The Animators(109)

“Never took you for the vain type.”

“Shut up.”

I shut up.

“You. Are making. Me old,” she says. “You, and Mel, and everything that’s happened. I have aged more in the past six months than I have in the past ten years.”

“I’m sorry,” I say.

“I realize that you’re sorry. But that doesn’t do much for me here. I can’t do this with you if you don’t at least try to move forward. Get some help. Get some of your shit together. Get out of bed in the morning, for starters. I have other clients. I don’t want to have to worry about you getting creamed by a Mazda because you’re too fucked up to walk.”

“I understand.”

She blows her bangs out of her eyes, bends at the waist, then straightens. “Do you realize how serious I am about this?”

I’m silent.

“Sharon, this is not like you threatening Mel with a bust-up and not coming through on it. When I tell you this, I mean it. Even if it kills me, even if I hate doing it, and by God, Sharon, I love you dearly, but if I say I’ll do it, you better believe I’ll do it.”

I nod, too embarrassed to look at her. I watch the road instead, the traffic. An entire summer has passed. It’s fall again.

She opens the car door for me. “Come on. We’ll take you home.”

—

Two days later I’m on my stoop having a smoke when a yellow cab pulls up and a frowsy, familiar head emerges, struggling with a suitcase. “Nuh uh,” I hear the head say. “You near bout kilt me. You can just forget about a tip, bub.”

The driver burbles something. What it sounds like when fuck you is said in another language.

“Well, same to you.” She smacks the door shut and takes a look around. Squints up at me. There’s a moment of delay before I realize it’s Mom.

We stare at each other for a minute before I scramble up and run for the door. “Don’t you move,” she yells.

I slam the door shut and lock it.

“Sharon Kay.” I can hear the wheels of her suitcase clacking up the stairs. She slaps the door with her hand. “Sharon Kay, I know you’re in there. You best open up this door right now.” There’s a pause. “What in the hell are you lookin at?”

Donnie went behind my back. Called not Mom but Shauna, who then trotted across the mountain and blabbed to Mom. “Every single goddamn one of you have done me dirty,” I tell her when I finally let her in. “Why didn’t Shauna come up herself? If anyone had to come at all, why’d she send you?”

“Shauna’s got two kids and an idiot husband to take care of. What do you mean, I did you dirty. No one’s doin you dirty here. You’re so hateful to me and I don’t even know why.”

“I’m a bastard,” I yell. “Who knows why we do what we do?”

“Are you gonna hang that over my head forever?”

“Yes. I’m gonna hang it over your head forever.”

“You’re actin like a teenager. Just real immature.”

“I lost the only family I ever had. I get to act how I want,” I scream.

Mom winces. We both pull back, surprised.

But I press. “You lied to me. Don’t you dare act like that’s a nonissue. I am entitled to act however I choose. And if you don’t like it, you can leave. Get the fuck out of here. Go back where you came from.”

She pinches her lips and goes quiet. “I’m sorry about Mel,” she says after a moment. “That was so sad. She was real young.”

I don’t know how to respond to this. I sit down, cross my legs, run a hand through my hair. It’s greasy, peltlike. I rummage through my robe pockets, locate a joint I rolled days ago. It’s squashed, but I light it anyway.

“Smokin that stuff’ll make you stupid,” Mom says.

“Mission accomplished. But will it make me boff creepy old child molesters like you?”

She sniffs. “It’ll make you walk out into traffic without your drawers on, that’s what it’ll make you do.”

“Well, shit. Check and mate, Mom.” There’s a stem on my lip. I pick it off, flick it away.

“That Donnie sounded real upset on the phone,” she says. “She’s worried about you. A lot of people are.”

“Go home. You flew up here for nothing.”

“No ma’am. I wanna see the sights. I never been up here, whole time you’ve been livin here.” She picks up her bag, wheels it into the hallway. “You got an extra room?”

“Nope.”

“I’ll put this in your room, then.”

She disappears into the apartment, tripping and cussing and sighing over what she sees. I throw an empty Ensure can after her. It hits the wall.

It’s sort of invigorating, feeling this angry. After all these months of surfing through the vanilla, I can almost appreciate being pissed off for its novelty.

“Where’s the commode,” she calls out. I turn the TV on, turn the volume up and up.

—

When I fall asleep on the couch, she changes the sheets on my bed and sleeps there. The next morning, she cleans house, emptying ashtrays, tossing mossy soup cans, stomping at the roaches with her puffy mamaw sneakers. She mops floors and pokes at my ankles with the handle to get me to lift my feet.