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As Shell turned to head to her room, I snapped my fingers. “Oh, hey. Wait, a second. Would you want to go up to New York sometime soon to check out Experience?”
“Sure! My DJ friend Nick lives kinda close to there. Let me check with him and see if he’s going anything coming up soon. Maybe he can get us some hookups. I’ll let you know as soon as I hear back. But I gotta go get ready,” Shell said as she motioned to herself.
I turned my focus back to my sleeping computer. I needed to check the train schedule, then call my mother.
There were only a few trains that connected to get me to Pennsylvania. The options were to leave in about twenty minutes and get there late tonight, or to leave tomorrow morning and get there in the late afternoon.
I picked up my phone and called Mom. The phone rang all the way through until the voicemail picked up. “Hey, mom. I was just looking at the train schedules and it looks like if I come out tonight I won’t get into the station until about eleven. Can you call me back and let me know if you’ll be able to pick me up that late? If I don’t hear from you, I’ll see you tomorrow afternoon.”
I hung up the phone and waited. I didn’t have a lot of time if I was going to make the public transportation. A text came through from my mom a few minutes later, though.
Mom: For Christ’s sake, just rent a car. See you later.
I didn’t like car rentals. It was always so expensive when you intended to drive out of state with them, but the other option was spending a large chunk of a day on the train, so I’d have to make the exception. I headed out the door to take the train to the rental company with my laptop and two changes of clothes packed in my overnight bag.
Once I slid behind the wheel ready to make the five hour drive, everything caught up to me. I was tired and my nerves were frayed. There was so much riding on my ability to pull through. People were counting on me, both to succeed and to fail.
I wasn’t sure which category my mother fit into.
The sun had long-since set when I finally pulled into Mom’s driveway.
The house was more weathered, tired, and sagging than the last time I visited. She hadn’t kept up with the gardens out front, and they tangled together into a mass of weeds and neglect. The modest patch of grass left of the front steps was nothing but mud and a few stray weeds, and the wooden steps bowed under my feet. Paint could have saved them several years ago, but they needed to be replaced. I made a mental note.
I knocked on the door and tried the handle. The door only moved a few inches when I tried to enter. Did she have the chain on? I pushed harder, and there was some give, so I shimmied into the gap, knowing no one was coming to open up.
“Mom? I’m here,” I called into the house.
“Out here!” Mom yelled from the dining room.
What used to be the dining room…
It had become a holding zone for who-knows-what. Boxes, clothes, books, and what looked like bags upon bags of trash. A heavy layer of dust had settled its grey cast onto the stacks that hadn’t moved for a while. That wasn’t different or surprising.
“You set up a new living room.”
My mom looked smaller, more frail than she had before, dwarfed by her piles of things.
“Have you gone through anything you’re storing in the front room?” I asked after Mother didn’t acknowledge me.
“I didn’t want you to come here so I could listen to you shit all over how I keep house,” she snapped, still not meeting my eyes.
“Why did you want me to come? What’s going on?”
Eventually, she picked up the television remote and turned off the news. She situated herself on her cluttered loveseat so she faced me and at last made eye contact. Her eyes were sunken in, and it looked like she wasn’t eating well. My heart sank.
“I need to see the doctor, and don’t think I should drive myself.”
“What’s the matter, Mom?”
“I’ve been out of breath, feeling lightheaded lately, not that you care.”
I crossed my arms over my body, protecting myself from the typical lashings I got from my mother.
That Mother wanted me to take her to the doctor surprised me. She risked me overhearing what the doctor had to say. No one knew how she lived, and I was sure this house had contributed to her deteriorating health. I barely made it through the door. Plus, the smell, and the strange, suffocating heat were enough to drive me back out as quickly as I’d arrived.
“You know I care. I just don’t agree with how much stuff you have. Like why do you need this?”
I picked up an infant’s onesie that didn’t look new.
