Page 71 of Suddenly Dating
Dammit. Harry sighed. He ran his hands over his crown, linking his fingers behind his neck. She was getting to him.
Nineteen
“None of you kids care about me at all. I’m already a corpse to you.”
Lola and her mother were in the transport her care facility had sent to collect her. Lola stared out the window, trying to ignore her mother.
“After all I sacrificed for you kids, this is the way you all treat me. Like I’mnothing.” The force with which she spoke resulted in a spasm of wet, phlegmy coughing.
Lola closed her eyes and pretended her mother wasn’t there. She knew her mother’s attitude was due, in part, to her debilitating illness. But her mother had always been an unpleasant person. How had she produced five likable children? What had Dad seen in her? If Lola could have one day of her father’s life back, she would pose that question to him. A very simple,what the hell, Dad?
The coughing grew worse. Lola grabbed her mother’s hand. “Mom?”
Her mother’s eyes were closed, and she squeezed Lola’s hand, as if holding on for dear life. Her mother was only fifty-four, but she looked as if she were seventy-four. The coughing finally subsided, leaving her mother to wince in pain. “You were the only one who ever cared about me, Lola,” she said hoarsely. “How come you don’t come out and see me like you used to? That’s all I have to look forward to, seeing my kids.”
“I told you Mom. I’m taking a couple of months off to write a book, remember? I’m staying at Lake Haven and it’s hard to get here from there.”
“A book,” her mother said disdainfully. “Everyone thinks they can be a writer, don’t they. So you write a book, and then what? How are you going to feed yourself?”
“Well, I hope to sell it.”
“Don’t be naive, Lola,” her mother said. “I can’t believe you quit a good job to go off and do something stupid. And after Will went to the trouble to get you that job.”
Lola gaped at her. How old would she be before her mother’s words would stop wounding her? “Will didn’t get me the job,” she said tightly. “I transferred jobs to get away from him. Because hecheatedon me, Mom. He was having an affair.”
“Please. He’s a muckety-muck in that firm. He arranged it so he could pork his girlfriend on your desk. That’s what I think.”
Her mother’s disloyalty and insensitivity were often staggering. No matter how many times Lola had been exposed to it, she never got used to it.
They arrived at the awful place where her mother was forced to live. The paint was peeling from the walls, and in the front salon, blinds were missing from one window. The furnishings were standard-issue institutional metal and plastic.
An attendant wheeled her mother into her room. A healthcare worker, tall and broad, shuffled in behind the attendant, reaching into her pocket to produce some pills. “Well, Lois, I guess you ain’t dead yet,” she said.
“Can’t get rid of me that easy,” Lola’s mother said, and laughed, then coughed. “I know you wish I had.”
“You have no idea,” the woman said, and tapped the pills into a little cup, which she handed to Lola’s mother. She tossed the pills down her throat and swallowed them dry.
After the attendant had put her mother in her bed, Lola arranged her pillows behind her while her mother glared disdainfully at her roommate, Mrs.Porelli, an elderly woman with dementia.
“There she is, that empty old bucket.”
“Mom,”Lola said softly.
“She don’t know what I’m saying. She’s a zombie. She doesn’t do shit but watchWheel of Fortuneall fucking day.”
“Language, Lois,” the healthcare worker said.
“Shut up, Roberta. Lola, pull those covers up to my lap,” she said, and sank back into the pillows with a heavy sigh. “I’m exhausted,” she said, and closed her eyes. The healthcare worker went out of the room.
Lola started to gather her things, but she heard her mother chuckle and glanced around.
“They hire shit-for-brains here,” she said. She smiled, extended her hand, and opened her fist. In her palm were two blue tablets.
“What’s that?” Lola asked.
“Painkillers,” her mother said, and popped them in her mouth, swallowing them dry, too.
“Mom! Where did you get those?”
