“Do you need a ride?”
A ride would be great, but for some reason, I didn’t want to discuss my mother with James. It made me feel too vulnerable. It had been Mama and me against the world for so many years, I wasn’t ready to share how scared I was over her stroke and the thought of losing her. Even though I knew intellectually she was recovering well, she would never be the same carefree mother who had raised me. It was just too real to share with a man I wasn’t even sure I trusted, and who probably didn’t trust me.
“No, thank you, I’m sure you have things to do and I really need to get there now.” I reached down and gave Amelia a quick pet. “Bye, Amelia.” I stood up and started walking quickly back toward the building and the bus station that was a half block down from there. “Bye, James. Thanks.”
I didn’t even know what I was thanking him for. The kiss? For not calling the cops on me when he caught me returning the wallet?
“Mia,” he said. “I can give you a ride.”
“No, really, it’s okay, thanks.” I didn’t turn around and just kept going, my heart racing. What the hell was wrong with me?
* * *
By the time I arrived at Oak Harbor, I had calmed myself down. “Jesus, Mia,” I murmured out loud as I pushed my shoulders back and entered the facility. Everything was fine. Me and James were cool. It was all good.
My phone buzzed with a notification and I absently glanced at it. Then swore softly out loud. He had done it again.
Another five-hundred-dollar tip.
I also had a text from him.
Dinner Wednesday?
I texted him back. I can’t. I have to work.
Then a pic of him and Amelia, their faces close to the camera, looking mournful. Amelia, because she always looked like that. James, because he was a smart-ass who had probably never been told no in his life. At least not his adult life.
My first night off is next Monday.
What???? That’s a whole week from now.
I could practically feel his outrage and irritation. It made me smile. I shoved my phone in my back pocket and signed in at the front desk. “Hey, Jeannette, how’s it going?” Over the past six weeks of visiting my mother, I had gotten to know the staff. They were all amazing at their job, super friendly, always helpful.
“Oh, you know how it is. My kids have been out of school for a week and they’re blowing my phone up all day bitching about each other. ‘He sat on my head. She ate my cereal. He took a video of me without telling me and put it on TikTok.’ Listen, I don’t care what you all do, just don’t kill each other and don’t call me at work.”
“That sounds about right, though I guess I don’t really know. I’m an only child.” Though I was pretty sure if I had a brother, I wouldn’t want him sitting on my head. “They’re in high school now, right?”
“Yes.” Jeannette sighed. “I’m hoping one or both will join the armed forces. They’re both terrible in school.”
“I was terrible at school and look how I turned out. I work backbreaking service jobs for terrible wages and get little to no respect,” I said, cheerfully. “If you want, I can have your daughter shadow me for a day in housekeeping. That will straighten her out.”
I never resented having to work hard. I was grateful I had my jobs. But that didn’t mean it was a wise career path for a teenager who might have other options. I had just stumbled my way to this point and I wasn’t sure there was a way out, barring bank robbery. Not a fast way, at any rate. The plan was definitely to work my way up to store manager at the coffee shop, because even though customers could be a bear, I didn’t want to be cleaning rooms when I was forty.
In the meantime, I had my mind down and was just plugging away.
Jeannette smiled. “Thanks, Mia, I just might take you up on that. You can go on in. Margaret is dying to see you. She has good news.”
“That’s great to hear, thanks.” I waved and went down the hall.
Before I could get to my mother’s room, the director, Bill, saw me walking past his office and waved. “Mia, do you have a minute?”
“Sure.” I entered his office. “How are you?”
“Just wanted to let you know that everything has been signed off on and your mother will be released next Tuesday. She’s eager to go home and I’m sure you’re ready to have her back home.”
It was news I had been expecting eventually, but much sooner. “I thought we were looking at a few more weeks.”
“Nope. Doctor says she’s ready to go.” He gave me a smile.
“Great, thank you,” I said, even as my stomach clenched. That was fantastic news. And yet, I had nowhere for my mother to go. Where she would live after her release had been a problem I’d been putting off for later, thinking I had time. But the time was now and I wasn’t prepared. Prior to her stroke she’d been living with a guy who was only a notch up from Christina’s last boyfriend.
There was no way I was taking her back to Turkey’s filthy apartment. Yes, his name was Turkey. Which told you all you needed to know about him. He hadn’t even contacted my mother once in the six weeks she’d been here. He’d probably moved on to another gullible woman.
Guilt that I couldn’t provide a better place than Casa de Broke Bitches for my mother to recuperate in, threatened to overwhelm me. I gave Bill another thank-you and walked quickly down the hall, trying to hold my emotions in. I couldn’t let Mama know I was worried and upset. She would come home with me and I would give her my bedroom. I could sleep on the couch, and hopefully she would qualify for a nurse’s aide to do home health visits.
The thought of that paperwork also gave me intense anxiety, but I clenched my fists open and closed and pasted a smile on my face before I entered my mother’s room. “Hey, Hot Mama, how’s it going?” I asked.
She loved that nickname. Mama prided herself on being a rebel, on being a girl who had hung out with the boys, and a sexy biker chick in her twenties and thirties. She had lots of stories about defending herself with a pool stick, about winning wet T-shirt contests at just the right time to pay off a bill and keep the lights on, and about traversing the country twice on the back of a Harley.
Her favorite story was about being engaged to her high school sweetheart at twenty and telling one of her co-workers at the deodorant factory she worked at that if she had fifty bucks, she’d ditch the fiancé, leave Georgia, and never come back. On payday, that co-worker came to her, held up fifty bucks, and said, “Ready to go?”
So she left with him. That man was my father. Spoiler alert: it didn’t end well. In fact, it ended with her leaving him for another man when he dislocated her shoulder during a fight. She ended up back in Georgia at my grandparents’ with me, where she swore she’d never live again.
But that was Hot Mama. Impulsive, full of love and life and spontaneity.
Her eyes were sparkling. “They’re springing me, Mia. Only one more week in this dump.” She said something after that might have been “hallelujah,” but it was garbled and hard to decipher, the aftereffect of her stroke.
I didn’t ask her to repeat it because she would just get frustrated.
“I heard. That’s awesome. But this place isn’t bad,” I told her. “The staff here is all amazing.”