The Animators(110)

“I think a roach just bit me,” she says.

“Yeah, they’ll do that.”

Donnie calls later in the day. “Did your mom arrive safe and sound?” she chirps.

“I hate you.”

“You’d be surprised how easily I can accept that.”

“I was going to thank you for bailing me out of jail. But I think I’ll skip it and just tell you to go fuck yourself, Donnie.”

“Have fun with your mom, Sharon. Give me a call when you’re ready to come back to work.”

—

Mom finds the Xanax on my dresser. She marches into the living room, holding the bottle. “What is this?”

I’m watching Scarface. “What’s it look like?”

“Looks like pills.”

She strides over and taps me hard on the head with the bottle. “We sent you to that fancy-ass school for you to get out and get started on this?” She shakes the bottle. “You know what they call this? Hillbilly heroin.”

“Hillbilly heroin is technically Oxycontin. Xanax is a prescription antianxiety medication.”

She whacks me on the head with the bottle again.

“You know what, that really hurts. Stop it.”

She puts her face close to mine. Her eyes are watery, white-blue. Says, “You know better.”

“I have a prescription,” I tell her.

“I don’t give a shit.” She storms into the bathroom and flips the toilet open, grimy and ringed. “Nasty,” she mutters, and dumps the contents in.

I keep still. “Go ahead. I’m just gonna get another prescription. That’s how it works when you’re under the care of a physician.”

“You just try. I’ll kick your ass up between your shoulder blades.”

She finds Mel’s ashes in the back of my closet and plunks them down on the coffee table while Tony Montana does Eskimo kisses with a big pile of coke.

“Sharon, is this drugs?”

“What the hell.” I get up, grab them. “These are Mel’s ashes.”

Her eyes go wide. “Oh.”

“Yeah. Oh. What, haven’t you ever seen cremated ashes before?”

“As a matter of fact, I have not.” She crosses her arms over her chest. She’s in pissed mode, what she resorts to when she’s wrong and she knows it.

“Jesus.” I lift the lid, show her. Clap the lid back down. “How Baptist are you?”

“Sharon Kay, that’s enough.”

“I’ll tell you when it’s enough.”

“It ain’t sanitary, keeping those around your house.”

“Leave. Them. Alone.”

“Fine,” she says. But it shakes her up. I can tell by the careful way in which she straightens the coffee table. Leaves the room. Does what I ask for once.

—

My mother is allergic to New York. She is particularly allergic to Brooklyn. The fact that flannel and high-waisted jeans are hot trends with the kids strikes her as both ridiculous and suspect. When homeless people yell at her, she is inclined to yell back. When I explain that there’s a service that will deliver your groceries, and another that delivers cleaning supplies, and another that delivers pet supplies, she says, “I don’t understand how people up here are so skinny but so lazy. I ain’t wastin money on that shit.”

She goes to a bodega and spends thirty bucks on detergent and Mop & Glo and Clorox wipes. She tries to haggle with the store owner. He tells her to fuck off. She pays up and lugs it all back to the apartment, then collapses on the couch, frowning at the red grooves the bag handles dug into her palms.

“Told you,” I say.

The next day, I am persuaded to clean myself up and take her to Prospect Park. “I wanna see something while I’m here,” she says. “And I won’t quit until you leave the house for once. Don’t need you getting to be a crazy old shut-in at thirty-three.”

“I am old and crazy.”

She leans in and swats me on the butt, hard. “Shut up,” she says, a weird, ragged edge to her voice.

Subway fares have risen twenty-five cents since I last rode. Swiping the MetroCard to get through the turnstile drives Mom batshit. She blows two minutes running the card through the slot too slow, then too fast, while a line builds behind her. I give the people waiting an empty look until they go to another turnstile.

“Haven’t you ever used a credit card before?” I ask her.

“Don’t get smart.”

On the train, she suggests we go to the studio later. “Wasn’t you all livin there for a while? Are people in there?”

“No.”

“Maybe we should go over to clean. So you can work there again.”

“It’s not around here. It’s in another neighborhood called Bushwick.”

“Where’s that?”

“Too far. Leave it alone, please.”

“Well, I don’t see no sense in paying rent on a place and then not having—”

“I said no,” I shout. The car goes quiet. A couple of kids climbing on and off the seats stop to stare.

At the park, she starts wheezing at the quarter-mile mark. We make it to the duck pond before she lights a cigarette and holds up her hands, saying, “All right. I give up. I’m tired. I’ll pay for a cab. Where’s a cab.”