Mom presses her hands firmly into her hips. “Oh, no. We are all going. This is a family affair.”
I’m trying not to laugh as my parents have a stand-off in the middle of the kitchen. My grandma doesn’t care for my dad, and they are constantly bickering, so I get why he wants to stay home.
Dad and I exchange glances as Mom turns away from us and slides her feet into clogs. She’s all dressed up for dinner, wearing a beautiful blue floral summer dress, but her irritation with the situation has her not giving a shit about her footwear.
My stomach rumbles, and I cover it with my hand with widening eyes. I glance at my dad, who covers his stomach and says, “Yeah, me too.”
We’re both starving. My mom has the appetite of a bird, and we look forward to this one night a week, with no cooking, no dishes, and no healthy meal, to dive into something fried and fabulous. As if she senses our starvation, Mom turns to us and says, “I’ll call the restaurant on our way back and get our usual meal ordered to go. We’ll pick it up after dropping off my mother.”
Like two children getting the toy they both wanted at the store, my dad and I exchange wide-eyed smiles.
She shakes her head and points toward the garage. “Come on, you scavengers. Let’s get this over with.”
???
I lean back in the back seat as my dad and mom approach, my grandma wedged between them. She stops in the middle of the sheriff's parking lot to adjust her robe, opening wide for the world to see before closing it again and tightening the belt. My dad’s eyes drift to the sky before pinching closed, no doubt trying to burn the image of my grandma’s bare, wrinkly body out of his memory. I couldn’t look away. How can boobs get so flat and long as you get older?
The back door flies open, and my grandma drops into the seat beside me, chuckling to herself. “No sense of humor,” she says as the door closes beside her. She glances over at me and grins broadly. “Hey, there, Tessa bear, how about a hug for your old grandma?”
I shake my head, declining as I gesture to the front of her with my pointer finger.
She gazes down at her left boob, lying flat against the front of her partially open robe. “Oh, hell, if you’ve touched one boob, you’ve touched them all. Hug me.”
Her arm hooks around my neck, pulling me against her bare chest, the faint smell of liquor wafting from her lips. “That’s my girl.”
My mom gazes at her through the rearview mirror. “Mom, why don’t you close your eyes and take a little nap before we get you back to the home?”
She releases her hold on me, and I can’t help but brush her dead skin cells off the front of my shirt.
Blech.
Her hand disappears into the front of her robe and reappears holding a joint and a lighter.
Where the hell was she hiding that?
My eyes widen as she presses the joint between her tight lips and flicks the lighter multiple times. A flame rises, lighting up her face, and my stomach tightens. Without thinking, I snatchthe joint from her mouth, burning the palm of my hand, roll the window quickly down and chuck it out onto the highway.
Grandma June glares at me, her eyes narrowing. “What the hell did you do that for?”
The lighter hovers in her grasp between us, and I peel it out of her tightly clenched fingers, tossing it out the window as well. “No smoking in the car.”
It has nothing to do with the car. I could care less. It has everything to do with the flame. I don’t want Mastyx to see me, to hear anything we discuss in the car—good or bad. Fire is his gateway, and I refuse to allow that gate to be opened around me, especially after what I saw at the funeral.
Grandma’s eyes leave mine and stare through the windshield for several seconds before she looks back at me. “Well, hello there, young lady. Who might you be?”
Fuck. This isn’t the first time she’s forgotten who I was. My mom’s been ignoring the signs of Grandma’s Alzheimer’s for months now.
“Grandma June, it’s me, Contessa, your granddaughter.”
Her eyes flit to the outside, watching the trees float by before they return to mine. “How have things been going, Tessa bear?”
And she’s back.
I open my mouth to give her a rundown of my summer so far, when her head drops back against the seat, and she starts snoring softly.
Let’s add a side of Narcolepsy to her Alzheimer’s, why don’t we?
After returning grandma to the old folks’ home, we swing by our favorite restaurant, pick up our lukewarm food, and head back home. I excuse myself to my room, lie on my stomach at the foot of the bed and flip on the television, shoveling forkfuls of mac and cheese into my yap.
