"Ma, I'm quitting school."

A half-rinsed plate clattered into the kitchen sink.

"No, you're not," Mrs. Hennessy said firmly toward the kitchen curtains.

"The college will, um, mail you your refund within a couple of weeks. I gave them more than enough war--"

"No, you're not," she repeated, whirling around to stare down--rather, up--at her son. Her small stature never prevented her from being the highest woman in the room.

"Ma, I already withdrew. It's too l--"

"So you march right back in there and sign up again. I didn't raise you for twenty years just to have you become another worthless layabout like your father. You're going to make something of yourself, especially as long as you live under my roof."

Mr. Hennessy was only a vague memory to Ben. Though that might have been a sore topic seven years ago, during the more turbulent parts of his first changes, Benjamin had learned sympathy. Even Ben sometimes had to fight the urge to rip his mother apart in a berzerker's rage. "My father doesn't have anything to do with th--"

"Don't you talk back to me. You *are* your father's son. Just like him, never listen."

Ben closed his eyes. Perhaps if he couldn't see her lips moving, the words could land more softly on his eyelids. "And I'm not finished. I'm moving out."

Mrs. Hennessy, for the first time in years, had nothing to say for thirty seconds. Ben took a few deep, calming breaths.

"How are you going to live? You don't have a real job. You're just a kid."

"I've been a bakery clerk for several months now. And I've got a place lined up." He decided against saying that he wasn't a kid. "Look, ma, just hear me out, okay?" He paused; she didn't interrupt. "College isn't helping me do what I really want. I've already got the talent. Even one of my professors admitted that there wasn't anything he could teach me beyond art history."

"I want to talk to this so-called professor myself.--"

Ben wrote a name on the dining room phone message pad while his mother talked continuously at whatever side of Ben faced her.

"... never going to be able to support me in my old age ..."

Ben sighed. There was nothing new to hear.