35 McKenna
McKenna
It’s been a full month since I’ve had a coherent conversation with Glory. It’s not that she’s asleep every time I visit, but
she’s so out of it. She stares into space, or she says things that have no logical relation to anything around us. I’m not
sure if she knows I’m here, if she knows who I am, or if she even knows herself anymore. I’m aware she can live many years
in this state, and the doctors tell me she’s still in good shape physically, so she probably will. But when I watch her gazing
off into the horizon for endless hours, as if she inhabits some great abyss I can’t access, it’s clear I’ve already lost her.
I’ve been sitting with her in the first-floor sunroom for half an hour now.
The staff uses a wheelchair for her sometimes, even though she’s capable of walking when she feels like it.
Mauricia wheeled her down here with me, and she’s been sitting in that sad-looking contraption with a blanket over her lap and her eyes turned toward the window ever since.
There’s a light dusting of snow on the grassy yard outside, a few scrawny birch trees in the middle distance, their leafless branches reaching up toward the sky as if they’re begging for warmer sunshine to come back.
It’s not a view I would choose to get lost in, and the Glory I know, the one who could out-garden anyone in the neighborhood, would never have settled for this kind of sparsity in her own backyard, much less chosen to stare at it as though stargazing.
But this is a different Glory. This one is so much quieter and thinner than the one I’ve always known. This one doesn’t ask
for saltier fries or make jokes with strangers. She just stares into space, locked inside of herself, moving her lips periodically
as though having a conversation only she can hear. No amount of repeated effort on my part can change what’s happening to
her. It’s completely out of my control, which makes it even harder to bear.
Were she still her old self, she’d probably have long since figured out my housing disaster. It’s getting harder to keep up
my physical appearance without any steady home base. Between my classwork, clinic hours, and running around campus looking
for the least conspicuous places to brush my teeth, constantly switching up my rotation of warm places to sleep, I’m just
wiped out, and it must show. Mauricia is definitely catching on. She’s been cramming extra plates of food onto Glory’s tray
when I’m around, and she actually let me spend the night two nights ago. “It can’t be all the time,” she told me the next
afternoon, her voice firm, but she put a hand on my arm in a gesture that reached something raw inside me. I had to turn away
so she wouldn’t see my eyes well up.
I’ve been bringing my knapsack inside during every visit. If Glory’s not going to talk with me anyway, I might as well get
schoolwork done. I haven’t felt like looking at my notes today though. I just want some time to sit in the silence and be
sad.
But then my phone pings with a text.
Leo. I’d been so hopeful when he told me he could get proof of what really happened at Hollyhock. I’d believed him instantly and wholeheartedly. But as it turned out, the proof he thought he had was long gone.
He’d been flying a drone that night after the storm cleared, letting it hover over Hollyhock. Apparently, lots of drones automatically
save footage of what they pass in flight. If the drone was there at the right time, it was possible Leo inadvertently recorded
the entire act of vandalism and it had just been sitting unwatched on the drone ever since.
But then he told me the bad news. He’d sold the drone online and shipped it to some guy in New Jersey.
“Just write to him and ask him if I can go get it. I’ll buy it back from him,” I said, even though I had no idea what a drone
might cost, and I definitely didn’t have extra funds sitting around to cover it.
It only took two hours for Leo to get back to me that night, telling me he’d written to the buyer.
But that was two months ago now, and the buyer never responded.
I’d long since given up hope, but not Leo. The kid followed up with the guy through some website called DroneTrader no fewer
than six times. There was no reply, and eventually I told him he had to leave it alone. I didn’t want Leo to get in trouble
for harassment, and this quest was a long shot anyway. The drone would have to have been in the exact right place at the exact
right time, and we had to hope the new owner hadn’t yet deleted the footage. With chances so slim, it didn’t seem worth chasing down this
long-lost device.
But when I look at Leo’s message, I feel a flicker of excitement.
The buyer wrote back. He hasn’t been going on DroneTrader so he didn’t see my messages.
I keep looking at the phone, waiting for the next message to come in, but there’s nothing. Not even the little dots indicating
he’s typing. After another two minutes, I lose my patience.
Leo!! What else did he say?
The three dots appear. And then disappear. And then appear again.
I don’t want you to be mad at me for lying. I didn’t lie. I didn’t know I was incorrect.
My heart sinks again.
Me: He doesn’t have it anymore, does he?
I press Send and then hastily add:
I’m not mad at you. This isn’t your fault.
Leo: When he bought the drone it wasn’t for him. It was a gift for his nephew who uses drone parts to build custom remote-controlled
vehicles. He said he’s sure Arnie has disassembled it by now.
Welp. There you have it.
I’m no worse off than I was a minute ago, but somehow, I feel so much shittier. I guess it’s easier to just never get your
hopes up.
I click out of my texts and open Instagram, but the first picture that pops up is Lark and Rae toasting margaritas at a bar.
Nice to see they miss me. I close the app before I can subject myself to any more torture.
“Heather,” Glory says, calling me by my mom’s name again and startling me back into the present.
“Glory, hi,” I say, taking her hand just as Mauricia appears at the doorway and starts making her way toward us.
Glory looks from Mauricia back to me, then down to where I’m holding her hand. She rears back, like she’s affronted by the contact.
“You’re not Heather.” She rips her hand away and slaps me across the face.