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Reviewed by Kimberlee J Benart for Readers' Favorite
Mother Knows Best is a short story by Valerie Allen. Bobby has finished high school and is working as a dishwasher in a restaurant to pay for his car insurance while he continues to live at home. His parents Maggie and Jimmy are extremely agitated over a woman Bobby now tells them that he loves. She’s a waitress at the same restaurant. The problem is, she’s 37 years old and he has just turned 18. Bobby’s position is that he’s an adult now and can do what he likes. Jimmy is so upset that he’s ready to throw Bobby out onto the street, but Maggie believes that would only drive her young son even deeper into an ill-advised and premature relationship. She decides to pray on the matter.
In Mother Knows Best, Valerie Allen presents us with a situation that any number of parents have faced: the fascination of a young adult with an older romantic interest. Maggie’s and Jimmy’s reactions are as different as day and night. The dialog between them, as brief as it is, clearly draws these differences in enough detail so that we can imagine Maggie and Jimmy as they argue. The subsequent dialog between Bobby and his father does the same. We hear the frustration the young man feels as he starts to understand the complications that can accompany adult relationships, and we finally hear a little humor in his father's voice. It takes great skill to sketch believable characters with so few words and Allen does it expertly.
