“You have no limit, no governor, do you? By the way, I wrote the notes in the LP covers for more thana fewyears. This holds meaning for me. I’m sorry you are a shell and have no feelings and that makes you incapable of understanding mine.”
“Dani, I do have feelings. I’m mainly irritated about something else and this is just adding to it.”
“Please, do share, I’m all ears.”
“That room, Danielle! We have to do something with your mother’s things.”
“Go ahead. Knock yourself out. By the way, I won’t let you buy me out of this house. I love this house.”
“So do I,” he says.
“Are we gonna go to war over it?”
“We can afford to split the mortgage for now. Let’s cross that bridge when the boys go to college.”
“The nesting apartment is temporary,” I say.
“We’ll figure it out!” he snaps.
I pick up the box and open the door to head to the car.
“Stop! So you’re gonna be okay with me clearing out that room so Noah can have it? You’re not gonna be pissed?”
“It’s fine,” I say quietly, momentarily forgetting that Alex can barely hear.
“What?”
“It’s fine!” I scream.
“Why are you shouting?”
Here come the tears. “I’m leaving, okay? Do whatever youwant. Put my mother’s stuff in boxes in the garage and I’ll go through them when I’m back.”
“Now you’re crying?”
“Of course I’m crying.” I set the box down on the porch. Alex is standing in the doorway. “You act as though I shouldn’t mourn her because you two didn’t get along.”
“She didn’t get along with anyone, including you! She was a monster, Danielle. She was horrible to you, to the boys, to your father. I put up with it for so long while you made excuses for her.”
Alex is leaning against the wall with his hands in his pockets. His body language and lack of expression on his face makes him seem like a sociopath.
“Can you imagine what her life was like? Her only son dies suddenly, then her husband leaves her a month later? I was all she had.” I wipe tears from my face and pull it together.
“She should have treated you that way, but she didn’t. She hit you, threw food at you, called you stupid. She called our sons pussies, Danielle. Her own grandsons. She said they would be weak like their father…me! She told me that you settled for me, that you never loved me, and that you cheated on me all the time. What kind of mother does that?”
“One withearly onset Alzheimer’s,Alex. One who is swept away in her own delusions. It wasn’t long after those outbursts that she didn’t even know her own name, let alone who the hell we were. Have you no compassion?”
“Each time I defended you. ‘She wouldn’t cheat on me,’ I’d tell her when she was on one of her kicks, but she wouldn’t stop there. Do you know how many times she told me that you and Lars belonged together? That he was your ‘intellectual equal’? I mean, it wasn’t enough thatEntertainment Weeklywas saying you two were sleeping together. I had to have your mother rubit in my face too, all while I was helping take care of her physically and financially.”
“I didn’t cheat on you! We’ve been over this. She was sick and Hollywood gossip isn’t real. You know that!”
“One time she actually told me Lars had a bigger dick than me.” He laughs maniacally while I cringe.
“That was less than three months before she died,” I say.
“Does he?”
“What?”
