“Whatever tempts her appetite. Fruit would be good,” Keisha added. “Those pain meds stop her up something awful.”
I sat beside my mother’s bed. Took her hand. An empty IV port ran into her arm, the skin around it purple with bruising.
“Jo.” Her fingers squeezed my hand with none of my mother’s strength. “Love you, honey.”
“Love you, too, Momma.”
She used to pester me with questions.How was your day... your date... your doctor’s appointment? Are you finished with your homework... your college applications... your taxes yet?In high school and later, coming home from college, I’d tended to brush her concerns away, saving my stories for a more appreciative audience. Saving them for my father.
I’d originally planned to fly home on Christmas Eve. Changing my ticket so close to the holidays had pretty much emptied my checking account. But she never asked me what I was doing at her bedside. Maybe she didn’t have the breath or the energy. Maybe she’d lost track of time. Or maybe, in some bone-deep, heartfelt, drug-induced place, she simply accepted I was where I belonged. I didn’t need a messy breakup to justify my presence at her side. She was sick. I was her daughter. Where else should I be?
My phone buzzed. A text from Eric.Where the hell are you?
Right. I was scheduled to work today. Well, screw him. Aaron was covering my shifts for the next two weeks. He didn’t need me.
I was suddenly, fiercely glad I’d come home.
After lunch, another aide—not Keisha—came to take my mother to physical therapy. She couldn’t get out of bed.
“Abby, you have to try,” the aide said with barely veiled impatience.
She’d been trying, without success, for almost twenty minutes.
My mother closed her eyes. The small gesture—of defeat, of resignation—terrified me. My mother never gave up.
“Listen, she didn’t choose to feel like this,” I snapped. “She’s in pain.”
“I understand. But we have patients waiting who are willing to do the work.”
“My mother has worked her whole damn life. She’ll get out of bed after her surgery.”
“Jo, it’s all right,” my mother said. “Don’t fuss.”
But after the aide left, she cried, silent tears of frustration leaking from her closed eyes. It was a relief when she slept.
It rained all week, a thin, cold rain that darkened the shortened hours and drove the goats to seek shelter under the lean-to. The days until my mother’s surgery stretched gray and empty. I visited her every day, driving an hour each way past frozen fields and huddled houses, my windshield wipers beating against the gloom.
When I got home, I fed the goats and my father, but he was rarely around.
“The holidays are a difficult time,” he explained. “Particularly for people who are dealing with sickness or loneliness or separation.”
Tell me about it,I thought.
I’d always relished my own space. But the house felt haunted by the ghosts of Christmases Past. I missed my sisters: the smell of Meg’s nail polish, the plunk of Beth’s guitar, even Amy’s messes scattered everywhere. Meg loved me. But she had John and the twins to care for. I couldn’t expect her to babysit me all the time.
There were worse things in life than being alone, I reminded myself. Anyway, it’s not like I didn’t have stuff to do. Laundry. Cleaning. I could haul out more Christmas decorations. Let Trey know I was back in town.
Or... I grabbed my hoodie and went out to the barn.
Shoveling straw was like cooking on the line—hard, dirty, sweaty work. After twenty minutes, I paused to pull off my hoodie. It felt goodto use my muscles, to occupy my hands, to find my rhythm. To feel appreciated, even if it was only by the goats.
But as I lay in bed, listening to the creaks and pings of the old house at night, a message lit my phone screen. Eric.
Are you all right?
My throat cinched tight. Chefs were egotistical, temperamental jerks. But Eric... Despite his unforgiving standards in the kitchen, he had a basic decency, an innate kindness I admired. He looked out for his employees.
Or ex-employees. Ray must have told him by now I wasn’t coming back to work.
