“Hi, Mom. I didn’t think you were coming.”
“Just running a little late today. Hope you still have some of whatever it is you made. It smells good.” This afternoon, she wore jeans and a top that both hung off her frame.
Smiling to myself, I plated her up a serving and handed it over, glad that I could give her something hot and homemade to eat.
“Thanks,” she said when we were both seated at my small but clean kitchen table. It wasn’t the one we’d owned eight years ago, the last time she’d sat in the house, and I wondered if she noticed.
I looked around the room, as if an appropriate topic would jump out of the butter-yellow walls of my kitchen.Are you clean? How long are you going to stick around this time?
“What did you mean about feeling your age last night?” popped out of my mouth, but I kept the scarier questions inside.Are you sick? Sicker than twenty-five years of meth would make the average person?
She picked at her food with shaking hands. “Just that I’m in my fifties, and I’m thinking maybe I don’t want to live like this forever.”
“Oh?” I said, leaning forward while reminding myself that Mom had already disappointed me once today by showing up late and not texting, so I shouldn’t get my hopes too high.
“Yeah. Been thinking about checking myself into some kind of rehab center, but, you know.” She shrugged. “I can’t afford them.”
“How much are they?”
“Twenty grand. Would be real nice of you to help your old mother out.” She pushed around another forkful of food, but she hadn’t eaten more than a bite or two.
“I don’t know, Mom. That’s a lot.” Maybe a payment plan? Did those fancy rehab centers take those? I started running the numbers on how much I could spare.
“Is it too much to keep me off the streets?” When her eyes caught mine, her pupils were blown wide. Her hands shook where they gripped her fork, and she couldn’t sit still in her seat.
“Are you high right now?” I asked with a sinking feeling that threatened to drag me to the floor.
“Course not.” But she couldn’t meet my eye.
“Because I can’t help you if you aren’t ready to help yourself.”
“How the hell am I supposed to stay clean if I can’t get into rehab? Huh? Tell me that.”
She had a point, one that made guilt rise in my gut. But that warred with the knowledge that, after eight years of silence, Mom turned up on the doorstep and the first thing she asked for was money. That didn’t exactly scream trustworthy.“How long have you stayed clean on your own?”
She shot out of her chair. “I won’t stand here and let my kid treat me like a misbehaving teenager.”
“I don’t have anything to prove. I’m not the one who did a runner after my husband of twenty-five years’s funeral.”
She sucked in a breath. “Oh, you stuck-up bitch, you think you’re too good for me now? I just need a few thousand bucks. I’m sure you have it. Not like you ever paid one cent of rent on this dump.”
“Rent? No, I just have to keep it from falling down.” And last month I’d spent most of my savings on new siding.
She threw her plate onto the floor, shattering it and sending food flying. “Is this how your daddy would want you to treat me? He worked his fingers to the bone to make sure you never went without, and you’d turn your poor mother out on the streets.”
“Yeah, Daddy worked his ass off to keep me and Travis fed and clothed while you were running around on him, breezing back home whenever you pleased.” Howdareshe? I loved my mom, but Daddy was the parent I could always count on. “I don’t know why he never divorced you, with the way you treated him.”
Her face crumbled, every line coming into sharp relief, more lines than a fifty-five-year-old woman should have. Hard living had done that and had made her hard in turn.
I sighed. “Just…leave, Mom. Come back when you’re serious about getting clean. In the meantime, there’s a food bank downtown that won’t ask any questions, and the big city shelter won’t turn you away, either.”
She crossed the kitchen, bony fingers gripping my arms. “You don’t understand, baby. You’ve got to help me out. Hand over some cash and we can do this the easy way.”
I jerked away. “Are you still trying to shake me down? Get out.”
“Not until you pay me!”
I wasn’t expecting her to be so fast, but she was on me again in seconds, clawing, trying to rush past me to the hallway, probably trying to get to one of the bedrooms. Daddy always used to hide cash back there.
