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I don’t know what to do with Mylo.
He doesn’t seem like the relationship type which is good because neither am I. It should make this awkwardness between us fade somewhat quickly, once we can both be open about what we want, but do we even need to have that conversation? Those talks are the worst. Plus, there’s just too much on my mind right now to think about how to broach that subject.
My Lyft driver pulls onto Franconia Road, the main street that cuts through the River’s Edge condo development, and I sigh heavily as we pass the playground and communal pool. So many memories, most of which include neighborhood kids telling me my curly hair looks like pubes, or white girls insisting I don’t need sunscreen because my skin is already brown.
A police car passes us, and I instinctively look away and hunch in on myself. At this point, I’ll do anything to avoid the local authorities. Especially Officer Burton. He can rot in hell as far as I’m concerned.
With the condos squished together like an accordion, it can feel like there’s no privacy, but luckily, ours is at the very end of the row, hugging the wooded edge of the Sudbury Cemetery. The cemetery was often where I’d run to when this town was suffocating me to death, oddly enough.
“I’m home,” I call out once I close the front door behind me and kick off my ratty Adidas Sambas.
“We’re over here,” Jackie hollers in a flat tone from the living room.
I walk past the cramped ’80s-style kitchen with yellow tiles and cherrywood cabinets that we’ve cooked so many meals in, and through the dining room into the living room on the other side of the main floor. Off the living room is a patio with four Adirondack chairs spread out around a fire pit and a line of dead plants that have been there since last spring.
I leave my suitcase at the bottom of the stairs and find Mom seated in her old dusty-blue recliner, and Jackie next to her on the floral loveseat that’s been here since before I got my first period. Mom smiles when she sees me, but the smile doesn’t reach her eyes.
She looks smaller than when I last saw her. Much smaller. How can someone shrink so much in two months? Her nightgown is wrinkled in such a way that tells me she hasn’t showered today, and the flatness of her usually volumized, curly pixie cut confirms that.
Jackie gets to her feet and pulls me in for an unexpected hug. Despite her petite frame, she’s surprisingly strong. “You’re on leave, right?” she whispers into my ear. “Tell me you’re on leave.”
“Mmm-hmm,” I mutter back.
“Thank god!” she cheers with a relieved sigh. “Ma, guess what? Sammy is going to be home with you for a while. Isn’t that great?”
“Why?” Mom asks, her mouth forming a concerned frown. “Were you fired, Sammy?”
“No, no,” I tell her. “Nothing like that. I’m just not taking on any new assignments.” I place my hand gently on her shoulder. “You look great, Ma,” I lie, pinning Jackie with a questioning glare. “Any updates from Dr. Fisher I should know about? How are you feeling on those new medications?”
“Ay, ese idiota,”Mom groans, the rock of her chair taking on an aggressive cadence. “He doesn’t know anything.”
Jackie clears her throat. “You hungry?” she asks me, nodding toward the kitchen. “We ordered pizza.” Then she grabs my hand and tugs me along behind her.
“Sure, I could eat.”
Jackie plops two slices of mushroom, onion, and sausage pizza onto a paper plate and shoves it toward me. “The donepezil makes her nauseous, so that’s why she’s lost some weight. She doesn’t like taking it, but you need to make sure she doesn’t miss a dose because, on her good days, she’ll try to convince you she’s already taken it when she hasn’t.” Jackie rolls her eyes. “I swear, she tricks Marty every time.”
I let out a chuckle. “He’s always been a sucker. Remember when she convinced him his fish wanted to live in the pond by Cumberland Farms? He carried that belly-up little blob all the way there, thinking it was still alive and just wanted to move into a new body of water.”
“Well, we all fell for that shit back then.”
“Marty was fourteen,” I remind her.
She laughs, the sound filling the tiny house we grew up in. “Oh yeah.”
Jackie turns her head toward Mom, and my gaze follows, looking through the rectangular pass-through window that separates the kitchen from the dining room. She sighs. “It’s not good,” she says, her tone turning grave. “They said we’d get eight to ten years with her, but it’s only been four and Dr. Fisher said she’s already in the later stages of the disease.”
“What the fuck does that mean? What stage is she in?” I ask, my voice getting shakier with every word. I didn’t think it could get this bad this quickly. It’s only been two months since I was here last. She was having trouble remembering things, but those instances were infrequent enough that it seemed like she had plenty of time.
Jackie’s gaze drops to the floor. “There are seven stages, apparently, and she’s in stage five, which is considered a moderate-to-severe cognitive decline.”
My chest tightens. “So…what, there’s just nothing we can do to slow it down?”
“Marty and I have started pulling out old photo albums and going through them with her. The doctor said that could help,” Jackie explains, then she grabs a notebook from the cubby above the microwave and hands it to me. “I wrote down everything I could think of for you. This has her medications, the side effects she’s experienced with each, the healthy meals we’ve been making her, stuff we’ve noticed from her bad days, and things we’ve been trying to make her feel better when she’s confused.”
I skim through the detailed descriptions that fill the notebook, pausing to roll my eyes when I come across Marty’s doodles. The entire notebook has Jackie’s handwriting, but Marty just had to include the transparent cube and the Superman “S” in the margins like he did when he was a teenager.
Jackie, per usual, was extremely thorough in her notes. Though, my brain doesn’t have the capacity to read them at the moment. If I really want to understand the jumbled letters in front of me, I need to sit down and go through each paragraph a handful of times. Dyslexia is super fun like that.
