Look Who's Lactating!

I was supposed to be finishing college this year, but that all changes when Sharon calls me in tears and tells me she needs me.

I call her Sharon, not Mom. She said it was okay after she divorced my old man. We were always more like friends than mother and son. She even said as much when she was drunk at one of the old holiday parties my parents used to host.

At the time, my parents were on the outs because my father slept with some bitch at the car dealership where he worked. Sharon got back at him by ignoring him and all of his guests for the entirety of the party and openly drinking more than she should have. That's how come she ended up on the couch with me, sitting too close for anyone's comfort, and rubbing my inner thigh while she extolled my virtues.

The old man shrugged it off as her being a weirdo and trying to fuck with him, but I took it dead serious and hadn't ever forgotten it. On the few occasions when I'd seen her since, the air was always charged with erotic tension. Maybe not for Sharon—she was a tough one to read—but definitely for me.

I couldn't help but remember that Christmas party. Her hand on my thigh. The look on her face. And those glacial blue eyes that always captivated me throughout my life.

Moving out of state for college had been a deliberate attempt on my part to forget my mother. To tamp down the desire I was sure would never be actualized.

But then she calls and nothing will ever be the same again.

I knew she had another kid with her new boyfriend, Terry, but that's all I knew. If you'd told me that my mother was living in a trailer court I would have told you to take a flying fuck.

After all, Sharon isn't some crack baby who grew up working a stripper pole. She comes from old money and her parents sent her to the best private school in Connecticut.

But that's about as far as Sharon's privilege extended. Once she got knocked up with me, her strict religious parents wrote her off.

The financial security she had known evaporated completely after she left my dad. The bastard gave her half alright, but half of nothing is jack shit and that's about all he had to show for his years as a car dealer.

When she met Terry, she thought she'd met her frog prince. He was handsome, charming, and idealistic. And she bought right into his bullshit about how, sooner of later, he would own his own boat and they would sail across the world. But the only boat Terry ever boarded was the one on which he shoveled crabs out of some other dude's nets.

Working as a seasonal crabber earned Terry just enough to move his new wife into the Grady Village mobile home park, but when the season was over so were Terry's prospects. They were living on leftovers and Terry was crawling into a bottle every night.

Then the universe brought them a surprise as the universe has a habit of doing. Sharon found out she was having another kid and, much to his credit, Terry sobered up fast and went looking for dependable work.

Of course, dependability and longevity don't always go hand in hand. Terry found regular work as a rideshare driver, but the gig taxed his ride to such an extent that it was constantly costing him money in oil changes, tire rotations, and expensive components.

It got to the point where Terry started letting things go. So long as the problem wouldn't keep him off the road, he'd put off the repairs until such time that he got himself caught up with all the bills there were to pay, bills which were mounting with the imminent arrival of their unborn son.

When Sharon calls me, she is in pieces. Turns out, there are some things you can't afford to scrimp on and one of them is good tires.

Terry hit a patch of black ice on the highway and his car was totaled. Highway patrol said an eyewitness counted six rollovers before it came to a stop.

Somehow, Terry had survived the rollovers and the crash completely unscathed, said the eyewitness.

“It was the freakiest thing,” they said. “Like that bolt of lightning was aiming right for that poor man.”

Between the newborn, the lease on the Grady Village plot, and the funeral expenses, Sharon is going to need to figure something out quick. She has a baby to think about.

It's like the whole thing is kismet. Not the Terry frying part; although, to be fair, the universe gives us signs, and what could be a bigger sign than my mom's deadbeat boyfriend becoming a victim of force majeure?

One week ago, I had suddenly—some might say serendipitously—started planning to take some time off school. I wasn't sure why, it was just a feeling I was having—like maybe something else should be happening in my life.

Don't ask me why, but it felt as though some force was pulling me away from the degree I'd been pursuing in creative writing. Perhaps because I sensed that an English degree wasn't going to be worth much in the future or, more probably, because some part of me knew Sharon was going to need me.

And I would do anything to see her again and have her depend on me.

When I get her call, I don't hesitate.

“I'll be there by ton