A phone starts ringing on the desk that used to be Lottie’s. She scurries over to it, platform sandals squeaking as she goes. I notice the way her face shrinks in consternation the way it always has.
“Hello,” she says, voice wary.
She listens to the person on the other end, eyebrowscrunching and lips thinning into a hard line. I could cross-stitch that expression on her face from memory.
“Yes, I hear you. Okay, yes, um,” she says, fumbling to put the phone between her ear and shoulder while she searches for her pocketbook calendar. “I’m so sorry. It looks like I got one of the locations mixed up and…” She pauses to listen. “Yes, once again, I am so sorry. It won’t happen again. Okay, bye.”
She sets the phone down slowly, like she’s in a daze, and starts picking at her hair. It’s a stress response I’ve watched her resort to my entire life. As if her thoughts were connected to the strands of her hair, tugging at them like the movement might bypass her skull and untangle her thoughts.
“Mom?” I call. “Everything alright?”
“Yes! Oh, yes, all good!” she says in her fake peppy voice, turning her back to me to avoid meeting my eyes.
Okay, so… definitely not “all good.”
“Do you need help with anything? I don’t have overtime hours tonight.”
She pauses for a long moment with her hands on the desk. I expect my efforts to offer help to be brushed past like they have been my entire life, but all of a sudden, her silence is interrupted by a stiff gasp for air. Like she can’t breathe. Oh, gosh. Something is happening to her. My first instinct is to wonder how she’s choking when she wasn’t eating anything. But then her shoulders erupt into tiny spasms as she covers her mouth, and I realize she’s crying. And trying with all her power not to. It was such an unprecedented event, I thought choking more probable than tears.
“Mom?” I ask, rushing to her side.
“Sorry,” she mumbles through a sob, keeping her head bowed.
“Are you okay?”
She manages a nod, but her eyebrows crumple beneath another wave of tears.
“Mom, come here.”
Her head is buried in her hands, but I pull her tiny frame to my body regardless.
My mom is crying, my brain narrates to itself, unable to believe it. I’ve never seen my mother cry. And I discover that she does so very silently, other than the jolt of an inhale punctuating the space every now and then.
“Don’t resist the tears, Mom. It’ll be worse if you’re all tense. Just let it out.”
Her body relaxes in my arms slightly. Which from her, feels like progress.
“I’m sorry, con.” She wipes at her eyes and pulls away from me. “It’s just been a lot with the convenience stores now that Lottie is…” She trails off.
“Gone?” I offer.
She nods quickly.
“I’ve overlapped or forgotten to schedule multiple employees for their usual hours and every time it feels like I’ve just messed up their entire livelihoods, and I feel so bad. I didn’t think managing seven locations would be easy, but this is—”
She shakes her head. In the silence, I’m aware that this is where I’m at risk of losing her. What she’s admitted in the past two minutes surpasses anything she’s ever communicated in the past twenty-two years.
“Mom, let me help you,” I blurt, before evaluating the logistics of that offer. Especially after last night, I’m even more confused about the house and where I stand with Declan. But my mom was priority above all those feelings. Making myself uncomfortable so that she wouldn’t have to be was easy after a lifetime of seeing her give up everything for my happiness.
“No, no, no, no. I’m sorry for burdening you with this, con. I should have never done that in the first place.” She waves at the space she was crying in as if it’ll push the memory away like a cloud of smoke. “I’ll figure it out, it’s okay.”
All her effort trying not to burden me worked when I was a child and didn’t have the full context to understand. But now, I saw everything, and I felt burdened by her inability to accept help.
She starts to head back to the front of the convenience store, and I realize if I want her to accept my help, I can’t just offer it.
“Hey, Mom?” I call to her retreating form.
She pauses. “Yes, sweetie?”
