You want to be a doctor? Hahaha

“You don’t really mean that. You don’t really want to be a doctor.” Natalie looked at him with one eye closed and blew a cloud of smoke at him. She knew he hated that. Then, she laughed.

“I mean it, Mom. I made straight As my first year of college, and my undergraduate advisor suggested it. She got me thinking – what better way is there to help people and also be successful? Even help our family.” Brad ignored the foul odor of the cheap cigarettes. Talking about helping the family however, that rang hollow in his ears. But, he had to give her a little credit. She wasn’t a sell-out, and she wasn’t afraid to speak her mind.

“Why don’t you just be a welder like your father and his father?” she said. She shifted from side to side, as if she had been drinking, but she hadn’t. Perhaps she was in one of her crappy moods, and was picking a fight.

“Are you talking about the father who is an alcoholic and a gambler? The one who can’t hold a job for more than two months at a time? That I should be just like him?” He suddenly regretted the cruel comment, but he knew she would shake it off.

She gave up. “I guess I should be congratulating you on your smart choice. I don’t know. I don’t know what to say. Honey, I’m sorry…” She took a step back, and blew the smoke over her shoulder.

Maybe the idea of a doctor in the family  had just sunk in, and she was imagining a real house surrounded by a white picket fence and no more evictions, Brad thought. But in some weird way, maybe she was jealous.  He had been on his own since he was 16, when he left the family chaos and his struggling 6 younger siblings.  But she had gotten tied down with babies and a bad husband. Still, did that give her the right to cut him down, right off the bat?

It made him think of his childhood role model, Superman.  The story of baby Kal-El coming to Earth in a space capsule from another planet, gaining powers from Earth’s environment, with a mission to help people of the planet Earth. All of the things Brad had done to try to be like Superman had failed. The gymnast who could defy gravity broke his wrist. The defender who would fight the bad guys got into a boxing ring and couldn’t hit back. The paperboy who made $50 a month to help pay the rent, couldn’t keep his family from getting evicted again.

But he could make straight A’s, and he could work hard for as many hours as he could stay awake. He could become a doctor. He would help people and be successful, that’s what doctors did. It seemed like a perfect choice. It was also the opposite of everything his derelict father was, and it represented the kind of authority figure that father hated with a vengeance. Dr. Brad Rosedale would be The Man. And that made it even better.

“You don’t need to say anything, mom.” Brad stepped outside and closed the door softly, got in his old Buick with its leaky windshield and retread tires, and drove away. He focused on school, and the many jobs he had to take to pay for school. He wouldn’t see Natalie again for years.