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“Hello?” I shoved the handheld receiver between my shoulder and ear, putting down my handful of mail retrieved from the box outside. I opened the refrigerator door, scanning the shelves for food besides leftover organically sourced compost grown berries.
“Winnie! Baby, how are you?” Mom sounded cheerful, ridiculously so, like she was glad I was out of the city and not causing her trouble. Her voice was New York nasal, all bagels and lox, but spicy, and not to be confused with our neighbors from the Jersey shore.
“Good, Mom, I just got back with the fur-beasts from the vet appointment.” She rambled on about my aunt’s bleeding heart for rescuing animals, and I thought if she knew she was leaving them with me the plant killer, she’d probably come back from her trip quickly.
“I think there’s something wrong with your cell phone, though.” Mom said. I looked around and grabbed it from my bag, seeing the bars of service show virtually nothing here.
“I think I need a different carrier up here. Maybe the cell service is wonky, or you could reactivate my international calling plan. I mean the woods up here are practically another country.” Giving up on food, I opened the freezer and pulled out a Ben & Jerry’s ice cream in some caramel and chocolate concoction. I pulled the drawer open and looked for the biggest spoon I could find, but grabbed a fork instead, stabbing deeply into the frozen treat. Somebody should really do some dishes around here and then I remember that someone is me. Damn.
“I’m not doing that so you can whine to your father and get out of this, Winsome. Did you forget to pay your bill?” Mom sounded so accusing when she asked things like this.
I scoffed with a laugh. “No. I paid it.” I think I paid. Shit. I might have to check and see if I paid it. Now I was distracted trying to remember my phone’s password so I could check my bill online and make sure I paid it since my auto-billing wasn’t hooked up for that. I shoved a double bite of ice cream in my mouth, sucking it down with a cool burn in the back of my throat that made me pant and run hot water over the fork.
“Oh and, honey, don’t forget about applying back to school while you’re up there. A business degree is like a high school diploma these days, a dime a dozen to get your foot in the door.” Suddenly that chunk of ice cream was freezing my brain in a nuclear fission of pain.
“Huh?” I only heard half of what my mother had been saying. Good grief, I kneeled down to the floor to have Roswell growling and licking my face while Pumpkin waddled over, tooting in my direction. The smell was enough to make your eyes water and your appetite vanish.
“Winnie, are you eating junk food? Seriously? Junk food spikes your sugars and makes you fat.”
“Mommm!” I’d heard none of the important stuff she’d been saying, but my brain centered on the fact she knew I was eating ice cream. The sweet creamy caramel soured in my mouth coupled with Pumpkin’s bodily functions, and I managed to get up and put the fork in the sink and the ice cream in the freezer without gagging.
“Honey, I’m only trying to help you. You’re only young once to catch a nice young man.” What she meant by nice young man was a doctor-lawyer-banker type because I had an expensive lifestyle of not knowing what the hell I wanted to do with my life. I tried that and it didn’t really work out so well. Get a degree in fashion merchandising didn’t exactly open the doors I thought it would. I’d been working out of college for a year and nothing panned out.
“Mom, I got here like yesterday…” Okay, close to a week ago. “And right now I’m busy dog walking and cleaning up poop. I’m checking some things out, but you’re the one who sent me up here for ten weeks unless I kill one of these beasts accidentally.” Anger reset my body temperature quickly.
“Winsome, don’t you try to guilt me. Your uncle had to really pull some strings so you wouldn’t get arrested for the fire alarm stunt you pulled.” This was the point I tried tuning out about ninety percent of what my mother said. “I can hear your grandmother rolling over in her grave as we speak—and your good for nothing father—don’t get me started on what he had to say about it…”
“Geez, you told Dad?”
Mom’s accent was honey thick as she continued on with her list of grievances. All we needed was the Yiddish and my guilt complex would engage in hyper drive.
“Of course I did. Who do you think is going to be paying you to be up there? You think my sister is going to have that kind of money for this fluff holiday?” That part was news to me since my aunt technically cut me a check for five hundred dollars. She probably thought that was for the whole summer, not each week now that I thought about it, groaning. Actually, it was probably for the vet bill.
Damn it.
Goodbye brand new Tiek ballet flats in hot pink on express shipping. I really hoped neon was a fad and I wasn’t missing out.
“So you talked to Dad?” There was only one way to turn this conversation around and it was for me to get Mom talking about herself and not whatever havoc I caused my separated co-parents.
“Have you been listening to anything I just said, Win?”
“Of course, Mom, so are you two going back out again?” My parents had this on-again, off-again romance for the last decade. Short story is that my dad cheated once with a woman he worked with and Mom couldn’t forgive him. I wasn’t sure she should forgive him, but if you think me pulling a fire alarm was bad, it was nothing compared to the craziness my mom pulled when she found out. Dad had been paying for it the last ten years while my mom pulled him in with false hope and then pushed him out right back to the curb. I’d seen more cardboard boxes and moving vans come and go that I no longer felt the anxiety when I drove past one on the highway.
“He always messes it up, Win, don’t get your hopes up.” And wasn’t that the truth?
“Mom, you have to either forgive him or let him go.” And I needed to find a direction and stay on course. It was easier said than done. My parents lived more years apart than they had together. My years growing up were marked by Christmas trees and Menorahs depending on my parents’ relationship status. I think one year we actually made it through all eight nights only to have the whole thing blow up by New Year’s in a fiery crash Dick Clark couldn’t save.
“I know, honey, but I love your dad and it does work until something reminds me of her.”
“I know.”
“Enough about me, Win. Use this time wisely. Your dad is planning to drive up with me in about a month to see you when he gets back from Peru and after the urology conference in Tokyo. He has a residency in Albany he’s considering.” My parents in one car was nothing to get excited about. Their volatility could go south before they even made it ten miles over the George Wa
shington bridge, but it was something.
“Love you.”
“Love you back.” I hung up the house phone, trying to remember what it was I needed my phone’s password for. Oh well. I figured I would remember it later.
