He stays

“Really, it’s okay, Mother. I will simply continue to read and finish my book. I don’t want to worry you.” His mother looks partly relieved but also annoyed at her son’s seeming insistence on being apart from her. She was protective to a fault, but genuinely concerned about her son’s well-being. She was not so neurotic before becoming a mother, but Nicholas’ disability changed her and she was more careful about every detail of her son’s life than just about any mother. She became disgusted at the mother’s who let their sons run free, play sports, and get bullied in school. Her son’s fragility made her into a protector and guardian above all else, and she got used to that role. But as her son has grown older, his fragility is less obvious. Indeed, Nicholas’ physical appearance was less than fragile. He had developed exceptional upper body strength out of necessity, as many wheelchair-bound people do. He had sizable biceps and abdominal muscles. And her son had become hairy. He constantly had a five-o’clock shadow from shaving (upon his mother’s insistence that he remain clean cut) and she would catch glimpses of the black hair growing on his chest. She thought the hairy chest must have been inherited from her half-Greek husband, Nicholas’ father. She watched as Nicholas’ jaw had changed from pudgy as a teenager, to a square protruding one, and his neck had a masculine width. Mrs. Notts could not ignore that her son was becoming a man, but still she was **** to keep him out of the outside world and away from the dangers she thought he might encounter.

Nicholas was relieved he got out from under the burden of going with his mother on errands. He was embarrassed at his mother’s insistence that he go along with her to the store as if he was six years old. He used the chair lift to get upstairs. The chair lift ride was agonizingly long and he practically tore out of it to get to his room, and up to the window.