"Callan!", mother cried from the kitchen. "Come here, quick! Look, daddy's home!"
Callan happily closed the history book what he had no interest in and leisurely walked to his mom. Glancing through the window and seeing the new Porche, the boy frowned.
"A new car! You surely wouldn't want to say you're going to give me his old Benz for Christmas, right?"
"If you will have bad grades on your midterm's report, you won't get anything at all," the lady of the house promised. "Especially considering that you crashed your old, reliable Volvo two months ago."
"Oh, God, it was ten years old! Besides, you know very well that I was bringing Lisa home then, she bit my ear and I drove into a tree! I've told this hundreds of times, but you completely refuse to understand and listen to me..."
Mom didn't listen to him this time either. Dad had already got his new Porshe into the garage and currently was closing its door. Pushing Callan aside, mother rushed toward her husband to greet him.
Callan watched his parents silently. To some extent, mom resembled Lisa. Both had light, long hair, big blue eyes, slim, beautiful body and smiling lips.
However his mother possessed a distinctive elegance, tenderness, pride and singularity that would have been incomprehensibly superior to the rest of the women who Callan came to know. Her eyes were the most beautiful, dark blue and slightly inclined, and her thoughts, like the sun's rays on the blue of the water, were visible, beautiful, and elusive. Lisa's eyes were clear blue and round, they did not radiate a mystery, but an invitation.
Callan's father also possessed mystery and graceful handsomeness. All family friends said that the son was a copy of the father. Both had grey eyes, dark, long hair, what both wore tied back at the nape in the tail, their body lean but strong. But the teenage son had neither his father's strength, nor toughness, nor steel in his eyes. Callan spent his evenings reading books or playing video games. Whereas his dad was lifting weights or working out in their home gym in his spare moments. Sometimes it seemed, he was made up of a single muscle.
To some extent, this was required by his father's work. He's been employed by a company whose statutes stated that it imports toys from Austria. It had a little shop on the city's outskirts. There were maybe three buyers a day or any at all, who having looked at the ludicrous prices hurried to quickly disappear without buying anything. It was very likely that customers were also frightened away by the sales person. The amount of his flesh made up for the lack of his hair, and the entire floor of the merchant occupied almost half of the already small shop space.
In this company, Callan's father has been listed as chief executive officer. After spending a few days in the house, he sat in one of the new cars, disappeared for a week or two. He'd come back tired, sometimes sleep deprived, grumpy, but always with money and endless presents for his mother as courtesy of a loving husband, even after eighteen years of married life.
The father treated his son kindly but with underlying irony, trying to hide his disappointment that nothing more had come out of Callan than a wimpy guy interested only in adult movies and his own convenience.
Callan's family lived on the outskirts of big city in a new two stories house with eight rooms, a gym and a swimming pool. Mummy didn't work anywhere, apart from the fact that for her own pleasure she painted landscapes.
Callan was big enough to realize that his dad didn't drive around to sell toys, and the gun he had been keeping in this truck wasn't for protection from thieves or gangsters.
It seemed so exciting and romantic to Callan that he often tried to give his father advice and suggest excellent plans of action, but, much to the boy's bewilderment, he was never taken seriously and listened to.
Callan was a little afraid for his father in the depths of his heart, since he knew very well how dangerous this work could be. Callan, however, had a good heart, a great sense of humour, which often helped him get out of serious trouble.
"Hey, old man!" father rasped, whacking the boy on the shoulder so that he swayed. "What's the matter? You missed your training again, did you?" His harsh rebuke made the air between them tense immediately.
'Here we go again,' Callan resigned in his thoughts. 'How many times...'
He still managed to put something in-between a smile and a smirk on his face. "No, old man, I was quite simply kicked out of there."
"I see," his father responded, his voice devoid of emotion, while putting away his shoes and a coat. "I'm going to check if you're going to be hired as a bookkeeper by one of our companies after you graduate."
Callan flushed and was about to explain that the coach was a total twat, that he loves to nit-picking on the boy, that he isn't some kind of a ballerina, to learn how to lift his legs to his ears, that the other guys in there are rude, ill-mannered and from bad families.
However father had already turned his back and disappeared into the bathroom. Callan sighed heavily, a wave of resentment washing over him. There were moments when he hated his father. As soon as his father's presence had dissipated, Callan's mother gently patted him on the head .
"Why so gloomy face, darling?" she laughed trying to lighten up the mood. "Let him rest for a couple of hours, and I'll start preparing your favourite big dinner in the meantime. If you want, you can take my car and go for a ride to clear your head. It's Wednesday night and the beginning of the month, hence the cops won't be out..."
Callan perked up. A glimmer of gratitude and hope appeared in his eyes. His mom always tried to do everything to maintain harmony in the family, smoothing tensions and cater to both her husband and her son .
"Thank you," Callan picked up the Volvo keys and quickly headed towards the door. "In two hours the crown prince will arrive to dinner, probably with his girlfriend." He had decided to go to Lisa.
"It seems that Lisa is riding in Steven's car," mom said with a knowing smile .
"That's because I'm without wheels," Callan replied with a shrug, blew an air kiss and darted outside.