Page 7 of Midnight Mass (Priest 1.50)
“Tyler,” she croaked when she answered the phone. “How are you, my boy?”
Drowning in this stupid dissertation. Worried about alienating my wife. Unsure what happens after I get this degree. “Busy,” I answered neutrally as I guided my truck onto I-295.
“Don’t lie to me,” she chided. “I hear all your thoughts in that voice of yours. You never were any good at hiding your feelings.”
No, I supposed I wasn’t.
“How’s Pinewoods Village?” I asked, changing the subject so we didn’t have to talk about the hurricane of stress that was my life right now.
“Terrible,” she complained. “It’s full of old people here.”
I couldn’t help but smile at that. Millie had just turned ninety-two years old and still considered herself apart from “those geezers,” as she often called them. She’d lived independently (and very actively) in Weston, Missouri until just last year, when a vicious bout with pneumonia and a broken hip made it impossible to live on her own. Her children had decided to move her to a nursing home in Kansas City, and after a life being the woman who got shit done—first in her job as one of the first female engineers hired by the state of Missouri—and then later in her church and her community, Millie now had to let people do things for her. Personal things, like helping her brush her hair or tie her shoes.
She was frustrated and miserable and I couldn’t blame her. I would be, too. Which made me all the more determined not to unload my problems on her.
As if she could sense what I was thinking, she said, “You might as well tell me, Tyler. Please. It will distract me from this place. They keep trying to feed me prune juice. Do you know how many years I’ve managed not to drink that stuff?”
I snorted. “I suppose they won’t let you add some gin to that juice?”
“The Baptists run this place and they’re fucking teetotalers,” the ninety-two year old woman said. “Now tell me what’s going on.”
I flicked on my wipers as a light drizzle began to fall. “It’s really nothing, Millie. My dissertation defense is ten days away, and once that’s over, everything will be good again.”
“So you admit it’s not good now?”
I sighed. “I didn’t say that.”
“You might as well have. What is it? Too much studying? Is The Danforth Studio taking too much of Poppy’s time?”
“Both,” I admitted. “It’s both. And Poppy hasn’t said anything about how busy I am, but I feel so guilty…”
“But you love the research and writing, right?”
“Of course I do. I love it so much, which is why this is so hard. And she loves The Danforth Studio and all the work she’s doing. Still…I can’t help but feel like we’re slipping away from each other.”
Millie took a minute to answer. “Has she done anything to make you feel that way? Or are you just inventing doom?”
I almost sputtered at that. “I don’t invent doom—”
“My dear boy, you most certainly do. Look back and really think—is there anything she’s said or done to indicate she’s angry with you? Or frustrated with your absence? Or are you simply projecting your own guilt onto her?”
I hit my turn signal as I crossed lanes to get to the exit ramp for Princeton. “Well. When you put it that way, I guess…maybe I have been letting my guilt take the reins there.”
She coughed—a wet, hacking noise that made the back of my neck prickle. It was the kind of cough that meant hospitals and doctors and tests. It was the kind of cough that, at Millie’s age, couldn’t be ignored.
“Are you feeling okay?” I asked quietly. I didn’t want to contribute to her feeling infirm or helpless, but at the same time, I worried about her. She was part of my family now, as close to my mother and my brothers as either of my grandmothers had been when they were alive. And suddenly, I felt very, very aware of the geographical distance between us.
“I’m fine,” she said after she finished her coughing fit. She was trying to hide it, but I could tell she was having trouble catching her breath. “Just a little cold.”
“Please tell a nurse. They can give you something.”
She made a scoffing dismissive noise. “They can give me prune juice and more bedrest. And if I spend another day in bed, I will starting digging an escape tunnel with the spoon they send in with my Jell-O.”
That made me laugh. “Okay, Millie. I believe you. Just feel better and have a good Thanksgiving, okay? I know Mom is planning on stopping by.”
“I hope she stops by with some real food,” Millie muttered. “Goodbye, Tyler.”
“Goodbye, Millie.”
