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So with my heart firmly lodged in my throat, I had taken my savings and socked it into the townhouse. Which, thankfully, had been on the market long enough that the sellers were happy for any bid.
I had such high hopes about the whole situation.
Until Jacob started sneaking out.
I knew right where he was going too.
To see his damn uncle.
See, I had been lucky when I was young to snag myself a job at the post office. I had been luckier that, when I found out I was pregnant, they had allowed me to switch to the graveyard shift. It allowed me to be with Jacob all day, then get him to sleep at night, and leave him with my mother in case he woke up. It had been perfect. I got to go to every school event for Jacob, be there to nurse him when he was sick, help him with homework, get dinner on the table for him.
But then Mom started forgetting things. And you know how it is at first, you blame it on age, you blame it on being tired, on side-effects from one of her medications.
The denial keeps you going until, eventually, the signs are too strong to ignore anymore.
Then there were the doctor visits, the tests, the diagnosis that changed everything.
I had to be home to take care of her all day, to see to her needs. Which meant that, at night, Jacob was on his own.
I guess I had overestimated his loyalty to his grandmother, since the woman had helped raise him. That was my fault for thinking a headstrong teenaged boy would have the forethought to realize his grandmother left alone at night could wander around confused, walk into the street, and get hit by a car. I thought that was common sense.
Clearly, we needed to have a sit-down about it.
"But maybe he would just resent me for putting my responsibilities on him," I mumbled to my mother, reaching out to stroke my hand down her robe-covered arm.
What were my options here, though?
Hiring an aide I wasn't sure I could afford would ensure that my mother got the care she needed. But it didn't help me with the Jacob situation. Changing my hours would only mean I couldn't be there during my mother's waking hours. Or my son's, for that matter.
"Did you ever feel like the whole world was spinning off its axis, Ma?" I asked, letting out a deep sigh, feeling my shoulders slump forward as I did. "Of course you did," I answered for her.
My mother had been a widow from the ripe old age of twenty-seven when my father had fallen off a roof at a construction job, going into a coma and then dying from his injuries two days later, leaving her with a five-year-old and a one-year-old me. Unlike me when I found myself pregnant, she didn't have her mother to fall back on. She had nobody, in fact. She probably felt like her world was falling apart all the time. I suddenly felt like a really shitty daughter that I never truly considered that before. And now that I did, I couldn't talk to her about it, commiserate with her over it.
God, sometimes it felt like the weight on my shoulders was pushing me slowly but surely into the ground. And no matter how hard I tried, I couldn't shrug it away, I couldn't get my legs out of the dirt.
"Okay!" I said, shaking off my mood, blinking back the tears in my eyes, forcing a cheerful tone. "What do you say to some oatmeal?" I asked, jumping off the bed, helping her out.
She was, thankfully, still mobile, still capable of carrying out her daily tasks even if she sometimes got confused in the middle of them, and needed a gentle reminder of what she was supposed to be doing.
We're taking a shower now, Mom. We need to rinse the soap out of your hair.
I didn't know what the future held for her. The doctors could give us best and worst case scenarios, but no guarantees. So I was trying to make the most of this stage before things started getting worse.
As I was walking her down the stairs, I could see out the front window into the neighbor's driveway where a bike was parked beside a simple black SUV. The SUV was where a bouncy-stepped girl of about twelve was making her way toward, her knee-length plaid skirt and Mary Janes making it clear that while this side of town did have a good public school system, this girl went to private school.
I caught myself standing there staring, waiting, it seemed, for the father to emerge from the house, making his way toward the car as well, all six-foot-something of him with his wide shoulders and somewhat bulky muscles.
