40 Samantha
40
SAMANTHA
T HREE MONTHS. THAT’S how long Grandma had been dead. That’s how long since I’d been laid off.
It was also how long it had been since I’d seen Xavier.
He’d tried to come in February. He had the flight booked and everything. But a pipe burst at the clinic two days before his trip. It flooded two of the exam rooms and the bathroom and he’d had to close the office for a week to mitigate the water damage.
He had insurance but it didn’t cover flooding or paying his staff while they were closed. He’d had to put payroll and the repairs on cards and then work graveyards at the ER just to pay them off before the interest kicked in. It took him two months to financially recover from that.
He was finally going to come this weekend, but now he was sick. Hank came in for him and Xavier went to urgent care, where he found out he’d been working eighty hours a week with a severe sinus infection.
Hank was covering for him going on two days now. Xavier hated that because Hank couldn’t be on his knees that much, but he was too sick to go in—which knowing my boyfriend spoke to how bad it truly was. Xavier would probably come to work on hospice, he didn’t shirk his responsibilities for anything.
I was also sick.
Physically I was fine. Mentally I was unwell.
Since I lost my job it didn’t make sense to hire the home aide for Mom. Now I was the home aide.
My days were monotonous. I couldn’t leave. I couldn’t take her anywhere. Not even for a quick drive for a coffee or a walk or to sit in a park. I washed her, dressed her, changed her diapers when she had an accident. I fed her with a spoon and wiped her mouth and did listless orange juice shots with her in the kitchen. I hung out alone all day with someone who couldn’t talk to me, who couldn’t remember my name. Who looked like my mom, but didn’t know her, couldn’t remember her, had never seen her a day in her life.
Mom asked about Grandma constantly. For the last three months, seven days a week, eight hours a day I told a story about Grandma being at Vons half a dozen times in a single afternoon.
I stopped doing her makeup. No point. It just gave me one more thing to do at the end of the night when I had to take it off. Her roots were growing out again. Nobody had time to do the little things for her anymore. Or we had time, but we just didn’t have the energy. None of us did. We were all too sad.
My family was a mess.
Tristan wasn’t talking to Dad. This made Jeneva mad, so she wasn’t talking to Tristan, which was an interesting position to take considering she also wasn’t speaking to Dad over the Grandma thing. Dad seemed to be avoiding both of them. He looked even more worn out than usual and I was so depressed I just wanted to be alone whenever I could so I could do the only thing that actually brought me happiness, which was talking to my boyfriend, who worked so much he never had time.
I missed Mom. I missed Grandma. And I missed the person I was three and a half months ago too.
Last Year Sam was shiny and hopeful and making mustard jokes. The me of today was a worm. And my worm expert never came to see me.
I tried to see the bright side of this thing with Xavier. I’d never get tired of my boyfriend being around. I’d always have something to look forward to. The sex would always be great because by the time we saw each other we were famished.
That’s it. That’s all I could come up with for the bright side.
It was like dating a ghost.
I was attached to someone invisible. I didn’t have someone to help carry groceries in from the car, or to put the clothes in the dryer when I forget, or to go with me to get drinks on a random Tuesday when I was stressed and tired from taking care of Mom and I needed a beer.
He would run himself into the ground trying to be here. He’d show up so exhausted from the effort of affording his two-thousand-mile commute that he’d sleep half the time he was with me. And I’d let him, because at least he was sleeping where I could reach out and touch him instead of him sleeping in Minnesota, where the entire time he’d go dark and radio silent and I’d wait on my end of the country for him to wake up and exist for me again.
I just wanted us to be a boring, regular old couple who napped and folded laundry together, who argued about whose turn it was to take out the trash. I wanted the luxury of mundane cohabitation.
I wanted to get sick of him.
I wanted to see him so much, his bad habits exasperated me. I wanted to be so tired of his shit, I looked forward to him going out on his boys’ weekends just so I could get some alone time, and then once he’s gone, I’d miss him so much I can’t stand it and I’m miserable the whole time because he’s my best friend.
But I would never get that much of him. Ever. Not even close.
This was it. This was the only way this relationship would ever be. And it was better than nothing, but somehow worse than anything because of what it cost us to keep it going. It didn’t even surprise me that he got sick. I don’t know how he didn’t get sick sooner the way he ran himself into the ground.
I wanted to go visit him. Go for a weekend. But now that I was unemployed I a thousand percent couldn’t afford to drop the money on an airline ticket, especially now that I was reaching the end of my severance payments.
I’d looked for another job. Had half a dozen interviews, but nothing was Murkle’s. No one wanted to pay me what I was worth—or they did, but the product sucked so bad not even I could sell it.
The only salvation for either of us was for me to get a job. If I got one that paid enough, Xavier could quit all his side hustles and I could pay for travel and then maybe both of us would be happier. He kept telling me something would turn up, to not force it, to just wait for the right opportunity to come, but waiting was killing me. I felt like I was fading.
Every night when Dad came home, I tapped out immediately. Handed Mom over and left to bed rot in my apartment and wait for Xavier to call me in between his two jobs.
I used to feel bad that Dad came home from work to more work. But now that I took care of Mom full-time, I realized his nine-to-five was his break. I couldn’t even pee with the door closed when it was just the two of us. I would love to have a nine-to-five and then come home and do a few easy hours of hanging out with Mom while the house is full of other helpers before she goes to bed. Or tries to. Dad said she was getting up in the middle of the night again. That the sleeping pills weren’t working anymore. He was tired, I was tired. Everyone was tense.
We weren’t a team.
Missing Xavier, grieving Grandma, and taking care of Mom. That was my life.
There was no color in my world. Only the promise of color for visits with Xavier that never seemed to materialize.
I was living now in nothing but gray.