Three
Sara
Favorite book: All of them—I can’t help it!
The bathroom doorknob jiggles. “Sara? Are you in there?” My mother-in-law’s voice is as brisk as her knock, easily reaching me where I sit. On top of the closed toilet seat. Reading. Hiding.
I consider staying silent, but the door is locked, and my car is parked in the driveway. There’s no way I can pretend that I’m not home. “Yes?”
“Are you planning to come out soon?” Dorothy, never Dottie or, God forbid, Dot, moved in three months ago after hip replacement surgery that didn’t go smoothly. Although the home health care workers are now gone and she is, according to her doctor, fully mended, she’s still here and in no rush to move back to her home in Greenville.
My husband, Mitchell, has no problem with this, primarily because he got a new job and has been working in Birmingham for the last six months and comes home only on weekends. This makes Dorothy, who has always made me feel that I am not good enough for her son, my responsibility.
Each month, our three-bedroom, two-bath home—the very first I’ve ever been able to call “mine”—gets smaller. There’s virtually nowhere left to hide. Including, it seems, the master bathroom.
“Yes. Of course.” I wait for Dorothy’s footsteps to recede, but my mother-in-law stays put. I glance around the bathroom looking for an escape route, but the lone window that overlooks the backyard is small. I’ve always been almost painfully thin, but I wouldn’t lay money on being able to squeeze through it. And even if I managed to wriggle out, I’d have to come back at some point.
“Any chance it’ll be this millennium?”
I curse myself for not locking the bedroom door, even though barging into a closed bedroom and knocking on a bathroom door is a stretch even for Dorothy.
“Are you all right?” I ask in case this is an emergency.
She doesn’t answer. I listen intently, but there’s no ragged breathing, no body crumpling to the floor. I set my book on the vanity countertop, reject the instinct to flush the unused toilet just to prove I’ve been doing something legitimate, and open the door. “Is something wrong?”
“No.” Dorothy’s puff of thin white hair is deceptively grandmotherly and looks freshly washed. She’s wearing makeup. Her purse hangs over one bony shoulder. “I just wanted to see if you’d heard from Mitchell.”
My parents left me in a rest stop bathroom on the Florida-Georgia state line when I was three years old. I have virtually no memory of them, but highway rest areas still make me queasy. I grew up in foster homes—six of them—before I finally aged out. After that, I worked multiple jobs to keep a roof over my head and pay for night school until I finally got my teaching degree. Meeting Mitchell Whalen at a friend’s birthday party was the most exciting thing that had ever happened to me. I’d never had a boyfriend. The fact that he’d never known his father and I couldn’t remember either of my parents gave us something important in common. When he asked me to marry him, I felt as if I’d won the lottery; I was going to have a husband and a mother. Unfortunately, what warmth Dorothy has is reserved for her son. I have tried my hardest, but it’s impossible to have a relationship all by yourself.
“No, I haven’t. But he must be on his way.”
The drive from Birmingham is just over two and a half hours, but Mitch doesn’t drive home on Friday nights for fear of rush-hour traffic, nor does he jump out of bed early on Saturday mornings. Normally, he rolls in around noon, which is when I typically leave for my weekly Saturday afternoon shift at Between the Covers. I check my phone. It’s eleven thirty.
“I’m sure he’ll be here any minute and ready for your lunch date.” This is the one-on-one time Mitch gives his mother each week. We share him Saturday evening. Once she goes to bed, he’s all mine; we tiptoe past her bedroom and into ours like naughty teenagers. There we make love (as quietly as possible), then curl up together to watch Saturday Night Live. It’s my favorite part of the week.
He heads back to Birmingham on Sunday afternoon so that he won’t have to fight rush hour getting out of Atlanta on Monday morning. “Did you call him?”
“No.” A former efficiency expert, Dorothy does not engage in idle chitchat, at least not with me. If she’s ever poured her heart or thoughts out to her son, I’ve never witnessed it and he’s never mentioned it. “You know I don’t like to bother him or distract him if he’s driving.”
I hit speed dial. Mitch picks up on the fourth ring sounding oddly out of breath for someone sitting in a car.
“Hi. Where are you?”
“Home.” He pauses. “I mean, in the apartment. I’ve got some kind of bug. I’m, uh, not going to be able to get back this weekend.”
The bathroom is small, but I manage to turn away from Dorothy. “When were you planning to let us know?” I whisper as the disappointment seeps through me. “Your mother’s expecting you.” And so am I.
“I’m sick, Sara. It happens.” He coughs loudly. A less charitable person might say unconvincingly. This is not the first time he’s bailed at the last minute.
“It’s only a couple hours’ drive,” I point out. “I’m not scheduled to work at the bookstore today. I’ll make a great big pot of chicken soup, and you can lie in bed and be waited on.”
“Sorry. But I can barely get out of the bed I’m in,” he says. “Besides, my mother’s had surgery. I promise neither of you want to be around these germs.”
The anger gurgles up from somewhere deep inside of me. It’s an emotion I rarely give in to. One of the keys to surviving a lifetime in other people’s homes is tamping down your feelings and not making waves.
“Hang on a sec. I want you to explain that to her.”
“Oh, no. You can’t . . .”
I hand the phone to Dorothy. Unable to get by her in the tight space, I’m forced to watch her face fall as she listens to her son’s excuses. Her lips quiver as she hands my phone back.
I feel like crying, too. I love my husband and I want him here, not in some furnished corporate apartment two hours away. And if I have to be here when he’s not, I don’t want to be left with this woman who barely tolerates me while she waits for his appearance on the weekends.
Since I’m not getting either of those things, I want a pint of ice cream. And I want to eat it lying in bed reading a novel that will take me somewhere else. Let me be someone else. Books are what got me through the foster care system and every other situation that I’ve had no control over. Don’t get me wrong, I like to read when I’m happy or even just okay, but books—and the words that form them—have gotten me through a lot of things I’d like to forget. If I’d relied on ice cream alone, I’d be the size of a barn.