“I don’t work for you.”
The words came from my own son, a seventeen-year-old freeloader standing in the house I struggled to pay for, demanding money I didn’t have. He was a ghost who materialized only for Wi-Fi and food, leaving a trail of dirty dishes and indifference in his wake.
His one chore, mowing the lawn, sat undone while his father’s work hours were cut and bills piled up on the counter. This entitled performance was happening while our family was quietly sinking.
Something inside me didn’t just break; it turned to ice.
He had no idea that he had just turned our family home into a business, and I was about to become the CEO who would hand him a detailed, itemized invoice for the staggering cost of his own existence.
The Gathering Storm: The Unopened Bill
The red-rimmed envelope from the utility company sat on the granite countertop like a tiny, rectangular bomb. It had been there for two days, a silent accusation. I’d glance at it while making coffee, while wiping up crumbs, while searching for my keys. Each time, a cold knot would tighten in my stomach. I knew what was inside. It wasn’t just a bill; it was a paper-thin monument to the fact that things were getting tight.
Mark’s architectural firm had lost the big downtown redevelopment contract. It was one of those slow-motion disasters, whispered about for weeks before the official, soul-crushing email landed. No layoffs, the email had chirped, just a “temporary reduction in billable hours.” Temporary. A word that, in the corporate world, means “until we figure out who to fire.” My job as an office manager was stable, but my salary alone couldn’t float the three of us in this suburban fishbowl.
I finally ripped the envelope open. The number was higher than last month. Of course it was. I thought of the perpetually glowing screen of the gaming PC in my son Leo’s room, the bathroom light left on for hours after a shower that used enough hot water to float a small vessel, the television blaring in an empty living room. Each one was a small leak in our financial dam.
I heard the front door slam, the sound echoing through the house. The familiar thud of a backpack hitting the floor followed, then the squeak of the fridge opening. I walked into the kitchen to see Leo, my seventeen-year-old son, chugging milk straight from the carton. He was a whirlwind of lanky limbs and designer-ripped jeans, his face half-hidden by a curtain of sandy brown hair.
He finished the carton, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, and tossed the empty container onto the counter, missing the recycling bin by a good two feet. He didn’t even seem to notice.
“Hey,” I said, my voice flatter than I intended. “How was school?”
“Fine,” he grunted, his thumbs already flying across his phone screen. He pulled a Tupperware container of leftover pasta from the fridge, one I’d saved for my lunch tomorrow, and peeled off the lid.
He was a ghost in his own home, a phantom who materialized only for food, money, and Wi-Fi. He’d consume what he needed and then dematerialize, leaving a trail of dirty dishes and wet towels in his wake. I watched him shovel cold pasta into his mouth, his eyes locked on the tiny screen, and felt that cold knot in my stomach twist into something sharper, something uglier.
A Ghost at the Table
Dinner was my nightly attempt at pretending we were a normal family. I’d make something I knew everyone liked—tonight it was chicken parmesan—and we’d sit at the big oak table Mark had inherited from his grandmother. It was supposed to be the one time of day we connected. Lately, it felt more like three strangers sharing a feeding trough.
Mark was trying, bless his heart. He asked about my day, about the perpetually malfunctioning printer at work. He asked Leo about his friends, about the upcoming end of the semester. He was the designated conversational cruise director on our sinking family ship.
“So, Kai’s party is this weekend?” Mark asked, pushing a piece of chicken around his plate.
Leo didn’t look up from his phone, which he held just below the lip of the table. “Yeah.” A one-word answer. His personal best.
“Sounds fun,” Mark said, his optimism starting to fray around the edges.
I put my fork down, the clink of metal on ceramic unnaturally loud in the silence. “Leo. No phones at the table. We’ve talked about this.”
He sighed, a dramatic, world-weary sound that grated on my last nerve. He slid the phone into his pocket with the deliberate slowness of a martyr. His eyes, when he finally lifted them, were blank. He wasn’t with us. He was still in the group chat, still scrolling through whatever meaningless drama was unfolding in his digital world.
“How’s the job hunt going?” I asked, trying to steer the conversation toward something resembling responsibility. He was supposed to be looking for a part-time job to save up for a car, an idea he’d been enthusiastic about for approximately seven minutes before the actual “looking for work” part became a chore.
He shrugged, picking at the breading on his chicken. “Nothing good.”
“Did you follow up at the movie theater? Or the grocery store?”
“They said they’d call if they were interested,” he mumbled, his gaze drifting toward the window, toward anywhere but here.
The rest of the meal passed in a strained quiet, punctuated by the scrape of forks and Mark’s increasingly desperate attempts at small talk. I watched my son eat the food I’d bought and cooked, sitting in the house my salary was struggling to maintain. He was a black hole of need, absorbing everything—food, money, energy, internet bandwidth—and giving nothing back. Not a thank you, not a moment of genuine connection, not even the common courtesy of putting his own plate in the dishwasher.
When he finished, he pushed his chair back, stood up, and left the table without a word. A few seconds later, I heard the thump of the bass from his room, the soundtrack to his escape. He’d left his plate, smeared with tomato sauce, sitting right where he’d finished. A perfect monument to his indifference.
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