by A. R. Hadley
Michelle smacked his shoulder while making eye contact with Rosa.
“I’ll come help you with lunch,” Rosa said while taking a few records out of a different box and setting them on the table.
“No, no. I have it almost finished. He’s given you enough to do.” Michelle glanced at the LPs and picked up the one on top. “Oh my gosh, where did you get this, Cal? I haven’t heard it in years.”
He dropped back down on the antique seat, eyed the tattered sleeve of the record in Michelle’s hand, then looked away, toward his work.
“Rosa, please don’t set the records on the table where I’m working.” Curtness marred his tone as he affixed his glasses to his eyes and snatched up the papers trapped under the old machine.
Rosa placed her hands on her hips and tapped her fingernails.
Michelle picked up a stack of vinyl. "You just set the player on the damn table. Don’t be an as—"
“I’m not being an ass." He peeked over his lenses and paused, but his eyes were actually focusing on something behind her. "When was the last time Mom’s floors were waxed?”
“Oh, he’s not being an ass,” Michelle roared. “Do you hear this bullshit, Rosa? Are you kidding me, Cal? I don’t know when the floors were waxed.”
Rosa helped Michelle move the records. They set them on the old and bold red velvet settee.
“Someone still comes in to take care of the house?” Cal asked.
With a heavy sigh, Michelle turned and tossed hair from her eyes. “No.”
“No?”
“I’ve been taking care of it.”
“That’s ridiculous.”
“I can help you while I’m here,” Rosa offered.
“I pay for someone to take care of this house. It’s not your responsibility, Rosa, and it’s not yours either.” Cal glared at his cousin. “What happened, Michelle?”
“I wanted to do it. I wanted to take care of—”
Cal grumbled, interrupting Michelle's bullshit excuses. He fidgeted with the frames of his glasses, shifted in the seat, then gave attention to a document in his hand.
“How long will you be staying?” Michelle asked Rosa while adjusting one of the window shades.
“Why are you closing that?” Cal snapped.
Michelle squinted at him, ignoring his comment with a roll of her eyes, but nevertheless, she opened the blind back up.
“Mmm … I will be leaving tomorrow." Rosa stepped behind the settee and put her hands on Cal's shoulders.
“Which son will you be staying with?”
“Miguel." Rosa began to massage his shoulders. “His wife is having a baby.”
Michelle squeaked and oohed and awed. “Congratulations. When is she due?”
Cal stood bolt upright and removed his glasses. As he meandered toward the fireplace, he kept his back to the two women, trying to hide the panic creeping through his veins, wishing he could crawl inside the brick of the hearth, but he had nowhere to go. He had to be here.
In this fucking house.
He didn't need to hear the word baby or due date. He had too many responsibilities — emotional ones. The kind he wasn't used to. And even though he didn't do nauseated, his stomach turned.
“In January." Rosa’s tone and eyes asked Michelle for privacy.
Michelle winked and said, “That's wonderful,” while nodding in secret agreement. “I’ll call you when it’s ready.”
“Thank you, love."
Rosa picked up the Nat King Cole record and carried it across the room toward the fireplace, walking between the two mahogany rocking chairs facing it, staring at Nat’s smiling face as she strode.
“I had forgotten about this too.” Rosa tapped the sleeve. “I didn’t know you had this all along in your collection.”
“Several of my albums were Mom’s."
“I had forgotten this,” Rosa repeated. “She would love to hear it.”
“How do you know that?" Cal's fist sat atop the mantle, his glasses next to it.
“Because she loves this album.”
“She is not there."
“She is,” Rosa insisted.
“Have you been in there?” Cal asked, raising his voice with each word. “Have you seen her? She is not there. I thought she was gone before. But now, she is…”
“She is there.” Rosa shushed him. “Give yourself time. You will know it.”
Cal chuckled with a nervousness he didn’t often display, then tilted his head down. “That’s all I have here." He glanced up. "Time … and waiting.”
“You mustn’t think of it that way.”
“I mustn’t think of anything." He stood taller, a statue made of iron, the metal steeling his voice and posture. “Isn’t that the Constance way?”
“That’s impossible, my love." Rosa placed the album on the rocking chair, then rested her palm on his back. She waited … just like that … alongside Cal, a hand on his back at the large, alabaster mantle. Waiting in silence, trying to catch his eyes.
But he stubbornly refused to meet her discerning gaze.
His forearm rested near his glasses and several photographs of family. Most notably, his mother — young and staring back at him. Had she always been so menacing? And then he dropped his head in sorrow.
Rosa moved her hand over Cal’s back in slow, steady circles, still waiting, feeling his breath rise and fall on the tips of her fingers.
“I am leaving tomorrow, mi querido,” Rosa whispered. “Please talk to me. I know what’s troubling you is about more than your mother.”
As Cal met Rosa’s dark, trusting eyes, his own moved back and forth, trying to communicate the words: Annie is pregnant. I made a mistake. Jesus Christ, Annie is pregnant.
“If I tell you, you’ll only give me hell. And I’m already in hell here in this damn house.”
“It doesn’t have to be that way.”
Cal glared at Rosa, rejecting her sentiment.
The wise woman sighed. “Oh, my hijo." She touched the tips of his hair. "You have much love here." She glanced around the room. "Here in this house.”
“Love is the last thing that exists in this house.”
“No. It’s here,” Rosa said, defiance and maternal love flavoring her tone.
Cal inhaled, and when he released the air from his lungs, it shook. God... He could feel Annie over him and through him. He could see her eyes peering into his guts.
“What are you afraid of, Calvin? It’s me, your Rosa. Tell me."
“It’s not the right time." He slipped his glasses into his shirt pocket.
“Ah, tiempo." Rosa smiled as she stood on her tippy-toes and kissed Cal’s cheek. “Tiempo…”
“I couldn’t have done all of this without you.” The lump in his throat ballooned.
Rosa nodded, communicating her own special something: unconditional love. And then she gently smacked his cheek.
“Vamonos.” She planted three more light and tender smacks in quick succession — one, two, three. “Let’s go make a place for this old turntable in your mother’s room. We’ll play her some of Nat’s record.”
Cal sat with his mother after dinner.
He’d spent every evening doing so since he’d first arrived, usually attempting to relax in a bamboo folding chair he’d placed near her side.
Rosa had left over a week ago, and Michelle was currently busy cleaning the kitchen, clinking dishes in the sink. Another type of noise was rolling in over the mountains. A storm. The thunder roared louder than the dish washing but not louder than Charlie Parker.
Cal watched as lightning flashed over the tops of the pale, yellow curtains every couple of minutes. He moved his feet to the beat of “I’ve Got Rhythm” while keeping his thumb inside the closed book on his lap, marking his place.
The room was as dull and bleak as those ugly curtains.
The lightning tried to give it a spark, but the music was what truly brought it to life. The record player had been a splendid idea, just as Michelle an
d Rosa had said. The sound thrilling him from the speakers couldn’t erase the reality he sat amongst night after night, though.
The room, it was an existence, containing Constance, but it didn’t contain her things — the things that made her unique. It only held her clothing. It didn’t contain her personal furniture. It didn’t bear her bold stamp of authenticity.
The room didn’t even contain Constance.
It seemed to hold a stranger lying in the bed — the guest in the guest room. She blended into the four walls and disappeared.
The smells didn’t.
Half the room had been taken over by nurses at varying hours of the day. Supplies and medication were scattered about. The flowers on the chest across from her bed were the freshest and cheeriest thing in the room, but despite the assortment of multicolored roses bursting from the vase, the room smelled and looked too much like a fucking hospital.
Cal set his book on the dresser, leaned forward, and placed his elbows on his knees. He dropped his chin on his clasped hands and moved his eyes over his mother’s frame, studying every wrinkle on her face, following the lines. He paused at her eyes.
A lump formed in his throat, and his chest felt tight.
The woman he once knew wasn't present behind those blue, blue eyes, but he refused to acknowledge it. He peered deeper, hoping to find what Rosa had said the other day… She's there.
Where was she?
Constance stared ahead, not blinking, at Annie's photograph of Pfeiffer Beach. Maybe that was the brightest and cheeriest spot in the room.
Annie usually was the brightest anomaly in any room, but Cal refused to acknowledge those feelings too. Especially in this confined place. Too crowded. Not enough space for the both of them.
He tugged at his collar, then pinched his nose.
So… He sighed. It wasn’t the flowers but the picture of the beach — a place his mother had known a long time ago — which gave the room its sunshine despite the rain. His mother had always been good with the old memories — at least during the early stages of the disease — and now she had nothing. Not even words.
Could she remember it? Was she at that beach now inside her head? Was she a middle-aged woman, making sand castles with her son, spending time with her mother and father and sister?
Thunder cracked, startling Cal.
And then the rain started to come down harder, sounding like hail over the metal roof. He stood and adjusted the volume of the music to compensate, and then he stepped back over to the side of the bed and caressed his mother’s forehead and cheeks, thinking of all she couldn’t do.
Cal’s body filled with a quiet rage. And he had to stop himself from shaking.
She couldn't do anything the same, and she never would again.
She couldn’t speak. She couldn’t feed herself. She couldn’t even use the bathroom in a dignified manner.
Fuck him! Fuck this! The voice inside Cal’s head began to taunt him relentlessly.
She couldn’t speak. She couldn’t speak. She couldn’t speak.
The thoughts marched on like a million soldiers ready for battle. She couldn’t speak. But despite the muteness she’d been struck with, he heard her voice clearly in his mind. He recalled her constant, firm demands and tart speech.
More than once — he smiled a little — he’d wished she couldn’t speak.
He imagined every child who had been lucky enough to have a mother had prayed for them to be quiet and leave them alone in peace. To not nag them.
The absurdity of it now. The disgust with himself.
Her one-of-a-kind tone played inside his mind like a broken record. The way she’d tried to disguise her love through her salty cadence. She had masked it with a strong, particular brand of vehemence. And now … now she lay in the bed, not even in her own bed, and she was a shell. The stupid nutshell. A hull of her former self, surrendering every last bit of freedom to the disease — everything. Surrendering the speech. Goddammit. She was a shell.
Cal’s pulse rose. He rubbed his forehead, then pulled at the collar of his shirt, tugging the material back and forth. He undid the top two buttons, then placed his palm behind his neck, rubbing his skin raw.
Being in this house had always been hard.
It had always been stifling.
Constance and Cal were too damn alike — both strong-willed, opinionated, and wanting things their own way … or no way. Constance was old-school, old-world, and she’d raised her son under that impervious thumb.
He’d always felt inadequate.
A few simple words, and she’d remind him he was never good enough. Questioning his choices, his decisions. Each and every fucking one of them.
Still, he was here.
She was his mother.
He loved the damn stubborn woman — and she’d known it and held it over him — even if they’d never said the three words often found plastered across greeting cards.
Cal felt her thumb now, pressing over him, and he smiled. He grinned as if he knew she was up to something while looking at her unsentimental face. Her face always unsentimental, sans the fucking disease. Her face always sporting a natural Katharine Hepburn frown. Her face always a brick.
Then his expression morphed into rigorous contemplation. He squeezed his thumb and first finger into the corners of his eyes, resisting the tears he could feel coming from wherever it was they began. He refused them — the way he refused love: his mother’s, Annie’s — as he touched her shoulder and trailed a finger up and down her skin.
Touching her was odd too.
Arguing wasn’t.
And he wanted to fight with her.
He wanted to argue.
Scream.
Right. The. Fuck. Now.
He didn't know if he’d ever felt anything as strong.
He needed to resist her tempestuous nature, see a knowing glance in her eyes, watch her sit up in bed, raise her fists, or hell — yell! To see the emotion in her eyes she thought she could disguise but couldn’t. The one telling him she loved him — it was the only way she’d ever told him. Always powerfully exchanging a glance to scold or pressure but never to excuse.
He wanted to see it now. He needed to see it now.
Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Where was she? In the water at Pfeiffer Beach? He called out to her silently, imploring her with his eyes. He squeezed her frail palm softly, but of course … she didn’t respond.
Cal let go of her hand, stepped away, and turned around a moment. He’d never been so aware of his breath, the way his lungs moved in and out. He caught the inhalations, and then he caught his face in the mirror hanging over the dresser. After staring at his pained expression, he glanced at his mother’s sterile one.
The definition of torture: to watch someone you love die.
It was worse when you had trash bags full of unopened dysfunction between you sealed up with padlocks not zip-ties. It didn’t matter how strained their relationship had been. She was family. His mother. She had raised him to be a man, an honorable one.
That was why he always came home.
Even when he protested.
Cal tilted his head toward the floor — this fucking disease was unfathomable; being with her was unfathomable — and wouldn't you know it? He couldn't control it. His eyes watered. His throat shriveled.
He cried.
No sound...
No movement...
Only goddamn tears.
Hurt and emotions leaked from some of the garbage bags — shit he hadn’t wanted to deal with for years. The helplessness that had been following him around like a shadow suddenly swooped down and captured him, pinning him and entangling him.
It took away his power.
But when had he ever had true power? Not over death.
Money couldn't save her. Everything she’d scrimped and saved. Everything he’d worked for — his pride — none of it could reverse what she’d become — a goddamned shell — or where she was headed.
How ironic.
All the money in the entire fucking world couldn’t stop the disease. It couldn’t speak his love, his regret, or his struggle. Money was empty like the room. A piece of paper. Nothing. The only thing that would take away her pain now was death.
Cal dried his eyes, shielding his tears from his mother’s face. She wouldn't be able to ridicule him if he hid them. Old habits die hard. He disguised them because she would know. She is in there. And he’d had to stop crying over spilled milk by age three.
Turning, he glanced over the top of the pale, yellow curtains. The rain had slowed to a pitter-patter. He could hardly discern it over the elevated music. He hummed along to the song under his breath and sat down on the edge of the bed in a trance.
A brisk and bright October morning, Cal was sitting in his room atop his tall, four-poster bed, a leg bent in front of his body while the other dangled over the edge. His glasses were on, and his laptop sat next to him, open.
He was attempting to write Annie an email.
The cursor blinked as he stared at the blank document on the screen.
Cal had emailed a few times, but he hadn’t heard the precious sound of her voice in a while. They missed each other’s calls sometimes, or he avoided them. It became easier to make excuses as the days wore on.
Her sweet voice reverberated through his mind now, though, and it was distracting him from typing.
Annie…
Cal picked up his phone.
He set it back down.
With a dramatic sigh, he dropped his head and placed his hand over his eyes.
Fuck him.
He picked it up again and opened the last text message Annie had sent.
Annie: The words are beautiful even though they’re somewhat melancholy. Reminds me of you, Cal. It can be easier … if you allow it.
Why did she always have to be so fucking kind? Even when he was a dick who wouldn’t call her. A couple days later, after he’d asked her to listen to “Glycerine” by Bush, he shared another song. And she hadn’t yet responded.
Cal: “Everlong” the acoustic version. Foo Fighters. Read the lyrics.
He was wasting away…
And he was alone.
He regretted not being able to text more often. He regretted not being able to call right at this moment.