Failed Gambit--Return from the Bad Trip

In this excerpt my mother and I are back home in NJ after a traumatic 12 week trip to Germany in which she attempted to escape my father by staying in Munich permanently.  My father eventually threatened to call the authorities, and we had to go back.  While we were gone he sold my Peugot 10-speed bike to pay the rent and my mother never forgave him for it.

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                         In my house it seemed the German trip never happened.  Nothing had changed.  My mother got her two jobs back, and she worked day and night.  The War plodded on.  The pattern of long silences broken by terrible fights resumed.  The house was freezing.  There was bronchitis and asthma attacks.

             No, things had changed.  They were worse.
            There was no more Hanukkah.  One snowy December morning my old said, You know today is Hanukkah, don’t you?  I didn’t.  He was mad.  That was our Hanukkah.
            I didn’t care.  I couldn’t stand to see him anymore.  We yelled at each other all the time.  We called each other Asshole and Sonofabitch and Stupid Jerk.
           There were no more family trips.  There were no more short periods of polite talk between my mother and old man.  There was either silence, or fighting.  And there was nothing new to fight about, except my Peugeot bicycle.
            My mother mentioned it every day, as if she had to keep fueling our indignation.  I can’t believe your old man sold your bike, she would say for no reason at all.  What kind of a father sells his son’s bicycle?  She told all her friends.  And she screamed at my old man about it.
            It didn’t bother me.  I missed having a bike, it was true, but when I tried to get mad at my old man for selling mine, nothing happened.  I didn’t feel angry.  I didn’t care.  But I grew sick of hearing about it.  I knew, without being able to say it, that it was all that stood between war and an end to war.
          I was changing.  I was tall, now.  And thin.  My face wasn’t round anymore, it was long.  I stopped looking like my mother, and I began to look like my old man.
          I stared in the mirror, at my long face, into my deep-set eyes.  I looked like him.  Would I become like him too?  Would I become a No Good bum someday?
         And the more I changed, the less I cared about what happened in my house.  It took some time, but I realized I just wanted out.  I wanted the same thing I cried about in Germany the night before my mother cancelled our flight home.  I wanted the fighting to end.  I wanted to go with my mother someplace away from my old man and never come back.
         My mother still talked about leaving, too.  Despite the bicycle, she was breaking down, slowly.   She took me to look at apartments.
         Let’s go, I told her now.  Let’s get out of that house.
        But she was still afraid.
        Oh, I can’t do it.  I have no money.  I have to save more money.
        Or it was winter and it was too cold to move.
        Or she didn’t like the apartment.
        Or she didn’t want to leave me without a father.
         Every kid needs a father.  I never left because I didn’t want to take you away from your old man.
         I don’t care.  Let’s just go!
         She was afraid.  Your old man will probably try to kill me if I leave him.
         I worried about that too.  But I really didn’t think he would do it.