Mad About You

One-"The Sign"

One

"The Sign"

I should have known what was coming when my mother started spring cleaning to "The Sign" and "Dreams" on repeat while simultaneously taking big gulps of her favorite red wine, Balletto Pinot Noir, out of a bottle instead of a glass.

My mother wasn't a crier. She was rather a sing loudly (and often off key) to "feel good, get over the freaking bastard" music while cleaning.

Usually, I was tasked with cleaning the matchbox sized apartment spotless since my mom worked a twelve-hour shift four days out of the week at the hospital in downtown Brooklyn, while spending the other three days sprawled on the couch spending half the day snoozing away and the other half praying for a lottery win. So, to see her doing it meant only one thing...

"We're moving," my mother bellowed over the blaring boombox, the only thing she still had left of the nineties and my father.

I slung my bookbag on the pink, white and purple polka dot rug that matched the drapes and slid slowly down unto the sofa as I prepared myself for the same refrain.

"Ray is getting out in a few days, and I don't want us to be anywhere near here when he does."

She sat down beside me, tucking a strand of her short auburn hair with blood red highlights behind her ear and put a hand to my lap. I mentally rolled my eyes as she continued. "I know I said this would be the last move before you graduate, but Ray is just too unpredictable and dangerous to take that kind of chance." She gave me a hopeful look of approval, "You understand honey?"

The average senior in high school would have objected, threw everything around the living room, and shouted at the top of their lungs that they weren't going but I was used to it. In fact, it didn't really phase me at all. I had no social life to lament.

We spent almost every year in a new state except for when we lived in Texas and Ohio...those happened to be three and two years respectively because she thought she found the love her life in both states, though both men in each state turned out being major asswipes like the rest.

In total, I think we have lived in twenty states so far. Wherever we were heading next was about to be state number twenty-one. She never circled back to the same state twice. Her mantra: "You can't move forward, if you're always looking back."

"Where?" I asked her although I honestly didn't care. There was nowhere we had been so far that felt like home and I'm sure wherever we were heading next would also feel the same.

"Only the best place in America. California! Los Angeles to be exact."

I looked at her in disbelief. I had expected somewhere far but not that far out.

"Do you even have Los Angeles money? The average rent there is about half of a semester's worth of school at Columbia U."

"So is New York and we managed." She shrugged.