Waiting

I don’t want to go in. Not yet. Does she even want to see me? Is she going to be angry? There’s really only one way to find out. I open the car door and take one last deep breath of crisp, cool spring air before I get out of the car. I stride up the front sidewalk quickly. If I’m going to do it, I might as well get it over with. I open the heavy glass door and enter the lobby. The front desk is at the right hand side of the room. I walk up to it, and the secretary silently looks up from her work.

         “Hi, I’m here to see April Thompson,” my voice is a little weak, so I clear my throat.

         The secretary gives me such a big smile that I can see the places her bleaching strips missed. “And your name is?”

         “Grace Jones.”

         “And your relation to Mrs. Thompson?”

         “She’s my mother.”

         She gestures with her pen to the clipboard on the counter between us, “Alright, just sign in right there, and then you can go ahead and have a seat. I’ll let her know you’re here.” She smiles again before she stands from her swivel chair and disappears through the solid wood door behind her.

         I hate waiting, but more specifically, I hate waiting rooms. They’re awkward, especially when you’re alone. It’s hard for me not to eavesdrop on other people’s conversations, because if I don’t, then I’m left alone to the quiet of my own thoughts. I hate that more than I hate waiting rooms.

         I turn to face the room. It’s a pretty typical waiting room, decorated in pastel blue with weird abstract artwork in various shades of blue and green, clean and sterile, void of any smells or personal touches. It’s empty except for one couple, whispering a little too loudly in the far corner. Lucky me. The woman has her back to me, and I can’t make out what she’s saying exactly, but she is gesturing wildly with her hands, stopping every couple of seconds to wipe the tears from her face, then continuing with her quiet rant not even stopping to dry her hand on something.

         The man just shakes his head at her. “You need more time; it’s too soon. Don’t rush it. You’ll be home soon. I promise. Better to do it right the first time, right?” He looks over the woman’s shoulder at me.

         I divert my eyes quickly to the row of seats that is the farthest from them and move to one of the chairs and sit down. My chair is directly across from the double-doors that my mother will come through. That is if she decides to see me. The couple starts to talk more quietly so I can’t hear them anymore. Darn. I look down at the large men’s watch around my wrist, 9:58 a.m. I wonder if she’s going to come? I set my purse next to me, but keep my keys in my hands so I can fiddle with them, rubbing my thumb up and down the irregular edges of the key to my mom’s red Honda Civic.

         The first time I used those keys was the last time I saw my mom—that was about four weeks ago. I was standing in the driveway outside the house I grew up in; I had the keys ready in one hand and my mother’s elbow grasped tightly in the other so she wouldn’t wander off in her stupor. I unlocked the car, opened the backdoor and halfway guided, halfway pushed her into the backseat.

         “I’m not going anywhere,” she had said. “If you want to go, then go!”

         But I knew she didn’t mean it because, number one, this was her car and I didn’t think she would appreciate me stealing it and, number two, she didn’t fight me. She laid down across the seat before she was even all the way in the car; her left foot still rested on the driveway. I rolled my eyes, and then lifted her foot and placed it on the floor of the car. Before closing the door, I noticed the long chain that my mother always wore under her clothes had come out, and the large gold ring that it held was resting up high on her neck. It was the one thing of my dad’s that she had kept, well, that and his watch which she eventually gave to me. My mother took the ring in her left hand and slipped her index finger into it and rubbed it gently with her thumb.

         The couple in the far corner got up, kissed goodbye. The man exited through the doors I had previously entered and the women exited through the double-doors across from me. I looked back down at my watch, 10:06 a.m. She’s not coming. She doesn’t want to see me.

         Twelve years ago my dad died. I don’t remember much about it except that Mom used to sit on the left side of Dad’s hospital bed, holding his hand between both of hers, and she would play with his ring. She never looked at what she was doing or even at him; she just stared with lifeless, glazed over eyes out the hospital room window. I tried so many times to figure out what it was that she was looking at, but we were up on a high floor in the hospital and from where she was sitting the only thing visible was the sky. At five years old I wondered what was so fascinating about that.

         I always sat on the other side of Dad in a chair that stood a couple of feet from his bed, and, unlike my mother, I spent a good deal of time looking at him. He looked strange; he was not the young, dark-haired man with bronzed skin that I’d lived with all my life. His face had the appearance of someone 30 years older. His head was mostly bald with only small, thin patches of white peach fuzz scattered here and there. His skin was pale and almost see through, like a ghost covered in a network of blue cobwebs. He was not the same strong, vibrant man who used to carry me around on his shoulders or swing me around in a circle by my arms until they felt like that were going to fall off. His body looked weak, fragile and much thinner than before. His eyes were closed most of the time, but even when he was awake, his face looked dull and lifeless. He was only a shadow of the man I knew as my father.

         Mom and I spent many long days at the hospital with Dad; we only left when the nurses kicked us out. But then one day, Mom got up from her normal seat by Dad’s side and walked over to the window. She stared down at the full parking lot down below for what seemed like forever: no smile, no frown, no laughter, no tears—just her expressionless, glazed over look. That day we left the hospital early, and we never went back.

         On the way home, Mom didn’t cry and neither did I. But, later that night when I was all tucked into my warm covers and slowly drifting off to sleep, I heard a sudden crash. I nearly jumped out of my PJs. I heard another. I sunk under my covers and curled into a tight ball. The crashing continued long into the night. It sounded like a band of cymbal players had been let loose downstairs. The next morning when I went down stairs for breakfast, the house was spotlessly clean, but every glass dish, vase, trinket, even the family pictures were gone.

         In one night, my mother had stolen all the pictures of my dad and destroyed them, leaving me with only five years of fragile memories. But that’s okay, she’s not the only one who can take things away—the day we left home I took something from her.          

         After I shut the door to the backseat, I opened the driver’s door, sat down, closed the door and locked us in, remembering to use the child locks just in case she woke up and decided to do something stupid. I started the car and put it in reverse. But before I backed out of the driveway, I reached into the back seat and grabbed my mom’s purse which was still wrapped loosely around one of her arms. I gently untangled the strap from her arm and set the purse on my lap. I dug quickly through the purse’s many pockets until I found what I wanted: a small orange bottle with a white cap and a white label with my mom’s name on it. I rolled down the window and threw the bottle out into the front yard then rolled the window back up. I let my foot off the brake; the car rolled slowly down the driveway. I drove down our street and turned at the first right. At the end of that street before the main road, there was a red light. As I came to a stop at the white line, I looked back at my mother. Her head was tilted to the side so I could see her face. She had a loose smile spread across her face.

         My watch turns to 10:14 a.m. What is taking her so long?

         In the years after Dad died, things changed. The glass was not the only thing in the house to disappear; the big screen, the computer, the stereo system, the art work and a lot of other random things also vanished one by one. Our delicious home cooked meals disappeared and were replaced by TV dinners and Ramen Noodles. Mom disappeared too; she was never home when I got back from school. I always went to our next door neighbor’s house, so she could watch me until Mom got home in the evening.

         But when I was ten, Mom met Scott at the Baltimore Harbor. He had some fancy job in the city, and it was not long before they got married. When Scott moved in, things started to reappear: the TV, the computer, the stereo, the art. Mom quit her job to stay home to cook and clean and spend time with me. Things turned around. Mom smiled all the time—real smiles that spread from her lips to her whole face. She was happy again. I thought life was finally getting back to the way it was before Dad died. But I was wrong.

         The smile on her face in the backseat of the car was not one of happiness, but one of blissful unawareness, and it was worn on a different kind of face than that of a beautiful and happy newly wed woman. Her left cheekbone was adorned with a puffy, purple bruise that was noticeably larger than when I’d first put her in the car. Her forehead, just above her left eye, was the starting point of a small stream of bright red blood that trickled down to the other side of her forehead getting trapped and clotting in her eyebrows along the way. Her lips were swollen and bleeding in a line that drained down her mouth and mixed with the drool seeping from the corner of her mouth to make a little reddish stain on the tan fabric of the car seat. The metallic scent of blood filled the car.

         I wish I could say that day was the first time I’d seen my mom like this, but that wouldn’t be the truth. Things were good with Scott for a while, but looking back, there were signs; Mom and I just didn’t take much notice of them—the jealous looks he gave when Mom would spend time with me instead of him, the way his voice rose at the slightest annoyance, the way he’d storm off over the littlest things. But then, when I was thirteen, Scott lost his job, and the subtle signs weren’t so subtle anymore. He and Mom fought a lot more, and it wasn’t just yelling; he started grabbing her and slapping her. In the beginning of it all, he would beg for her forgiveness, and she would give it. Eventually, he got another job working for his family’s business, but the fights didn’t stop; they escalated.

         One evening when I was fourteen, Mom was cooking dinner just like always except, this time, dinner was late. She hadn’t been feeling well recently, so she’d gone to an appointment with the doctor after she’d picked me up from school that afternoon. We got home later than usual. She was rushing, trying to finish on time—Scott didn’t like it when dinner was late.

         I watched her from our small kitchen table.          “Can I help?”

         She smiled weakly at me. “No, I’ve got it.” She seemed on edge. She stirred the pot of boiling water and spaghetti with one hand and rubbed her stomach with the other. She was staring the pot down like that would help the pasta cook faster, but of course it didn’t.

         We heard it at almost the same time: the engine, the car door, the keys, the front door, the footsteps, the huff. Scott was home. He trudged into the kitchen tracking mud onto the floor with his dirty work boots. He looked at the empty kitchen table, then at Mom, still stirring the spaghetti methodically. She didn’t look at him.

         “That better be ready when I get back,” he said as he pointed forcefully at the pot.

         He turned and stomped up the stairs. We didn’t move until we heard the bedroom door close. Mom got the plates down from the cabinet and started dishing the pasta.

         “Mom, there’s no way that’s done.” I stood up from my chair at the table.

         “Go to your room, Grace,” she said quietly.

         “But Mom he’s gonna...”

         “Don’t argue with me. I said go!” Her face was strained and her eyes watered, from the sting of the steam coming off the pot or from fear of Scott, I didn’t know. I went up to my room and waited for the fireworks.

         I heard Scott go back down the stairs, and I couldn’t resist the urge to sneak back down stairs. I hid in the living room behind the sofa where I could peek around and get a partial view of the kitchen, but where I was still relatively out of sight.

         Scott was sitting at the table across from Mom. He took one bite of the undercooked spaghetti and slammed his fork down, stood up and flipped the table on its side. It all happened so fast I didn’t see everything, but the next thing I knew, Mom was on the floor with a bloody chin, cradling her stomach with both arms. He didn’t wait for her to get up. He walked over and started kicking her in the stomach. She was screaming and crying with her arms wrapped around her mid section like armor. When he wasn’t kicking her, he was throwing things: utensils, plates, pots filled with just under boiling water, anything, everything he could get his hands on.

         I just crouched there behind the sofa, silent, shaking, my heart pounding violently against the walls of my chest. I didn’t stop it. I didn’t run. Nothing. I just watched and waited for it to end.

         I’ve never forgotten that smile she gave me in the kitchen that day because, even though it was not a big one, it was the last real one I got from her. After that day, her smiles became distant and disconnected. After that day, the orange bottles started to show up.

         The light turned green, and I turned the car onto the main drag of our little town. My foot was heavy on the gas pedal. I may not have done anything to help her during that first beating but no more. Despite Mom’s protesting, I put her in the car and drove both of us away from everything—for good.

         And now four weeks later, I’m here in the waiting room at the rehab hospital. I sit fidgeting with my keys and staring at my watch, wondering if Mom is going to be mad at me for what I did or happy or sad or maybe just numb, wondering if we can ever get back to normal, wondering if Mom is just going to take us right back to Scott.

         My watch says 10:17 a.m.

         The double-doors swing open. I look up, and my mom is there in front of me for the first time in a month. I slowly rise to my feet as my eyes wander over her face. Her bruises are healed; her hair and make up are beautiful, and her smile is wide and bright and real. Her eyes lock on mine—they start to well up—her smile wavers a little as she walks toward me, reaching out her arms. I fall into them. I don’t realize that I am holding my breath until my lungs start screaming. I take a quick breath to relieve them, and for the first time, I let it all go: Dad, Scott, the drugs, my fears, my memories, everything. It all rushes out of me. My stolid face begins to break, and the tears begin to fall. I wrap my arms tightly around my mother’s waist and rest my forehead on her shoulder.

         “I’m sorry” She whispered. I can feel her tears dripping onto my neck. “I love you, Grace.”

         The wait is finally over.