“Sit down, Pam.”
“I’m not hungry.”
“You need to eat.If you don’t stay healthy, you won’t be able to visit your mother.”
As a threat, it was empty.“I won’t be able to visit her anyway.You’re sending her to some place in Wellesley.I can’t walk there.”
“Marcy can drive you there.”
“But not every day.”
“Of course not every day.You shouldn’t be visiting her every day anyway.It’s not healthy.”
“She’s my mother!”
With that, John lost his patience.Planting his forearmson the table flanking his plate, he said, “Right now she doesn’t want to be your mother.Don’t you see that?She has serious physical and mental problems, and if she’s ever going to work them out, she needs time by herself.You’ve been there every day, and it’s not helping.So give it a rest, for God’s sake.Leave her alone.”
Pam’s stomach churned harder.John always did have a way of making her sick.Lowering her head, she made for the door.
“Where are you going?”he barked.
“Upstairs.I don’t feel well.”
“You don’t feel well because your stomach’s empty.”
But she continued on, climbing the stairs to her room and curling up on her bed.She didn’t throw up.Neither, though, was she hungry when Marcy came up with a tray.
“Come on, honey, you got to eat.”
Pam stared straight ahead.“It won’t get better.This is it.It’s not going to change.”
“Sure it is.”
“No.They’re both gone now.”
“Nuh-uh.Your mama’s right down the block, and when they move her she’ll be just a short drive off.”
“She’s not interested, Marcy.She doesn’t care about being a mother anymore.”
“Sure she—”
“No.And it’s not just because of the accident.She hasn’t cared about it much for a long time.It didn’t matter when I had Daddy, but now that he’s gone it matters.She doesn’t care.How can a mother do that?”
“She’s sick, honey.She’s not feelin’—”
“She doesn’t even care about this house.She always loved this house.She loved it almost before she loved my father.”
Marcy smoothed a lock of hair back from her face.“She’s grieving, Pammy.She’s grieving for your daddy, and that’s a hard thing to do sometimes.”
Pam turned her head on the pillow and looked up.“But what about me?I’m not dead, and I need her.I keep telling her that, but she won’t listen.Doesn’t she know I miss Daddy, too?Doesn’t she know how lonely it is without either of them?The only one I have now is John, and he’s worse than ever.He likes it when I’m unhappy.I can’t believe that they left me here alone with him.”
“You’re not alone.You have me.I won’t ever leave you.”
Pam took her hand and held tight.She wanted to believe that, but so much of what she’d always believed had been torn away from her that she wasn’t sure what to trust.She knew that if Marcy had her way, she wouldn’t ever leave.But people didn’t always have their way.After all, Eugene hadn’t intended to leave either.
She took Marcy’s offer of comfort, though, because she had nowhere else to turn.Patricia was moved to the small private hospital in Wellesley the following week.Pam visited her once, but she was received with such disinterest that she didn’t go again.It hurt too much.
In time, the hurt spawned anger.Pam was angry at Patricia for rejecting her, for refusing to get well, for lying around in a semicatatonic state in a hospital when she had a daughter who needed her.She was angry at Eugene, too.He had betrayed her by driving his car into the path of atruck, then he’d compounded the betrayal by abandoning her.She was angry at John for surviving the other two.
