“I’m not letting you in, Angelique, until you promise me you won’t treat my home like a halfway house.” She crossed her arms. The incongruity of the still-dangling tubes under her arms made me gulp and experience a small twinge of guilt.
“I told Daddy and Dom …”
“They said you only told them you were ‘out’ and would be ‘back in the morning.’” She hooked her fingers around my exact words.
“Well, yeah …”
She held out her phone. “And this,” she said, brandishing it. “You forget how to use one of these?” Her eyes were bright and shiny.
I realized she might very well be high on painkillers.
“I was worried sick. Sick, I tell you.” She pressed her fingers to her mouth while tears slid down her face. “Oh, Lord help me, I am so sick of being sick!” She shrieked the last word, whirled and ran inside. I could hear her hurling her guts out all the way from the kitchen.
I dumped my bag on the table, noting the mess my brother had left on his way out to the brewery, and followed her. Daddy’s van was gone. It was just she and I today, I surmised.
Something about that pleased me.
I watched her clutch the bowl that I’d cleaned the day before. Her red hair hid one side of her face and was trailing close to the toilet seat, so I pulled it back and secured it with a hair tie I always kept on my wrist.
She pounded the toilet seat, wept, and threw up for the better part of thirty minutes. Then she flopped onto her butt, leaning against the tub. Her skin had a nasty greenish tinge that alarmed me, but I took it in stride, finding a cloth, wetting it with cool water, and putting to her face. She was surprisingly hot to the touch.
“Mama,” I said. She grabbed my wrist, tugging me close until I sat next to her and had to put my arm around her thin, shaking shoulders. The moment was so very strange, so out of context, I felt as if I were watching someone else comfort their redheaded, too-thin mother on the floor of a bathroom. But we sat there for a while until I got a little sweaty from the heat rolling off her.
I touched my lips to her forehead, parroting what she used to do with my brothers or me when we’d claim we were sick, and then peeled her off me. She swayed, her eyes seeming to go all unfocused and weird. “Mama,” I said, touching her flushed face. “Do you hurt? Did you take a pain pill?”
“Don’t … know,” she said, slurring a little. “Can’t read the words. Too small.”
I pulled her up, but when she almost crumpled to the floor I scooped her up and into my arms, shocked at how light she was, how barely there.
I put her in the bed, covering her since she was now shivering so hard her teeth chattered. “T-t-t-tired.” Her eyes drifted shut. I sat, wiping her face, and then finally pulling the shade closed once she fell asleep.
After cleaning the kitchen chaos and the path to the bathroom, I pulled down her plastic tub of pills, studying each bottle for side effects. Figuring she must have taken the muscle relaxer and the pain med together, which combined might lead to lethargy, I called Daddy to let him know what had happened.
“I’ll be home about two, Angel. Thanks for managing her.”
“You’re welcome,” I said. “I’m sorry I didn’t come home last night.”
“It’s fine. You’re a grown-up. But please check in with her next time. So she won’t get frantic.”
“I think she’s out for a while. I’m gonna try to finish the walls downstairs.”
I hung up and then spent two solid hours scraping between the grooves of the endless paneling. Finally, sweaty and tired—Bobby and I had only slept a couple of hours the night before—I put on a swimsuit, checked to see if Mama was still asleep, then headed for a lounge chair by the pool.
I awoke to loud shouts. Someone was yelling my name. I wiped my face and jumped up, alarmed and wondering how long I’d slept.
“Angel!”
I ran for the house, heart thudding in my chest. The lower patio door was open. My eyes took a few seconds to adjust to the indoor gloom.
“Oh Jesus, God, no. Mama!” Aiden. It was Aiden’s voice coming from the bathroom. I flew upstairs and found him, holding her in his arms. “Call 911, now,” he hollered. I froze, watching him cradle her to his chest. “Fucking-A Angelique, call the goddamn ambulance!”
Chapter Nine
The mystery infection my mother contracted landed her in the hospital for a solid week. Once the antibiotics did their work, she was, of course, itching to get home again. This time, she declared herself finished with the stronger chemo and demanded treatments that were less harsh so she could at least live her life free of that level of misery. The doctors adjusted it, and she rallied, big time.
We’d even resumed our old bickering ways. She found nothing but fault in everything I did or said. I lashed out at her. We argued. My brothers avoided us. My father watched baseball and ignored us.
Status quo.
We headed into Halloween week with my mother in full-throttle party mode. After absorbing the rather shocking news that Aiden had actually asked Renee Reese to marry him, and given her our Nana Halloran’s emerald engagement ring, we figured that three out of four of them engaged to be married would make for some interesting coordination in the coming months.
I wondered what had happened to force Aiden and Rosie to sort themselves out, but, kept my opinions to myself.
I had enough trouble getting Bobby Foster to believe me when I told him—repeatedly—that I had no interest in him beyond sex.
The Wednesday before Friday’s Annual Love Family Halloween Party, Mama had a checkup. Daddy went with her, while I finished applying the last layer of varnish to the newly exposed maple paneling in the lower family room. It did look nice. I hated to admit it, but she was right. As I stood admiring it, doing a few touch-ups to spots I’d missed, I heard the front door slam hard.
Glancing at my watch, I realized I hadn’t started dinner, and I’d promised to do it, so I hurried up to the kitchen and started hauling out the ingredients for my mother’s meatloaf. I got the onions and green peppers finely chopped and sizzling, then pulled out her secret spice combo and sprinkled it into the ground turkey, eggs, ketchup and bread crumbs. I knew we might be feeding all the Loves, so I tripled it according to her directions, then dumped the peppers and onions into the mix. Once it was all hand-folded together, I formed two large loaves, covered them in foil, and stuck them in the oven.
I made an executive decision to go with macaroni and cheese instead of mashed potatoes, and was pouring the pasta elbows into boiling water while stirring the cheese mixture slowly on the stovetop when Daddy dropped into a kitchen chair.
“Pour me a drink, Angel.”
I turned, surprised. Hard liquor was usually consumed on weekends, if at all, in the Love household. But his face was set and stony, so I skipped the questions and went to the sideboard in the dining room for the bourbon. I put a glass on the table, dropped in a single ice cube and poured a splash. He made an impatient gesture toward the bottle so I poured another splash.
“Get yourself one, too.”
I checked the macaroni and the cheese sauce before grabbing another glass. Once I’d filled it, he held his up. “To family,” he said, his usual toast. I clinked mine to his and sipped, wary and suddenly afraid of what he would say next. He downed the double pour in one swallow. The sound the glass made hitting the table made me flinch. He still had it gripped tight in his hand.
“What’s wrong?” I put my glass down and tried to pry his out of his grasp. He made a strange sort of growling sound, grabbed the bottle and sloshed more into his glass. “Daddy?”
After knocking that back and pouring another, he sucked in a deep breath. “I’m gonna lose her after all,” he said, clear as day. He looked at me. His eyes were dry and hard. His jaw clenched and unclenched.