“Mom hasn’t worked since she gave up her job when she had me. There are women who are good to do that, some born to do it, but she’s a woman who shouldn’t have done it. After she did it, she felt she had to become Supermom and Superwife. And that was her, the way she was. An overachiever. But Dad played no small part in validating it for her.”

I already suspected I wasn’t going to like his dad all that much.

I was thinking I might be liking him even less now.

Axl continued.

“Eventually, when I got in high school, outside coming to meets, she had nothing to do. They have a big house. Dad requires all the trappings of the status he’s earned, so they also have a lady that cleans and runs errands and stocks the kitchen and sometimes cooks. Mom does some charity work because that’s what Dad thinks she should be doing. Mom does not go back to work, because that’s not what Dad thinks she should be doing. Bottom line, she’s bored out of her mind, has been for twenty years, and it’s torture, because it’s like watching the slowest death in history.”

Oh my God.

Yikes.

Awful.

“I hate hearing that, Axl,” I said softly.

But I didn’t ask if there was some more sinister reason why his mom didn’t stick up for herself and do what made her happy and fulfilled regardless of what his dad wanted.

“I hate sayin’ it, but it’s the truth,” he replied. “She’s like…” He shook his head. “Vacant. A robot. She switches on when she’s conditioned to do that by Dad. Say, he has some dinner party he wants her to give. But that’s rote. And she switches on for me. And that’s genuine. I bought that house, and I had some idea of what I wanted it to look like, but I worked with her in doing it. She handled the bathroom refurb and the painters and the guys who put in the blinds. Shit like that.”

“I bet she enjoyed helping you,” I remarked hopefully.