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“That doesn’t answer my question. She’s on a ton of meds and she requires oxygen, and she has special dietary needs and she’s diabetic. And I hope you have her in a cleaner place than this. She has no immune system left.”
“You always had a tight ass for rules. Do this, do that. But see, you’re tied up and I’m not. So relax your shrimpy ass while I wheel her in.” She smiled and held up a warning finger. “But don’t you go anywhere.” From the rear of her waistband she slid out a pistol. “Or bang-bang and Mommy is dead. By my hand, not yours. Because I don’t follow rules anymore, I make them.”
As soon as she left, Clarisse struggled against her restraints, but to no avail. She didn’t have long to wait, as the door opened and there was her mother in a wheelchair, with an oxygen line in her nose and a canister of the stuff riding on the back of the chair.
She looked clean, well-groomed, and actually clear-eyed, even with the cataract in the one. She smiled at her daughter and waved like a little girl encountering a friend.
“Lovey, Lovey,” she said. “See my new friend?”
Clarisse looked at the other woman, who said, “We got her med list and other requirements before we snatched her. What, you think we’re monsters?”
“They snatched me, they snatched me!” exclaimed her mother happily. “Broke me out of my prison, way I see it. And they let me smoke, too, a little. But only with the oxygen off. Nobody wants to go boom.”
Behind her the woman placed the pistol against Mommy’s head. “And if smoking doesn’t kill her, guess what will, babycakes?”
“Oh, don’t say that word,” screamed Mommy, putting her hands over her ears. “It’s god-awful.”
“Yes, it is,” said Clarisse. “Only you didn’t seem to care back then, did you? If you can even remember.”
Her mother slowly removed her hands and looked directly at her daughter. “I remember. And I had to pick my battles.”
“Well, you don’t have to worry anymore.”
“Really?” said Mommy with widened, hopeful eyes.
“Really,” answered Clarisse.
“Did you do it?”
“I wish.”
Mommy looked at the other woman. “Was it you?”
She shook her head. “Somebody beat me to it.”
Clarisse said, “Bullshit. If not you, who then?”
“Don’t know, do I?”
“They wrote on the wall. Same thing you wrote on Bruce’s wall.”
“Bruce I’ll ’fess to. But that’s all.”
Clarisse focused on her mother and snapped, “And exactly what battles did you pick to fight? Because I don’t remember a single one.”
Her mother took a moment to eye both women. “You have no idea what all they wanted to do. Not evenyourmother,” she added, turning to look directly at the other woman. She saw the gun but didn’t react to it. “I put my foot down there. I would have told.”
“Like those assholes gave a shit,” said the woman. “Fox guarding the henhouse. Well, not my issue anymore. And I don’t live in the past.” She shivered comically. “It’s too s-s-scary.”
“Youwerescared,” said Clarisse. “We all were.”
The woman stopped her fake shivers. “Well, you should be scared. Now. There are lots of bad people around and you’re looking at one of them. So take it all in. For the memory books.”
“You didn’t use to be this way,” said Clarisse while her mother worried at the cannula in her nose and eyed her lap.
“We didn’t use to be lots of things. Now we are. All of them. Least I am.”
“How is he?” asked Clarisse. “I mean really?”
