Chapter 19
Mid-September
Wednesday – Moon in Pisces, Waxing Gibbous
I’ve lost all track of time. I don’t know where June went, and I was aware of July only because I heard firecrackers and booms. The farmers in the fields are already harvesting peanuts, which is the only reason I know September is passing quickly. Time seems to move in a void of partly stationary and partly a flash and gone.
Every day is the same as the day before. The same four walls of my mom’s house. The same conversations with Mama, only… each day becomes more repetitive.
In the four weeks she’s been out of the hospital—after a month in ICU and another six or seven weeks in and out of the geriatric ward—the weather has turned from considerably hotter to slightly cooler, and her memory considerably shorter. Initially, she could hold a thought for a few minutes, but already she’s to the point of asking the same question within ten seconds of my answering it. Every time, her response is the same, as if it’s entirely new information. If it’s good news, I get to see the joy on her face all over again. If it’s bad news, I already know how she will respond. I try my best, therefore, to redirect her so I don’t have to see that pain again.
Thank the Gods, I have had both Virgil and Dix helping me, or I’d have no way to get groceries to the house. I learned my lesson the hard way. Mama had sworn up and down that she’d be okay to stay by herself for a single hour while I raced to the store and back. It’s a small town, and having groceries delivered isn’t that common here.
The first time I left her house for a solid thirty minutes to pick up her prescriptions and return with them, she had indeed been fine.
The second time I left her alone, this time for a quick but focused trip to the grocery store, I’d come home to find her crying in her chair because she didn’t remember where I had gone or if I was ever coming back and mumbled that she thought I might have died and been buried in the swamp.
The third time, I left sticky notes all around the house reminding her that I’d gone to the grocery store and that I would be right back. She’d been able to decipher the notes well enough to be satisfied that I would return, but she’d decided to take good care of me as her guest, as she always had. I walked into the house just in time to find smoke billowing out of the oven. She’d decided to make a frozen pizza dinner for me and she tossed it in the oven at 450 degrees—inside its cardboard box. She’s done that once before with pizza and once since with a grease fire, and I have no doubt that if I stop to brush my teeth with her out of my sight, she’ll do it again.
The fourth trip to town, I took her to visit her doctor, pick up prescriptions, and then to the grocery store. I dared not leave her in the car alone, for fear that she might try to drive away or wander off. Instead, I’d convinced her to go inside with me. I’d even brought her wheelchair so I could push her in front of me and pull the grocery cart—or “buggy” as the locals called it—behind me. That had worked until we got through the front doors of the grocery store, and she’d insisted on walking around herself.
Suddenly, it was as if the strokes had never happened. Despite her fragility, she stood way too long on the concrete floors of the store, chattering with a church member or a local librarian or someone she used to see in the grocery store every week. Her friend from the “beauty shop” stopped me in the aisle to tell me how great Mama looked and how capable and independent she was, based on a two-minute conversation with her, and suggested maybe I was restricting Mama’s social life too much.
Yeah, everybody’s an expert when they’re still walking in their own shoes and not in mine.
Half my critics think I’m holding a healthy woman with a youthful mind hostage, and the other half think I don’t do enough for her and need to be sitting by her bed, holding her hand, every second of every day and never need a shower or meal of my own. Plus, a good percentage of both populations want to spur her to argue with me about how I take care of her.
Thanks, y’all. Just thanks.
That fourth trip somehow took three hours and exacted a toll on both of us. By the time we returned to the car and I buckled her in, Mama was exhausted—and so was I. It took her five days to recover from that routine-to-others trip to town.
She’s had plenty of visitors to her house since then. Some of them have been the lookie-loos. They’re almost always the busybody friends of some distant kin. They show up to assess and report back our situation to family members who aren’t welcome here or have restraining orders against them. Some visitors have been genuine friends, and others are polite acquaintances from town. Most of them have either praised her health and told me how my mom apparently doesn’t need me anymore. Worse, others have told me they remember how perfectly clean Mama’s house was before the strokes. I know exactly what they’re saying—that I’m not doing enough.
I grew up this way here, with nothing I did ever being enough. The weight of public opinion in a small town is smothering.
The truth is, I can barely find time for a shower once every three days, let alone bask in a full night’s sleep. I never know when she’s going to wake in the middle of the night and decide to wander outside. Just stopping for a five-minute shower when she’s sleeping is a luxury.
I never know when I’m going to step out of the shower—clad in only an almost threadbare towel because she never gets rid of things—and find her standing over the beginnings of a grease fire on the kitchen stove. I guess I was fortunate enough to be wearing a damp towel and able to save the house from burning down. Afterward, my mom had stared at me in shock and asked why I was naked.
I’m worn thin right now. I dare not light a candle for my magick or try to slip away into the backyard or one of the pastures on the far side of the farm to work my magick for fear of what I’ll find when I return home. I’d love to fly to California to see one of Sonnet and Christabel’s presentations or go help Rhiannon in the latter months of her pregnancy, but I can’t leave my mom. Virgil has helped me find a dozen different sitters to give me a break, but Mama either throws them out or they quit after the first thirty minutes because this side of her no one’s ever seen rages at them. She’ll act out until I come back, whether it’s a follow-up appointment of my own with the dentist or a trip to the pharmacy. I’ve committed myself to being responsible for her, and that means that a fifteen-minute hot shower or a full five hours of sleep are luxuries I cannot afford, let alone freshening up my hair dye and getting my wayward hair trimmed.
To make matters worse, my visions have become unsettling. They bubble up at least once a day now, though they are mostly repeats. I know from prior work with magick that the sensation of “shields down” can allow visions or psychic insights that normally wouldn’t take hold. When I was a part of the Grand Coven and the subsequent Elders’ Coven, we had all joked plenty of times about how too much wine or the anxiety drugs your doctor gave you to get you through a tough week or the lack of sleep from watching a newborn—or an elderly dementia patient—could make a witch susceptible to supernatural factors she could normally filter out or shield against. I can now confirm that that’s true.
“Lauren?” My mom calls from the other room in the two seconds I’m away from her. When I run back in to check on her, she’s standing at the back window. She squints into the backyard. “Whose red car was out here earlier?”
“That was Virgil’s car, Mama. And that was yesterday. He dropped off your medicine.” I stand on tiptoe behind her to make sure that Virgil isn’t back.
Dixon delivers a bouquet of whatever flower is in season once a week to impress me and another bouquet for my mom, also to impress me. He brings us dinner, too, for the both of us. If I were trying to have a love life, taking care of my mom would certainly play havoc. I’m not, but it seems the more I push Dix away, the more determined he is to be a good boyfriend. He’s offered to stay with my mom while I get my hair done—my gray roots are now six inches deep—but I don’t know if I trust him enough to watch out for her. I already have a rule when it comes to dating men: if I don’t trust them to take care of my dog while I’m out of town for a few days, then I certainly won’t trust them with either my body or my heart. Dixon is somewhere in between. I know I could trust him to watch my dog, if I had one, but I don’t trust him to be vigilant enough with a dementia patient.
My mom teeters in front of the window and grabs a handful of dusty blinds to hold herself upright. “Lauren? Whose red car was that out here earlier?”
I want to scream, but I can’t. I can’t lash out at her. It’s not her fault that she’s fading away in my presence. The worst part is that she thinks she’s still independent and that she doesn’t realize the state of her own mind.
No, I suppose the worst part could be if she did realize that she’s losing all her memories. She’s already this week forgotten the name of Sonnet’s partner, Christabel, and she struggles to remember both Sonnet and Rhiannon’s names. I keep hoping she’ll forget Quent’s name, but him she remembers.
“Virgil’s car, Mama.” My voice is steady and patient, even if I’m not. I feel like I’m doing everything wrong, but how would I know tips and tricks to deal with her state of mind? If she should remember, I could reason with her and convince her. “He and Dix come by quite often to bring us groceries or run errands for us. “
She accepts my explanation with a nod, as she has a dozen times already today, and turns to go back to her squeaky recliner. She stops suddenly. She ambles back to the window and messes with the blinds. “Lauren? Was there somebody out here earlier, in a red car?” She freezes, then turns slowly to gape at me. “Have I already ask you that?”
Right in front of me, she’s beginning to realize her worst fears.
“Yes, Mama, you did.”
Misery paints her face. “I’m so sorry,” she says, her voice breaking. Tears stream down her face as she struggles to get out the rest of her words. “I can’t… I can’t… ”
“It’s okay, Mama.”
I help her back to her chair and show her a new sales catalog for autumn flowers that came in today’s mail. She’s immediately distracted, even with the tears still wet on her cheeks.
These episodes of forgetfulness come in spurts. They last for two to three days usually before her mind gets wrapped around some new question that she can’t escape from. Four days ago, it was “When is Rhiannon coming to see me?” I reminded her that Rhiannon is confined to bed with a high risk pregnancy and can’t travel, but that as soon as the baby’s born, she and her husband will visit. Each time, she tells me that she didn’t know Rhiannon was pregnant and her face will light up with joy. Though it’s tiresome to answer the repeated question, that’s a particular question I don’t mind responding to because it brings her the same joy each time, as if it were the first time she had discovered that she’s about to be a great-grandmother.
Virgil has repeatedly recommended that we find a home health aide who can come by daily to give her a much-needed bath and simply check in on her, possibly give me a few minutes break to take care of chores around the house that must be done. Mama won’t hear of it, though. If she was negative about sitters sharing space with her, she’s infuriated about anyone helping her with hygiene. She insists that she doesn’t want a stranger helping her dress or bathe. She doesn’t want my help either, and I cannot physically handle her flailing for fear that she’ll cause both of us to fall and get hurt.
At this point, it’s been at least two weeks since she’s had a bath, and I could barely stand to be in the same room with her. She insists every time that she just had a bath. In her mind, I suppose it seems that way, but in reality, the lack of hygiene is not only offensive to anyone around her, but dangerous for her. The last thing she needs right now is a urinary tract infection or the batshit-crazy delirium that comes with it.
I’ve not heard anything from my cousins in the last six weeks or more but that doesn’t mean they aren’t trying to take control of the situation. They’ve sent several mutual acquaintances, as well as my mom’s preacher, to ask that I hire them to help take care of her. I can’t possibly let that happen. All I would have to do is run to town for groceries and come home to find the locks all changed and me not able to get into my mom’s house. Virgil has warned me of at least three other instances of Fallon, Walker, and Ranger defrauding the elderly. In those cases, very caring adult children could not sever my cousins’ hold on their parents until the family fortunes were gone. Their elderly parents had been mentally capable but physically fragile enough to be terrified of disagreeing when my cousins insisted they were wanted, and they’d become prisoners of their so-called caregivers.
My mom suddenly drops the sales catalog in her lap and stands after three tries. She makes her way back to the window and peers through the blinds. “Lauren? Whose red car is that out there? It looks kind of like your Uncle Bobby’s.”
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