Cathead Crazy

by Rhett DeVane

  Cathead

  Crazy

  RHETT DEVANE

  Cathead Crazy

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or to actual events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2012 by Rhett DeVane. All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book, or portions thereof, in any form, electronic or mechanical without permission in writing from the publisher, except for brief quotations contained in critical articles and reviews.

  March 2012

  Published by Writers4Higher

  Cover photograph by Rhett DeVane

  Cover design by Donna Meredith

  Dedication

  For my mother, Theresa DeVane.

  I was proud to be your caboose, then your engine.

  For my sister, Melody DeVane-Kight.

  You left way too soon, hon.

  Acknowledgements

  To my family: both the blood-lines and the love-lines, may God bless you all.

  To the three Fletcher sisters: thanks for always being there for me. Special thanks to Denise Fletcher for her camera expertise. And to Wayne for just being Wayne.

  To my friends: whether I have known you for years, or less—you have made my life rich. Thank you for listening, coming to my aid, and reading my books. Where would I be without you?

  To Donna Meredith: thank you for your support and hours of hard work.

  To Paula Kiger: appreciate your green pen, hon.

  To the Wild Woman Writers critique group: I have learned so much from you ladies! Love each one of you.

  To Mary Menard, RN; Dr. Roberta Burton; and Peggy Kassees. Thank you for your help.

  To the staff of Woodmont Assisted Living: you are the true angels. Thank you for your patience, kindness, and compassion. You were there with us every step and stumble.

  To my fellow humans on the caretaker path: be gentle with yourself. This book is as much for you as it was for me.

  Chapter One

  “Yuck. What’s that, road kill?” Hannah Olsen steered around a brown lump and squeezed into a parking space in front of Chattahoochee Drugs.

  The lump: a pair of pantyhose resting in an oily mud puddle. Hannah’s thoughts went first to sex. Some woman in such a big hurry she had ripped off her clothes? Had she and her lover/husband/partner let it fly in the back of the family minivan, right there in front of God and everybody?

  At least someone’s caught up in passion, Hannah thought. She imagined a different scenario for the discarded pantyhose: some harried working woman like herself—wedged between insolent teenagers and an aging parent—stressed out and fed up.

  Bless her heart; the stockings must have pinched the poor woman’s torso like a sausage casing, squeezing the middle-aged belly fat into a double roll beneath her breasts. Perhaps the lady had flung the hose off in a fit of aggravation similar to the one Hannah felt looming over her shoulder. The scene popped into Hannah’s daydream: a woman after a long day cursing her computer, pulling into a tight parking slot, and then proceeding to have a total meltdown.

  The cold, pissy early-February drizzle increased to a steady thrum on the SUVs roof and snapped Hannah to reality. She glanced toward the rear seat. “Great. No umbrella.”

  When she stepped up to the pharmacy counter, water droplets dangled from the tip of her nose and eyelashes. Hannah turned over her mother’s soggy prescription, plopped down onto a hard orange plastic molded chair, and used a crumpled lipstick-smudged tissue to dab her face and neck. “That’s plain-out common,” her mother would say. “Women of quality should always use a cloth hankie, preferably one with embroidery.” At last count, Mae Mathers had over thirty handkerchiefs, some printed with violets and cabbage roses, others plain white linen with crocheted edges. None had been left behind in her move to assisted living. Heaven forbid.

  The elastic band in Hannah’s bra cut into her skin and she felt so bone-weary, breathing was a chore. How pathetic that she would welcome the brief respite in a cramped aisle of Chattahoochee Drugs.

  Hannah wondered if her sixteen-year-old daughter would be speaking to her this evening after the morning’s heated fashion altercation. The outfits these young girls wore! Well, no daughter of hers would so much as step foot from the house with two miles of bare belly and that much cleavage showing. No sir-ee!

  Her thoughts slipped to her elderly mother. Another kidney infection, this one compounded by a chest cold. The day had consisted of phone-tag calls to Mae’s doctor’s office and an order for another round of strong antibiotics. All of this, crammed into a business schedule already full of enough hassles. And she still had to go home and scrounge up something for dinner.

  Hannah felt her damp pantyhose tighten like a famished boa constrictor. An old man with a bubbly, hacking cough lowered himself into the vacant chair beside hers.

  “Afternoon, Ma’am.” He squeezed his bulk into the chair and coughed into his cupped hand.

  Country music blared from behind the counter—some screechy-voiced female whining about losing her man to a floozy, or to a whiskey bottle, or both. The rumble of the man’s phlegm added a steady annoying rhythm. Hannah prayed her immune system was up to the challenge. Everywhere she went people shared germs faster than Santa Claus scattered toys to good girls and boys in one globe-circling night.

  Sometimes Hannah felt like the star of some cosmic Candid Camera episode, or perhaps a cock-eyed version of Survivor. Put a woman through trial by fire, piss and vinegar, and see if she ends up in a padded room. Good thing there was a mental hospital within easy access, two blocks down on West Washington Street.

  Wouldn’t that be nice? Hannah’s mind changed channels to her favorite fantasized version of a voluntary admission lock-up: A quiet white-walled room. A single cot. No sharp utensils. Plenty of mind-numbing medications. A psychiatrist to dutifully listen to her litany of woes. Maybe a pot-holder arts and crafts class.

  All she wanted in this life was a small slice of peace. Maybe add in some attention from her husband. Respect from her kids. A clean house. But she’d settle for peace.

  Peace would be nice.

  She picked up a worn copy of a typical women’s magazine, one with the latest diet craze announcement posted next to a glossy picture of the cake of the month. Give me a break.

  Mr. Phlegm Man leaned over and motioned to the full-page photo of an eight-layer coconut confection. “My mama used to make cakes looked just like that ’un.”

  “That’s nice,” Hannah said.

  What was it, her girl-next-door face? No matter where she went, people wanted to talk to her. The few times she had flown, Hannah had felt like the official in-flight counselor. Even if she wore earphones with her head buried in a novel, some stranger would sit down beside her and relate intimate details about a contentious divorce or botched hemorrhoid surgery. That or she would pull babysitting duty for the biggest freak on the plane, the one who white-knuckled long before they closed the hatch.

  Mid-way through ads touting every kind of beauty emollient known to modern chemistry, she spotted a self-help article on women as caretakers. The term “sandwich generation” caught her attention. The expression pegged her perfectly, one of the many women smashed between parenting children and caring for elderly relatives. If the analogy held, Hannah served as the mayonnaise gluing the pieces together.

  Images of skinny models popped from the magazine’s glossy advertisements. Slick red baboon-butt lips. Jowls that didn’t meet their bird necks. Eyes clear of red veins. No cottage-cheese thighs. Hannah felt the warning flare of a hot flash, her own personal summer. She dug in her purse for an unpaid bil
l envelope and used it to fan her face.

  How long had it been since she felt remotely hot, the kind of woman men licked with their eyes? Hannah didn’t feel sexy. At all. The one black lace negligee she owned strained to corral the extra bottom fat. She longed to be touched, but maybe from across the room, certainly not close enough to communicate additional body heat. God forbid. She surveyed the males in the room: Mr. Phlegm Man. The pharmacist. One juvenile near her son’s tender age.

  “Paul Johnson?” the pharmacist called.

  Hannah watched the jowly man cross in front of her to retrieve his medicine. He hacked so hard, she was sure he’d hawk something up on the tile.

  Ugh. Definitely not him. Guilt set in immediately at the unkind thought. Guilt: Hannah was good at that, if nothing else.

  Twenty minutes later, the paper pharmacy bag clutched in hand, Hannah dashed to the second-hand Chevy SUV in the now-sheeting downpour. By the time she flopped into the driver’s seat, no part of her remained dry. The pantyhose bore the slimy consistency of a garden slug.

  Hannah kicked off her ruined leather pumps, then peeled the hose from her skin, lowered the window, and flung them to the pavement. A second nylon lump stood in the muddy pool. She laughed—a giggle, then a full-fledged falling-out fit complete with tears and staccato air snorts. When she finally decompressed, mascara rivulets stained her cheeks.

  “Oh for Pete’s sake,” she muttered.

  Hannah jumped from the car long enough to retrieve the discarded hosiery—hers and the other pair. No use to be a litter-bug, even if it had felt briefly empowering. She tossed them into the back seat floorboard, sending an arc of muddy water through the air, then used a wad of fast-food napkins to dry the bottoms of her feet. She smeared a generous dollop of alcohol-based germicide onto her hands and waved them back and forth to dry. A month back, she would have been hysterically sobbing and grinding her molars to a gravelly mush.

  “Hannah, forget getting sedatives for your mama,” her cherished sister-in-law Suzanne had advised. “You need drugs for yourself. Call your doctor and get on something, honey!”

  Hannah hated the idea. She barely took an aspirin for a headache. But she had to admit—in less than a week, when the antidepressant finally reached a proper blood level—she felt almost human again. Able to think in a straight line. Able to smile. Able to rip her pantyhose off in a parking lot and cackle like a budding nutcase.

  Able to do most anything.

  Hannah steered from the drugstore lot, stepped on the gas, and covered the three miles from Chattahoochee, Florida, to Interstate 10 West. She tore up the on-ramp like a NASCAR driver leaving pit row. Worry rolled off her as the mile-markers passed. By Marianna, she wouldn’t be a mother. By Pensacola, she wouldn’t be a wife. By New Orleans, she would cease to be Mae’s daughter. Maybe by the time she crossed the California border, she would be someone else entirely. Even the Angel of Lost Things—the heavenly entity her mother called upon to locate most anything misplaced—wouldn’t be able to find one shed hair, one tire tread, one fingerprint.

  Right, she thought. Get real, Hannah. Like you could really do something like that. Who do you think you’re kidding?

  She turned around at the next exit and headed east, back into town.

  Hannah squeezed the SUV close to the curb in the cramped parking lot of Rosemont Assisted Living. A mishmash of emotions vied for first place; a weary sadness won out.

  What kind of mood would her mother be in? Anyone’s guess. On a good day, Mae Mathers and Hannah might hover over a jigsaw puzzle, reminiscing about family history and local affairs between lapses spent searching for a missing piece. Hannah assembled the edges and corners, leaving the sky to her mother. Mae found little challenge in the straight-edged sections and her “baby daughter” loathed the eye-crossing sameness of the heavens.

  Bad days came as regularly as Monday mornings, though less predictable. The set of Mae’s jaw held the initial clue to her mood: often clenched, held tightly together as if by doing so, death couldn’t steal her life’s breath.

  The anger and small hissy-fits were easier to overcome than the tears. Mae cried for pent-up hurts, real or imagined—a collection spanning eighty-five years.

  Hannah nodded to a couple of residents and signed in at the front desk before heading down a long carpeted hallway to her mother’s section: the Camellia wing. She triple-tapped then used her key to enter room 104. The spacious efficiency apartment held a queen-sized bed, bureau, writing desk, a recliner, and a small upholstered rocker. A walk-in closet and bathroom took up a fourth of the room. Bright light filtered into the bedroom from three tall windows. The walls displayed clusters of family pictures and two framed monarch butterfly photographs, a gift from Hannah’s sister Helen, from Helen’s photography phase.

  “Ma-Mae?”

  “In here,” a faint voice answered from the bathroom.

  “Don’t know why I eat greens,” her mother said as she pushed into the room, “gives me the Hershey-squirts every time.”

  A wave of putrid, lily-of-the-valley air wafted in Mae’s wake. Hannah wasn’t sure which was worse, the fecal odor or the cloying floral spray. She dropped the pharmacy package on the bed and hugged her mother. “At least you’re not constipated, Ma-Mae. Here’s your kidney medicine.”

  Mae coughed. “When do I take it?”

  “Once a day.”

  “God knows I have enough to keep up with, without having to take it more often.”

  “I’ll put it in your pill organizer. That way, you won’t have to worry about missing a dose.”

  Mae shuffled to the faded blue recliner and flopped down. “Sometimes, I don’t know why I’m still on this earth. I can’t seem to shake this cough. I’m scared to death I’ve got that new virus that’s been going around.”

  Hannah cleared a spot on the bed and sat. “Long as you wash your hands and be careful, you should be okay. You’re not exposed to many folks outside of Rosemont. Lately, you won’t even go to Wal-Mart with me.”

  Mae poked a stray strand of white hair into the bun atop her head. “Still, it’s going around. Sweeping the country, from what they say on TV.”

  “What virus is that, Ma-Mae?” Hannah dropped pills into slots in a clear plastic organizer: Monday through Sunday, a.m. and p.m.

  “That computer virus. Everyone’s getting it!” Mae jabbed a finger in the air. “Causing business to all but shut down.”

  Hannah fought the smile threatening the corners of her lips. Forget Candid Camera; life had become one big freaking sit-com and the writers had seriously outdone themselves on this episode. No use trying to explain technology to her mother. The ensuing stress would overwhelm even Zoloft’s capacity.

  “Ma-Mae, you don’t have to worry. Only people with computers get computer viruses.” Not exactly a lie.

  Her mother’s blue-gray eyes studied her. When Hannah was a child, the same look had withered her into honesty. “All the more reason I shouldn’t ever get one, at my age. But you’d best watch out. You got them all around you.”

  “My office has virus protection.” Hannah held her breath for a second.

  Mae coughed several times. When she was able to catch her breath she said, “That’s a weight lifted off my mind.”

  Hannah slowly exhaled. Conversations with her mother felt like tip-toeing through a smoldering peat bog wearing flip-flops. She snapped the lids closed on the pill organizer and returned it to a spot on the bathroom vanity.

  Mae picked up a crocheted afghan and spread it across her legs. She frowned. “Women your age shouldn’t go bare-legged, dear. You still have a nice shape to your legs, but nylons help to hide those little spidery veins. Besides, it’s still too cold to be fanning around without anything covering your skin.”

  For a second, Hannah flashed back to adolescence, a time when nothing she did met with her mother’s approval. The adult supervisor in her psyche snatched back the controls and she stuffed the urge to roll her eyes and snipe a re
ply.

  “I had a run in one leg. Took them off in the car.” Hannah’s gaze roamed across the row of family pictures. One caught her attention: the three Mathers children—Hal, Helen, and Hannah—dressed in starch-stiff Easter finery, wicker baskets top-heavy with colored eggs. One egg had fallen to the ground and the eight-year-old Hannah stretched to return it to the fold, a pinched expression on her face. Her brother Hal looked as if the tie choked the life from him. Helen looked her usual self—available to emote at will.

  Mae’s voice snapped her back to the room. “Long as you don’t stop anywhere else on the way home. I taught you better, than to be doing such in public. When you bringing my grandbabies to see me?”

  When I can tie one down long enough to get him or her to the car, Hannah thought. “They’re not babies anymore, Ma-Mae. Justine is sixteen and Jonas will be thirteen in a few months.”

  Her mother’s eyes narrowed. “How can that be?”

  “Time passes, Ma-Mae. Time passes.” Hannah flopped back down on the bed.

  Mae hacked phlegm into a handkerchief—purple printed on white cotton, with “New Jersey” scripted across an outline of the state. When had Mae been to New Jersey? Her mother tucked the hankie into the edge of her robe sleeve then shifted her weight to the opposite hip with an audible grunt. “You know who gave me this cold?”

  “It’s that time of year. Could be most anyone.”

  Mae pointed in the general direction of the rest of Rosemont. “That new lady from California brought it in.”

  Hannah leaned back on her elbows. For the first few months after the family helped move Mae into assisted living, and Hannah morphed from daughter to caretaker, she had felt a bit off-kilter—like stepping into a play in the midst of the second act without the benefit of a program.