Charlie's Mom

You want to hear about my kid?

You want to hear about Charlie?

My kid stopped talking to me
Once that thing happened
With his wife
With his ex-wife

Once she got with my other son

I said, 'Charlie, I don't want to hear it.  I'm not picking sides.'

Did I like the girl?

No

Wasn't my business to like her
Or not like her

Wasn't my business at all

Charlie thought I was playing favorites
Wasn't the case

What do you do when a slut comes between two brothers?

Tell one of them not to love her?

I tried that
Didn't work
So I stayed out of it

And Charlie stops talking to me

Okay, fine

What am I supposed to do?

A son stops talking to his mother
What does she do?

You tell me
What I was supposed to do

Did he care that when my husband, his father
Walked out
That I had to take care of everybody by myself?

That I had to hold the family together
While he was off somewhere
Doing God knows what?

No

Nobody cared about that

Charlie didn't care

Charlie said he took care of me

HE took care of ME

That's what he says

Why?

Because I had a few every now and again
And he'd help get me to bed?

That's taking care of somebody?

Bullshit

Because he helped with a few bills?

I paid all the bills his whole life
And all of a sudden
It's a big deal
If he chips in a few bucks
Every now and then

All this he throws in my face
All those years later
Because of what happened with his brother

Well, you don't do that

Pain ain't retroactive

You got a problem
You deal with it then and there
That was the rule in my house

You let something go
You let it go forever

Charlie didn't like that rule

Oh well

Guess he thought he could stop liking it
Once he wasn't in my house anymore

Wasn't that convenient for him?

You think you know things about me
Because of what he's said
Or what someone else has said
Some friend or maybe his aunt
Or something?

You think you know?

You don't know shit

You don't know me as a mother

You sit in a room
At a funeral
And you listen to something
And you say 'that's the truth'

What's the truth?

Somebody's memory?
Somebody's story?
Somebody's opinion?

What's the damn truth?

You want a little truth about my son

He gets to high school
And I get a phone call one day
Telling me I gotta come get him
There's been a problem

He'd been taking piano lessons for years
Lessons I paid for
And now there's a problem
Because he wrote some story in some class
About a piano teacher taking advantage of her student

So I go apeshit
And call the principal
And the woman's husband
And she gets run out of town on a damn rail
And Charlie says he can't take piano lessons anymore
And I say 'Why?  It's just a bad experience.  Everybody has bad experiences.'

But he doesn't want to hear it
He wants to stop

So I let him stop

Some bad mother, huh?

Years of practice
Years of lessons
Bucketfuls of money
Mine and his father's
Yeah, some of it his father's, I'll say it

And he throws it away
Because a woman gets fresh with him

Well, fine, I said
Fine

I didn't push it

Then this thing happens with his brother
And all this shit's coming out
And I bring up the piano lessons
And he says he made it up

'Made what up,' I asked

'The whole thing,' he said, 'The thing with my teacher.  I made it up.'

I was stunned
I sat there
I remember I just sat there
In my living room

Just looking at him
Really seeing all that badness
All that nastiness inside my own blood
This person I gave birth to

Telling me he did this thing
That he lied
The worst thing you can do is lie, you know that?

The worst thing

And he's standing there
And that's my kid
That's my Charlie
Made it up
Ruined a woman's life

'How could you do something like that?  You destroyed that poor woman!  What are you some kind of animal?'

And he said--

'I told you I didn't want to take those lessons.  I begged you to let me stop.  You wouldn't let me.  Even after I lied, you wouldn't let me quit.  I told you!  I told you!'

So he goes and does something like that

Any wonder he couldn't make a marriage work
Couldn't be a good father to his daughter
Couldn't be around anybody for too long
Before they got sick of him?

You want to say I'm a bad mother?

Yeah, well fuck you
He was a bad kid

There I said it

He was bad from day one
And I loved him anyway
And where did it get me?

Cut out, that's where it got me

Thank God for my other son
That's all I'll say

Looks like I made the right choice when I...

. . . . .

Doesn't matter

None of it matters

You asked me about my kid
And I told you

Somebody wants to say something different
That's them

Just remember
They're not his mother

I was his mother

That was me

That's how it was