Grandpa Park snorted again. “A public school?” he said. “You’re sending my grandson to a public school?”
“Albie,” Mom said, squeezing my arm a little harder. Too hard. “Go do your reading.” Her eyes were focused on my grandpa.
“Why bother?” Grandpa Park said. He pushed his plate aside and reached for his glass. He wasn’t having wine like Mom and Dad. His glass was filled with the red-brown drink he always had when he visited, the one Mom kept up high in the cupboard just for him. “Why not just throw him in a ditch now and be done with it? That’s where he’ll end up at this rate.”
“Appa!” Mom stood up then, her eyes angry-on-fire, and she practically pulled me out of my chair. “Come on, Albie. I think dinner’s over.”
“But . . . ,” I said, because I’d only had two bites, and I was still hungry. But I didn’t really want to stay either, so I followed her down the hall.
“Frankly,” I heard my dad say as Mom dragged me away, “I don’t appreciate the way you’ve been speaking to my son, Shin.”
“Oh, really?” I heard Grandpa Park reply. “Because I don’t appreciate the way you’ve been misraising my grandson.”
That’s when Mom slammed shut my bedroom door. She plopped herself down next to me on the bed and put her head in her hands.
I pulled the Hatchet book Mom gave me for my birthday off the table next to my bed, and I held it out to her because I thought she wanted to help me with my reading, and that was why she came into my room. But she didn’t take it. Instead she sighed.
I sighed too.
“I’m sorry about that, Albie,” she said. She was looking at the closed door. The way she narrowed her eyes at it, you would’ve thought it was the door she was mad at.
“It’s okay,” I said. I didn’t want her to feel bad. Anyway, it wasn’t like I was upset or anything. I was pretty sure Grandpa Park was wrong about me ending up in a ditch.
“No,” she said, still glaring at the door. “It’s not.”
I nodded. And I waited for her to tell me the stuff she usually told me when Grandpa Park came over, about him not really meaning all the stuff he said sometimes. And about him loving me so much, and that was why he could be so hard on me. And about him having a hard life growing up and so that was why he was gruff. Mom said the word gruff a lot when she was talking about Grandpa Park.
“Your grandfather . . .” She let out another long breath of air. “Your grandfather is not a very nice man.”
I sort of laughed when she said that, because at first I thought she was joking. That definitely wasn’t something you were supposed to say about your own dad. But when I looked at her face, I could tell she wasn’t joking.
She closed her eyes and shook her head. “God, sometimes I could just. . .” She balled her hands up into little fists in her lap.
I hugged her then, around the side. I wasn’t sure why I did it. Usually it was moms who hugged their kids, not the other way around. But I thought right then maybe she needed a hug more than I did.
She buried her nose deep in my hair. “I love you so much, Albie,” she said softly.
Maybe my mom didn’t always know how to be the best mother, like she said. But at least she was trying.
Maybe that was the important thing.
“I love you too,” I told her. “You are caring and thoughtful and good.”
Mom pulled away to look at me. Her eyes were wet. She smiled at me as she pushed the hair off my forehead, just gazing at my face. When she spoke, her voice was soft.