Obvious things come to mind, of course. That she was abusive, emotionally or even physically. That she had a weak will in some way or another, that Brian blamed her for imbibing in him all the faults that he saw in himself. Or maybe in another guy's book you'd read that Brian's superior lack of self esteem fomented in him a means of identifying himself in his mother, and that since he was too far gone to believe he could succeed in hating himself, he chose to wish his mother, his other identity, dead. But even this is a bunch of made-up bull-snot, as Brian himself would say.

I met Brian's mom, and she was pretty but not too much so, intelligent but not too much so, momish entirely but again, not too much so. She was as indistinguishable to me as all the other moms of friends I've had over the years, and her relationship with her son in my presence was also as indistinguishable. Some one might suggest that she was too normal, too perfect or too blase to accept at face value, but that wasn't true either. She had her quirks, like she wouldn't eat pork even though she wasn't a Muslim or a Jew, and she like to stick her tongue between her lip on top teeth when she was thinking about something. She had her past, I guess, and she had her faults even. Perhaps there was in her something that explained Brian's loathing, but I sure couldn't see what it was.

Let me amend even that, I'm not so sure Brian even hated his mom, loathed her, despised her. To be honest, he never said many bad things about her when we would huddle at lunch time around the flagpole in the wind. He insulted her on occasion, he called her stupid or nerdy or whatever, but so did everyone else. Indeed, it was only after hearing from him over and over that he wanted to kill her, wanted to see her die, see her dead, that I realized that something was here to be seen. But what that something was, I don't know.

It began like I said around the flagpole, the only paved spot in front of our tiny junior high which wasn't a sidewalk. Sidewalks were for the ninth graders and the grass was for the roughhousers, those boys and the occasional ugly, stocky girl who couldn't let go of more physical lunchtimes from grade school. Brian and I, friends since fifth grade when were made to sit next to one another in Mrs. Grendal's class, would eat our lunch hurriedly in the cafeteria and then wander over to the slab and talk about whatever seventh graders talked about.

I was bitching about my mom, how she still thought I was a little kid and should go to bed at nine. I'd already committed the unutterable sin when I was eleven of muttering, under my breath at her back, those words, "I hate you," which college professors have assured me means I made the break from the parental personality toward my own. Whatever. In this particular conversation with Brian I said, "I wish she'd just die."

Brian liked to look at your neck when you speak to him but at these words he looked me in the eye. "Yeah? Wow. I'd like to kill my mom too."

I rolled my eyes. "I didn't say I wanted to kill her. I just mean she gets on my nerves sometimes. I'd probably miss her cookies if she actually died."

This made Brian giggle. "I'll bet you'd miss her cookies."

"You asshole." I said. that was the conversation for then.

But it kept coming up. We'd be by the flagpole or outside for gym or waiting for the bus, and the conversation would be about baseball, or Susan Galahan who by the seventh grade already had boobs bigger than most of our teachers. And sometimes, someone would mention a problem with a parent and Brian would say, "Yeah, I'd sure like to kill my mom."

And like I said, I always I took it with the grain of salt that seventh graders take the whole world. To me it was like anything else. There was David Eljan, who ate his boogers. There was Mr. Fomiran, our English teacher, who had a collection of loud ties. There was Susan Galahan, who had big hooters. And there was Brian, who wanted to kill his mother.

Actually, I wasn't even very suspicious until he told me that he'd actually tried once to kill her. I mean, I knew he was weird, and I secretly hoped that he would grow up to be a serial killer or something so I could say I knew him. So when we were sitting by the pole shivering in the wind and he said, "Have you ever tried it?" I think I probably knew what he was talking about.

"What? I said anyway.

"Killing your mom?"

"Hell no." Seventh graders are the epitome of extremism. We react to something like the prospect of one murdering one's own mother with complete believability and then respond with complete coolness.

"I have."

And if Brian had said it with a straight face or with an eyebrow raised or while looking me straight in the eye it would have been funny, or I would have played along with it, or something like that. But he had a great big grin on his face and and he was staring at the patch of concrete between his feet and was completely shivering in the cold. So, of course I believed him.

And of course, it was as if two lovers were sharing their most intimate thoughts and fears and hopes and dreams and terrors when I said, "How?"

"I tried to poison her."

He was till grinning, and it wasn't an evil grin or a shy grin or anything suggestive like that, just an embarrassed grin, like admitting to an adult that he'd put blue dye on the cat or farted in church. I believed him. I was slightly disgusted, slightly appalled, but mostly fascinated. "When?"

"It was like three years ago. I had this really fierce headache, maybe from watching t.v. Mom gave me some aspirin, but she only gave me half a tablet. I asked her why couldn't I have a whole one or even two like in the commercials and she said if I had too much it would make me sick. And I couldn't believe it. I mean, how can medicine make you sick? Something that's supposed to make you better?"

"So what'd you do?" This was even more amazing than hearing Kenny Roe telling about the time he and his dad got mugged.

"A little while later I got up and found the aspirin bottle and put a whole bunch in a glass of milk."

"How many?"

"Like seven or eight. Boy was I dumb. I figured if I took more than that, she'd notice they were gone from the bottle. So I put them in a glass of milk and kind of stirred it around and brought it to her and said this was thanks for getting me the aspirin."

"That would never work on my mom. She never drinks milk."

"Yeah, neither does mine. She gave me this sort of weird look and and said thanks and took a few sips."

I whispered, "Were you scared?"

Brian just gazed between his feet. After a while he said, "What? No. I mean, yes, but when she have me that weird look, it was like the fear drained all away."

"So then what happened."

"So then I watched t.v. with her for awhile and then she told me to go to bed and so I did. The next day the glass was still there on the coffee table, still most of the way full."

"Whoa."

"I even thought about drinking it myself."

"No!" I was amusedly fascinated. You know what I mean.

"But I didn't cause it was warm."

A long time after that conversation and a long time after getting used to Brian's desire to kill his mom, so used to it that I forgot about it the way you forget about streets, and the reason I'm telling you all this now, is that one day I suddenly recalled that conversation, sitting in my room after a big fight with my own mom, after saying the now common "I hate you" under my breath, and the common vows of eventual autonomy and freedom and independence. And I got really scared. I mean, I got sweaty and nervous and terrified. What if I was a bad child? What if I got mad at my mom, like on an occasion such as this, and went into the bathroom, got the Tylenol, split open that capsules, and dumped a bottle-full into her diet coke? What if we had a fight in the kitchen and I picked up a knife and in a seething raged rammed it into her chest, into her face? What if she banished me to my room one night and I got so mad at her for it that I snuck out of the house, broke into a gun shop, and then came back with a .357 magnum and opened up on her, pulling the trigger even after running out of bullets, over and over and over until the police finally came and blew me away too?

You must understand I loved my mother and would never do anything like that. But I could think it. I certainly could conjure up in my mind sledgehammers and scorpions and tanks and ropes and all manner of death and destruction. And if some one like Brian could act on an impulse, why couldn't I? Why wouldn't I? He did, didn't he?

The terror went away, thankfully. About ten minutes later. And even later that night mom and I had a hug on the couch over something soppy on the t.v. because I was still young enough to do that, I guess.