“Baby!” She pops up when she sees me, then lists sideways and knocks over a pile of magazines. Definitely drunk. “You came! I thought you’d abandoned me like everyone else.”
“Mom, your door was open. Anyone could have?—”
“What’s the point of locking it? There’s nothing left to steal. He took everything.”
“Who took everything?”
“Derek! That bastard! Three months we were together, and he just… justleft. No warning, no explanation. Just gone when I woke up this morning.”
Derek? Derek who? I’ve never even met Derek. Hadn’t known he existed until this moment. Truth is, I stopped bothering with allher Dereks a long time ago. He’s just the latest in a long line of men who drift through my mother’s life, promise her the moon, and inevitably leave things worse than they found them.
I go into autopilot. The routine is as familiar as breathing. Get her water. Find aspirin. Listen to the same circular story about how men are trash, how she gave him everything, how she’ll never love again.
Until next week, of course, when there’s a new one, because Dereks are an infinite resource. In twenty-seven years, the world has never run out of them.
“Let’s get you to bed, Mom,” I say when she’s starting to wind down.
“I don’t want to go to bed. I want to talk to my daughter who never visits anymore.”
“I was here two weeks ago.”
“Hardly! You used to stay longer. You used tocare.”
I guide her toward the bedroom, trying not to engage with the guilt trip. That’s when I spot something on the kitchen counter. A red-bordered envelope. I’ve seen that enough times to recognize it on sight.
An eviction notice.
“Mom,” I ask, “what’s this?”
She waves it off. “That idiot landlord. He’s being completely unreasonable.”
I pick it up and scan. “It says you’re three months behind on rent.”
“That’s not my fault! Derek was supposed to help, but then he left, and my hours got cut at the store, and?—”
“Mom.” I sink into a kitchen chair, suddenly exhausted. “I just sent you eight hundred dollars.”
“And that barely covered anything! You don’t know what it’s like, trying to survive on nothing while your daughter lives it up in her fancy downtown apartment.”
“My apartment is a studio the size of your kitchen.”
“At least youhavean apartment! Your own mother is about to be on the streets, and you’re lecturing me about money?” She starts crying again, those manipulative tears I know so well. “I sacrificed everything for you. And this is how you repay me?”
The speech is a knife between my ribs, same as always. Repetition doesn’t make it any less effective. It doesn’t matter that I’ve been supporting her financially since I got my first real job. I’ve paid her rent more times than I can count, but is that enough?
No. It’s never enough. It will never, ever be enough.
“How much?” I hear myself ask, voice flat.
She’s suddenly sober and serious. “Twelve hundred.”
“I’ll transfer it tomorrow.”
“You’re an angel, baby. The best daughter anyone could ask for.” She hugs me, reeking of cheap wine. “I don’t know what I’d do without you.”
I get her into bed, make sure she has water and aspirin on the nightstand, double-check that the stove is off.
When I finally leave, making sure to lock the door behind me, I find Bastian leaning against the wall in the dim hallway.
