AllFreeNovel
Share Us
After kicking off my shoes and shucking my shorts and t-shirt, I was just stepping into the pants when I heard movement from the stairs.
I didn’t turn around but was delighted when I heard the soft intake of air as Mavis saw me getting dressed in the corner.
I waited until I had the jeans buttoned before turning around and surveying her.
She was in scrubs, and she was staring at me as if she’d never seen me before.
“You done?” I asked gruffly.
Her face was pink from the shower, and though I couldn’t see her baby belly due to the looseness of her scrubs, I could still tell that there was something more there than there’d been the last time she’d been in my shop.
I opened my mouth to say something, probably like ‘you can leave,’ when both of our attention went to the front door.
“Alessio, who is that here so…oh! Mavis! You’re back! I’m so happy to see you!” My mother, the woman that couldn’t help herself from being nice to everyone, no matter what, looked like she was struck with sheer joy upon seeing her. “Would you like a donut?”
Mavis smiled back at my mother, and for one instant in time, I almost wished that that smile was aimed at me.
“Ohh,” Mavis turned to my mother and smiled. “Guilia. You’re so beautiful. And thank you, but no thank you. I’m trying to cut down on all the sugary things because I’ve gained so much weight.”
“You can’t tell that you’ve gained weight,” I muttered underneath my breath.
Mavis’s eyes shot to mine. “What?”
“Aren’t you going to be late?” I asked, not repeating my words.
She looked at her watch and cursed. “I have like six and a half minutes to get there on time. If I run across the parking lot to get into the hospital.”
My mother ushered her out the door, and before I could say another word to her, she was gone, yelling, “Thank you for letting me use your shower,” over her shoulder as she left.
I was sitting down in my office chair, glaring at her stupid foreign-made van backing out of my parking lot, when my mother got back into the office.
“I found a place to work,” she said. “This’ll be my last day bringing you breakfast.”
I groaned and looked at her. “Are you sure you have to work?”
She rolled her eyes. “You know I like to keep busy. And though doing this,” she gestured at my desk that looked almost immaculate in the way she organized it, “keeps me busy, I don’t want to do it every day of the week. I love you, but my brain needs more stretching than what I can get filling out orders, filing paperwork, and making sure you have the correct parts ordered.”
I snorted. “Where did you find something?”
She grinned then. “At the local radio station in town. I am officially on the air at five in the morning until ten thirty when the syndicated show comes on.”
I grinned. “I knew they’d want you.”
My mother, after being fired from Pearl Pope’s place, eventually found a job at a local radio station four towns away. It took her over two years, but eventually she went from a custodian, to working in the sound booth, to being the actual radio personality for over five years.
Everyone loved her so much, especially when she was dubbed ‘The Italian Mama’ by a local celebrity. She became the person that ‘told you like it is’ and ‘never went easy’ on anyone, no matter how hard the subject matter.
It was my mother’s job, and eventually her radio personality self, that helped raise the money to give me lifesaving surgery when I turned eighteen years old.
If she hadn’t had that job, I didn’t think that I would be alive to tell the tale today.
“That’s great, Mom,” I told her. “But why didn’t you just take that syndicated deal that was offered to you?”
I knew why she didn’t.
My mother was a special person.
She was the type of person who would root for the underdog every single time.
“The station spoke to me spiritually,” she told me.
My mother believed in ‘spirits.’ She believed in the way someone’s ‘light’ made them shine…or not shine.
She was seriously one of those ‘woo woo’ people that others looked at and thought they were completely whacko.
And sometimes I thought the same.
But she was the gentlest person you’d ever meet in your life, and never pulled her punches when she thought you were being a dumbass.
She only ever wanted to see people succeed.
“Well, Ma.” I groaned as I leaned back in my chair and eyed the box of donuts she put down on the desk in front of me. “I’m going to miss you.”
“You’re only going to miss me because now you’ll have to answer your own phone,” she countered.
