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“None taken.”
“What’s it like?” she asks, resuming her search through a never-ending array of clothing. “Having a mother who’s the governor of the entire state?”
“Lonely.”
I know by the way she pauses, she wasn’t expecting that answer. Finally, she comes back out of the closet and moves to her dresser. Chester curls up against my leg to take a nap.
“Surrounded by a crowd of people, but yet you still feel like you’re all alone.”
“People who only know me as her daughter and not as a person on my own.”
She mulls that over for a moment as she flips through a bottom drawer of pants.
“Like working at a bar in the middle of this shithole part of town, but studying medicine at night?”
Now, it’s my turn to be surprised.
“Medicine?”
She turns back to me. “That hard to believe, huh?”
“No,” I rush but fall flat. “I’m sorry. I just wasn’t expecting you to say that.”
She shrugs. “It’s alright. People don’t like to better themselves anymore. At least, not as much as they used to.”
“No,” I agree. “Doctor, then?”
She shakes her head, handing me a pair of what I can only assume are leather pants. I’m getting quite the collection.
“Nurse. They’re the real backbone of the industry.”
“I don’t disagree with you.”
“The doctors get all the credit, but it’s the nurses that really save lives. Sure, you’ve got your special circumstances, but where would those doctors be without the men and women behind them?”
“Like politics,” I blurt before I can even think, but luckily, she nods along. “Sorry, my mother has an entire team making sure none of us fuck up her perfect image.”
“Your mother does that all on her own. She doesn’t need you to add to it, so she makes sure you’re perfect.”
I roll my eyes. “My mother’s a saint in the media’s eyes.”
“The media, sure, but what about the streets? People don’t like the way shit’s going. I hear about it every time she comes on TV down at the bar.”
“What are they saying?”
“She’s a con artist,” she shrugs. “I know she’s your mother, but I get the feeling she isn’t a very good one.”
“She’s not,” I admit. “But . . . she’s the only one I’ve got.”
“That’s where we’re different. I cut my family off because they were a bunch of sexist assholes who thought I would never be able to do better for myself than living in some rundown trailer in Mississippi with roaches climbing down the walls and a man who beats me every night.”
“I’m sorry that happened to you,” I say because what else is there to say when someone lets that out?
“Don’t be. It may not be much, but I’ve got Chester. My job. Only a couple months left and I can get the nursing job I’ve always wanted. Shit’s rough for everyone, no matter their plight.”
Her phone buzzes on the bed beside me and she groans.
“Time’s up,” she grimaces. “Means Jerry’s probably got all of three customers and has decided he can’t handle it.”
