“Yep,” I said. “It took me two days to make room for a hospital bed in the dining room when she came home in the spring. I scrubbed the kitchen and bathroom as well as I could, without throwing her stuff away, for the home health aides.”
Stifling summer heat had made the air stale and stuffy. I raised the blinds and pulled back the drapes, then forced open the ancient windows to let in the breeze.
Dust motes formed clouds of silver confetti between us, fitting decor for this party.
“Is her air-conditioning broken?” Alicia asked as she looked for a place to set the grocery bags.
I checked the nearby thermostat, set to eighty, then lowered the temperature to something more reasonable and listened as the unit kicked on.
“Thank heavens,” Alicia said.
“Mom?” Camilla’s voice carried from the back of the house.
I moved in her direction, careful not to trip on boxes or bags. “Yes?”
“There’s a table and chairs on the patio. Maybe we can eat outside under the umbrella,” she said, peering through a rear window.
“That sounds perfect.”
Several minutes later we toasted to my mother with plastic cups of red wine, but all I felt was tired.
Ilona appeared in the distance, trudging across the adjoined lawns to the patio. She was a decade older than my mother, somewhere in her mid-seventies, I guessed, but healthy and active, unlike my mom. She’d dyed her cropped gray hair pink. She’d changed out of her funeral clothes into jean shorts and a T-shirt. “I brought the mail,” she said. “I’ve been keeping it.” She set the stack of bills on the table. “Been feeding the cat too.”
“What cat?” Camilla asked.
“Raisin.”
I squinted at Ilona, backlit by the sun. “Who?”
“Trina’s cat. She found him under the trailer when he was a kitten. He’s indoor/outdoor, but he hasn’t been to the vet or groomer in a long while, so I’d do that first, if I was you. He’s sure to have fleas or worms or something by now.”
I looked to the camper trailer, parked across the backyard. Mom purchased it years ago when the house started filling up with junk. She planned to live there while overhauling the cluttered house, but that never happened. Now the camper was full of junk too.
“Kitty, kitty, kitty,” Ilona called. She clucked her tongue and made soft whistling sounds while scanning the yard.
“I didn’t know she had a cat,” I said. Why hadn’t she mentioned it?
Oh, I don’t know,my mind retorted.The same reason she didn’t mention my biological father?
A dark, flat-faced cat peered around a nearby bush. Long, ratty hair snarled into mats at his ears. He watched with assessing eyes as we turned at once to stare at him.
“There he is,” Ilona said. “This is Raisin.”
Alicia wrinkled her nose as the feline lumbered closer. “What kind of cat is that?”
“We think he’s a Himalayan mixed with a little Maine coon.”
I looked to Ilona, smiling proudly at the filthy creature, and an unexpected bout of emotion clutched my throat. “He looks like something Mom would love.”
Alicia and I laughed softly at the ridiculousness of my mom caring for anything when she wouldn’t care for herself. Then again, based on the looks of Raisin, she hadn’t taken very good care of him either.
Camilla lifted a chunk of greasy cheese from her pizza slice and offered it to the cat, who approached with caution.
“Well,” Ilona said. “If you need anything, you know where to find me. I’ve got a soup on, and I don’t want it to burn.”
“Ilona,” I said, rising as she turned to leave.
“Yeah?”
