“Don’t tell me how to raise my kids.”
“Don’t answer me in clichés,” I replied, shoving past him into the house.
Only the blue glow of the television set lit the living room. It was always on, no matter what time of day. My mother liked it as background noise, said it made a house feel homier when she could hear people talking.
The hallway was full of newspaper and bits of tissue. Lucinda must have been over, helping my mother package up any last-minute pieces. I imagined her over at the gallery, putting finishing touches on atrocities that shouldn’t see the light of day. Or maybe not, maybe Donna had done something about it after all. I itched to call again, one last-ditch effort, but I figured I’d save up that stress for handling my mother.
Milo picked up the remote and switched off the TV. The room went dark. “What the hell do you want from me, Jessa? I’m doing my best.”
I didn’t believe that for a second. He was doing the least he could, especially when it came to his daughter. “I’m just saying, Lolee needs a parent. God knows that’s not Mom right now.”
“Shut up, Jessa. Just . . . shut up.”
“Both of you shut up, you’re giving me a headache.” Our mother poked her head through the doorway. “I heated up a pot pie and threw some of those tater tots you like in the fryer. I put garlic salt on them.” She turned and walked back through the kitchen. “Jessa, will you help me get ready?”
My mother had never once asked me for help getting dressed. I followed after Milo and snagged a paper towel from the rack, filling it up with tater tots and taking them with me into the bedroom. I hadn’t eaten since that morning and thought I could use the fortification, though I was already feeling queasy.
She sat at the stool in front of her vanity. Her back was toward me, revealing the low zipper of her black satin evening dress. The band to her bra snicked around her torso, the soft skin over her ribs dimpling around the elastic. Her head was cleanly shaved this time, nearly glistening in the light from the ceiling fan fixture. The room was toasty-warm and smelled familiar: yeasty, like the bedclothes my mother seldom washed.
“Zip me. Then we can do the other stuff.”
Alone with her in her room, I felt the beginnings of a panic attack flutter in my chest. Because I hadn’t known what else to do, I’d brought my father’s letter with me. It sat in the back pocket of my jeans, folded up, feeling like it wanted to burn a hole through the fabric.
There didn’t seem to be any good way to bring it up, no specific opener that wouldn’t immediately upset her. I wasn’t used to saying difficult things. We didn’t do that in our family. It was one thing for us all to process my father’s suicide; it was another for me to present my mother with the last words he’d ever written. Words that weren’t even addressed to her. The letter hadn’t said specifically to keep everything to myself, but the contents made it seem like they were for me alone. All that duty. The vulnerability he’d shown. His overwhelming sadness and need.
She dug through the drawer in her vanity, grabbing a flat tin and a small paintbrush. I looked for the makeup, waiting for her to produce her stash of Mary Kay pale pink palettes, but that was it. No blush, no mascara. None of the eyeliner that always wound up smudged under her lids after a long day chasing after us or cooking for my dad.
She wriggled her shoulders at me impatiently, knocking the flap of the dress open wider to reveal another pale section of skin below her bra. I set my napkin full of tater tots on the bed and hurried over. The zipper was hard to grasp with my oily fingertips, and I left behind salt granules on her neck. She’d missed a tiny wisp of hair in her past few shavings. It peppered the base of her skull like a tiny soul patch, gray and wiry. It reminded me of Dad’s hair. I wondered, if he were still alive, whether they’d have started to look more like each other, the way couples often did when they got really old. I touched the light fringe of it and imagined it was his mustache.
“Oh, that stupid piece.” She handed back a pair of nail scissors. “Could you get that for me?”
A single snip and the hair was off, leaving just a dark smudge of stubble. For some reason, I couldn’t stand to toss it. I stuffed the pinch into my jeans pocket.
“What do you need?” I asked, brushing some stray dog hairs off the back of her dress. I still wasn’t ready to talk, though I’d had weeks to come up with something. I knew if I could say the exact right words, I wouldn’t have to show her my father’s letter. Something heartfelt, maybe, that would show her how I was hurting. That way we wouldn’t have to deal with whatever fallout was going to happen at the gallery. Whatever Donna had decided to do.
She uncapped the tin. It was full of oily, bright-colored paints in tiny pots: teal, indigo, fuchsia, orange the neon of a nacho cheese Dorito. She dipped the paintbrush into the brightest red and swirled it there, handing it back to me the same way she’d done with the scissors.
“I want you to paint it. My head, I mean.” Some dripped off the tip of the brush and landed on her dress. I swiped up the dot with my finger, using the cleanest edge of the paper towel to blot the excess. It left behind bits of white linty residue on the black fabric.
She held up a picture torn from a magazine. It was a full page of stained glass, light pouring through the colors like a geometric rainbow. “I want something like this.”
I stood there, holding the paintbrush and staring down at my mother’s pale scalp. “Mom,” I said, speaking carefully. “This is extremely weird. All of this is very, very weird and it’s making me uncomfortable. I would like you to stop.”
“It doesn’t have to look perfect. I just want the colors.” She uncapped some ChapStick. It was a very yellowy old tube that smelled like VapoRub. I was positive she’d owned it since before Milo was born. She smoothed it on in concentric circles until her mouth looked tacky with it.
“You’re not listening to me.” I held the paintbrush in front of me, red end ready to drip again. “I don’t want you to do this show. I think it’s a bad idea, for you and for our family. It’s upsetting, especially the stuff with Dad in it.”
My mother groaned. “If you’re not going to do it, just give it back.”
“Fine.” I decided I could talk to her while I clown-painted her bare head. It was bizarre, but I could get through it. I set the brush against the base of her scalp and drew a bright red line up the middle, bisecting her skull.
“Was that really so difficult? Think of all the times I did things for you and Milo.” She leaned forward and I doubled up on the red line, nearly pressing her face down against the vanity. “Driving you places, cooking, cleaning up. This is just a couple minutes of your time.”
My mother had done everything for us. The letter poked from my back pocket and all I could focus on was the feeling of it there; my father’s hand in his exacting print. My name at the top written tight and controlled. How he’d ended it with the word love, something he hardly ever said when he was alive. My mother told me she loved me constantly, said it so often I wondered how she could possibly mean it. I love you, please pass the butter. I love you, could you get the laundry from the dryer? I love you, I am going to hurt you, but I love you. Just remember that.