Where Do I Go?

by Neta Jackson

  “Hey there, Dandy,” I said, trying to keep the dog from jumping up on me as I crossed the yard and threw my arms around my mom. Had she always been this short? But she still smelled like lavender, the same soft smell I remembered from nighttime kisses when she’d tucked us girls in bed.

  Paul was already tussling with the dog. I waved P.J. out of the car. “Hey, guys. Come give your grandma a hug.”

  “Hi, Grandma!” Paul ran over, gave his grandmother a noisy smack, and ran off again with the yellow mutt, who led him on a merry chase around the yard.

  P.J. climbed out of the car and sauntered over to where we stood by the flower bed. He gave his grandmother a polite hug. “Whatcha doing—planting flowers?”

  My mother looked at my oldest quizzically. “Is this Ryan?”

  “No, no, Mom. This is P.J.—Philip Junior. You remember.”

  “Oh, yes, of course. Philip’s boy. He’s just grown so much. Looks so much like Ryan now.”

  P.J. rolled his eyes at me. His cousin Ryan was Honor’s oldest, at least two years older than P.J. An easy mistake, I decided, since my mother hadn’t seen any of the grandchildren since my dad’s funeral two years ago. Except that even then, Ryan had been a beanpole, blond and freckled.

  I made a quick call to Philip and left a message on his cell that we’d arrived safe and sound. Then we unloaded the car, and I had the boys put their stuff in the second-floor bedroom with the two dormer windows that Honor and I had shared for years until Celeste left home, at which time Honor inherited her bedroom.

  P.J. made a face. “Aw, Mom. It’s all full of, you know, girl stuff.”

  “I won’t tell anyone.” I laughed. “I’m going to help Grandma with supper. But I’ll tell you a secret. Behind that little door into the crawl space, I bet you’ll find a whole box of superhero comic books. Go for it.”

  I left the boys diving into the crawl space. To my surprise, the oven was cold, no supper makings in sight. In fact, the refrigerator was surprisingly bare. A half gallon of milk, half-empty. A carton of orange juice. A wilted head of iceberg lettuce. A bag of raw carrots. A package of shredded cheddar cheese. A carton of eggs—full. An array of condiments in the door. Several contain-ers of leftovers. A partial loaf of wheat bread. And in the freezer, two TV dinners and a package of Mrs. Stouffer’s Homemade Lasagna.

  “Uh, Mom? Did you have any plans for supper? How about if I make some cheese omelets? We can eat at the kitchen table, make it easy.”

  “No, honey, we can’t eat in the kitchen. I’ve got the dining room all set with the good china. Tonight is special, having you and the boys here.”

  I peeked into the dining room. Sure enough, the dining room table was covered with my mom’s antique lace tablecloth. Her rose-patterned wedding china sat at each chair—six place settings in all. A silk flower arrangement graced the center of the table.

  China on the table, but no supper? Six place settings? What was going on here?

  I woke up in Celeste’s old room the next morning, sunlight streaming in through its single dormer, and stretched. What a good sleep! And we’d had fun the evening before, eating our cheese omelets on china and lace, pretending to ignore the two empty place settings, and then all four of us had played a rousing game of Pit, yelling and trading and hoarding. My mother had laughed triumphantly when she won.

  It felt so good to just lie in bed this morning, cuddled in the faded lavender-flowered comforter. Funny . . . Celeste had been the girly-girl of the family. Now she was married to a park ranger in Alaska with, I guessed, very few frills. Honor had always been the “wild child,” doing things differently just to be different. She’d been born in ’62 and came of age in the early seventies, and flower-power stuck to her like a permanent tattoo. As the young-est, I was the tomboy my parents never had, climbing trees, always running, never walking, living up to all the stereotypes of redheads with tempers, fighting for my place in the family.

  Trouble was, I didn’t fight for my place in the world. Got married right out of high school—even before Honor. Got divorced two years later—even before Honor. At least I got married again—unlike Honor. But, oh God, look at me. I hardly recognized the person I used to be.

  Sudden tears blurred the sunshine, and I brushed them away. Get a grip, Gabby. This week is your gift. Don’t waste it on spilled milk.

  I grabbed a tissue, blew my nose, and reached for my Bible. Okay. Might as well put first things first. Trouble is, I didn’t know where to start. Maybe one of the Gospels, the story of Jesus. After all, He was the main point. Right?

  I’d read the first two chapters of Matthew about the birth of Jesus and was trying to imagine the headlines if that had happened today—Pregnant Teen Denies Having Sex with a Man or World Leader Kills All Infants in Town Trying to Get Rid of a Possible Successor—when I heard the click click click of doggy nails on the stairs, and Dandy poked his nose into my room and cocked his scruffy ears quizzically. I smiled. The dog had a sweet face. “Hey, boy,” I murmured. “Anybody else up? You need to go out?”

  And then I remembered. I had planned to get up early and make a quick trip to the nearest Miracle Mart so we could have breakfast. My mom had obviously forgotten how much food two adolescent boys could pack away in a day, much less a week!

  When I let the dog out into the backyard, I realized some-thing else my mom had forgotten. Dog poops. The yard was full of them.

  By late morning of our first day at Grandma Shepherd’s, I was feeling that things were a little more under control. Old leftovers and expired food had been tossed out. The refrigerator and cup-boards had been restocked with fresh food. I’d called Aunt Mercy and invited her to come over around four and stay for supper. And I’d corralled the boys into helping me do pooper-scooper duty. I sweetened the deal by saying we’d not only go swimming at the public pool after lunch, but I’d let them go to the movies on their own afterward if we got the yard clean.

  The public pool I remembered as a kid—shallow end, deep end—had been replaced by a larger pool with a water slide. I bought the boys waterslide bracelets for unlimited trips through the curlicue and let them run off. As Mom and I looked around for a place to set up camp, I thought, Odd. Everyone here is white. Which wasn’t that odd, given that Minot was in the heart of Scandinavian country. What was odd was that I even noticed. My reality had changed.

  Both Paul and P.J. were good swimmers, so I let them horse around in the pool on their own, while I sat with my mom under a shade umbrella and talked. She seemed perfectly fine . . . except for the occasional long pause in the middle of a sentence, and then she’d say, “My, my, what were we talking about?” But mostly she smiled a lot and patted my hand, happy for company.

  On the way home, I dropped the boys off at the neighbor-hood theater, which had a four o’clock showing of the latest blockbuster animated movie. “Pick you up at six!” I yelled after them. I watched them go. Could I do this in Chicago? Probably not. I’d have to go with them, which wasn’t such a bad thing. But today I had a reason for getting them out of the house.

  I needed to talk to Aunt Mercy about my mom.

  Aunt Mercy was my dad’s younger sister, ten years his junior and still working as a reference librarian at the Minot Public Library, even though she was nearing retirement age. “They won’t let me retire.” She laughed as we peeled potatoes and diced ham for scalloped potatoes. She tapped her head. “I know too much. That’s what they get for letting me work as a reference librarian for thirty years.”

  I’d talked my mom into lying down for a nap, telling her not to worry about supper, Aunt Mercy and I would take care of it. Dandy curled up on the rug beside my mom’s bed and gave me a look. Dog on duty. Beat it.

  Aunt Mercy shrugged. “Even if they did, I need to work another two years to get my full pension. And I only have a one-bedroom apartment. Otherwise I’d invite Martha to come live with me until her name comes up on the list for assisted living. They said it would be another three to six months a
t least. Maybe longer.” She shook her head. “I don’t think your mom can wait that long, Gabby.”

  I stopped slicing and stared at my aunt. She was an attractive woman in her sixties, her short shag turning silver (or tinted, I couldn’t be sure). And she was dead serious. “What do you mean?”

  Aunt Mercy pointed a paring knife at me. “Gabby, we’ve got a problem. Your mom’s still driving that old Ford Galaxy, but she had three fender-benders last fall. Drove into the birch tree in the front yard in December. But it’s not just the driving—it’s her memory. I come to pick her up for church and she thinks it’s Tuesday. Gabby, she calls me Mary all the time—her sister.” My dad’s sister sighed. “The doctor says she’s had a series of small strokes. Nothing major—yet. I try to check on her at least one other time during the week, but I live on the other side of town, Gabby. I can’t do it every day.”

  I was silent as I stirred the white sauce for the potatoes. What was she saying? I’d been hoping we could get Mom moved into an assisted-living situation—but Aunt Mercy had already answered that. Waiting list.

  Aunt Mercy broke the silence. “What about you girls? Have any of you considered moving your mom closer to one of you?”

  Move Mom closer to—? I was sure Mom wouldn’t want to leave Minot. Even getting her to sell this house would be tricky. But even if she did, I couldn’t imagine moving Mom to Denali National Park in Alaska to live with Celeste! And moving her to Southern California with Honor was just as laughable. Honor lived in a trailer with two kids, for goodness’ sake! It was some artsy trailer park for aging hippies, and she made jewelry for a living, more or less. Plus, I didn’t know whose forgetfulness would be worse—Mom’s or Honor’s. I snorted to myself. Honor would probably call me back about my proposed “family reunion” next week. “Oh, when did you say it was, Gabby?” Yeah, right.

  I stopped stirring and stared out the window at my mom’s poop-free backyard.

  That left me.

  chapter 36

  Oh, great. In my haste to grab my cell phone at the last minute, I’d forgotten to unplug the charger and take it too. Well, no big deal. I’d just turn it off and save it for the trip home. The boys could use the house phone to call their dad while we were here. And my mom’s number was in our address book at home, if Philip bothered to look.

  Besides, I had bigger problems. Aunt Mercy’s question niggled at me all the next day, most of which we spent at the pool again since the weather forecast threatened rain at the end of the week. My thoughts bounced around like a pinball trying to find the right hole. What was I going to do? I couldn’t just take my mom home with me! We didn’t have an extra bedroom, not since we decided to give the boys their own rooms. And Philip . . . I didn’t even want to go there. Maybe we could set up something like Meals on Wheels, so she’d at least get a decent meal once a day . . . find a housekeeper to come in once a week . . . hire a kid to walk the dog . . .

  I tossed aside the magazine I’d been flipping through and scanned the bobbing heads in the pool until I found Paul’s curly head and P.J.’s dark one. How am I going to do all that in just two days? We have to leave on Saturday! I suddenly felt like throwing something. Grr! Celeste and Honor should have come home like I’d asked them to! Then we could talk about what to do together.

  I looked over at my mom in the other deck chair. She was asleep. Her hair looked as if it needed a cut and a perm. Definitely didn’t get my curly hair from Mom. I sighed. One more thing to do . . .

  I got up and dove into the deep end of the pool, letting the cool water slide over my body and black tank. In the underwater silence, a line from the gospel song on the CD Josh Baxter got for me floated through my head. “Who do I talk to . . . when nobody wants to listen . . . ?” I came up gulping for air, hearing the chorus in my ears: “I go to the Rock of my salvation, go to the Stone that the builders rejected . . . !”

  I felt like yelling, “Okay, God, I’m listening!” But what I really wanted was a husband I could call who’d listen to the pain in my heart and help me decide what to do.

  I called my aunt that evening to ask what she thought about Meals on Wheels. She sighed in my ear. “I tried that a few months ago, Gabby. Your mom would eat a little, then stick the leftovers in the refrigerator to ‘save for another day.’ I came over one week-end and found six or seven half-eaten containers and threw them all out. I was afraid she’d get food poisoning.”

  “Mom? Mom!” Paul was tugging on my shirt.

  I frowned at him and held up a finger to wait.

  “But Mom—”

  I covered the phone receiver. “Just a minute. I’m talking to Aunt Mercy.”

  “But Mom! There’s an empty pan on the stove, and the gas burner’s turned up on high!”

  Okay, that was it. The pan-on-the-stove episode scared me. What if she set the house on fire someday? I had to do something about my mom, and do it quick.

  Since I woke up Thursday morning before working people were even out of bed, I dutifully turned on the bedside light and read chapters five, six, and seven of Matthew’s gospel—three whole chapters devoted to Jesus’ famous Sermon on the Mount. I skimmed most of it. Didn’t want to deal with radical stuff like “turn the other cheek” and “love your enemies” right now.

  But I skidded to a stop in the middle of chapter seven, where Jesus said, “Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; he who seeks finds; and to him who knocks, the door will be opened.” The verses were familiar. I’d probably even memorized them in Pioneer Girls club as a kid. But today, something about those promises felt like wide-open arms, and I wanted to fling myself into them.

  Instead, I flung the comforter off. Get a grip, Gabby. I wasn’t likely to get any answers about my mom until I got on the phone, knocked on some doors, and asked about services I could line up for her. I still had two days. Maybe I could put together some-thing that would fill in the gaps until the assisted-living unit opened up. After all, Aunt Mercy said it might be only another three months—I hoped.

  The temperature had dropped into the fifties under a gray cloud cover that matched my glum spirit as I served up old-­fashioned oatmeal for breakfast. P.J. frowned at his bowl of oatmeal. “Doesn’t Grandma have any instant stuff ?”

  “I want cold cereal.” Paul plopped into a chair. “What are we gonna do today?”

  I kept a watchful eye on my mother as she sorted her medications and vitamins into a plastic seven-day pillbox, while I heaped brown sugar and raisins on the boys’ oatmeal. I’d have to double-check that pillbox later. “First, you’re going to eat this hot cereal. Then Paul is going to walk Dandy, and P.J. is going to mow Grandma’s lawn before it rains, while I make some important phone calls this morning—”

  “Aw, Mom! I thought this was supposed to be vacation!”

  “—And if we get that stuff done, then maybe we can go to the Dakota Air Museum this afternoon. I hear they’ve got a rep-lica of the Wright Brothers’ flyer.”

  That mollified them briefly. As soon as I heard the lawn mower start up, I got out the yellow pages and looked up Senior Services. A lot of listings . . . in other towns. Fargo. Bismarck. Burlington. The list for Minot was pretty short. I called one church group that had an “in-home companion” program and was told that their current volunteers were all assigned. But they’d be happy to put my mother on a list for when they got new volunteers. “We are usually able to assign a companion within a month or so who can give five to ten hours a week. How many hours a day does your mother need a companion?”

  I thought about the pan on the stove. Twenty-four hours a day would be about right. But I agreed to put my mom on their list. It was better than nothing.

  I next tried the local Agency on Aging. The person on the phone explained their list of services, which included day care at the local senior center, transportation to medical appointments, home-delivered meals, and hot meals available at vario
us sites around the city. “We’d be happy to set up a home visit to assess your mother’s needs. How about next Wednesday at eleven?”

  The piano in the living room tinkled a jazzy tune. Didn’t sound like my mom. I stuck a finger in my ear so I could hear the phone. “Uh, I’m only in town this week. Could we do this today?”

  “I’m sorry. The best we can do is a ten o’clock tomorrow here in the office.”

  Tomorrow?! I gritted my teeth. “Fine.” What was I going to do between now and then?

  I poked my head into the living room. Paul was sitting at the piano, playing with both hands, while my mother sat nearby, beaming. I listened. Not bad. “Where did you learn that, kiddo?”

  Paul shrugged. “Made it up myself. Can we go to the air museum now? Are you coming, Grandma?”

  I hesitated. I really should make more calls! But my mother was already getting her hat. “Just so we’re back in time for prayer meeting tonight,” she said.

  Was she assuming we were all going to church? I opened my mouth to protest . . . and was surprised to realize I actually wanted to go. Maybe needed to go was more like it. I could sure use some help praying.

  At the last minute, I tore out a page from the yellow pages and stuck my cell phone in my pocket. No way could I waste several hours wandering around a museum while there were still stones to be turned.

  In spite of the change in weather, the boys had a great time at the air museum. The huge DC-3 World War II Troop Transport standing out in an open field, named Gooney Bird by its now-silent heroes, was the boys’ favorite, while inside the museum a replica of the Wright Brothers’ famous flyer and a two-winged, red-and-white aerobatic plane came a close second and third.

  Mom tired fairly quickly, so I parked her on a bench while the boys ran their batteries down. Stepping away a few paces, I turned on my cell phone and dialed all the social service agencies I could find. But the answers all ended at the same place: zero. “We would need a doctor’s referral” . . . “Why don’t you call the Agency on Aging?” . . . “I’m sorry” . . . “Would you like to put her name on our waiting list?”