People Who Knew Me (15 page)

“For the record, I don't wipe her ass,” I said. “Drew does. He knows better than to ask me to do that.”

“At least he'll be good at changing diapers when that time comes.”

“
If
,” I said, “
if
that time comes.”

I ate my discarded raisins, one at a time. It was just before ten o'clock. The high girl was starting to wipe down the counters.

“Do you have kids?” I asked Nancy.

I felt like I knew her so well already, and yet not at all.

“Nope,” she said. “I have a slew of nieces and nephews, though.”

“Drew and I don't have any sisters or brothers, so I won't even have those.”

I was crashing her pity party, making it my own.

“I was married once,” she said. She leaned back in her chair, so far that the front legs came off the floor. I remember when kids used to do that in school and the teachers would scold them, say, “One day you'll fall on your head, then you'll see.”

“I think I was too selfish for the whole institution,” she said. She pulled at a huge turquoise ring on her left middle finger. She wore rings on all her fingers, as if compensating for what society deemed the all-important ring.

“Selfish?” I asked, interested.

“I wasn't good at it—caring for someone else, being a team with someone. I just wanted to do my own thing, live life my way,” she said. “I wanted to take trips when and where I wanted. I wanted to have a bowl of cereal for dinner some nights. I wanted to sleep without someone kicking me or snoring. I know, it's crazy.”

“It's not crazy,” I said.

“I guess the universe is teaching me a lesson by giving me my completely debilitated mother to care for round-the-clock. So much for selfishness.”

“How old were you? When you got divorced?”

“Just about your age. Got married when I was twenty-four because it was what I was supposed to do. Gave it a try—probably not my best try, but
a
try.”

“Any regrets?”

She put a chunk of muffin in her mouth and, while chewing, said, “Nope.”

With that, she looked at her watch and said she had to get home. She had a neighbor watching over her mother and was already going to be late. We left the coffee shop and she asked where I'd parked. I told her that I didn't come in a car, that I had run, and she looked at me like I was stark-raving mad.

“I'm giving you a ride home,” she said. There didn't seem to be a way to object to this.

She pulled up in front of my apartment building, reached over across the center console, and gave my hand a squeeze.

“Will I see you next week?” I asked, as nervous as a girl being dropped off after a first date.

“Unless I kill my mother first and go to prison,” she said.

“You mean go to a different kind of prison,” I said.

She pointed a you-got-it index finger at me and winked.

“Know what? How about you and me do our own meeting?” she said. “At the coffee shop? Same time?”

“I'd love that,” I said.

She reached down by her feet for a balled-up piece of paper, a windshield flyer advertising dry cleaning. She smoothed it out, wrote down her number, and gave it to me.

“Hang in there, kiddo,” she said, then drove away.

*   *   *

Drew's mom was still awake when I walked into the apartment. She was sitting up straight against the back of the couch, two pillows stacked on each side of her so she wouldn't tip over. The TV was on, its glow highlighting her catatonic stare.

“Hi,” I said. It hadn't become any less awkward to communicate—or attempt to communicate—with her in the months we'd shared a home. She couldn't manage to reciprocate my greetings and I couldn't manage not to take it personally.

Drew walked in from the bedroom, a glass of water in his hand.

“You're home late,” he said, taking the water to his mom, tipping it into her mouth slowly. It had become more difficult for her to clutch a glass. We switched to plastic cups, but then decided it was time to just spare her the embarrassment of spilling.

“Yeah,” I said. It hadn't become any less awkward to communicate with Drew, either. He set the glass on the end table and came to me, put his arms around my waist, kissed my neck. I never knew how to feel when he did this, when he tried to act as if everything were normal, as if his mom weren't right there watching his desperate attempts to win my affections.

I pushed him away gently. “I'm pretty tired,” I said.

I gave his mom my good-night wave and escaped to the bedroom. I heard Drew wish his mom sweet dreams. He used a booming voice with her, as if he assumed she couldn't hear, just because she couldn't speak.

“You okay?” he asked, closing the bedroom door behind him.

“Long day,” I said. There was no point in sharing my unhappiness with him. He would just say there was nothing he could do about it and we would be left standing there, at an impasse neither of us knew how to circumvent.

“She seemed stronger today,” he said. “She was lying down on the couch and I saw her push herself up to a seated position.”

Nancy was right—Drew's mom was our baby. We cheered for even the smallest physical achievements.

“That's good,” I said, less than halfheartedly. Quarter-heartedly.

“Her voice seemed to have a little more oomph today, too.”

I didn't know if Drew was in enough denial to really think she was going to get better, or if he just wanted me to think that.

I went to our bathroom across the hall. He followed me, stood behind me as I washed my face, brushed my teeth.

“I can give you a massage,” he said.

I didn't want a massage, though. I didn't want any of these attempts to make it better, to make it something it wasn't.

I spit into the sink. “Maybe tomorrow. I just want to go to sleep.”

“You sure you're okay?” he asked, following me to the bed.

“Uh-huh,” I said. He didn't probe more. He knew that was dangerous.

I gave him a kiss on the cheek, the kind grandmothers give their grown children. Then he got into bed on his side, and stayed there. Neither of us would sleep well, anticipating his mom calling out to him around two o'clock in the morning, needing to use the bathroom. If I wasn't awakened by Drew getting out of bed, I was awakened by the light flashing on and the bathroom fan whirring away.

 

THIRTEEN

Drew got his driver's license back right before Thanksgiving. I thought that would coincide with an immediate plan to move his mom back home. When a week passed without that plan, I couldn't restrain myself anymore.

“How much longer is she staying with us?” I said to him. We were in our bedroom. That was the only place the two of us were ever alone. We spoke in whispers regularly, taking on his mother's voice, as if in a show of strange solidarity.

“Just give me time to figure something out,” he said. He was noticeably agitated, impatient with my question even though it was the first time I'd asked. It must have been bouncing around in his head for a while, like a pinball in a machine.

“You see how much worse she's gotten in the last six months,” he said.

With just that one statement, I understood: she wasn't going anywhere.

*   *   *

Nancy and I continued our Thursday night meetings at the coffee shop. Bitching sessions, we called them. We didn't meet on Thanksgiving, of course. We were both busy preparing turkeys and pretending life was normal for the sake of our loved ones. When we met the Thursday after Thanksgiving, we hugged like we hadn't seen each other in months.

“I missed you,” I said. She'd come to be the only person in my life besides Drew, his mom, and coworkers. Marni had found herself a boyfriend and effectively disappeared from the planet. My mother had a new boyfriend, too. It was one of her chaotic on-and-off-again situations that consumed every minute of our few-and-far-between phone calls. She asked how I was, but it was obligatory, not curious. And that was fine with me. I didn't want to tell her about my life. She would just make me feel worse about it.

“How was your Turkey Day?” Nancy asked.

We draped our coats over our usual chairs, at our usual table in the back corner. The girl behind the counter had come to know us, and we'd come to decide that she wasn't always high; she was just a little dumb. She remembered our orders, though—cinnamon herbal tea for me, black coffee for Nancy. And she always brought us one of the baked goods they were going to throw away at the end of the night, like we were homeless people, charity cases.

“Drew's mom briefly choked on my mashed potatoes. So that was exciting.”

She laughed. These were the things that humored us.

“You don't have my full sympathy until you've done the Heimlich,” she said.

“You have?”

“Oh, yes. That's the incident that drove me to that stupid caretaker group,” she said. “It was a piece of toffee, of all things.” She simulated the trajectory of the toffee, drawing an arc in the air from her mouth to my side of the table.

“Jesus,” I said.

“Nah, he wasn't there. I don't know where the fuck he's been.”

We giggled like schoolgirls.

“So when's she leaving?” Nancy asked, blowing on her coffee. Her lips had deep lines in them, like she'd spent years in the sun or smoked thousands of cigarettes. I rarely asked about her past. Our presents were much too consuming.

“It's become a question of
if
,” I said.

“Tell me you're kidding.”

Last we'd talked, I'd been hopeful. I'd picked out the new couch we'd get to replace the one she'd slept on all those months. I'd told Nancy maybe Drew and I would talk about having a baby.

“He said he needs time to figure something out.”

“What's there to figure out? He can go back to taking care of her
in her own home
. Or hire someone to do it. That would be the smartest idea. I'm hiring someone.”

“You are?”

“I've had it,” she said, with a quick jerk of her head that sent the tail end of her braided hair flying over her shoulder. “I figure my mom can't live for more than a year or two like this. She's already choked, broken her hip, and had stage three bedsores. I can afford two years of care, max. If she's still going after that, I'll have to kill her.”

This was just how Nancy spoke. She wasn't serious. She loved her mom. I could tell by the way she checked her cell phone every five minutes to see if she'd missed a call, if there was a new emergency.

“Drew says we can't afford to hire someone.”

“Well, yeah, that's probably true.”

The words slapped me in the face. It was devastating to hear someone besides Drew telling me there was no other option.

“If he got a good job, it might be an option,” she said. Then: “Maybe.”

“He says the pay from a restaurant job wouldn't cover the cost of hiring someone,” I said.

Oh, how I wanted her to dispute him, say he was wrong.

“Well, yeah, that's probably true, too.”

My shoulders slumped.

“You might just have to wait it out,” she added.

“It” being Drew's mother's life.

“That's what I'm doing,” she said, “waiting it out.”

It occurred to me right then that maybe Nancy wanted me to be miserable, like her. She wanted the company.

I sipped my tea. She sipped her coffee. I waited for the burst of anger I felt to dissipate. I couldn't hate Nancy. She was just the messenger of truths I needed to face.

“You're going to have to do Christmas with her,” she said. I'd already confronted this particular truth, shook its hand, agreed to be civil.

“I know. I'm going to have Drew go get her boxes of Christmas decorations tomorrow,” I said. “We'll put them up. She's obsessed with Christmas.”

“Look at you—Saint Emily.”

I shrugged. “I have to balance out all my complaining with some goodwill.”

Drew and I had just had a big fight a couple days before in which he'd said he never knew I could be such a bitter person. It hurt to hear. I felt guilty, like I'd become this person he didn't marry, like I'd duped him.

“You're a better person than me,” Nancy said.

I didn't believe that was true, but it was good to hear it anyway. At home, I saw myself as callous, cruel, because that's how Drew saw me.

Nancy checked her phone and said she had to get home. On our way out, I asked if she'd show me the Heimlich maneuver, just in case I needed to use it. And there we were, on the sidewalk outside a Brooklyn coffee shop, Nancy grabbing me and hoisting me upward. To drivers passing by, we must have looked insane.

*   *   *

Drew's mom had thirteen boxes of Christmas decorations. Five boxes of just Santas: fat Santas, thin Santas, stuffed Santas, wood Santas, glass Santas. A set of reindeer and a sleigh meant to occupy a grand mantel. Snow globes, a village of ceramic houses with snow-covered roofs, garlands, wreaths, and three boxes of ornaments. And she had a six-foot-tall fake Douglas fir that we propped up to the left of the TV. It was too big for our small space. I told Drew that just looking at it gave me heart palpitations. He said, “You're so dramatic.” I said, “No, I'm so claustrophobic.”

We set aside Saturday night to put up all the decorations. It was hard to tell if Drew's mom was happy—she didn't have enough strength in her face to form a smile—but Drew said she was. He could tell, he said.

“I'm going to pick up some food. You two get started,” he said, kissing me on the nose before heading out the door with Bruce. I would have rather been the one to pick up the food. He had to know that.

I started unpacking the boxes slowly. I put everything out on display on the hardwood floors. It looked like a Christmas-themed yard sale in our tiny apartment. Drew's mom surveyed it all and pointed one mostly bent finger in the direction of the sleigh and reindeer.