy stuck his gun out the window. He took me completely off-guard!” I paused to catch my breath, biting on my tongue to keep the next words in my mouth.

I might as well have said it. It was hanging so heavily in the air that the next thing Joe said was: “And he wouldn’t’ve walked out of the house if you hadn’t-”

“Shut your mouth, Joseph, don’t you dare try to lay a speck of blame on me for this!” Mom’s hand slapped down on the table-top.

“Why not?” my brother demanded, leaning forward, fists clenched, cheeks flushing red with anger. “You deserve it!”

Something clicked sharply in my mind. “So that’s it,” I muttered. “If you can make us admit we were working on a mystery, you can lay all the blame on that. Then you can say it never would have happened if it weren’t for all that horrid investigating. But if we weren’t investigating, you have to admit you were at least partly to blame for it all- and you don’t want to accept your responsibility.” I paused and looked straight into her furious eyes. “I wasn’t investigating a damn thing, Mother,” I went on curtly. “All I was doing was putting as much distance between me and you as I could, in the shortest possible time. And some ass decided to pull a drive-by shooting right where I was.”

Mom’s face went from white to red as she glared at me. “You wouldn’t have felt any need to walk out of the house if you’d bothered to listen and understand what I was saying to you!” she told me in a furious but very distinct voice. “I was angry at you for deceiving me about the danger you two put yourselves into! It’s your safety I’m worried about! And you somehow twisted my concern around to mean I was favoring Joe over you-”

“That is not what happened!” I shouted at her. “I wouldn’t have gone anywhere if it’d just been about us omitting stuff! I never felt right about giving you only part of the story, and you had every reason to be mad about it. But I didn’t twist anything! You’re the one twisting things! You’re pretending that argument was all about our safety, but it was as much about your rotten favoritism as anything else! It’s Joe’s safety that concerns you, you admitted it when you told me how worried you were that he’d get hurt- Joe, not Dad, and not me! You wanted Joe to stop taking cases, but you could care less whether I do or not! You don’t care about what I do, so long as Joe’s not in danger!” I pointed stiffly at my brother, not taking my eyes from Mom’s.

“Frank, you-”

“And you can’t deny that you favor him over me, either. It’s blatant! Anyone with functioning eyeballs can see it. You don’t have any problem demonstrating how much you adore him- and you don’t have any difficulty conveying how oblivious you are to me!” I could have given her a number of explicit examples, and I was deeply tempted to. But I knew that for every bit of guilt I flung in Mom’s face, I’d be inflicting an equal- or greater- amount of guilt on Joe. I couldn’t do that to my brother. None of it was his fault and he didn’t deserve to take the backlash. “I don’t think you have ever really loved me, but you wouldn’t come out and admit it. You just demonstrated it,” I concluded as calmly as possible. Which wasn’t very.

Mom’s face was pale again and her expression was a blend of disbelief and guilt. That pleased me. Then she straightened up and declared, “That is not true, Frank. None of what you just said is true.”

“Well, you’ll excuse us if we believe it anyway,” Joe practically spat at her. “You refuse to believe Frank wasn’t working on an investigation when he got hurt? Fine, we refuse to believe that we’re wrong about your favoritism. Besides, we’re used to drawing conclusions based on evidence, and you’ve demonstrated plenty of it.”

“Evidence, what evidence?” Mom cried out. “What in the world has made either of you think this way? You’re making these statements and you’re not even offering me any examples-”

“I don’t notice you offering any examples to the contrary, either,” I told her wearily. “You want me to think you care about me? Then you better give some thought to proving it.” Sick of the circuitous argument, I turned away and walked across the room. Silence seemed to blanket the entire house as I made my slow, aching way up the steps. The little creaks of the wood under my feet sounded terribly loud to me and I was grateful when I reached the quiet, carpeted hallway. I could hear my brother’s grimly angry voice drifting up the steps, but by then I was too far away to hear his words clearly. The sound cut off as I shut my door and lay down on my unmade bed.

How can she stand there and pretend she doesn’t favor Joe? How can she act like she’s got the same concern for me that she has for him? How stupid, how unobservant does she think I am? And how dare she ignore the favoritism and act like it was all about us deceiving her? Ah, of course- that way she’s the wronged one and we’re the ones to blame for it. Call me a liar, will you? You’re the one lying, Mom; you’re the one twisting and evading and refusing to admit you’re wrong. At least we admitted it!

I wished there was something I could do to vent all the feelings that were piling up inside me; I felt like I was going into emotional overload. If I could just feel one thing instead of many... My primary emotion was anger, because I had always hated to be accused of lying, but there was a lot of frustration and indignation mixed in with it. And an incredible amount of pain. I turned over, rearranged the pillow, and tried to soothe myself with indifference. Tried to tell myself that it didn’t matter if Mom loved me or not; it didn’t matter if she favored Joe. What mattered was that Dad loved me, and Joe certainly did- two out of three was plenty, and more than some people had. I should be glad I was loved so much, instead of pining for what I couldn’t have. It wasn’t as if it was my fault. And there wasn’t anything I could do about it. I’d just have to accept it. That was what I’d been doing wrong, wishing I could change something that wasn’t mine to change.

It was a fine philosophy, but it didn’t help in the least. I wanted my mother’s love, and it hurt terribly to admit that I didn’t seem to have it. It did matter to me. But there still wasn’t anything I could do about it.

After a while I sat up and looked drearily around my room. Its familiarity suddenly seemed dull, confining. I wanted to be out of it, but I wasn't about to go back downstairs and deal with Mom- or with the stairs themselves. Besides, I was still fairly weak; even if I did get out of the house, the best I'd likely manage would be a walk around the block. But staying shut up in my room was a very uninviting thought. I was restless for some distraction, but in no mood to listen to music or try to read, and even the computer didn't tempt me. Finally I got up from the bed, sat down at my desk, and pulled out a sheet of paper and a pencil. I made sure the door was firmly closed, and then I started writing. I poured out all the 'examples' that were burning inside me that I'd wanted to fling in Mom's face; all the things I could think of that proved she cared more for Joe than I. All the things that I didn't want to say in front of him, knowing how miserable it would make him feel.

I stopped when I got near the bottom of the page, but the memories kept fluttering through my mind. Large things, small things- even petty things, some of them- but added together, it made a devastating whole. It wasn't my imagination, and it wasn't paranoid jealousy, though I had little doubt Mom would describe it that way. That, or say I was making mountains out of molehills.

I'll keep this, and next time she goes on about proof, I'll show it to her. Let her deny it then! This proves I'm not making it up- she'll have a hard time explaining it all away, or claiming I don't understand, or that I don't have any 'evidence'.

My thoughts wandered on in this vein for a while; it was nearly an hour before physical pain began to distract me from my miserable brooding. My stomach was all right, but the area just under it was beginning to ache- my colon, where one of the bullets had lodged. I grimaced, thinking of the eggs I’d eaten, and concluded they had been a bit too solid for my healing body to deal with. Then I remembered that my pain medication was downstairs; Dad had left it there the day before yesterday, when I came home. Joe had brought me a pill up last night when I needed it, but now I’d have to go downstairs to fetch it.

Not that I want to go down there- or anywhere else that Mom might be…

I heaved a sigh, got up from the chair, and moved reluctantly down the hall to the stairs. As I reached the top step, I hesitated. I could hear agitated voices drifting up from below and frowned, annoyed and suddenly apprehensive. Had they been arguing the entire time, or was it a rematch? Either way, I was unwilling to face it, and for a moment I stood debating with myself. Did I really need the painkiller that badly? After a moment, I concluded that- like it or not- I'd better get it. The pain wasn't too bad yet, but the longer I delayed, the worse it would get. I started slowly down the steps, bracing myself on the banister. The old, dry wood creaked a few times under my weight, but neither Joe nor Mom seemed to hear it. If I was lucky, I’d be able to slip into the kitchen for the pills and get back upstairs without being noticed.

Then Joe’s words became clear and I paused to listen, halfway down the staircase.

“If you feel more for one of your kids than the other, the very least you should do is treat them equally, not show one more affection than the other. Hold us both at arm’s length if you can’t show us equal amounts of love.” Joe sounded very cross. I closed my eyes, feeling a rush of gratitude. It was so like him to insist that Mom should be fair in showing her affection- or lack of it.

Never works that way, little brother, but it’s so good of you to try...

“But what I don’t get is, why? Why won’t you admit it? Why do you let him think there’s some terrible flaw in him that you just can’t forgive? Why won’t you be honest and admit that it’s something in you that makes you treat your own son-”

“He’s not my son.”

 

The Hardy Boys belong to Simon and Schuster and the Stratemeyer Foundation. The Hardy Boys Fan Fiction authors of the Hardy Detective Agency have just borrowed them for an adventure or two. The authors promise to put the boys back when they are done with them. The authors do claim copyright to the original characters in this story. Please do not borrow original characters without express permission of the authors.