“A nursing home,” she says. I wanted to put my mother in a nursing home, and I planned to use the five grand to get her in. But of course now there is no money, because in one impulsive moment I chose to save the girl and ended up screwing over my mother and myself at the same time.
But in the back of my mind, I know why I did it. And it wasn’t about the girl. If my mother found out that I’d been the one to snatch the judge’s daughter, later, when it was all over the news that she’d been found somewhere slain, it would have killed her. The five grand wouldn’t have mattered anymore. She’d be dead. And if not dead, she’d want to be. She didn’t raise me to be like this.
I just didn’t think about all that before the girl was in my truck. When the dollar signs gave way to reality: the girl, crying beside me, the image of Dalmar’s guys tearing her from the truck, the thirty years in prison. My mother would be dead before I was ever released. What good would that do?
I begin to pace the room. I’m mad. Not at her. At myself. I ask, “What kind of person wants to put their mother in a nursing home because they’re so fucking sick and tired of caring for them?”
It’s the first time I let myself be unguarded. I stand at an angle against the pine walls, and I press my hand to a lingering headache. I look at her receptive eyes and ask again, “Seriously, what kind of person would put their mother in a nursing home because they don’t want to take care of them anymore?”
“There’s only so much you can do.”
“I can do more,” I snap. She’s standing before the front door, watching the snow fall. Beside her feet the damn cat roams in circles, begging to be let out. She won’t let him. Not tonight.
“Can you?”
I tell her that some Sundays, when I arrive, I’m surprised she’s still alive. The place is trashed. She hasn’t eaten. The meals I’ve left in the freezer are still there. Sometimes the door is unlocked. Sometimes the oven is on. I asked her to come live with me, but she said no. This was her home. She didn’t want to leave Gary. She’d been there her entire life. She grew up there.
“There are neighbors,” I say. “One lady checks on her once a week, gets the mail, makes sure there’s enough food. She’s seventy-five but she gets along better than my own mom. But everyone has their own life. I can’t expect them to babysit a grown woman for me.” I tell her that there’s also my aunt, Valerie, who lives nearby in Griffith. She helps out, from time to time. I’m hoping that Valerie has figured it out somehow: a call from the neighbor, seeing me on TV. I’m hoping she’s figured out that my mother’s alone and that she’s doing something, anything, to fix the situation.
My mother didn’t know about the nursing home, but she never wanted to be an inconvenience. This was the best I could do. A compromise.
But I know that a nursing home is a shitty compromise. Nobody wants to live in a nursing home. But there wasn’t a better option.
I grab my coat from the arm of a chair. I’m upset with myself. I’ve let my mother down. I force my shoes onto my feet, slam my arms into the coat. I won’t look at her. I nearly run her over to get at the door.
“It’s snowing,” she says. She’s not quick to move. She lays her hand on my arm and tries to stop me but I shrug her off. “No one belongs outside on a night like tonight.”
“I don’t care.” I push past her and open the door. She hoists the cat into her hands so it won’t run away. “I need some fucking air,” I say, slamming the door.
Eve
Before
In the days after Thanksgiving a woman microwaves her three-week-old infant and another slashes her three-year-old’s throat. It’s not fair. Why have these ungrateful women been blessed with children when mine has been taken from me? Have I been that bad of a mother?
The weather on Thanksgiving was like spring: temperatures in the sixties, plenty of sun. Friday, Saturday and Sunday were more of the same, though even as we ate the last bites of leftover mashed potatoes and stuffing, the makings of a typical Chicago winter were in the works. The weathermen warn us for days of the impending snowstorm that’s to arrive Thursday night. The grocery stores have run out of bottled water as people prepare to take shelter in their homes; my God, I think, it’s winter, an annual certainty, not the atomic bomb.
I take advantage of the warm weather to decorate the home. I’m certainly not in the cheery holiday spirit, but I do it nonetheless—to stave off boredom and the dreadful thoughts that fill my mind. To enliven the home, not that James or I will notice, but just in case. Just in case Mia is here for Christmas to enjoy it, the tree and the lights and her aging, childhood stocking with the embroidered angel whose hair is beginning to fall off.