4. Deanna
DEANNA
“Hey, Mom? Can you give me a hand with these?” I grunt as I prop open the door to the house I grew up in, a row home unit in a relatively bad south Philly neighborhood. The hinges creak as I strain to shout over a radio blaring Steely Dan. “Mom? Hello?”
No answer and I’m not sure why I expected one.
With a groan I manage to get the grocery bags into the house, pausing grimly to take in how pathetically empty they are.
I do the math, planning meals in my head, but I know that’s futile.
Mom’s going to make whatever she damn well pleases, no matter how many times I tell her we have to stretch everything.
“There you are, Deanna.” Mom’s in the kitchen like usual.
The stove’s going and she’s got a pot of something cooking.
It smells like her typical Friday evening gravy: red sauce, lots of garlic, whatever random leftovers are still good from the fridge.
It was one of my favorites, growing up, and the nostalgia still gets me.
“Hi, Mom.” I kiss her cheek and start unloading the bags, but I stop a moment later when I hear a thump from upstairs. “What was that?”
Mom sighs, waving a spatula toward the stairs. “It’s only your father. He’s in one of his moods.” She looks at the ceiling and crosses herself, shaking her head like it’s the most annoying thing in the world.
Ice fills my guts. “Dad’s alone up there?”
“He’s fine, hun, you worry too much.”
“You know he’s not supposed to be alone. The nurse?—“
“Left an hour ago. Would you stop it? Pass me that cheese?—“
I hurry out of the kitchen. There’s another thump and an angry yell.
I don’t have time to explain to my delusional mother the situation we’re in yet again.
I take the steps two at a time and burst into my parent’s room, pausing to find my father lying on his side, kicking his legs feebly as he tries to pull on a pair of dress slacks.
“Daddy,” I say, rushing over. “Oh shit, are you okay? Daddy?”
He snarls at me, yanking at the waistband. “Don’t fit anymore. I got a interview in a hour and these don’t fit anymore. The hell you staring at me for, Rosa? Help me out!”
I clench my jaw and brush past the fact that he thinks I’m my mother again. “It’s okay, Daddy, the interview’s over already, you went to it earlier. You did great, did you know that?”
He frowns at me, clearly suspicious, but he lets me get him up onto the bed.
My father was a lion of a man growing up.
In my memory he’s still the big, booming voice from the living room laughing and shouting at the TV, cracking jokes at Christmas, holding court at the dozens of parties my parents used to throw for their coworkers.
We were never rich, but my father was the kind of guy with a million different friends, at least until he got sick.
Then they began to disappear, until now they’re all gone, not that he’d notice.
Now he’s an old man in his seventies, his mane of dark hair turned to a white, wispy frizz, his stubble patchy and poorly shaved by the home aid this morning, his undershirt frayed and worn to the roots.
It kills me, how thin he feels, the bones right under his papery skin.
When I was a girl, he could throw me fifty feet across a pool and still somehow swim over to catch me.
“Hold on, let me help you.” Together we manage to dress him.
I make sure he’s not hurt from the fall and mercifully he seems okay.
He keeps muttering and thanking me and calling me by my mother’s name and asking when the hiring manager is going to call.
I’m not sure what year he thinks it is but it doesn’t matter.
I’m furious with my mother as I help my father down into the kitchen.
He seems calmer now that I’ve convinced him that he’s not late for the interview.
Mom gives him an annoyed look as he sits down and absently fiddles with a stack of newspapers we keep for him.
For whatever reason they seem to settle him.
“Don’t tell me you’re pulling that shit on Deanna, Vinnie. You have to snap out of it.”
I get closer to Mom, standing beside her at the stove. “He’s sick, you know that. Can you stop? You’re going to make it worse.”
“Sick people get better, hun, and your father’s got to get past this.”
“Mom—“
“Sick people get better.” It’s her mantra these days. The four words she clings to like a life raft in the middle of the sea. “He’s confused, that’s all. This morning he was talking about you, did I tell you that?”
I steel myself against the sudden flush of joy. Dad still recognizes us, but only in brief waves and never for long. “I don’t want to hear it.”
“He was saying how proud he is of your field hockey. Remember when you scored those three goals at the state championship?”
“Mom, that was like five years ago.”
“So what? He remembers. Taste this.”
I tell her dinner’s good and slink back to the table.
Dad’s involved in his newspaper, an old one from the looks of it.
I told Prime one time that Dad likes the vintage stuff and occasionally stacks of them appear on my desk at work without any comment.
He never admits it, but I know Prime’s the one hunting it down, though I have no idea where he gets them from.
We haven’t spoken about the Housesitting Fiasco all week. That’s how I think of it in my head: capital H, capital F, a real doozy of a fuck up, but at least he’s been acting normal, at least for him. Except normal for Prime is probably bat shit crazy for anyone else.
The man comes and goes as he pleases. I don’t think he’s ever been to the office before ten in the morning and rarely before noon.
In theory, he runs a successful real estate investment portfolio with a fleet of parking lots as its core earner, but I’m pretty sure he doesn’t do any work.
Most of the time, he signs whatever documents I leave on his desk, and he lets everyone else that works for him do the actual jobs.
It’s a small company, only about twenty employees, but at least the boss is permissive, the paychecks come on time, and the yearly holiday party is a killer.
Dad snaps the paper down abruptly. “Eagles lost again!” He rubs a palm against his face. “Andy Fucking Reid, that cheesesteak guzzling fuck, gonna ruin this town’s good name, I swear on Christ.”
“Don’t swear on Christ, Vinnie,” Mom chides.
“Andy! Fucking! Reid!”
“McNabb’s a good player though,” I say, shooting Mom a glare.
Reid and McNabb haven’t been a part of the Eagles organization in a decade, but it’s always better to play along.
If I try to correct him, Dad will only get angry and upset.
At first it felt terrible, like I was feeding his delusions, but I’ve gotten used to it.
Only Mom ever bothers trying to set him straight, but even she doesn’t do it as often anymore.
At least dinner’s good. I want to grab a bottle of wine, retreat into my bedroom, and put on Netflix, but I have to help Daddy with his nightly routine first. Mom tries sometimes, but she’s too impatient.
Once I found her berating him because he couldn’t remember where they kept the toothpaste, since he thought they lived on a house they’d moved out of before I was born.
Another time she sent him to bed in all his clothes because he couldn’t remember his name.
She cried herself to sleep for a week after that. But sick people get better.
I have dreams. Visions even. Long, detailed fantasies where I win the lottery and can afford full time help for my father, can pay for their expenses without worrying, can move out on my own, make friends my age, maybe even meet a man for once in my miserable life.
Instead, my reality’s this: carefully helping my father shave with an electric razor so he can’t cut himself at eight at night while my mother fusses with the TV that she claims is broken yet again.
I collapse in bed at nine-thirty, wine forgotten downstairs, since I can’t really afford to replace it anyway and I’m too tired to bother getting it.
I have a long weekend ahead of trying to convince my mother that she needs more help while also teaching her the basics of financial literacy, which she flat out refuses.
Vinnie takes care of that. Another one of her mantras.
Except Vinnie can barely tie his own shoes let alone look up their bank account balance and take out funds from their savings.
My ceiling is the same ceiling I’ve always known.
Pathetic, I know. Twenty-three, still living with my parents, my choices whittled down to nothing.
No college because we didn’t have money and my dad was already starting to show signs of his illness.
No prospects because what’s a high school graduate going to do with herself?
I’m deep in self-pity mode when my phone buzzes.
I’m tempted to toss it away. There’s only one person in the whole world who would call me this late at night and I don’t want to hear from him.
But he’s also my only lifeline right now, and as much as I hate it, I can’t risk alienating my asshole boss.
“What, Prime?” I blow out an annoyed breath and don’t care if he hears it.
“What are you doing right now, Deanna?” His voice is low and sexy. God, I hate him for that. It’s like he was born to talk dirty.
“I’m going to sleep.”
“Are you indecent? I only ask because the last time I saw you this late, you weren’t.”
I grit my teeth. I can’t believe he’s mentioning that out of nowhere, the bastard. “You weren’t complaining if I remember right.”
A soft, sensual chuckle. “You’re right. I’m still not.”
“What do you want, Prime? If you’re just calling to mess with me, I’m hanging up.”
“Wait. Hold on. It’s work.”
“I’m extremely skeptical of that.” I check the time. “There’s no way you’re working at almost ten on a Friday night.”
“You remember that investor we’ve been chasing? David Sorensen?”
I jerk upright. “Don’t tell me you’re talking to him.”
“Took him to a club, actually.”
“Prime—“
“It’s fine.” He sounds annoyed now, but screw him.
David Sorensen is a player in the real estate world and we’ve been circling him for ages.
I’ve been working his angle for months, sending him proposals, talking up the parking lots and the expansions we have planned, and all Prime has to do is stay the hell out of it, or at least not screw it up.
“Why the hell are you out with Sorensen right now?”
“He called me up and wanted to meet. I suggested that new spot that opened near Passyunk.”
“Why didn’t you tell me that?!”
“Because I knew you’d react like this.” He lets out a low, frustrated growl, and I hear street noise in the background.
“Are you calling me from the meeting right now?”
“Yes.”
“Is Sorensen waiting for you?”
“Yes, he is.”
“Prime!”
“I need numbers, Deanna. I know you’re off the clock, but he’s asking questions I can’t answer.”
That makes me pause. He doesn’t sound contrite, exactly, but at least he’s admitting that I know way more about this project than he does, which isn’t something Prime particularly enjoys.
I sit up and rub my forehead, doing the math in my head, but my dad’s in bed and likely asleep, and I should be able to trust my mom with him for a few hours.
“I shouldn’t leave,” I say, chewing my thumbnail.
“Please.” That one word sends a shiver down my spine. “I could order you, you know. Make some threats.”
“I bet you’d enjoy that.”
“You know I love bossing you around. Get your pretty ass down here. Bring all those fun numbers you nerds like discussing.”
I hate this. Fucking Prime. He bulls his way into my life, charging through all my boundaries, and even though it drives me crazy, I always end up giving him what he wants.
Because here’s the sick truth: I really do like it.
I don’t like his cocky attitude, his carelessness, his selfishness, his playboy bullshit, but I can’t pretend like Prime isn’t fun.
And I like the job. I like feeling useful. I like doing something worthwhile, even if it’s just parking lots and office rentals, so long as it’s outside of this house, I like it a lot.
“Text me the address right now. I’ll get an Uber.”
“Dress sexy.”
He hangs up.
I groan, get out of bed, and find the most business-appropriate outfit I can, hurriedly throwing it on as I summon a car, knowing this is way outside the bounds of my job description, but unable to do anything about it.