“But I thought we were going to take care of himtogether. Like he has a serious illness, and you’d be the first line of defense, seeing that you’re a registered nurse. I’m just here as back-up.”
She glances at her phone, scrolling through a cluster of notifications, then looks up with an air of decision. “Mary Kate, I’m going to be honest with you. Kent and I are separating.” She says it with the same tone she uses for calling the pharmacy, or telling me to wear sunscreen.
For a second, all I hear is the hum of the furnace and the faint clatter of her nails on the phone case.
I blink. “What?”
She puts the phone down, hands flat on her knees. “He’s going to file the paperwork this week. We’ve already talked to the lawyer. It’s amicable. Nobody’s mad.”
My mind scrolls through the last few years like a flip book: dinners in expensive restaurants, Christmas in Aspen, the time Kent bought Jeannine a convertible because he said her old one “lacked character.” I never saw a single fight, not even a hint of friction, but then again, my mom can wear a crisis like a new coat.
I pick at the edge of the quilt. “Is this because he’s sick?”
Her expression darkens a fraction. “No, I’m not leaving a man because he’s ill and I’m ditching him when he’s down. It’s because he’s himself.” She lets out a brittle laugh. “Kent’s been difficult. You know how he gets. The moods. The silence.” She doesn’t look at me when she says this, but I feel the words land anyway.
“He’s your husband,” I say. It’s a stupid, useless thing to say, but I can’t think of anything better.
“Was,” she corrects, voice soft but final.
I want to ask what “difficult” means, if there’s a specific event or just the slow erosion of years. But Jeannine’s already moved on. For a moment, she just breathes, her fingers picking at an imaginary thread on her skirt. Then she gets up and sits next to me on the bed. She puts a hand on my knee, gentle but firm.
“I know this is sudden,” she says. “But it’s what needs to happen. For all of us.”
I look at the floor. “You could have told me before I drove out here.”
She smiles, a cracked version of the old one. “If I’d told you, you might not have come. Or you would have spent the whole drive making yourself sick.”
“Probably both,” I say.
She squeezes my knee, then releases. “Kent is fine, honey. I mean he’s sick, but he’s not dying, that was a bit of an overstatement. He just—” She lets out a breath, searching for words. “He just needs someone in the house. Someone he trusts. He’s never liked strangers, you know that.”
I pick at the stitching on the bedspread, refusing to look at her. “Yeah, but I’m not a nurse.”
“You don’t need to be. He doesn’t need a nurse. He needs a familiar face. Meals, company. Someone to help him keep a schedule. He’ll be busy at the hospital, but when he’s here…” She trails off.
I want to ask why, if he’s so high-functioning, she’s leaving me here alone with him. But I already know the answer. It’s written in the way she holds herself, the defensive hunch of her shoulders.
She changes the subject with a wave of her hand. “He’ll take care of your tuition, the way he’s always done, as well as all expenses. There are groceries in the kitchen, and you can order takeout if you want. The guest car in the garage is yours to use, if you need it.”
I finally meet her eyes, and for a second she looks like the woman who used to sing me to sleep in a one-bedroom apartment, all softness and exhaustion. “I don’t know what’s happening, Mom. You asked me to come home to care for a sick man, and I said yes. You said it was practically life-threatening,but now I hear that it’s not. I’m confused, Mom. What’s going on?”
Jeannine looks conflicted, her pretty face pulling into a frown. But then she straightens. “It’s just the end of something, sweetheart. Not a tragedy. I have to get back to work, or I’ll go crazy. You know I was never good at just sitting around. And Kent—” She stops, biting her lip. “He’s better when he’s working, but when he’s not…” Her voice trails off, and she glances at the hallway, as if he might materialize there.
I nod, numb, because there’s nothing else to do.
She leans in and takes both my hands in hers. Her grip is cool and dry, and the skin on her knuckles is starting to show fine cracks, like porcelain seared by heat. “I am so proud of you, Mary Kate. I really am. You’re braver than you think.”
I almost laugh. “I’m not brave, Mom.”
She shakes her head. “You left home for school. You made your own life. You stuck with it, even when you were scared. You got a job, all by yourself. That’s more than I ever did at your age.” There’s a tremor in her voice now, a little shiver of emotion she tries to blink away. “You’ll be fine here. He’ll respect you. And if he doesn’t, you call me, and I’ll come back. Or you leave. You’re not trapped.”
Her voice is oddly firm, and her eyes bright when she says these words. Is my mom getting at something? Does she know that Kent touched me intimately that long-ago Thanksgiving? But I brush the thought from my mind because neither Kent nor I have ever given any hint of our attraction.
But for some reason, I feel like there’s a subtext that I’m not understanding. Something’s roiling beneath the surface ofJeannine’s abrupt departure, and I don’t know what it is. It’s on the tip of my tongue to ask, but then she releases my hands, brushes my hair behind my ear, and stands. For a second my mom hovers over me, as if wanting to say more, but she just checks her watch, a cheap digital thing that looks out of place against her wrist. “I have to call Uber. If I don’t leave now, I’ll never sleep tonight.”
She’s halfway to the door before I can find words. “Mom?”
She turns, and there’s a shimmer in her eyes, just a blink away from tears.
