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I shouldn’t feel that way. Ryker even assured me that sex wasn’t what he’s looking for in exchange. But we will be married and living under the same roof. I guess those details will still need to be ironed out if I agree.
So I do what any daughter of a mother who’s half Italian but full temper, will do… I lie.
“I have a friend who needs some help staying in the country.”
“Juliet…” she starts, that tone of disappointment in her voice already.
“He has connections to the Hawkeyes and will secure me the event planning contract and will give me Jerrin’s down payment. I just have to help him get his green card and that’s it.”
“His green card? You have to marry this person? Juliet this is absurd,” she says, lifting the spatula and pointing it at me.
“He’ll pay me the money for Jerrin’s down payment and I’ll get a five-year deal with the Hawkeyes that will be sure to pay for Jerrin’s monthly lease.”
“I told you already, Jerrin is fine where he is. And if it’s between you marrying some strange man and Jerrin getting better care, then I’ll just bring him home.”
“You can’t mom, you know you can’t,” I argue.
I love that she wants to take care of him but we've tried this. She works too much and Jerrin needs more hands-on help.
“I can take care of him just fine. He’s my son.”
“Mom, he's twenty-six years old. He needs some independence and someone who will work with him every day. You work six days a week and mostly the night shift or swing shift. You're asleep while he's awake."
“The state-paid facility he’s in is fine then. We don’t need to move him.”
“It’s practically a daycare, mom. They do their best, I’m sure, but this other facility has its own home economics classes where he can learn to cook and do his own laundry. They help him to become more independent. And he’d get his own apartment instead of sharing a bunk bed with other residents. Plus he gets assigned an Occupational Therapist that works with him daily.”
She lets out a sigh, dishes herself a plate of baked ziti, and starts walking towards me. We’ve been through all of this already, but the price tag is hard to swallow.
She sets her plate down and pulls out the chair across from me.
“A good mother would never agree to let you go through with this. Your brother's care should fall on his parent's shoulders… not his sisters.”
I hold my tongue for wanting to curse my father for not being here and lending a hand with everything. But it only hurts my mother more when I bring him up.
“I found a way to make this work. I don’t need you to agree, I just need your blessing… please,” I say, reaching out and covering her right hand lying on the oak table with my own.
“How does someone who’s struggling to stay in the country have that kind of money and influence with an NHL team to give you that? And if you say he’s a mob boss—”
“No! God no,” I chuckle, although sadly, she would like that answer better than the one I’m about to give her.
That’s how much she hates pro players. She’d rather I married an Italian mobster than marry a rich jock.
This is the question I’ve been dreading most all evening.
I pull my hand back off of hers in an effort of self-preservation. She might bite my hand off when I give the last damning piece of information.
“He’s a… well, he’s a hockey player that I met the night I went to the game with Shawnie.”
“A hockey player!” my mother practically screams. “Oh no—absolutely not. You know how I feel about professional athletes.”
“This isn’t an actual marriage. I’ll be in and out, two years max.”
“Two years? Juliet… that man is going to ruin your life.”
“You don’t even know him.”
“I don’t have to know him. They’re all the same. It’s all rainbows and puppies now but wait until the career he spent his life dreaming of burns down with a line drive to the kneecap. Just wait until the man you fell in love with turns into a shell of the man he once was and tries to grasp at his old glory days by spending his nights with women half your age.”
