A Slight Change of Plan

by Dee Ernst

  “I do not,” my mother said loudly, “need to be monitored. I am quite capable of living by myself. I have for the past twenty-two years, ever since my youngest child moved out and left me alone.”

  “Mom, that was when Laura got married,” I said.

  She sniffed. “Whatever. I’ve been doing quite well without anyone’s help for this long; I certainly don’t need help now.”

  Gretchen grabbed Mom’s hand and shook it. “It’s been a pleasure, Rose. I’ll send a wheelchair in to take you out to your daughter’s car.” To me, she rolled her eyes. “Bring your car up to the doors at the end of the hall. And, seriously, good luck.”

  I took a deep breath as Gretchen left. Then I reached over and grabbed the paper bag holding Mom’s things. “I’ll see you in the car,” I told her.

  I made it to my car and sat there for a few long moments, staring out the window. My mother had never been an easy woman, not even when she was young and happy with Dad. I remembered her being beautiful, and when she would get into one of her rages, where harsh words as well as pots, dishes, and furniture would be hurled around the house, my father would always hug me and whisper, “Lucky your mother is such a looker, or I’d have to trade her in for a quieter model.” Then we would laugh together and wait for the storm to subside.

  When he died, I know she was devastated, not only to lose her husband and number-one fan, but I’m sure she hated having to work, not to mention raising her children alone. I was fifteen then, and, like all teenagers, disliked her on principle. I spent a lot of years away from home during college and law school, and our times together were always short and not very sweet. We had done some mending of our relationship while I had been married to Adam, but by then her attention had moved to the kids. I felt like we never connected as two adults. The woman I had just left seemed like a total stranger.

  I started the car and drove up to the double doors. Mom sat in her wheelchair, her purse clutched tightly to her chest, and I listened as the nurse read off a series of instructions; then she handed me a folder filled with notes. Mom sat heavily in the front seat and struggled with her seat belt. By the time I got around to the other side of the car, she was breathing heavily.

  I looked at her. “You okay?”

  She nodded. “Just catching my breath.”

  We drove in silence the twenty minutes from the rehabilitation center to Mom’s development. I pulled into her parking spot and turned to her. “We need to decide what you want to bring up with you. You won’t need lots of clothes, but we’ll need other things, your checkbook, address book, things like that. Then we’ll stop at the post office and have your mail forwarded. Do you know who was collecting your mail for you here?”

  She was staring straight ahead. “Am I really going home with you?”

  There was something in her voice that brought a rush of tears to my eyes. “Yes, Mom. I couldn’t leave you down here by yourself. Laura and I talked about this. It’s best. And we’ll see about getting you into a place nearer to us. It’s not going to work anymore, your living alone.”

  She unfastened her seat belt. “I’ll need help with this car door,” she said.

  I got out, went around to her side, and opened the door. She grabbed my forearm and leaned against me as we went into the house.

  She struggled for a few minutes with the key, then opened the front door. A blast of cold air hit me in the face.

  “Mom, you left the air-conditioning on?”

  “Of course,” she said. “I was practically unconscious when they took me out of here, remember? I didn’t think to tell them to shut it off.”

  Good point, Mom.

  She made her way across the room, her hands going from tabletop to chair back, until she vanished into the bedroom. She reminded me of a spider, hunched over and moving slowly, but without the eight legs, of course.

  I looked around. Her little house looked clean, but there were piles everywhere: stacks of magazines, newspapers, and opened mail. The air was very cold but stale. All her plants were dead, and some had been that way for a long time. The light was blinking on her phone, and there were dirty dishes in the sink. I looked in her refrigerator. It didn’t smell too bad, but there were lots of plastic containers. I opened one. It contained half an egg roll. I had forgotten that she had always been the leftover queen. I looked in a few of the cabinets. One box of crackers had a use-by date of October 2009.

  I went into her bedroom. She was standing in front of her walk-in closet.

  She turned to me. “My suitcase is up there. I need it on the bed.”

  Sure. No problem.

  “Mom, while you’re packing things, I’m going to clean out your refrigerator, okay?”

  “Fine. My shopping bags are in the big drawer by the sink.”

  “Why would I need shopping bags?”

  “To bring my food up to your house, of course.”

  “Mom, I’m not going to pack three eggs and leftover Chinese food and drive it all the way to Madison.”

  “You mean you’ll just throw out perfectly good food?”

  “I have food at my house, Mom.”

  “Well, maybe you have so much money that you can afford to waste it, but I don’t.”

  I turned around and walked back to the kitchen.

  I had three plastic garbage bags full by the time she came back out.

  “What’s all that?”

  “Garbage.”

  “From my kitchen? That’s not garbage, it’s food.”

  “Mom, after two years, whether you want to or not, it’s time to buy a new box of Cheerios.”

  She glared.

  “Where are your garbage cans?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t think I have any.”

  “Then how do you take out the garbage?”

  “I can only carry a small bag at a time. I put them on the back porch and my neighbor takes them to the street for me.”

  I opened her back door, and, sure enough, there were half a dozen plastic shopping bags, tied neatly shut, each holding about four pieces of trash. I gathered them up and looked around. There, by the far corner of the house, were two large, faded garbage cans. I loaded both up and hauled them out to the curb. When I got back inside, Mom was at her dining room table, the overhead light on, going through stacks of paper.

  “Are these your bills?” I asked.

  “Why? Are you planning to throw them away, too?”

  “No. Did you see your phone? It looks like you have messages.”

  She made her way over to the phone, and I went back into the bedroom. Her suitcase was packed full but wide-open on her bed. I took a look. She had packed about twenty pairs of underpants, one bra, a pajama bottom, and three wool sweaters.

  I looked in her closet. She had obviously never thrown anything out. I recognized a black cocktail dress that she had bought for one of the Christmas parties Dad’s work used to throw, back when she and my father would dress to the nines and go out for an evening, leaving Laura and me with a babysitter until two in the morning.

  There were at least forty shoe boxes. I pulled one off the top of a pile and looked inside. A red-and-white spectator pump, probably from the fifties, size five, with the original tissue paper still crumpled in the toe.

  What on earth was I going to do with all this stuff?

  I found a few simple dresses, sandals, and slip-on sneakers, then went through her dresser. I pulled out pajama tops with matching bottoms, shorts, and neatly folded T-shirts, and a few more bras. Socks and a few light cardigans. I repacked her suitcase and took it out front.

  She had a visitor. A handsome and healthy-looking gentleman was standing in her living room, bending down to listen as she whispered furiously in his ear. He caught my eye and made a small face, straightened up, and smiled.

  “Why, Rose, is this your other daughter? Hello. I’m Fred, from across the street. Rose was just telling me about her plans.”

  My mother gave me a look that rivaled any
thing Medusa could have come up with.

  “Nice to meet you, Fred. Yes, I’m Kate.”

  He nodded. “I was just telling Rose how much better she’s looking. The week or so before her fall, her color was pretty bad.” He put his arm around her shoulders and gave her a gentle squeeze. “Rose, I’m really happy you’re going to be closer to your family now. We’ll keep an eye on things; don’t worry.”

  He kept that smile on his face and came over to me, picked up Mom’s suitcase, and made for the door. “I’ll help you put this in the car?”

  “Sure,” I said, and followed him outside.

  “Your mother,” he said as I opened the back of the Suburban, “is a real pistol.”

  “Yeah, I know.”

  “We tried to do more for her, but she’s very independent.”

  “Or stubborn.”

  He chuckled. “Yes. So you’re the evil daughter? I can’t see the horns from here.”

  “No, they only come out at night. Thank you for looking after my mother.”

  “We’ve been neighbors a long time. She wasn’t always like this. Ten years ago, when my wife was in the hospital for three months, she brought me a huge, hot dinner every Monday night. It would last me the whole week. Her heart has always been in the right place.”

  I took a deep breath. “I know.”

  “Will she be back, do you think?”

  “Not to live. She can’t be alone anymore. I’ll bring her back to close the house as soon as we can talk her into it.”

  He patted me on the shoulder. “Good luck with that. Nice meeting you, Kate.”

  I went back into the house. My mother was seated at the dining room table, slowly rearranging her piles.

  “Mom, we have to get to the post office before it closes. What else do you want to bring with you?”

  She pointed to a battered recliner. I shook my head. “I bought you a new one. You can leave that here.”

  “But it’s mine. It’s comfortable.”

  “I’m sure the new one is, too. Besides, it’s too heavy. I can’t put it in the car without help.”

  “So why didn’t you bring help?”

  “Because, Mom, it’s a three-hour drive down here. And it’s a workday. Which means Bobby or Sam would have to take the day off to come down here with me. And I wasn’t expecting to move furniture. I’ve got the clothes. There’s your paperwork. What else?”

  “My magazines? I always need something to read. Did you buy a new television, too? I can’t miss General Hospital.”

  I took out my cell phone and sent a text to Alisa to run out, buy a flat-screen, and make sure Sam had it ready to go when I came home.

  Then I looked around at the magazines. “Which ones, Mom?”

  “All of them.”

  “There are at least eight piles here. Haven’t you read some of these already?”

  “Yes, but I can’t remember. Besides, I like to go back and cut out recipes.”

  “What do you mean, recipes? I didn’t think you cooked.” Her stove burners had been spotless, except for a thin layer of dust.

  “I don’t. Not anymore. But that doesn’t mean I won’t in the future.”

  “Mom, there isn’t going to be a kitchen downstairs.”

  “Downstairs where?”

  “You’re going to be living in the basement of the condo.”

  “What condo?”

  I closed my eyes. I had been sitting right across from Laura during the long, frustrating phone conversation she had had with Mom, where my sister went over, at least three times, all the details of where Mom would be living, for how long, and why.

  “Mom, did you talk to Laura yesterday?”

  She sniffed. “Of course I did. Laura is a good girl. She calls her mother every once in a while.”

  I clenched my jaw, then let it relax. “So, do you remember what you talked about? You know, my new condo, the space in the basement?”

  “You want me to live in a basement? Are you crazy?”

  I grabbed a stack of magazines and took them to the car. Then I took four more stacks. Then I grabbed several plastic shopping bags that Mom had scattered over the dining room table, each of them filled with three or four pieces of mail.

  “Okay,” I said at last. “We’ll turn off the AC and lock up. Ready?”

  “You can’t turn off the AC,” she said. “I can’t breathe too good in the heat.”

  “You aren’t going to be breathing here anymore, Mom. There’s air-conditioning in the basement.”

  “Along with a lot of damp and mold, probably. But I don’t want to come back to a hot house.”

  “You aren’t coming back, Mom. Not for a while, anyway. Where’s the thermostat?”

  She pointed. I went over and turned it off. The house was suddenly silent. I did not realize how loud the hum of the AC had been. I looked at her.

  “Ready?”

  “No. But I know that doesn’t make any difference, so let’s go.”

  We stopped for gas. We stopped at the post office. We stopped at two rest stops. We exchanged perhaps twenty words in four hours. When we finally pulled up in front of the condo, she squinted into the dusk.

  “Where the hell are we? This isn’t your house.”

  The garage door opened, and there stood Bobby and Laura. Bobby ran to open Mom’s door. Laura waved. I threw the car into park, shut off the engine, and leaned my head against the steering wheel.

  “Kate?”

  It was Alisa. She was standing outside the car door. I opened it and got out slowly.

  “Sam and I will unpack the car. Why don’t you just go on in?”

  I nodded gratefully and went into my house. Eight was perched in her usual spot in the living room. I could see Seven slink downstairs, drawn by the sudden light and noise. I tried to remember—did my mother like cats? I went out onto the deck and sat down slowly. From there, I couldn’t hear any voices, just a vague rumble of sound coming from downstairs. Boone came over, laid her head against my knee, and whined softly.

  I scratched her ears.

  My mother was home.

  There was a pot roast in the oven. Laura had obviously been here for a while. It was after six, and I felt like the day had been three weeks long. I poured myself a glass of wine, and could hear laughter from downstairs. My mother’s laughter. Laura and Bobby were working their magic. Then I heard Sam, and my mother exploded in laughter again. Good boy, Sam. Maybe this wouldn’t be too dreadful after all.

  Alisa came upstairs. I looked into my wineglass, not wanting to meet her eyes.

  “I know what you’re going to say,” I said. “That she’s a funny little old lady and what have I been so bent out of shape about for all these years?”

  “Yes, she is a funny old lady. But I bet she’s also a total bitch.”

  I looked up at her and broke into a laugh. “Alisa, you are by far the favorite of my children this week.”

  She smiled. “Laura wondered if we could bring down dinner. I guess she wants us all to eat together.”

  So I sliced the pot roast and arranged everything on a tray, while Alisa ran up and down a few times with plates, napkins, and wineglasses. I brought the tray of food down slowly.

  The basement looked great. Alisa and Sam had fit their tiny dining table and two chairs into one corner. I noticed that the flat-screen television was not only on, but mounted to the wall on something that looked like it could swivel, making TV viewing possible from the love seat and the double bed tucked into the alcove. There were a bunch of daisies sitting on the refrigerator.

  “Looks good, Mom. What do you think?” I said, setting the food on the table.

  She shrugged. “I suppose.”

  “Now, Gram, you just said it looked like a suite at Disney World,” Sam said.

  “That was a great trip,” Laura said. And it had been. Laura and I had taken Sam, then twelve, and her two sons, seven and five, along with Mom down to Orlando for a whole week. We had a blast. Even Sam, who
kept complaining he was too old, had such a good time. That had been ten years ago, when my mother could walk the length of Epcot without having to stop once to catch her breath. Now I watched her as she put a small piece of meat on her plate and walked to the recliner. She put the plate down on the side table and lowered herself slowly, then sat back, her breath coming in short puffs. Her hand shook just slightly as she picked up the plate again.

  “Is it as comfortable as your old one, Mom?” I asked.

  She shrugged and chewed slowly.

  Why was I so desperate to get any positive reaction from her? I knew better.

  Bobby was talking with Sam about a project he was stuck on at work, and Laura and Alisa were discussing Regan’s wedding. Mom ate, ignoring the talk around her, her eyes on the television. The pot roast was delicious. As I started clearing things up, I asked her if she wanted coffee or tea. She shook her head. The news was on.

  “Well, Mom,” Laura said, “I’m going upstairs, so I’ll say good-bye now so I don’t have to hobble down. Sleep good, okay?”

  Mom waved her hand vaguely. The news was still on.

  We all went upstairs and put things away in silence. Sam loaded the dishwasher. Alisa put leftovers in containers. Bobby took out the garbage. Laura and I sat side by side at the dining room table, just holding each other’s hands.

  “What are we going to do?” she asked me at last.

  I shook my head. “I don’t know. She can’t stay here. Look at her. She hates it; she hates me; it’s impossible. It shouldn’t have to be. I mean, the room down there is perfect for her: plenty of space, I can cook for her, Sam and Alisa are here to keep an eye out, you’re close. If she were any other mother in the world, we’d be set.”

  “I know. I’m so sorry, Kate, that she’s still so mad at you. I’ll never understand it. It was all so long ago.” Bobby stood behind Laura, massaging her shoulders.

  Alisa and Sam sat down with us.

  “What did you two fight about in the first place?” Alisa asked.

  “I told her I thought Adam had been cheating on me. She told me I was being paranoid, that I never appreciated him enough, and that I had always been looking for a reason to leave him. It wasn’t true, I’d loved Adam and worked hard at our marriage, but she had really loved him, the son she never had.” I glanced up at Bobby. “I think it was the fact that he was a doctor,” I said. “She loved you, too, Bobby, I know that. But Adam represented something to her, I think. His own mother died when he was a kid, and he and Mom just really connected from the very beginning. She couldn’t stand my being the least bit unhappy with him.”