“I don’t need to see a fucking doctor!” she shouted. “Nor do I need you to tell me what to do. I’ll be fine. I promise.”
Gee, wonder where I get my delusional need for control from.
“Mom, you sound terrible.”
“Hush, it’s a bad morning,” she said. “Did you get my medication and food? Christ almighty, I might as well hire someone to get groceries and drugs for me if you’re going to be this slow.”
“They’re at the front door,” I groused as I walked back to get them. “And be happy I get them for you. If I had any sense, I’d make you go vegan so you can lose some weight.”
“What did you say?”
I sighed.
“Nothing.”
“Have you gotten a job yet?” my mother said as she rummaged through the groceries and drugs I’d gotten her. “Have you made something of yourself yet? Or are you still bumming around the house, wishing for that whore?”
My fists clenched. I stuffed them in my pockets, lest I break the wallpaper at my mother’s house.
“Yes, Mom,” I said, biting my lip. “I’m working as a mechanic with the guys. We opened a store—”
My mom laughed.
“A mechanic?” she said. “Stan was a soldier.”
“That wasn’t Stan.”
“Don’t tell me who was who, you fool!”
Her memory’s getting worse. Christ. She’s going to forget who I am in a matter of months at this rate.
If I ever want us to be anything more than just a bickering, drama-filled family before she dies…
If that’s even possible.
“I’m sorry, Mom.”
“Damn right, Steele,” she said, but her tone had softened.
And, for once, she had used my name correctly. She still look like she had a death wish for the world, and she still looked like she despised me for not following in my father’s footsteps to join the military. But…
“You know, thought you’d be interested. I’ve been talking to someone,” I said. “Her name’s Elizabeth; we’re not—”
“Oh, another whore to take you away from me.”
That’s it.
“All right, have a great day, Mom,” I said, treating her name like a vile curse.
I ignored her yelling at me as I stormed out of the house. As I flung the screen door open and stomped to my bike, I took a glance back. I wanted to say that this would be the last time I ever saw my mother.
I wanted to say that after a comment like that, seeing her like that, I would break free from her entirely. I’d get her a nurse just so I wouldn’t live with the guilt of killing her through drug withdrawal, I’d write her letters to settle legal issues, and then I’d cleanse my hands. That wasn’t my mother; that was the woman who gave birth to me.
But what would it do to a woman who had already suddenly lost half of her family in an instant? Her body already had one foot in the grave; her soul had already become a turbulent, shattered mess. But call it the wishes of a son who could not give up—or, perhaps better said, refused to give up—or call it something mushier and cornier, but I refused to believe that the person I called “Mom” for the first half of my childhood wasn’t in there somewhere.
Tears started to form in my eyes. This wasn’t me. This wasn’t Steele Harrison.
But who the fuck was I? If I was the cocky, “everything will work out” guy, then why had last night and this afternoon made me utterly question that? If I was the guy who didn’t take any shit from anyone and would fight if necessary, why did I just roll over and let that woman in that house berate me and make me feel like shit?
