Page 10 of I Can't Even

We were silent for a few moments. I heard the clock ticking in the corner, the rattle of silverware and plates as my sisters set the table in the dining room, and the quiet rasp of Babs’s breathing. That was new.

“Enjoy sleep when you can.” She glanced away from me and out at the dark night sky. “I don’t sleep well anymore.”

This seemed like a solid opportunity to ask her what was going on. I took it. “Ba...er...Mom. How are you, really?”

Her frail body stiffened and she turned to me with one of her frostiest expressions; her pale blue eyes looked positively wintery and I half expected snowflakes to shoot out her nose. “I’m fine, Julia, just fine. Thanks for asking.”

May in Gull’s Harbor was generally around seventy degrees during the day and in the fifties at night. The town maintained a perfect year-round temperature which was the reason so many people loved it, except for right now. As if Babs could control the atmosphere, I swear the temperature in the room dropped to freezing.

“Obviously, you are not fine,” I persisted, surprised I didn’t see my breath when I spoke. I tried to sound reasonable but when she rolled her eyes like a moody middle schooler, I lost the battle. “Listen, I didn’t come all this way—”

“Stop!” Mom held up her thin, age-spotted hand as if she could physically ward off my words. “This isn’t about you. It’s about me. And I say the status of my health is between me and my physician, no one else.”

Seriously? Babs was really going to play it that way? With her obviously wasting away and the three of us, her daughters, uselessly flapping our hands in dismay because we had no freaking idea what the hell was going on?

My temper spiked. This was likely the only other thing I had inherited from her besides her blue eyes. We were both a tad hot headed.

“You have got to be kidding me,” I snapped. “I raced all the way here—”

“Again, I fail to see how this is about you.” Mom made a tsk noise. It was her go-to sound when she was displeased. It had followed me around my entire life and still had the power to make my insides twist. I shook it off.

Her voice was infuriatingly calm but the two spots of color on her cheeks gave away her agitation. I probably should have felt bad that I’d upset her, but, yeah, not so much.

“Mom,” I said.

Sophie charged into the room right then and announced, “Dinner is served.”

I had no choice but to table the discussion. Damn it.

It became clear when Babs struggled to stand that she was weak and frail, using her cane to push herself up. It was jarring to see. The woman who had always dominated every room she entered with her natural grace and style was now hunched over, her posture that of a question mark.

Babs held out her hand and Sophie offered her arm to lean on while our mom also used her cane to cross the room. Shocked, I felt my throat get tight as I walked behind them and my eyes burned. As if sensing my distress, Sophie reached behind with her free hand and squeezed my fingers in reassurance.

It hit me then, all at once, that Babs really was dying and like everything else my mother had ever done in life, she was going to do it on her own terms and to hell with what anyone else thought.

Over the next few days, we settled into a rhythm. Dr. Patel, my mother’s physician for the past twenty years, stopped by daily to check on her. When he did, she always shooed us out of the house.

I balked but both Em and Soph took Babs’s side. They felt that as long as she had the wherewithal to be in charge, then we should respect her wishes. It chafed. Because I was outnumbered and had no choice, I fell in line.

Sophie had her own family to care for but as soon as Harry and Hannah left for school, she arrived at the house to sit with Babs. My older sister took the morning shift, staying most of the day until Em came home from work, when she left to make dinner for her family.

Em had cut to part-time at her insurance job and worked mornings, spending the afternoon and evening to fetch and carry for Babs. This meant the night shift was all mine, so I slept in and managed my online clients in the afternoon. I clocked in with Babs at eleven o’clock and stayed through until Soph arrived at seven in the morning. I wasn’t sure who was less thrilled with me on nights, me or Babs, but I had the most flexible work schedule, so it only made sense.

As Babs’s breathing became more of a struggle, Dr. Patel put her on oxygen. The steady hiss of the machine became the background noise to which I dozed in the recliner beside her divan. She drifted in and out of sleep, waking only when I had to give her the pain medicine the doctor had prescribed.

Once in the wee hours of the morning, she woke with a start and peered around the room as if trying to remember where she was. I took her withered hand in mine and gave it a gentle squeeze. “It’s all right, Mom. I’m here. I’ve got you.”

Her pale blue gaze latched onto my face, flickering over my features. With a curl of her lip, she yanked her hand free, shut her eyes, and turned her head away.

Instantly, I was seven years old again, bringing her a bouquet of Queen Anne’s lace and black-eyed Susans that I’d picked in a field up the hill. She accepted the wildflowers, looked at them and then at me without a hint of a smile when I’d dared hope for a hug. She’d opened her hand and dropped the flowers into the dirt. “There’s a bug on them.” She’d walked away, leaving me gutted.

Tears coursed down my cheeks, just like they had that day, as I gazed at her frail back. I rubbed my eyes with the heels of my hands. Why was I here? Why was I putting myself through this? It wasn’t worth it. She wasn’t worth it.

“Why?” I asked. “Why do you hate me so much? And why did you ask for me to come?”

I thought Babs was asleep. I didn’t think she would answer. Instead, she turned and glanced at me over her shoulder. In a tired voice that was no less scathing for the exhaustion in it, she said, “I never asked for you.”

She closed her eyes again and fell into a deep medicated slumber. I slumped back in my chair, feeling as if she’d taken a scalpel and cut my heart out with a surgeon’s precision. She hadn’t asked for me? Then why had my sisters said she did? It didn’t require a genius IQ to puzzle it out. Babs didn’t need or want me here but my sisters did.

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