Over the years

As Mr Edward polished off his second cup of tea, he noted how his wife was fighting sorrow and self hatred while trying to look at peace. The conflict made no sense. What had happened that weekend? Why could she not speak a word of this with him?

As Andrew grew up from that incident, the explanation for why his body was covered in welts and scabs was that someone had attacked him for being a good Samaritan. That story did not hold up. It was a small town. If anyone had seen another man beating a small framed teen, word would have gotten out.

Law enforcement came up empty handed, even though Mrs Edward had insisted the law not get involved. Mr Edward had his friends look into the matter unofficially. He had to make sure it was not something that had happened from one of his son’s outings.

The boy had a thing for one of the girls in the next town. She was amazing. The boy was enthralled with her. Mr Andrew was concerned that some group of guys tried to scare him out of dating the woman of his dreams.

The thing was this, Mrs Edward felt that dating was not appropriate for young fellas before they had completed their degree. By degree, any degree that would allow him to hold a job. In Andrew’s case, college degree. He was still a teen. To allow this otherwise celibate boy to experiment with love, Mr Edward had provided some cover so that his son could date this girl in the next town.

The girl was on his cycling route. She loved the color pink. She was very smart. She came from an awesome value driven family. It was the harmless high school love that would probably fade before their junior year ended.

After that weekend, Andrew never said a word to that girl or even rode his bike out her way either. Instead, he rode the other way and usually much steeper hillier and harder routes. The boy seemed to attack the new trails with intense anger with no regard to his well-being.

Over the years, Andrew got better at controlling the expression of his emotions. He got very good at being gallant without ever committing himself socially. He moved in and out of many circles at will. The teen excelled in school well above anything he had ever done before, which was very impressive to begin with.

His wife seemed all too pleased with how the teen had grown. She was taking a lot of credit for many of the feats of accomplishments Andrew did. She had used his growing list of awards as evidence that she knew more about child rearing than he did. The other children seemed to have a different reverence about their mother too. They challenged her far less. They did their work more eagerly. Yet, none of them seemed to know anything about the marks Andrew got that fateful weekend.

Now that all the younger children had gotten married, everyone wanted to know who had caught Andrew’s attention? Who would be the lucky lady?

Yet, no candidate had ever shown. In college, Andrew gobbled up the classes and graduated on time with several degrees. He turned down any job offers and threw himself headlong into law. He graduated top of class and was offered many very impressive high paying jobs.

Mr Edward’s concern grew to full maturity the day Andrew came home and dropped a bomb on them. He announced that he was moving out and would be returning to them all their financial investment in his formative years. He dropped off all his diplomas on the table and then walked out.

The man never returned for any of his things. Instead, the following week, he electronically transfered the amount the accountants had said it cost to raise a child from birth to college age. Andrew had paid his way through all of his schooling yet he had a separate check that covered the amount of his entire schooling as well.

Andrew gave no explanation.

Over the years, Andrew did join in the family ritual of meeting three weekends a month. He always appeared to be going through the motions. Andrew was a good big brother. He advocated for his siblings. He kept the balance of power where it needed to be. His siblings often called him their guardian angel who buffered the from the strict hands of their mother.

However sweet the guardianship was, Andrew managed to keep his private life sealed. He could turn on the love and charm towards his nieces and nephews and then instantly turn all emotions off when asked about his personal world.

Mrs Edward had lamented many times to Andrew about his lack of interest in settling down. The pleas fell on deaf ears. He always stood motionless and emotionless in front of his mom during those heartfelt pleas.

Mr and Mrs Edward had many bitter fights over the option of hiring a private investigator to figure out what was going on in Andrew’s private life. Mrs Edward eventually went ahead on her own and was bitterly disappointed to find out her son had no social life. He had no active life. He had nothing.

Andrew just had this one job. This one stupid meaningless boring job. The kind of job that would not help him land a good woman. A job that was very very far beneath him. A ten dollars an hour job doing manual labor in a warehouse.

Andrew was a total and disastrous failure. Complete and total utter humiliation to the Edward family name.

Mrs Edward realized, she had pushed her son to find self control to the point of him self destructing. He controlled himself straight out of ambition. With nothing going for himself, she was at loss on how to fix this broken son of hers.