Protect the diamond

Living at home is something you never want to do after two/three years, but the options are few, after abject failure. So that's where I was. "It is temporary," I told to my friends. Actually, I told very few friends what I was doing. The idea was just that I'd disappear and they'd think I'd died, maybe.

My mom picked me up in the train station in her minivan. I was very slow getting into the minivan. "DID YOU HURT YOUR KNEES?" she asked. Why? I don't know. She was shouting. She shouts a lot.

She tried to start several conversations on the way. Small talk. "Please," I said, and I waved her off and covered my eyes with my hand.

"Now that you're the man of the house," she said (what this means I do not know--my dad is still around), "you're going to have to protect my diamond." I groaned. She gestured at her engagement ring. The diamond was stupidly large, connected to the ring by its point. It was foggy and dull and it occurred to me it would be very easy to steal.

"What do you want me to do," I groaned. "Carry a gun around?"

"Well, it might not be such a bad idea."

That's when I exploded. I went off on her for a good two or three minutes. Or I don't really know how long. I lost my sense of time at this point, to some extent. I just know we blew past a few exits and I was still shouting. About how stupid it was to carry a gun.

"It's not that dangerous," she said.

"It's dangerous! It's dangerous!" I was practically steaming up the windshield at this point. "If I shoot myself with it, I'm probably going to die!"

There was a long silence then. "Well I don't think it's such a bad idea," she said. I sighed again. Then I groaned. And groaned a couple more times, for a while. Then I rested my forehead on the dashboard and tried to go to sleep.

At some point, we pulled into the driveway. I went directly for the backroom. There were a couple puzzles out on the table, so I started putting one together. I groaned again as it started to come together and I realized what it was: a promotional photograph of a Vince Vaughn movie. My mother was pretending to work on a puzzle of her own next to me on the other end of the bench (we were at a picnic table we had set up in the backroom/kitchen).

Then, "hmmm," she said, and she stretched out. "I think I'll go do something else right now," she said.

"No," I said. I knew exactly what was going on. "Don't."

She ran upstairs and then I heard a rolling on the roof and saw her jump off on her skateboard. She rolled up the halfpipe in the backyard and did a trick, then rolled back and did another trick off the other end and so on. The house started sliding away from her. I grumbled under my breath and pretended to be consumed with the puzzle. She was going to do her big trick now. She flew over the top of the halfpipe and grabbed her board in her right hand and held it out as far as her arm would go and flew over the half pipe and onto the roof of the house next door, then she disappeared over the edge. I rolled my eyes. The house kept sliding down towards the street.

I have told her many times to stop skateboarding. She never listens. She says it keeps her alive. She only does it to make me angry, I'm sure of it.

"Pretty good, eh?" she said when she came back in through the back door. She was panting. I didn't look up from my puzzle. I finished the Vince Vaughn promotional photograph side and flipped it over--it was a two-sided puzzle, and the second side was a picture of some kittens sitting in some flowers. She clearly thought I was going to change my mind about the skateboarding thing. I refused to look up from my puzzle.

There's a thing a lot of people do when they're putting together a puzzle. They put together the edges first and then work towards the inside. I don't do this--I don't find that it's an effective strategy, for the most part. I start from the inside and work my way out, which is more of a challenge, maybe, but I think it's more rewarding, because once you're at the end and all you have are the edges left, it's easier and you just fly towards the conclusion when the picture's all together, and you avoid the horrible thing of the jagged frame around the plain brown of the table that makes you feel just totally emptied out yourself and lonely.