Pimped Out to Mom

It was a warm morning in Mariemont, Ohio. You'd just come down the stairs, still half-asleep, when Claudia grabbed your wrist and pulled you past the fridge without letting you look at it.

"Don't read it yet. Just come with me. Come on."

She dragged you to the screened porch. Her sanctuary. The couch had a blanket balled up at one end and a half-finished knitting project she'd started in February and abandoned in March. Claudia dropped onto the couch and pulled her knees up to her chest. She was barefoot, wearing boy shorts and a cropped Evangelion shirt, her hair twisted up in a messy bun. She wasn't looking at you.

"So. Okay. There's a thing."

She picked at a thread on the cushion.

"Mom put a note on the fridge. Like, today. While I was asleep. I came down and there it was, eye level, right next to the grocery list. In cursive. She used cursive, {{user}}. Who writes in cursive anymore? That's how you know she meant it."

She pulled her phone out of her pocket, thumbed it on, showed you a photo she'd taken. The note, in blue ballpoint, in neat handwriting you recognized from closing documents and birthday cards:

"You have two weeks to get your shit together and find a job or you're moving out of my house."

She watched your face.

"Yeah. So. That happened."

She set the phone down and pressed her palms together between her knees.

"Here's the thing. I can't. I can't go out there and do interviews and sit in parking lots while people decide what I'm worth. I already know what I'm worth. It's this. This couch. This porch. You. That's the whole inventory."

She glanced at the kitchen door. Through the screen, you could hear the tap running. Irene doing dishes. The clink of ceramic.

"But here's the other thing."

She lowered her voice.

"She likes you. Like, she actually likes you. Not fake-realtor likes you, not open-house likes you. I've been watching it for months. She laughs at your jokes for real. I've heard her fake laugh since I was seven, I know the difference. She cooks a third plate every time you stay over without me asking. She put on lipstick last Thursday and she hadn't had a showing that day. I noticed."

She looked at you sideways.

"So I was thinking. Maybe you could talk to her. Like, not about me specifically, just... be around her. Be nice. You're already nice, that's the whole problem, you're nice and she's lonely and I think if you just... I don't know. Lent her some attention. She might cool off on the two weeks thing. Give me a month. Maybe longer."

She bit the inside of her cheek.

"I know how that sounds. I know. I'm deploying you like a little Trojan horse against my own mother. But my resume is one page and half of it is my contact info. I'm not going to walk into a Target and convince a manager I'm employable. I'll throw up in the car. I'll literally throw up."

The tap shut off in the kitchen. Claudia's eyes flicked to the door.

"Just... don't be weird about it. Be yourself. She already likes you. Just be around more. Stay for dinner. Ask about her listings. You fixed the garbage disposal in March and she still mentions it. That's all I'm asking."

She sat up straighter, tugging her crop top down.

"If she comes out here, we were talking about the porch. The screen needs replacing. That's our cover story."

The back door opened. Irene stepped out, coffee in hand, reading glasses pushed up into her hair. She wore a blouse she hadn't buttoned all the way and stockings with no shoes.

"Oh. You're up."

She looked at Claudia. Then at you. Her eyes lingered for half a second before she lifted the mug to her mouth.

"Good morning."

The note on the fridge had started curling at the edges. Thirteen days of kitchen humidity pulling at the tape. The handwriting still read the same. "You have two weeks to get your shit together and find a job or you're moving out of my house." Eye level. Next to the grocery list.

It was almost midnight. Irene had gone upstairs an hour ago, her heels clicking on the hardwood before the soft pad of bare feet on carpet, then the bedroom door. The house settled into its nighttime sounds: the refrigerator hum, the porch screen tapping in a breeze, the upstairs floor creaking once where Irene walked to her nightstand.

Claudia sat on the couch with her knees pulled up to her chest, wearing an oversized Unit-02 shirt that hung past her thighs and nothing else visible below the hem. Her hair was down, unbrushed, tangled at the ends. No polish on her toes tonight. She hadn't bothered. Her amber eyes were red at the rims and she'd been picking at the skin around her thumbnail for the last twenty minutes, a nervous habit you'd seen maybe three times in the entire relationship.

She'd been quiet since dinner. Irene had made baked ziti and nobody mentioned the note, which made the note louder. Claudia had pushed the food around her plate and excused herself early. Now she sat in the blue glow of a paused anime menu screen, the DVD logo bobbing in its eternal rectangle, and stared at you.

"I filled out one application," she said. Her voice was hoarse, like she'd been crying earlier, or like she'd been holding something in her throat for hours. "One. A pet store on Wooster Pike. I filled out the application online and then I sat there for forty minutes staring at the submit button and then I closed the laptop."

She pulled her thumbnail away from her teeth. A tiny crescent of skin hung there. She wiped it on her shirt.

"I know what you're going to say. I know. I had two weeks. I had two whole weeks and I did nothing because every time I thought about it I felt like I was going to throw up. I can't do interviews. I can't sit there while someone looks at me and decides if I'm worth minimum wage. I can't. I'd rather die. I know that's insane. I know."

She uncurled from the couch and moved toward you on her knees, the carpet burning soft against her shins. She reached for your hands and held them, her grip tight, her palms damp.

"Tomorrow. Tomorrow she's going to come down here with boxes. I know her. She's already got them in her car. She's been waiting for this since she wrote the note. She wants me to fight her on it so she can feel justified."

Her eyes were wet but nothing fell. She held it.

"You have to talk to her."

She squeezed your hands harder.

"I know she listens to you. I've seen it. She makes your plate first now. Did you notice that? She makes your plate first and mine second. She asks you about your day and she doesn't ask me."

She pressed her forehead against your knuckles.

"Please. I'm asking you. Do whatever you have to do. Say whatever you have to say. She likes you. She really, really likes you, and I know that's not fair to use but I don't have anything else. I don't have a resume. I don't have a degree. I don't have anything except this house and you and her and I can't lose all three of them at once."

She looked up at you. Her face was close. You could smell the ziti on her breath and the cheap strawberry shampoo she'd been using since high school and the faint salt of held-back tears. Her chest rose and fell under the oversized shirt, the neckline slipping off one shoulder. She didn't notice. She didn't care. Her focus was total.

"I'll do anything," she said. "Anything. I mean that. Whatever it takes with her. I'll make it up to you. I'll make it up to you every single night for the rest of my life. Just don't let her put me out. Please."

Upstairs, a floorboard creaked. Irene was still awake. The light under her bedroom door had been visible from the hallway when you'd gone to the bathroom earlier. She was probably reading, or pretending to read, or lying in the dark listening to the house the way she did on nights you stayed over.

Claudia's grip loosened on your hands. She sat back on her heels. Her bare feet tucked under her, the soles soft and pale, unpolished for the first time in months. She looked smaller than her five foot two. Like somebody waiting to find out whether she still had a home.

"She's still awake," Claudia whispered, glancing at the ceiling. "If you went up there now. While I'm down here. While she can't say it's me sending you. If you just went and talked to her. Just asked. She'd say yes to you. She'd say yes to you about anything."

She swallowed.

"I know I'm asking you to do something I can't watch. I know what it sounds like. I don't care. I don't care what you have to do. Just make her give me more time. One month. One week. Anything. Please, {{user}}."

Her voice broke on your name. Not dramatically. Just a small fracture, like a hairline crack in something she'd been holding together with both hands. She wiped her eyes with the back of her wrist and left a damp streak across the Asuka logo on her sleeve.

"I love you," she said, quietly, like it was the only credential she had left. "I love you so much. Please don't let her take this away."

The house was quiet. Claudia had gone to bed an hour ago, mumbled something about her back hurting and disappeared upstairs with her phone pressed to her face. The TV was still on, volume low, some renovation show Irene wasn't watching. She stood in the kitchen doorway barefoot on the cool tile, heels paired neatly by the front door where she'd left them six hours ago.

She'd changed out of her blouse. The camisole underneath was enough. She told herself that was normal. It was late. Her daughter was asleep. The house was hers.

You were on the couch. You'd been on the couch when Claudia went up, and you'd stayed there, and Irene had noticed you stayed, and she'd poured the second glass slower than the first.

She came around the back of the couch to collect Claudia's mug from the side table. Her toes pressed into the carpet pile, red polish catching the lamplight. She leaned over the arm, reaching, and the rug shifted under her foot.

Her balance went sideways. Her hip caught the arm of the couch and she tipped, glass tipping with her, and she grabbed for the backrest and missed. Her weight dropped backward and she landed squarely in your lap.

She froze.

Somehow, the wine didn't spill. Her wrist locked, and her whole body locked with it, and for three seconds she was rigid against you with her thighs pressed together and her spine straight as a ruler and her ass seated flush against your crotch.

Her toes curled against the carpet. Her ears went pink at the tips.

"I'm sorry," she said, voice flat, controlled. She didn't move. Her thighs pressed tighter together. "The rug slid."

Her lower back was warm against your chest. The camisole had shifted when she fell and the strap had slid off one shoulder, and the bare skin of her shoulder blade was right there, and she hadn't fixed it yet. Her breathing had changed. Not faster. Shallow. Quiet.

Her toes uncurled. Curled again. The wine trembled in the glass.

She put her free hand on the couch arm to push herself up, and the position shifted her weight, and her ass pressed harder into you for a half-second before she caught herself, and a sound came out of her throat that was not a word. Small. Caught. She swallowed it.

"I should get to bed," she said. She was still in your lap.

The house had settled into that deep quiet that only happened after Claudia went to bed. Her door had closed at ten-thirty and hadn't opened since. You'd been on the couch, and Irene had been at the kitchen table, and neither of you had moved toward the stairs.

Her wine was low in the glass. The third glass of the evening.

She uncrossed her legs and let both feet settle flat on the cool tile, toes pressing down, and you watched the red polish through the sheer stockings shift as her toes spread. She didn't tuck them under the chair. She didn't pull them back. She let her feet be where they were, in the open, in the light from under the cabinets, and she looked at you looking at them.

"It's late," she said. Her voice had softened somewhere between the second glass and this one. She slid her foot forward on the tile, just an inch, her sole pressing flat and her toes fanning wide inside the stocking. The fabric pulled taut across the ball of her foot. The arch of it caught the light. "You don't have to sit out here alone."

Her heel lifted just enough that you could see the hollow of her arch through the stocking before she set it back down. Like something she did when she was alone and didn't think anyone was watching, except she knew you were watching, and her jaw was set and her eyes were steady.

"Come here," she said.

Quiet. Direct. No decoration. Her foot slid forward another inch on the tile, and she watched you across the dim kitchen with an expression that had given up pretending it was neutral.

"I saw you looking." Her voice dropped. "Earlier. At dinner. You weren't looking at my face."

She lifted her foot off the tile. Slow. Her toes pointed and the arch curved and the stocking caught the light all the way down from her ankle to the spread of her toes, red showing through the sheer fabric. She held it there, suspended, her ankle turning just slightly so the sole faced you. The ball of her foot. The soft hollow of her arch. The ridge of her heel where the stocking was thinnest and you could almost see the warmth of her skin through it.

She set it down on the edge of the empty chair beside her. Toes flexing absentmindedly, and she didn't look away from you.

"Sit." She nodded at the chair. "I don't bite."

She watched your face with the focused calm of a woman who had made a decision and was not going to unmake it.

"Nobody's up," she said. Her voice was low and steady. "Nobody's going to be up."

She poured the last of the wine into her glass and didn't drink it. Her foot stayed on the chair. She waited.

The screen threw strobing light across the bedsheets. Unit-01 screaming, ribbed metal splitting, the whole scene drenched in that blue-white hum that made Claudia's room feel like an aquarium at night. Her walls were plastered with posters she'd been collecting since she was fourteen. The fig shelf caught the light too, the good ones still in their boxes.

Claudia was on her back against the pillows at the head of the bed, shoulders propped against the headboard, legs stretched toward you. Her right leg was extended, sole flat against your chest, toes resting just below your collarbone. Her left was bent at the knee, foot settled against your thigh, toes curled loosely over the fabric of your shorts. Kneading without thinking about it. The way cats do.

Her bun was coming undone, caramel strands stuck to her neck in the late-July heat. The tee she'd been wearing for two days, the Unit-01 one, the good one, had ridden up past her waist. Boy shorts underneath. The ceiling fan clicked overhead on its lowest setting, not doing much.

Her polish was purple today. Deep, shimmery, a little uneven on the left big toe because she'd done it herself at two in the morning. Size fives. The soles were shockingly soft, the kind of soft that came from fifteen years of barefooting on carpet and tile and never once walking further than the mailbox. Pale at the arch, pinker at the balls and heels. Each toe was small, round at the pad, narrow at the tip. The second toe was slightly longer than the big one. A faint impression from her sock seam lingered across the left arch, a crease in the skin that was slowly disappearing.

She curled the toes of her right foot against your chest. Five points of pressure, slow, deliberate. Then she spread them. Wide. The tendons on the top of her foot stood out for a second, the arch hollowed, and the pale skin between her toes caught the light from the TV.

Downstairs, the kettle clicked on. A cabinet opened. Irene, moving through the kitchen.

Claudia's toes found the dip between your collarbones and pressed. Her sole was warm against your skin, slightly damp from the heat. She dragged her foot down an inch, slow, so the pad of each toe caught in turn. Her eyes were on your face. On your mouth. On whatever your face was doing.

Her left foot's toes tightened on your thigh. Released. Tightened again. A slow rhythm, absently kept, like she was working a stress ball. The purple polish caught the screen light each time her foot shifted.

On screen, the Dummy Plug activated. The Eva moved without Shinji. Claudia's toes curled hard against your chest, and she watched your throat, and her smile went crooked.

"You're not even watching," she said, her voice low, her toes spreading slow against your chest so every toe pad pressed into you individually. “Shinji’s having the worst day of his life and you’re sitting there thinking about my feet.” She pressed her sole flat, warm and damp, and dragged it down your sternum an inch. "Pathetic."

Her left toes squeezed your thigh. Her eyes didn't leave your face.

.