"Just Shut the Door"

Just Shut the Door

Owwwwww! cried Susan, dropping the neatly folded stack of clean clothes into a heap onto the floor of her son’s bed room. Looking down at her bare foot she saw the rusty old bicycle lock on which she had stepped as she had navigated through the wall-to-wall clutter which littered every corner of Jackson’s room. How could he stand to inhabit such a pigsty?

Well, she reminded herself, it really was just about his only shortcoming, something she had always tried to overlook. For Jackson was exemplary in just about every other way, her beautiful boy who had charmed her from day one, handsome, smart, strong, affectionate, an honor roll student, a star athlete, a talented musician, popular at school, president of the student body, a real day-brightener, and the apple of his mother’s eye. Except for this room of his. She had always tried to honor it as his sanctuary. How strongly convinced she’d always been that every teenager needed privacy. This was his space. His retreat.His refuge. But, holy crap, it looked more like a landfill. Like a war zone where a grenade had exploded. An unidentifiable smell of something sour—was it mildew? or mold?—assaulted her nostrils. Whatever it was, it was most certainly in an advanced stage of decomposition.

Susan surveyed the chaos. From corner to corner, the room was crammed with clutter of every sort: discarded magazines, assorted books, wadded paper, a half-eaten bag of trail mix, sweaty socks, a pair of worn jeans, several wrinkled t-shirts, plastic go-cups, a cereal bowl in which a few soggy cheerios floated in a pool of souring milk, crumpled fast food wrappings, damp towels, assorted CD’s, electronic cables, plugs, adaptors, a paper plate with torn bread crusts. And this old bike lock. Susan picked it up, tossed it into a far corner of the chaos, quickly refolded the stack of clean clothes, and laid them on top of the wadded covers of his unmade bed.

And the bed.This jumble of sheets and blankets.When was the last time she’d seen this bed made up with clean sheets? When was the last time had Jackson stripped these linens for the laundry?That was the truce they’d made:if he was willing to bring his dirty clothes and linens to the laundry room, she would be willing to wash, dry, fold, return them to his room, make up his bed with clean sheets--and leave his room alone. Just shut the door, her patient husband Frank had admonished her so many times before. Just shut the door.

But how hard it was to shut her eyes to the surrounding mayhem. Unable to remember the last time she’d washed his sheets, she angrily began to strip the bed.

Wait a minute. What am I doing? she asked herself. This is Jackson’s job. If the boy wants to live like a pig, then fine. He’ll be off to college in just a few months, and then he will have to take care of all these things for himself. Do I really want to be one of those helicopter moms? And so she tucked the dirty sheet back under the mattress and pulled back the covers, resolved to leave the room and just shut the door. That’s when she saw it.

It was pink. It was silky. It had lace. It was wadded up between the mattress and the twisted covers. She pulled it free and shook it loose. It was a pair of pink panties. Are they mine? she wondered, trying to remember if she even owned such a sexy pair of lacy undies. Had the dryer static caused them to cling to his sheets? Holding them to her ever-widening, 50 year old hips that had borne three 8 ½ lb. boys, she concluded immediately they certainly were not her mom-size underpants.Suddenly her heart was thumping in her throat, her brain synapses buzzing with alarm: Code Red. And a backlog of every imaginable terror from the darkest nights of 18 years of conscientious motherhood reared its ugly head, and Susan reeled with panic.

Whose pink panties were these? Surely they were not his. Surely not. Surely they were not some girl’s. A girl in his bed? Susan did not know what scared her more, that her son might be cross-dressing, that he even might be trans, or that he might be having… Was it possible? Already?Under this roof? In his bed? This bed which she used to make up for him not so very long ago with his prized Spiderman sheets?

Torn between wanting to flee the scene of the crime or searching every square inch of the room for more clues as to what had actually transpired, Susan stood frozen.Two possible scenarios played out across her mind’s eye, one in which she righteously confronted her son, dangling the damning evidence before his eyes, demanding an explanation, took away his phone and timed him out for a small eternity, or the other in which she simply walked away. Just shut the door.

Taking a deep breath, Susan decided to buy a little time in order to ponder the alternatives. She stuffed the panties back into the folds of bedclothes, did an about face, tiptoed through the obstacle course on the floor, and resolutely shut the door behind her.

“Wow. I sure would like to see those pink panties,” her husband teased after he heard the full report that evening.

“No!” Susan shot back. “You men,” she complained, “with your one-track minds.”

“I’m sorry, sweetheart. I know you are upset. I’m just as concerned as you. I’m just not surprised that he might be sexually active. You know what the statistics are. I only hope that, if he is, he is being responsible and careful about it.”

“Whose do you think they are?” asked Susan. “They must be Courtney’s. They looked like they could be hers.”

“I can’t imagine them belonging to anyone else,” said Frank. “Jackson and Courtney have been together for almost 3 years now.That might be a high school record. “

“When could this have possibly happened?” Susan wondered.

“Maybe Saturday night when we went out with the Mathisons and came in so late,” Frank offered.

“Maybe Sunday,” Susan added, “when we were at church--God help us!-- and stayed after for that endless potluck dinner. Remember?Jackson said he had to study.Yeah, right. We know what extracurricular subject he was studying.”

“Does it really matter when?” Frank asked. “What matters most to me at this point is that we all handle this situation with the utmost care.”

“Didn’t you have ‘the talk’ with him? You said you would have ‘the talk’ with him.”

“Yes, I did,” insisted Frank. “That was years ago. I gave him that book we ordered, the one that came so highly recommended. What was the title? S.E.X. All You Need to Know…, or something like that.” Told him I wanted him to read it through, and that, if he had any questions or concerns, we could discuss it.”

“Did he read it?” Susan asked. “Did he have any questions?”

“All he said,” answered Frank,” was that he already knew about safe sex, STD’s, HIV/Aids, pregnancy, condoms, all that stuff.He said that he would read the book anyway. He told me not to worry. He said, ‘Dad, I’ve got this.’ So I haven’t worried.”

“Worry doesn’t even come close to what I am feeling now,” said Susan flatly. “

“Think about this,” Frank said. “He and Courtney were here, at home. Not in some cheap hotel. Not in the back seat of a car.

“I don’t know if that comforts me or offends me,” Susan moaned. “And I sure don’t like him sneaking around like that.”

“Yeah, but can you imagine him asking permission for something like that?Asking us to put it on our calendars?Look,” Frank assured her, putting his arm around her, “I’ll talk to him.”

“Promise?” she asked.

“Promise.”

That next morning, Susan discovered a huge pile of Jackson’s dirty clothes and linens in the hamper of the laundry room. Sorting it out into lights and darks, once again amidst the tangled sheets, she found them. The pink panties. Evidently, Jackson still did not know that this incriminating evidence had been left behind. Nor did he have any clue as to how much turmoil it had stirred in his parents’ hearts, no clue as to the nature of “the talk” he and his father would soon be having.Maybe she would also have a talk with Jackson. And maybe she would try to do less talking. Maybe she would try to do more listening.

Susan washed, dried, and folded it all—the shirts, tees, jeans, socks, shorts, sweats, pillowcases, sheets, and the panties too. Folding them neatly, she then delivered it all to Jackson’s room where she made up the bed with clean sheets, and where she left the stack of clean clothes, and where she perched the pink panties right on top of the stack where he would be sure to see them.

It might have been one of the hardest things she’d ever done when she then turned, walked out of the room, and just shut the door.