ALBERTO

This short story is a tale of a smothered son of a smothering mother. Read an excerpt below.

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When Barbara came home, a few hours later, Alberto was sitting on the couch in the living room, in the dark. When his mother turned on the light, she winced.

“God, Alberto, what are you doing here? I thought you were somewhere with Beatrice.”

He turned to look at her. He was so tired that he didn’t even have the energy to hate her. He simply wanted answers. He went straight to the point.

“Mom, do you hate me?” he asked as if he was asking about the weather.

“What are you babbling about? You are my son, how could I hate you?”

“You can be sincere. It’s just you and me.”

She peered at him, searching for an answer on his face.

“Are you drunk?”

“No.”

“On drugs?”

“No.”

Barbara frowned.

“Then I don’t understand how you could ask me such a thing.”

“It’s none of your business. Think about an answer.”

“No, I don’t hate you Alberto. Happy now? Can I go to sleep?”

“If you don’t hate me, why do you treat me like dirt?”

Without hesitation, Barbara answered: “Because I think you are.”

Just a few hours before, that answer would have made him crazy.

“Have you ever wanted to be my mother?”

“Until I realized what a failure you were, yes.”

“You’re lying again.”

Barbara snorted, annoyed.

“Alberto, I’m not going to discuss this with you. I don’t owe you any explanation.”

“I think you owe me a lot of explanations.”

“Since when do you reply to your mother like that?”

“Since I stopped considering you my mother.”

For a second, those words seemed to strike a chord in Barbara, but she recomposed right away and a disdainful expression reappeared on her face.

Alberto continued.

“Do you hate to be my mother or the idea of being a mother?”

Barbara must have decided to cut it short and follow through with answers, probably because she had never seen so much assertiveness in her son.

“The first one. I would have wanted a different son. Someone who could carry the family name.”

“So my person is the problem. If I were different, would you have treated me with respect?”

“Maybe.”

“How could I have been different?”

“Where do I start? You’re weak and insecure, too sensitive, not intelligent enough to execute the simplest of tasks, unreliable. Do I need to go on?”

Barbara rattled off the answer, as if she couldn’t wait to say it. There was no trace of hesitation or remorse in her voice, only disdain.

“Have you ever thought, even for a moment, that this might be your fault?”

The rabid eel in Alberto’s chest came back to life. He didn’t want to give in to it. It would have made his mother even more aggravated.

“Don’t be foolish. I did nothing but try to make up for your shortcomings. Don’t blame your failures on me, Alberto.”

“Unbelievable. Do you know who just told me these exact same words? Beatrice. You brainwashed her good, didn’t you? She bought all that crap about being my fault if I’m not able to live a normal life.”

Barbara smiled, satisfied.

“I did a great job with Beatrice. When I met her, she was like you: insecure, full of anxiety, paranoid. Look at her now: she blossomed into a wonderful steel flower. Her only downfall was falling in love with you, but if I planted my seeds in the right spots, soon it won’t be a problem anymore.”

Alberto sprang from the couch. The urge to put as much distance as possible from that woman was making him nauseous. The eel in his chest stopped roughly around his throat, ready to rear its ugly head at the first misstep of his self-control, now on its last legs. His palms were itching and he tried to scratch them by rubbing his legs. He couldn’t understand why.

“Are we done with this ridiculous conversation?” asked Barbara, huffing “I would like to go to bed, if you don’t mind.”

Barbara couldn’t realize it by looking at his son, but something in Alberto’s chest had ripped. Something that was pulled, yanked, scratched to the point of being unable to be mended: his dignity. Behind his torn dignity, glimpse of something darker and scarier was worming its way through the rips to pollute Alberto’s mind.

He turned to his mother, clenching his fists and breathing heavily. His palms were still itching. He gazed at Barbara with fire in his eyes. His desire to hit her, hurt her, watch her suffer and beg was filling the distance between the two with an eerie presence.

Even when she deciphered what was going on in his son’s mind, Barbara didn’t seem scared in the slightest.

“Alberto, cut it off. We both know you won’t hurt me. I’ll tell you what is going to happen: I’ll have a good night’s sleep, you’ll remain here depressed, and tomorrow everything will be back to normal. You’ll still be the useless worm you’ve always been, I’ll always be your mother. You can’t change any of these things.”

Barbara’s words flew through the room like sharp knives and stabbed Alberto straight to the chest. The tear where his dignity once was widened, but the obscurity that had kept Alberto on his feet until then, dissolved and he collapsed to the ground. Sighs as huge as rocks filled his mouth.

“There, you’re behaving exactly as I predicted. You’re pathetic.” spouted Barbara before turning the light off and marching upstairs.

Alone, upset and defeated, on his knees on the living room floor, in the dark, Alberto cried. In the end, she won. With cruel irony, she won giving him exactly what he asked for: the truth. He was now certain to be the cause of his own suffering. The universe had aligned its pawns to send him to that house, with that woman, to be punished for being born.