She shoots a pleading look at me over my mom’s shoulder, and the automatic assumption that my mom can’t or won’t listen to her grates, even if it’s true. Give her some fucking autonomy, Joanne. I can smell the swollen, tender pieces of your organs, the fluid building up where it shouldn’t. It’s not like you’re the peak of health.
“Hey, Mom,” I say, soft and soothing. “Let me talk to her.”
My mom’s shoulder’s sag. The wooden spoon bangs against her thigh. “I’m sorry,” I mutter to Joanne, and fish in my purse for the eighty dollars I owe her. She wants to take it, I can tell, but she still makes a show of protesting until I insist and insist and insist. As she leaves, I smell pity on her breath.
“What happened?” I ask my mom after the door clicks shut. She’s slumped into the couch, thumb idly tracing the corner of the TV remote.
“The flayed man called me.” She sounds like herself, clear and sure. “He said he visited Bill. He said he’s still hungry. Then Joanne knocked on the door, and I got scared.”
“So you yelled?”
“Yeah.”
“But you kept yelling. You woke me up.”
A childlike craftiness gleams in her eyes. “I wanted her to leave.”
“Okay.” Uncle Bill must have called to apologize or explain about the missing blood. She’s just confused or telling me whatever she thinks will get her the most sympathy. “About the call. Did he leave a message?”
“He said Bill’s an asshole and he’s going to leave us.” Her words begin to run together. “Can’t let him. I can’t . . . be good. We need . . .”
I settle onto the couch next to her. The cushions bend so much more under my weight than hers. She forgets to eat, sometimes, if I don’t remind her.
“I mean, yeah, Mom, Uncle Bill comes and goes, but he always comes back. You’re sure it wasn’t him who called?”
She crosses her arms, thinking. “Maybe. You know I get confused.”
“I know. It’s okay. When you said yesterday that someone was watching you, were you confused then too?”
“No.” She frowns. “You know who he is.” She makes claws of her hands and gestures to her chest, the way she used to when I was a kid and she told me stories during the long late-night drives. “He says Bill is going to leave, and you’re going to leave, and then it’ll be just me and him and his hungry jaws.”
Her words slur, and she blinks slowly, like she’s exhausted. Or like she’s not sure of what she’ll find when she opens her eyes.
“I’m not going to leave,” I assure her. I reach for her hand, but she flinches away, her face going suddenly wooden.
“You’re not going to leave?”
Something’s wrong, but I can’t quite tell what. “Of course not.”
She pushes herself upright, shoulders squared. “You can’t just barge in here. My daughter’s coming home any minute.”
My stomach drops.
“Mom.” My voice betrays me, shaking a little as I round out the word. “Who do you think I am?”
“Stop trying to confuse me.” She twists away, burying her face in the couch cushion. Her words come out muffled by polyester. “Just leave me alone.”
“Okay.” God, this hurts. Every time, so much that I promise myself the next time has to be easier. And it never is. “I’ll be in the other room.”
Usually that’s enough. But not tonight. Tonight, she whips forward and spits, “Get out of my house.”
It’s not your house, I want to retort. I pay the damn rent. Instead, I say, “How about you watch something on TV?”
“Get out.” She rockets upright, leaning hard on the arm of the chair. “Get out! Intruder!”
I know what comes next if I fight her on this. She goes for a knife, or she bangs on the wall, and the night ends in screams and sobs and apologies to the neighbors.
“Okay.” I grab my coat, shuffle my purse onto my shoulder. “I’ll go. I’m leaving.”
