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The Education of Matthew Buchanan - Chapter 3   The shattering of glass followed by the sound of Matthew’s voice had Bo and Nora turning at the same time to see their son standing at the back of the room near the service hallway. Both panicked as the ghostly face of their son stared back at him. Broken glass shimmered in the milk at Matthew’s feet, Oreo cookies melting in the wet mess.   “Matthew,” Nora said gently, wiping the tears from her face. She started towards him but he took a few steps back.   “Stay where you are,” he ordered, his voice cracking a bit.   Nora stopped abruptly, glancing at Bo before turning back to her son. “Matthew, I’m sorry that you walked in on our,” she stammered over the words, “disagreement.”   “Disagreement?” His voice was deeper and his tone was disbelief sarcasm. “Is that what you two call it? I know a fight when I hear one and I heard what you said.” He glanced at Bo. “I heard what you both said.”   “Son,” Bo started.   “Don’t call me that,” Matthew said angrily.   Bo glanced at Nora then back at Matthew. His son’s face was beat red, his eyes glazed, his small body shaking. The anger and resentment were ready to explode out of him. He and Nora needed to tread softly. “Matthew,” Bo said gently. “I’m sorry about fighting with your Mom.”   “No you’re not,” Matthew snapped. “You’ll do or say anything to pick a fight with my Mother. You’re just sorry I walked in and heard it.”   “Matthew, honey,” Nora said gently. “Your Dad and I…”   “Hate each other,” he finished for her. “I get that now, more than ever before.”   “No, we don’t,” they both said at the same time.   “I heard you. I heard you both.” He looked at Nora, the question burning through the pained look in his face. “You only wanted me,” he jerked his head in Bo’s direction “to save his life? Because you weren’t good enough for him? I know what being a whore means.”   “That was just a figure of speech,” Nora tried to explain.   “That’s not what she meant at all, Matthew,” Bo said.   Matthew held his hand out at Bo. “Don’t. You don’t get to talk right now.”   Nora and Bo exchanged glances again. He had heard their entire conversation. Nora tried again. “Matthew, I wanted you,” she then added quickly, “we both wanted you.”   “That’s not what you said,” his voice broke as he glanced in Bo’s direction before looking back at his mother. “You only wanted me because Drew died,” again, he jerked his head in Bo’s direction, “to give him a reason to live. So you gave him a replacement child instead. Me. And it worked.”   He looked at Bo. “Dying was a better alternative than living for Mom. How pathetic.” He looked back at his mother. “So you gave him a kid instead. You’re both pathetic.”   “That’s not true,” Nora tried again.   Matthew ignored her comment, choosing to look back at Bo. “I always wondered what had happened, why you and Mom split before I was born. Every time I asked, all my questions were answered with your stupid stories about how much you loved each other but having a problem you couldn’t resolve. What a bunch of crap. The truth was, you needed a replacement for the son you lost, to continue the Buchanan blood line” he extended his arms out in a grand gesture, “and here I am, wanted or not.” He glanced over at his mother. “You both suck.” “Matthew,” Nora said sharply. He turned from them quickly, rushing through the service hallway, up the back stairs and into his room, slamming the door behind him. He flung his backpack towards the foot of his desk, barely noticing as it banged the desk chair and tumbled it over, the contents of his bag spilling onto the floor. He threw his baseball as hard as he could at the far wall, causing the drywall to crack and crashing the framed poster of Derek Jeter onto the floor.   He had never felt this angry in his whole life and didn’t know how to deal with it. His hands were clenched in fists and he wanted to lash out, hurt someone or something as much as he was hurting. He paced like a caged tiger around the room, kicking at whatever was lying on his floor, sending shoes from one end of the room to the other, knocking over his stack of Sports Illustrated Magazines by the side of his bed, before turning to the desk and raking his arm across the top, sending pencils, papers, desk calendar, books and various odds and ends flying through the air. The desk lamp crashed over sideways and his computer monitor tilted back to lean crookedly against the wall. The pictures crashed onto the floor, frames cracking, glass shattering.   He kicked at the half opened bottom desk drawer, slamming it into the closed position. The momentum of his kick banged the entire desk back against the wall and the shock of desk hitting wall caused the mounted shelf above his desk to tumble down. The shelf contents flew in all directions. All of the model airplanes and race cars he had worked on with his father crashed into pieces and lay broken and shattered, a visual display of the state of his heart.   He moved around the room blindly, banging into the telescope that had been standing in front of the window pointing towards the north sky. It toppled over, the lens glass shattering across the hardwood floors. He moved around his room, his anger overwhelming him. He kicked over the table that held the chess set, sending the pieces crashing to the floor, pawns rolling in all different directions, the other pieces lying in a mixed heap of black and white. This visual gave him pause.   Black and white, Matthew thought, his chest heaving and his teeth clenched, staring at the mixed heap of pieces piled on the floor. Being a cop, his father’s world had always been black and white, while his mother’s world of law held different shades of gray. Why was he just realizing that?   He raked his hands through his hair, his anger still at its height. To hell with their black and white and grays. They were liars and he hated them. He hated their fights, he hated their lies, he just hated them. He couldn’t even come to terms with who he hated most; the one that couldn’t forgive the lies or the other who lied for forgiveness.   Granted, his mother sleeping with Sam and then lying about it to save his father’s sorry life was not okay. He could almost get his father’s bitterness and refusal to forgive. But his father had tried to kill himself and his mother had kept that a secret. So whose sin was worse?   He rubbed his eyes, trying to clear his head. He couldn’t decide who he was angrier with; his father for holding his mother to higher standards than the rest of the world, or his mother, for still loving a man who wouldn’t forgive her for saving his life. “Saving his life,” Matthew thought again. He couldn’t believe it. His father had tried to kill himself. And his mother had kept his secret, protected his sin all of these years, making him out to be some kind of hero for Matthew to look up to and respect.   To hell with that. He had had a right to know what had happened. He should have been told. And what was Lindsay’s role in all of this? What were the things Lindsay had done that his father could forgive but not forgive his mother? He didn’t understand. But now that he knew their secrets, he wanted all of the answers. He had a right to know what had happened all those years ago, “the missing years” of his life.   And it was his turn to pay back for what was done, for all of the lies and the fights and the secrets. He needed time to think. He needed a plan. He needed to get far away from them. He was about to leave his room when he tripped over his backpack. The contents had fallen onto the floor and gave him pause. Books, papers, folders and his iPod lay half in, half out of the bag. He picked up one of the folders, perusing the contents.   When Matthew had left them so abruptly, Bo had started after him but Nora had grabbed his arm, pulling him back.   “Let him be,” she advised.   “Did you see his face? We need to go talk to him.”   “We need to give him his space. He needs to process everything he heard. He needs time to work through it.” She paused. “He’s a lot like you in that respect.”   Bo gave her look. “This is not the time to compare personality traits.”   “I’m not,” Nora said, angry that he was feeling the victim when the real victim was upstairs. “I know my son and know that he needs time to work it out.”   “He doesn’t have all of the facts,” Bo argued.   “If he heard us, he has most of them, at least the facts that count.”   “None of it counts, not anymore. I’ve moved on,” he saw the look on her face and corrected himself, “we both have. I knew telling him about the past would be a mistake.”   “This isn’t how I wanted to tell him, us screaming at each other over who did what to whom.”   “Doesn’t matter much now, does it?”   “What matters now,” she said, trying to hold her temper, “is giving him time to absorb it all so that we can deal with his questions, which will be plenty.”   “You still think taking him away, moving to Chicago is what’s best for him?”   “What I think isn’t the issue now.”   “I won’t let you take him away. Not like this.”   “You won’t have a choice.” He opened his mouth to refute her and she continued, not allowing him to speak. “I don’t have a choice either. It’s up to him. He’s in control. It will be up to him to decide what’s best for him.”   “Based on what? Our past? What he heard? Give me a break, Nora.”   “He heard us and there is no changing that. I wish he hadn’t but he did. Do I wish we could have spoken to him rationally, without yelling? Yes, of course I do. Am I glad he knows the truth? Absolutely.”   “You think what he heard was the truth?”   “You think it wasn’t?”   “He thinks I made you a whore.”   “He thinks we both lied to him.”   “He thinks I hate you.”   “He thinks we hate each other.”   “He thinks I didn’t want him.”   “You didn’t.”   “That’s the lie,” Bo yelled at her.   Nora took a deep breath. “I’m not getting sucked into another fight with you. You are not the victim here.”   “And you are?” he asked incredulously.   She clenched her teeth and bit back her retort, instead saying, “I didn’t say that.” She paused for a second before adding, “It’s just that sometimes, I wish, that you could look back on our past unbiased and see things from my point of view. Just once.”   “What’s that supposed to mean?”   She shrugged, turning from him and thinking back. “It means I know I screwed things up. I’ve told you that to many times to count. But you insist on holding onto everything I did wrong, everything I did to hurt you. Just once, I wish you would put yourself in my shoes and try to understand the things I did to try and help, where I was, what I was feeling.”   “What’s that supposed to mean, ‘put myself in your shoes?’ You mean sleep with an ex while I was still married to you? Because I would never have done that to you.”   “I think you should go,” she said suddenly.   He looked at her shocked. “My son is a mess, you’re talking in riddles and you want me to go? I don’t think so. Let’s finish this conversation once and for all, get it all out in the open and be done with it because I’m sick of talking about it.”   “So am I and I want you to go. It’s my house.”   The look that flashed in Bo’s eyes had her regretting her words the moment she said them. But the look was gone as quickly as it had been there and she held her ground, refusing to take the hurtful words back. “Fine. I’ll go, for now. But I’ll be back. I will not wait until tomorrow to speak to my son or to finish this conversation with you.”   She didn’t respond so he turned and left. Nora followed him to the doorway of the library, waited for the sound of the front door to close and then headed quickly up the stairs to find her son.   To be continued...