Mothered (5)

Maybe Grace should’ve factored in more than the well-being of her bank account. A tiny part of her had been legitimately concerned about her mother’s health—and agreeing to this arrangement was something a Good Daughter would do. But was Grace a Good Daughter? For that matter, was Jackie a Good Mother? And now, with all their questionable goodness, they were stuck together in a house that felt spacious for one person but cramped for two.

It was too soon, really, to doubt herself and her reasons and all the possible outcomes—that was the exact kind of behavior that Grace urged her damsels to avoid. What would LuckyJamison say? Deal with the NOW. You’re getting ahead of yourself.

She had no idea, yet, what her mother was like, day in, day out. Maybe the years in Florida and the husbands with grown children and grandchildren had changed her. And even if they hadn’t, Grace’s years on her own, with a career she was good at and enjoyed, gave her the confidence and identity she’d lacked in her youth. The twin that lived. There was no reason why they needed to repeat the dynamics of their past.

“The room looks good,” Grace said, finally letting her guard down a little.

While she’d needed two months to get fully unpacked, Jackie had managed it in less than two days. It helped that she’d been ready, or at least willing, to part with most of her material acquisitions. Now she only owned some knickknacks and memorabilia and the bedroom furniture. Everything matched. The bed and dresser and chest of drawers. The bedspread was in the same coral and turquoise colors as the little floor rug. The lamps were a pair, as were the nightstands. One wall was nearly covered in framed artwork, mostly reproductions, but it made the room feel like Jackie had lived there for years. In contrast, Grace’s furniture had been acquired piecemeal, and while she’d say it all blended, neither her bedroom nor her living room was as well put together as her mother’s Instant Abode.

A scent lingered in the old furniture and bedding, part perfume, part aftershave. Grace could almost see Robert’s imprint on the far side of the mattress. For the first time, she felt genuine sadness for her mother—that Jackie’s fun-loving husband had died, that her health was ravaged, that the elder stepsons had closed in like vultures to claim what they could. Jackie lost everything. And really, she hadn’t complained. But Grace saw in her mother’s stooped posture that all of it had taken a toll.

Jackie looked closer to turning eighty-five than seventy. Her skin had the bluish tinge of a bruise, the soft look of an overripe peach. Her hair had thinned, and sometime in the last few months she’d given up dying it and had it chopped off. Now it stood on end, grayish white and windblown, the soft down of a baby bird.

“It looks really nice,” Grace said gently, gathering the last of the boxes.

Her mother glanced around, and Grace saw her thinking of how her things had looked before, at home. She probably saw Robert’s imprint on the bed too.

“Thank you. For letting me come here. It means a lot.” Jackie smiled, as weary as Grace had ever seen her—even more tired than after she’d worked a triple shift to try and pay for all of Hope’s extra therapies.

“I’ll put these in the basement.” She lugged as many boxes as she could manage.

“In a dry spot,” Jackie insisted.

“In a dry spot. And make some supper. Why don’t you rest, take a nap?”

Her mother nodded. “It was a long trip. Staying in hotels wasn’t as fun as it used to be.”

“I know.” Grace gave her a tender smile and eased out of the room. She would’ve shut the door, but she didn’t have a hand free, and her mother didn’t seem to mind it open.

As Grace headed downstairs she heard the creak of the old mattress and box springs—maybe Mom would like a new memory foam bed?—and a sigh of relief. I won’t let her bring out anything but the best in me.

But even as she thought it, Grace registered a seedy stench. It reminded her of the waterlogged stems in a vase of flowers, going to rot. The smell followed her all the way to the basement, and she told herself it was the dampness in the walls, the mildew that wouldn’t go away even with the french drains and the dehumidifier. Pittsburgh basements were wet, and she lived on the low side of Greenfield Avenue—something she’d insisted on, as the houses on the high side had too many front steps. (She remembered a client once describing Pittsburgh’s neighborhoods as “Escher-like,” with the houses perched all over the hillsides.) Yet a part of her understood that the mustiness didn’t originate within the fetid walls beneath her house.

The smell was strongest in her mother’s tidy, perfectly decorated room.





4


It was fortuitous that she found part-time work that coincided with her mother’s arrival. The last thing they needed was to be on top of each other 24/7. Many of the chain salons were still closed, but some of the privately owned ones had reopened, with new precautions: limiting capacity; taking temperatures at the door; wearing masks. A lot of stylists didn’t feel comfortable going back to work yet, standing in close proximity to clients with questionable safety practices. And a lot of people weren’t ready to sit in a chair with a stylist breathing down their neck, even masked. Grace had meager hours, sometimes with little to do. But she took what she could get.

For her lunch break, she left the salon. She got takeout noodles and went down to the museum and sat on the wall near the fountain. The rectangular black pool spat monotonous shoots of water, relaxing, even if artistically dull (nothing anyone would pose in front of for an Instagram story). The trickles and splashes masked some of the bus noise on Forbes Avenue, a busy thoroughfare that primarily shuttled university students back and forth between Oakland and Squirrel Hill. Grace had worked in Squirrel Hill—where her house in Greenfield was a hop, skip, and a jump away—for all her working life, until now. Oakland wasn’t that much farther away, but it was far enough that she couldn’t walk, and her student clientele had a lot less money.