“I bet my son would’ve liked to have seen me happy.”
Cassie rammed the coffee pot so hard into the holder that it hit the rear wall of the machine and smashed all over the countertop. Her mom hadn’t sunk this low before, and that was saying something.
“Shit, Cassandra. What the hell are you doing?” Her mom took a step closer before she halted abruptly. “You’re bleeding.”
Cassie looked down at her right hand and saw blood pulsing from a long cut between her thumb and forefinger. She calmly moved to the sink and turned on the faucet to wash away any remaining shards, then she yanked off a couple of pieces of paper towel from the roll and pressed them over the wound.
Her mom remained motionless and unhelpful, as she had done the many times Cassie had injured herself as a child. It was little wonder she’d ended up in medicine, even without everything else that had pushed her in that direction. Cassie lifted the paper to inspect the damage; it wasn’t too deep, but it would need stitches, which, ridiculously, was a relief. “I have to get to the ER and have this stitched.”
Her mom swallowed another mouthful of whiskey. “Of course you do.” She waved her hands wildly at the mess in her kitchen. “Cause chaos and then disappear. That’s just like you.”
Cassie swapped out the bloodied paper towel for fresh sheets and ignored the groundless dig. She had no idea where her mom’s memories of their interactions derived, but they weren’t from reality, and her therapist taught her she couldn’t battle with figments of her mom’s imagination. “I’ll clear this up before I leave.”
Her mom wobbled her head like a turkey. “Good. And make sure you get all your blood. Fred doesn’t like the sight of blood.”
“Of course.” Cassie began the clean-up operation, predictably unassisted by her mom, who stood by tutting and shaking her head.
“Of course you’ll get all the blood or of course Fred doesn’t like the sight of blood?”
Cassie frowned and swept the broken glass into a paper bag she’d found under the sink. “You’ll never know I injured myself, Mom.”And it’ll be cleaner than when I got here.
“Huh, I’ll know every time I want to make coffee and can’t.”
Cassie didn’t respond. Her mom didn’t drink coffee.
“Don’t give me that look. Fred likes coffee, and now I won’t be able to make him any becauseyou’vebroken the pot in a temper.”
Exchanges like this caused Cassie to occasionally question the validity of her therapist’s advicenotto engage. How could her mom ever learn what an unpleasant human being she was if she was never challenged? Teaching her mom how to be a better person wasn’t her job. Her job was to concentrate on herself and her own healing. But would she ever be healed if she continued to pick at the wound by maintaining a relationship with her mom? “I’ll buy you a new one.”
“When?”
Cassie finished wiping the countertop and crumpled the top of the paper bag closed. “Right now.” She pulled her phone from her pocket and searched for the exact model in front of her. “They sell replacement pots—”
“You may as well replace the whole thing,” her mom said. “You’ve probably damaged the machine as well with the way you slammed it around.”
Cassie smiled over gritted teeth. “Sure.” She showed her mom the sales page on her cell.
“That’s an old model.” Her mom snatched the phone and scrolled down the screen. “Fred likes his milk hot and frothy. Don’t they have a machine that does that?”
Cassie pinched the bridge of her nose.Of course Amazon has a machine that does that. Amazon sell machines that do everything. But why would she want to spend hundreds of dollars on something forFred’sbenefit? The man in the picture her mom had thrust under her nose did not look like a man who liked hot and frothy milk. He seemed like more of a strong and black coffee kind of guy.
She swapped out the rudimentary dressing again and unfurled the paper bag to put the bloodied towel inside. The cut was obviously deeper than it looked, but her mom still showed no concern for anything other than her own needs. Cassie didn’t expect anything else, of course. Wasn’t that the definition of insanity? To expect a different outcome from the same action?
Her mom handed Cassie’s phone back. “That one. And I need it today. Fred should be home tonight, and he’ll want his coffee. You don’t want me telling him that you’re the reason he can’t have his coffee at night.”
Or what? He’ll come find me?But there was something more ominous in her mom’s words than her usual drama, like she might even be harboring a little fear. God knew what kind of a man Fred was; Cassie was glad she wasn’t hanging around to find out. She looked at her phone to see her mom had chosen an eight-hundred-dollar barista express machine—quite the upgrade from the thirty-dollar unit Cassie had just broken. Was she making her mom worse by pandering to her outrageous sense of entitlement? Yes, Cassie could afford it, but why should she?
Because she didn’t want an ulcer, that’s why. And no, she didn’t want Fred turning up at the hospital demanding she satisfy his caffeine addiction. Cassie popped the contraption in her basket and selected same-day delivery. “It’ll be here between five and seven p.m.”
“It better be.” Her mom tilted her head slightly and smiled. “Maybe you could order some nice coffee too. That would be a nice gesture for him.”
Cassie pushed her phone back in her pocket and held up her bloodied hand. “I really have to go before I need a transfusion.” She grabbed the paper bag from the counter and headed toward the door.
“Aren’t you being a little over-dramatic? It’s barely a scratch.”
Cassie resisted the temptation to go back to her mom and open up her sliced skin like a mouth. “All this blood says otherwise. And I don’t want to upset Fred by spilling it everywhere, do I?”
Buster bounded up, placed himself between her and the door, and let out a loud groan. Dogs had never really been on her radar as something to keep her company, and her apartment didn’t allow them anyway, but the pleading look in his eyes could’ve made her reconsider.
