Done Adulting Vol. 1 Ch. 129

“Is he down,” Amanda asked her Mom. Once Jamie had recovered from his nightmare, he’d spent the rest of the day quiet, moody, and clinging to one or the other of them.

“Yes, finally. I’ve never seen him so nervous. I hate when he gets anxious like this.”

“I’m sure he’ll feel better when she gets here.”

“Hope so. His poor little tummy is doing flip flops.”

“Yeah, that was obvious today,” Amanda grimaced. When Jamie got nervous, his tummy would get upset, and his desire to nurse when he felt that way only made the problem worse.

“She’s gonna be here probably a little after breakfast. Someone from the agency is giving her a ride,” Becky reminded Amanda.

“I hope it all goes well.”

“Why wouldn’t it? Just two friends visiting.”

Amanda was amazed at her mother’s ability to remain blind to anything that would make Jamie out to be anything other than her little boy. Jamie didn’t confide in her about certain things, partly for that reason, but how could she not pick up on the way his mood changed when he received a letter from her or when he wrote one? Or think that maybe his affection for Ella went deeper than just friends? Amanda had started to seriously wonder what was wrong with her species when her mom had told her one of them would have to help Cheryl use the bathroom if she needed to. Why her mom understood that Cheryl, a little, was continent but still, all these months later, couldn’t understand that Jamie was too, couldn’t be explained. It was a cognitive contradiction with no solution.

“Well, when she gets here we should give them some space,” Amanda said. She wanted to make sure Jamie and Cheryl got to talk, really talk, alone.

“Of course. But first I wanna make sure she knows how thankful we are. When she interviewed us I was sure we weren’t gonna get him.”

“Yeah, that was an interrogation, but she just knew he needed the right family.”

“I like her more than Marsha,” Becky declared. “She seems aloof, at least by comparison.”

“I think Cheryl has a little more emotionally invested in Jamie.”

“She is gonna remember to call him that, right? I don’t want the word ‘Eric’ within a mile of him.”

Amanda smiled at how protective her mom could be. “All her letters have been addressed to ‘Jamie.’” They sat in silence for a moment. “He’s nervous she’s gonna think less of him for the way he lives now, or even be angry at him.”

“Think less of him for what?”

Amanda shrugged. “For ... all the changes in his life since he got here.” How could she explain those changes when there was so much about Jamie that Becky thought was normal, or maybe even thought had always been the way it was now?

“He’s a little,” Becky said.

“So’s she, but obviously they’re not the same.”

“Well, obviously not. He lives here; she lives there ... Kinda sad when you think about it.”

“What is?”

“A little all alone, unprotected.”

“We don’t know she’s alone. She could have a huge support network. She has parents of her own, friends.”

“But who looks after them? All those littles ... It must be so hard for them.”

“No harder than it is for us.” Amanda looked at her mom, who was looking somewhere into the distance. “They are running their own dimension, Mom. They’re fully functioning people.”

“Yeah, but it must be better here.”

“Why?”

“Because you don’t see any of us going to live there, do you? I don’t know, it feels almost irresponsible to just send her back.”

“We’re not ‘sending her.’ She’s just going going home ... Mom, you know you can’t keep her, right?” Amanda said it as a joke, but her Mom was being weird.

“Of course I know that. I’m just saying ...” Her mom hadn’t taken it as a joke, apparently. She stood up and began to leave the room.

“Where are you going?”

“The nursery. I wanna watch Jamie sleep. He’s so handsome when he sleeps.”

Amanda sat on the couch alone trying to understand her mom and amazons in general. Jamie was right; it was like a mental block. And Amanda wondered why she didn’t have it, and not having it, if something was wrong with her rather than all the amazons like her mom. She wondered how her mom would behave when Cheryl arrived and whether she’d have to be a buffer between them. Amanda wouldn’t put it past her mom to sweep Cheryl into her arms as soon as she came in the door. One more thing for her to worry about.

Amanda felt tired and stressed, the many months of cumulative emotional labor seeming to pile up. She’d be glad once Cheryl was gone and her mom went back to work and she could spend the last few days of her winter break just living a normal day-to-day life. She decided to call Mel and Donna to arrange a couple girls’ nights. Outside, it had begun to snow gently.