Chapter 4: Changes

Mark came downstairs and walked outside. He had the folder with all the papers from his lawyer's office tucked under his arm. He walked the two miles from his house to the large enclosed mall where in the past he had spent so many hours alone.

The pizza by the slice stand smelled good as ever. The owner of the stand, a handicapped woman greeted him with her friendly, "Hey Mark." She gave him his usual order, two slices and a soft drink.

"Hi, Lisa. Your new arms work okay?" More than once, Mark had told her he wished she were his mother. Their close bond surprised everyone who knew them both.

"They are an improvement. I can't deal cards or handle dice yet, but I'm getting there." She made a dramatic pause and added, "I can swim with these new hands." Born with arms that ended at the wrists, Lisa was the most upbeat person Mark ever knew.

"I'm glad for you." He patted her cheek and paid, then moved to a small table and began to study the papers one at a time.

He read and reread the documents. The only thing he could not understand was why there were so many different entities handling small portions of the estate with no central oversight, other than the account manager?

"To hell with it," he muttered to himself. "Too many questions and too few answers."

He replaced the papers in the folder and walked the length of the mall to the martial arts studio where Mike had introduced him to the joys of martial arts and self-discipline when he was barely nine years old.

"Mark, where you been keeping yourself? You have been missing for over a week. Are you all right?" The speaker was a barrel-chested man who appeared to be somewhere between forty and seventy.

"Hi Greg," Mark greeted him. "I've been through a hard time the past few days. I need to unwind.

"People or bags?" he asked.

Mark thought. "Bags," he answered. "The way I feel right now, I might hurt someone." He walked through the dojo to the locker room and undressed. He returned to the workout area in fresh sweats and began to work with two kick bags.

He started slow, stretching and bending, and then twisting in what seemed a clumsy dance. As he progressed his movements became faster, his kicks higher and his twists flowed into each other until his limbs were a blur of motion.

Others in the dojo stopped and watched Mark's near perfect form. His sweeps and one-legged drops ended with devastating kicks at the two heavy bags. "Oh man," a young student murmured, "I'd hate to spar with him. He's lethal."

Suddenly one small, inflated kick bag flew off its stand and bounced off the wall thirty feet away. Mark turned and walked back to the locker room. Greg followed him.

"What is it Mark? You looked ready to explode out there. Is there anything I can do to help?"

"Nah, not really. I had Mike's estate turned over to me on my birthday and caught my mother blowing my lawyer."

Greg flinched at the revelation. He could hear the raw emotion in Mark's voice. "Well hell, no guy likes to watch his mother have sex, especially when it's oral. Well, not unless he is a little strange."

"No man, I don't care if that bitch has sex with a donkey. I'm just glad to be almost rid of her."

Mark took a deep breath and continued, "No, my problem is that my personal papers were spread all over his desk and I know she had already gone through them.

"She's about to try to block me and set herself up to gain control over Grandfather Hunter's estate. She wants to be in the driver's seat."

Mark shook his head in frustration. "Right now I don't dare to get into a court battle for control because of my age and lack of experience. I need to sit back and wait a while before I'll be in a position to fight her and anyone else."

"Man, I wish I could help you. You have been my most dedicated student right from the first day Mike brought you in here. If you could get your temper under control you'd be prime Olympic material."

"Nah, that's not my thing. I'm going home and try to take a nap. I need to figure out what to do tomorrow. You know, I am about to say to hell with all of it and take off."

"Be careful Mark," Greg slapped him on the shoulder.

Mark was too filled with emotion to walk home. "To hell with it," he muttered to himself and began to run. He stayed at a near sprint the whole distance. A block from his house he began to slow to a walk and start to do the cool down and stretching exercises as he kept going. He was drenched with sweat when he entered the house.

Upstairs in his room Mark made a decision. He called a car dealer and asked about the models they had in stock ready for immediate delivery. "I'll grab a cab and be down first thing in the morning," he told the salesman. Mark went online and researched car prices.

He also looked up Whispering Willows Resort and found their web page. It was bland and uninteresting. The logo looked like a Mormon illustration depicting Eve in the Garden of Eden with all the good parts below her shoulders totally obscured by tamarack branches.

He clicked on the "Contact Us" box and sent an email. "Take this site down and learn the difference between a tamarack and a willow. Also, make the new web page interesting. This one sucks.

"Signed, Mark Hunter."

He clicked the send box and grinned. "Hey, that was my first executive order. I like it!" He felt proud and a sense of something he had never felt before, accomplishment.

He thought for a minute and decided his next decision would not be executive in nature but more along the lines of a payback. He quickly found the porn site he wanted, "itsmylip_service.com." He made the site's first page his screen saver. Blowjobs drifted at a slow pace across his monitor.

He typed a short note in eighteen point Ariel. "Mom, this is for you." He thought and added a few more words then saved the short note as his desktop illustration.

Mark removed the side panel from his computer and slipped the folder of papers inside. He replaced the panel and smiled. This had always been the one safe place he could hide things from his mother. He arranged his bureau drawers just so. Now if anyone disturbed the contents he would be able to tell at once when he checked.

Then Mark went to bed. He slept well and got up the next morning in a better mood than when he went to bed. He smelled his own sour body odor. "Woops, I didn't shower last night." In minutes he bathed and put on fresh clothes. He headed downstairs toward the front door.

"Where are you going Mark?" Claire Hunter asked. He ignored her and walked outside.

She sat alone in her misery. She was scared of what Mark might do next. She never realized her son had an iron will. Before he had always been moody, but obedient. "Oh," she exclaimed to herself. She realized what she thought as a moody disposition was really anger directed toward her. She sighed.

A while later she roused herself. "I need to see all of those papers he signed." She thought she knew just where to look. She went to his room and shoved his clothes to one side in the big walk in closet. She searched the two ski parkas hung in the back on hooks. Nothing.

She checked his bureau, under his mattress and even the box springs. She stood straight, stretched her aching back muscles and saw the screen saver on his thirty-six inch flat screen monitor. "Oh my god!" she exclaimed. She grabbed his mouse and left clicked once to remove it.

The screen saver disappeared and the message Mark left behind appeared. "Oh my god," she said louder. She realized he had been playing her the way a skilled fisherman does a trout he intends to let go.

"If you want to go to work for Lip Service I can get you a job, Mom. Claude will give you a glowing recommendation." She jumped when she heard his voice. He had returned.

"Have you humiliated me enough yet, Mark?" Her son had stripped her of her pride, her dignity and even her sense she was in control of her own life. Claire surrendered, if only for the moment,

"You brought it all on yourself, all of it." His resentment toward her had turned to contempt.

"Mark, I tried to..."

"Control me," he finished her sentence for her.

He looked at her for a moment and added, "Get this straight Mom, neither you nor anyone else is ever going to make me roll over and be an obedient pet, especially a damned woman. Okay?"

She stared at this stranger whom she had called her son. "What do you want of me?" she asked in a plaintive voice.

"Nothing. You may live here or not, your choice. I'll set you up with an allowance so you don't have to nickel and dime it now that the money for my support has ended. All you now have is your allowance from Mike.

"You had damned well stay out of my way or suffer the consequences." He sat down at his computer and returned the desktop and screen saver back to original.

He turned around in his chair. "I told Claude to not try an end run around me or he would be fired. The same goes for you. Screw him all you want, but you say nothing about me to him. Also you tell me if he tries to get any information about my personal business out of you. I have a bad feeling about this whole setup, especially about him.

"Now get out of my room." She left.

"It is time for my second royal decree." He smiled at his joke and logged onto the Hunter Manufacturing home page. He clicked on the "contact us" box and sent the following email, "As of this date I am now in control of all Hunter business interests. I shall contact you sometime in the next week or so to set up a meeting with the senior officers of the company. Please contact me through my attorney Claude Richards whom you have dealt with in the past. (Signed: Mark Hunter – now age 18.)

"Let's see what happens next." he headed downstairs

As he came downstairs he told his mother, "Tell Claude to take you out to dinner this evening on me. See you."

She called him back, "Mark, do you want me to move out? Is that why you are treating me like this?" She searched his face as she tried to understand this stranger she thought she knew.

"Mom, like I already told you, whether you move out or stay is your decision. However you will respect me and my right to run my own life."

He looked at her and thought he understood her. "Mom, you just called me Honey for the first time in a long time, perhaps for the first time ever. You never gave me any encouragement or bragged on me when I skipped grades in school or won any honors.

"All you have ever done is order me around and bitch at me. I was the only kid in the history of the school who took a cab to get to my own graduation and I was the valedictorian. I was only fourteen years old and you never noticed anything I accomplished."

One look at his face was enough. Then Claire understood. "Oh god!" Her whisper echoed in both their ears. "I became my own version of my mother!" Her horrified expression caused Mark to stop and look at her.

"Can you ever forgive me?" She stared at her son and began to understand a little of what had happened to both of them over the years. "Is there any way we can start over?"