Saturdays at Sweeney's

by Ashley Farley

  “Not so fast, Jackie.” Sam yanked her back down to her chair. “We’re not finished here. We need to figure out a way to help Faith. It’s not fair for her life to be turned upside down like this.”

  “I’ll ask Bill. I’m sure he knows a retired nurse we can hire,” Jackie said, eager to leave so she could schedule her appointment with the Doyles.

  “Hiring someone isn’t what I had in mind,” Sam said, her expression one of exasperation. “We need to pitch in, to give Faith a break.”

  “I can manage until Thursday,” Faith said.

  Sam squeezed Faith’s hand. “I’ll help you, honey, since Jackie is obviously too busy. I’ll take Mom with me to run errands tomorrow. Maybe we’ll go out to lunch afterward if she feels up to it. Or, if you’d rather, I’ll stay with her here.”

  Jackie felt their eyes on her, but she kept her mouth shut. She didn’t have time to babysit their mother. She had a business to run.

  “Thanks,” Faith said to Sam. “Midmorning for a couple of hours would be great. Take her to your house or stay with her here. Either is fine with me.”

  #

  Jackie spent the rest of the afternoon in a funk. The sooner they found a permanent solution for their mother the better. But that was easier said than done with Sam and Faith involved. They would insist on visiting every retirement facility on the East Coast. They would drag it out for weeks on end, hemming and hawing every step of the way. In the meantime Lovie would continue to live at Faith’s, which meant they would have to share the burden of taking care of her. Jackie felt a pang of guilt for not volunteering to help out this week. She reached for her bag and removed the bottle of nerve pills. Between her mother and her son, she was losing control of her life, and as a result her grip on her business was slipping. She needed to stay on top of her game. And she couldn’t very well do that from Prospect.

  She was having a glass of wine at the counter in the kitchen when Sean got home a few minutes after six that evening. She slid off the stool to face him. “Where have you been?”

  “Out on the boat with Jamie.”

  She studied him closer. His eyes were clear and his breath smelled like mints. “Since when does it take five hours to set the crab traps?”

  “We went fishing after we set the traps.” Brushing past her, he went to the stove and lifted the lid on the marinara sauce. “What’s for dinner?”

  “Spaghetti.” She peered over his shoulder as he spooned sauce into his mouth. “Did you find a job?”

  “Jesus, Mom. Will you back off? Yes, I found a job.” He returned the wooden spoon to the spoon rest. “Jamie got me a job at the Roost.”

  “Are you kidding me?” She grabbed him by the elbow and spun him around to face her. “That’s the one place I told you I didn’t want you to work. Will you be waiting on tables?”

  “They hired me to be a busboy.”

  Jackie planted her fists on her hips. “You can’t be serious. What’s Jamie’s position?”

  “He’s a dishwasher.” Sean stared past her, refusing to meet her eyes.

  “Jamie is graduating from college in December, and the only kind of job he can get is washing dishes?”

  “Chillax, Mom. We’ll get promoted to waiters once business picks up for the summer,” Sean said and started to walk away.

  “Wait just a minute, young man. Get back here. Have you started your application for the College of Charleston?”

  He stopped in his tracks. “Not yet. I haven’t decided if I even want to go there. I’m not sure college is my thing.”

  “You are too young to know what your thing is.”

  “I know what my thing is better than you. I’m not Cooper. I’m not your golden boy. You can’t control my life, Mom. The sooner you get that through your thick head the better,” he said, storming out of the kitchen.

  Jackie hustled to catch up with him. “You are going to college, even if that means the local community college.” He mounted the stairs, and she said to his back, “And by the way, I have to be in Charleston on Thursday. I want you to make arrangements to spend the day with Jamie.”

  “I don’t need a babysitter,” he said as he ascended the stairs.

  “Are you sure about that? Your recent run-in with the Athens police suggests that maybe you do. And don’t forget you have an appointment with Moses at two o’clock tomorrow afternoon.”

  He turned right at the top of the stairs, and seconds later she heard his bedroom door slam.

  ELEVEN

  Sam

  Sam picked up her mother at ten o’clock on Tuesday morning, but instead of running errands, she took Lovie back to her house. She had another plan for extracting the needed recipes from the deep caverns of her mother’s memory. If the disease eating away at her memory hadn’t already gobbled them up.

  “I have some things to do at home,” Sam explained on the drive over. “If you help me, we can finish early and go to lunch.”

  “What sort of things do you need me to help with?” Lovie asked in a concerned tone.

  “I’m having some friends over for lunch tomorrow. I’m serving shrimp salad and coleslaw. Everyone always raves over your shrimp salad. You have the special touch, Mom. I’ve tried to make it, but mine doesn’t taste the same.” During the past few days, Sam had spent hours on the Internet researching dementia and Alzheimer’s, including effective ways to interact with people afflicted with those conditions. One of the websites recommended speaking kindly and complimenting them to increase their self-esteem, and giving them accomplishable tasks to help maintain their sense of self-worth. But the website also warned not to expect more than a person was capable of.

  Lovie didn’t respond. She stared into her lap and fidgeted with her hands the rest of the way.

  “Who lives here?” her mother asked when they pulled up in front of Sam’s bungalow.

  “This is my house, Mom.” Sam hurried around to Lovie’s side and helped her down from the passenger seat. She unlocked the front door and stepped out of her mother’s way so she could enter.

  “Your home is lovely, dear,” Lovie said, exploring the great room as though she’d never been there. “Allen must be doing well to afford all this.”

  Allen is dead, Sam thought, but there was no need to tell her that. She wouldn’t remember it in five minutes anyway. According to Sam’s online research, her mother was incapable of forming new memories.

  Ignoring her mother’s comment, Sam led her to the kitchen, took her purse from her, and set it down on the breakfast table. Jamie had purchased two pounds of shrimp for her off one of the boats at the marina. Sam had cooked it earlier that morning and organized the other ingredients on the counter, along with measuring cups, mixing bowls, and knives. Placing her hand on the small of her mother’s back, she walked her around the counter to the prep side of the kitchen, where she’d set up a cutting board with a Vidalia onion and chopping knife. “Mom, why don’t you dice the onion while I peel the shrimp.” She hoped the shrimp salad recipe would come naturally to her mother once she got caught up with preparation.

  Lovie eyed the shrimp in the colander in the sink. “Did you remember to cook the shrimp with lemon?”

  “Lemon, huh? I never knew you did that.” She felt like jumping up and down with glee. Her plan was working. “Do you think they’ll taste okay without the lemon?” Sam didn’t care how they tasted. With or without the lemon, the shrimp salad would be fine for their dinner.

  Lovie removed one of the shrimp from the colander, peeled it, and popped it into her mouth. “Next time add the lemon.”

  Sam snickered. “Yes, ma’am!” she said, and jotted a reminder on the notepad beside her.

  She set the pen down and began to peel the shrimp, watching her mother out of the corner of her eye. Lovie picked up the knife and stared curiously at it, as though she’d never seen one before and wasn’t sure what to do with it. She set the knife back down on the cutting board, abandoning the cooking project, and rounded the counter
to the bank of windows. “You have a lovely view. What did you say Allen did again?”

  Ignore it, Sam. Remember, that website on dementia said it’s better to play along with her than to correct her. “He works on one of the fishing boats.”

  While her mother stared out across the marsh, Sam finished preparing the shrimp salad, tasting and making notes as she added a little bit of each ingredient. Before the fire, Sam and Lovie had worked together every day. Maybe that explained why she hadn’t noticed the changes in her mother. But now, looking back over the past year, she was able to see the signs. In addition to the strange combinations of clothes she wore, as she’d been doing for years, Sam categorized her appearance of late as unkempt. Her hair was not always clean, and oftentimes she wore no makeup. It wasn’t just her physical appearance but her demeanor as well. She talked to herself all the time, and got frustrated when she couldn’t remember things. She’d been reserved with their customers, even borderline rude on occasion. Out of concern, several had mentioned Lovie’s brash behavior to Sam. On some subconscious level, she must have known what was happening to her mother, but she’d been unable to face the idea of losing her. When, in fact, she’d already lost her.

  Sam finished with the shrimp salad and moved on to the coleslaw. “Mom, do you have any ideas on ways to improve the slaw?”

  The sound of her voice startled her mother out of her trance. She darted her eyes around the room, as though confused about where she was, and was visibly relieved when she set her eyes on Sam. She staggered over to the nearest bar stool. “Did you say something, dear?”

  “I asked if you had any ideas on how to improve our coleslaw. Our recipe is the tried-and-true traditional slaw. I’d like to create an alternative that doesn’t have mayonnaise.”

  Lovie stared straight at her and responded, “When can I go home?”

  Sam let out a soft sigh, wondering which home her mother had in mind. Surely not Faith’s house. Maybe her town house, but Sam suspected the home she was referring to was the cottage on the inlet where Sam had grown up. “We’re going to lunch when I finish this. I’ll take you home after that.”

  Lovie watched her slice and dice the cabbage, but after a few minutes she grew bored. “Where’s your powder room, dear?”

  Sam pointed at the doorway. “Across the main room, through the master bedroom. Do you need me to show you the way?”

  “Don’t be ridiculous, Samantha. I’m not an invalid, you know.” But as she shuffled out of the room, Sam thought her mother looked exactly like an invalid.

  Sam became so engrossed in experimenting with her cabbage, she forgot all about her mother until she realized, some fifteen minutes later, she hadn’t returned. She washed her hands and hurried to her bedroom, where, much to her relief, she found her mother fast asleep in her bed. The odor greeted her as she entered the room. Her mother had wet herself, the urine soaking through her elastic-waist denim jeans and saturating Sam’s white down comforter.

  She planted her face in her palm. It eventually happened to everyone, and now it was happening to them. Parent and child had switched roles. Grabbing a stack of old beach towels from the linen closet, she took them out to her car and draped them over the passenger seat. She went to the kitchen and quickly put away the food and cleaned up her mess before returning to the bedroom.

  “Wake up, Mom.” She gently shook Lovie awake.

  Lovie blinked her eyes open. “Where am I?”

  “You’re at my house, remember? You took a little nap while I was finishing in the kitchen. I don’t know about you, but I’m hungry. Let’s go grab some lunch.”

  Lovie sat up and swung her legs over the side of the bed, seemingly oblivious to her wet clothes or the stain on the comforter. Sam linked her arm with her mother’s as she walked her to the car.

  Sam held her breath against the odor as she drove down her driveway. “Why don’t I swing by home so you can change? I’m taking you someplace nice. You should probably put on some slacks.”

  “Have I ever been to this restaurant?”

  “Many times. We’re going to the Pelican’s Roost.” Definitely not nice, Sam thought, but there’s no other place in town for lunch.

  “Never heard of it. Where is it?”

  “It’s the restaurant at the Inlet View Marina.”

  “Oh, I see. You’re talking about the Inlet Bar and Grill,” Lovie said, referring to the original name of the restaurant. New owners had changed the name when they purchased the marina in the early seventies. “Since when do I need to dress up to go there?”

  “Since it’s not the Inlet Bar and Grill anymore,” Sam said. During the rest of the short drive, she ignored her mother’s endless string of questions.

  “Let’s hurry. We don’t want to miss our reservation,” Sam said when they arrived at Faith’s house. She dragged her mother out of the car and into the house without giving her a chance to challenge or complain. She helped her out of her soppy jeans and into a pair of dry navy slacks, leaving the soiled clothing on the bathroom floor. She would start a load of laundry when they got back.

  #

  Sam requested a booth with a view of the water. Having to look at the burned remains of Captain Sweeney’s Seafood might upset her mother. Fortunately for them, the hostess was able to accommodate the request. If the nearly empty restaurant was any indication, Jamie would be looking for another job before summer even started.

  “What do I usually get here?” Lovie asked the waitress when she handed them menus.

  Sam smiled a knowing smile at Raquel, the gray-headed waitress who had worked there forever.

  “I’ll give you a few minutes to decide,” Raquel said and scurried away.

  Be patient, Sam, she reminded herself. “You usually have the fried flounder sandwich with sweet potato fries, Mom.”

  Lovie set the menu down. “Then that’s what I’ll have.” But by the time the waitress returned, Lovie had forgotten about the fried flounder sandwich and copied Sam by ordering a chicken Caesar salad.

  Lunch was a torturous affair. Her mother asked one question after another. The same questions over and over. None of them were of any importance. Most pertained to the logistics of her going home. Whichever home was on her mind. When Sam finally stopped answering her questions altogether, Lovie didn’t seem to mind or notice. She babbled on and on about the la-la land where she was currently residing. The best Sam could make out, her mother had ventured back in time to when she and her sisters were young adults and their father was still alive. Jackie was living and working in Charleston, and Sam and Faith had just started full-time at the market. They had not yet married, and none of the grandchildren had been born. Sam first felt sorry for her mother and then wanted to wrap her fingers around her neck and choke the life out of her. One thing she knew for certain—Faith would go batshit crazy if they didn’t put her in a home.

  By the time she got her mother back to her sister’s house and down for her nap, Sam was craving vodka, but she would have to settle for sweet tea. She gathered her mother’s soiled laundry and started a load of wash. When she went to the kitchen, she was surprised to find Mike eating a sandwich at the counter.

  “I didn’t know you were here,” Sam said, pouring herself a glass of tea from the pitcher in the refrigerator.

  “I heard you getting Lovie settled, and I didn’t want to disturb you.” He held his sandwich up. “I’m working a double shift. Just came home for a quick shower and a bite to eat.”

  She sat down next to him at the counter. “Surely you know some nurses who are either retired or need extra work. Mom needs professional help. Faith can’t do this alone.”

  “I’ve already given Faith a list. I offered to interview them, but she insisted she’d handle it. As far as I know, she hasn’t called any of them yet.” He set his sandwich down and wiped his mouth with a paper napkin. “We brought Lovie here to live with us so that I could assess her condition. In my professional opinion, she is ready for full-time
care. Faith is against putting her in a retirement home. With the right help, I don’t see why we couldn’t manage Lovie’s care here.”

  Sam considered this. “That would totally disrupt your life. We could move her to Jackie’s guest cottage and set her up with a staff of nurses out there.”

  “Or you could move her back to her town house.”

  “True. Except that Bill would be able to keep an eye on her at the farm. Having a family member around would keep the nurses in line.” Sam considered the financial implications. “That would work in the short term, but a long-term arrangement with round-the-clock nurses would eat through her savings in no time. Don’t misunderstand me. I’m not concerned about inheritance. We need to make certain she has enough for her health care if she lives another ten years.”

  He offered her a sympathetic smile. “I think you and I both know that’s not likely to happen. Then again, you can never predict these things.” He checked his watch and stood to leave. “I need to get back to the hospital, but don’t worry, Sammie”—he gave her shoulder a squeeze—“it’ll work itself out in due time.”

  TWELVE

  Jamie

  Jamie was willing to bet his first paycheck that his cousin had been smoking weed before he picked Jamie up to go fishing on Thursday morning. Sean was wearing sunglasses despite the early hour, and he laughed hysterically when he rammed his boat into the dock upon arrival. Sean, who’d handled boats since he was old enough to sit on his father’s lap and grip the steering wheel, could dock a boat in his sleep. He usually took excellent care of his family’s fleet, particularly this fiberglass skiff their father had bought for the twins on their sixteenth birthday.

  Jamie loved his cousin like a brother. He’d been keeping an eye on Sean at work, concerned about the crowd he was hanging out with in the kitchen. The kitchen staff at the Roost was a rough bunch, but one in particular, the dishwasher, seemed worse than the rest. Night before last, Jamie had spotted Sean smoking with Julius out behind the dumpster. At the time he’d thought they were smoking a cigarette, but it could have been weed. Sean, claiming his car was in the shop, had bummed a ride home after work on Tuesday night, but when Jamie dropped him off at the farm, his cousin’s 4Runner was parked in the garage. Sean had always been mischievous, more of a prankster than a troublemaker, but Jamie had never known him to tell a bold-faced lie. When Jamie questioned him about it, Sean had blown it off by saying his mother must have picked up his car. Jamie would’ve believed him if not for his sheepish grin.