Casually Compromised - Book 1

Telegraph Hill

My mother is fading away.

In my collective family's eye she's well taken care for, 24hr aid, financially sound, nice home, occasional visits- everything a 90 year old mother of six needs.

To me she's fading. Locked alone in huge empty house. She's waiting to die often telling me she's living too long. Is this a fate for me I wonder, powerless.

Before my father passed we had a plan. My father was an engineer, he had plans for everything and the plan for one of them passing was that family would move in. My sister was tee'd up for the task but couldn't handle it emotionally in the end. I should of taken the role, it wouldn't of been easy and we'd still have help but my brothers saw me as the youngest, less likely to succeed perhaps and definitely unorganized too messy. Unfit for this responsibility I suppose.

We were all seemingly content to watch her die.

Mom wasn't getting up today. My sister texted the family someone need to check on her even though my sister lived five houses down from her. That was complicated. My sister was like my dad strong and independent. She took on the role of primary care giver but this wasn't her life. Again it's complicated.

Ally and I went to the house, checking in. My mother enjoyed her resistance not wanting to get up. We played our honey it's good to see you games. I told her I was worried breaking the delusion from her mind- she didn't want to see her youngest worried. She got up to take a shower.

Ally and my sister debated on whether or not my mother had a urinary track infection- I hated this diagnosis, it would be a universal moniker to describe my mother. True or not it was another ruse to get her to a doctor, and the doctor would say go to the ER and the ER would commit her and we'd watch her take yet another blow to the self. The hospital was where people would go to die in a depressing diatribe of repeating who you are and what your problem was 700 times in a shiny stainless steel complex of the latest technology, where no one seemed to know anything.

I was a sadistic flosser. I mean I was really really mean to my teeth. Maybe this is how I endured the pain of living from time to time, watching my mother wither, my fathers memory. Fuck those back molars, I'm gonna floss the shit outa them.

I could hear Ally explaining to my mom she has a UTI and my mom resisting the shit out of her. The last thing a 90 yr wants to hear is another reason to take more drugs more shit that's wrong with you.

Ally was in justification mode, she wanted to be right more than just being present. I know she wanted to get outa here home and back to her own shit but she felt noble for a moment convinced the UTI found and mom fixed. I was angry. I felt like flossing.

"You going to club tonight?" Ally said breaking out her knitting.

"Maybe.." I replied. I wasn't planning on it but now maybe I should. Who was darker the dark crow or my own wife high on the fact she eyeballed some bullshit diagnosis for my mom, yet another drug for consumption.

Was I any better? This is exactly the kind of misguided feelings I hated, these would bring out some seriously sadistic flossing, drinking and pussy parade if I let it. I needed to get addicted to running or maybe cutting myself, maybe I needed another form of pain.

"Wars have created so many romantic ballads..." my mother said easing back into her chair.

It took me 3 hours to get her up. She really didn't like to do much of anything but sleep, racing death to the finish. Mom made me happy and melancholy all the same.

We were listening to Billie Holiday, her favorite. Billie lived a tortured life- my mother would tell me time and time again as if she was best friends with Billie. My mother would go thru the motions singing along with Billie blasting thru the sunroom. Mom was hard of hearing and hated wearing her hearing aides so we had to blast the music near rave level.

"I was a sock hop girl ya know... " my mother told me, the music pulling her back in time as she stared into the speaker.

I got my work done next to her, scribbling away notes from pervious meetings. I see the smirk in my mind, traces of Vera in my head. Replaying her back, what was my brain up too? Was it the music? I was sullen with the sexy intoxication of Billie Holiday, watching my mother smile from end to end listening to the music of her youth- the forties. Vera was a notion in my head, that look. Enough to keep me wondering? Like my mother, what was she wondering?

"This is pure america honey...' my mother told me filing her nails, and biting them all the same. Billie filled the room.

"I used to cut school, take the street car.. go see them play." she smiled, reveling in her bad conduct.

"I wouldn't tell my mother of course." she said laughing.

"I used to do daring things." she said assertively, as if to inform me on a thing or two. I loved the rebel in my mother.

"I remember a play came to town that was condemned by the catholic church. It was a fantastic play all about the pointlessness of war. I told the pastor afterwards, saying I wasn't sorry for seeing it. I had to say four Our Fathers as pence." she said.

To club or not to club was on my mind.

"Have you been a bad boy?" my mother asked noticing my contemplation. She read me too easily.

Sometimes I try recalling memories where either my mother or father taught me about the birds and bees. I always come back to the same memory, me 19 in the kitchen and my mother awkwardly saying...

"Surely you've figured it out by now... talk to your father. Have some cake." sliding a piece of cake my way, thanks mom!

Some thirty years later, still figuring it out.

Pity is a poor man's an aphrodisiac.

Sad and sullen this afternoon. Maybe the club was what I needed next. Yank me out of the funk. Separate me from my cash as if that'd put a smile on my face? Ally was blowing up my phone wondering where I was, we had shit to do.

"You know how cute you are?" mom perked me up.

"You're a wonderful man with ladies in your life you know..." she smiled filing her nails with even more vigor now. Little did she know.