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“Your man!”
Post-it note to self: Never ask Mommy another question again. But you know you will because you can’t help it.
“I feel like shit,” said Agnes, not waiting for an answer and probably already having forgotten the question.
“You actually look better than last time.”
“Can I come and live with you?”
“We tried that, remember? You tried to stab me with a cheese knife. Putting you here was actually a pretty fair compromise in lieu of my having you arrested.”
“I forget things,” said Agnes.
“That’s okay. I don’t. Especially cheese knives to the jugular.”
“You look rich. Are you rich? Is my little girl rich?”
“I do just fine. That’s why you can afford to live here. Because of your little girl.”
Her mother would never remember this, because her brain was full of rot, too. But it made her feel good to say it.
“I never thought you’d make anything of yourself,” Agnes said with a yawn.
“You always said I was full of surprises.”
“Did I?”
“No, I’m lying.”
“How’s your father?”
“Dead to us. Over twenty years. We covered this before.” She pantomimed the shotgun to the mouth, pulled the invisible trigger and jerked her head back, although her mother wasn’t even looking.
That was okay because the pantomime had been bullshit.
“I forget things,” said her mother, promptly forgetting it but then surprising her daughter by saying, “Did he treat you nice? Did he love you?”
Clarisse’s fingernail rubbed the arm of the chair she was sitting in. She rubbed it so hard, part of it broke off and fell to the floor. She looked down at the fuchsia-colored piece of herself resting on the cheap, stained carpet and said, “How have your bowel movements been lately? Firmer?”
Her mother sucked down the last of the Ensure and handed the empty to her daughter, who promptly disposed of it.
“Why do you keep coming here?” asked Agnes, licking her cracked lips, caused by oxygen deprivation, caused by the COPD, caused by the Camels. “You hate me and I know it.”
“I’m your daughter. And Iampaying for this place. So I like to make sure you’re gettingmymoney’s worth.”
“Do I have other children?”
“Not that you ever mentioned,” she lied.
“What is your name again?”
“Lucretia.”
The older woman sniggered. “That is one funny-ass name.”
“Says Agnes.”
The lips curled back. “I don’t like you much, you little bitch.”
