Ozrik #2
Vern sipped the foam off his beer as he hovered his finger over the envelope icon on my phone’s homepage. “Can I do the honors?”
“No… Fuck. Fine. I don’t care. Lay it on me.” I braced for impact.
Vern cleared his throat and tapped the icon, then dramatically scrolled to the first missed text from my mother. It took several swipes before he found it. Adopting a horrible imitation of Stella Devereaux—the metric ton of motherly concern included—he read.
“Sweetie, I’m home from church, and you aren’t here. You know I don’t like it when you forget to leave a note. What if something happens?
“Sweetie, what time did you get up this morning? I spoke to Fred next door, and he said he saw you leave the house around eight. I’m sure I heard you milling about in the middle of the night.
If you don’t get a full eight hours, your body doesn’t repair itself properly, and you can be more prone to illness.
I don’t want you to compromise your already weak immune system. ”
“Fred needs to mind his business.” I closed my eyes and sank lower in the booth, the vinyl squeaking under my ass, punctuating my slow descent into madness.
“Oh god.” Vern snorted. “This one’s epic.
Sweetie, did you have a bowel movement this morning?
I noticed you aren’t eating the bran cereal I bought.
I hate for you to risk constipation or, god forbid, colon cancer.
Remember what Dr. Evans said? I would appreciate it if you filled in the chart I left in your room.
It saves me from having to ask all the time. Dude, dude, duuude. What chart?”
I buried my face in my palms. “Please don’t ask.”
“Is it a poop chart? Oh my god, it’s a poop chart. You have a poop chart. I have to call Lex.”
“Fuck off.”
“Do you have to tell her the size and consistency, too?”
I shot my former best friend the finger, which only encouraged more laughter and indirectly—unintentionally—answered his question.
“Give me my phone back. The humiliation has gone on long enough.”
Vern disagreed and held the device out of my reach.
I didn’t have the willpower to fight. What did it matter?
The stigma that was Stella Devereaux had belonged to me and me alone since a crisp winter night in 2001, when I came screaming into the world.
Living in Elk City, Oklahoma, with its population a smidge over eleven thousand, meant everyone knew paranoid, slightly unhinged Stella Devereaux.
“I’m not finished, sweetie,” Vern mocked, using my mother’s favored term of endearment.
“I’ll skip to the good ones.” He skimmed the messages and cleared his throat.
“Sweetie, please turn on the fan when you shower. I noticed an excess of condensation around the mirror. Condensation grows mold, and mold aggravates your asthma. Plus, you know your lungs are sensitive to drastic changes in humidity. You don’t want to end up with pneumonia again. ”
Another scroll. Vern sipped his beer with a smug grin.
It was only funny because it wasn’t him suffering.
“Here’s a good one. Sweetie, I don’t see any dishes from your breakfast. Did you eat this morning?
Is your appetite off? I thought you looked a little peaked yesterday.
Did you take your temperature when you got up? ”
I groaned. “She’s going downhill.”
Vern snorted. “I’m pretty sure she went downhill years ago.”
“Shut your fucking mouth and give me my phone.”
“No.” He scrolled and sipped and scrolled and sipped, then almost choked on his ale when he found an especially good one. “Oh my god. Your mother gives me life.”
“Try living with her.”
“She wants to know what color your urine was first thing when you got up and suggests you increase your fluids today. In case you’re coming down with something.”
“Yep. On it.” I drained my Coke via the straw, slurping the dregs around the melted ice cubes at the bottom of the glass. “Another one down. Are you almost finished?”
“I—” At a noise from outside, Vern glanced over my shoulder to the window. Cringing, he laid the device face down and slid it across the table. “You be fucked, my friend.”
“Nooo.” I spun to see what he was looking at, but I knew.
The sound of crunching gravel was familiar. Swirling lights reflected against the glass as Sheriff Barclay screamed into the parking lot and swung his Ford F-250 cruiser around, halting when he was parallel to the building and in perfect view of every patron inside the bar.
“Fuck my life.”
Vern dissolved into laughter.
“You’re batting a hundred, kid,” Bobby called from behind the bar. “What did I tell you?”
Sheriff Barclay tumbled from his vehicle and scarcely spared a moment to adjust his pants before barreling through the door. He didn’t seem to notice Slick on his heels. She was sneaky like that.
The midday sun pierced the gloomy interior, blinding patrons and backlighting the officer as he scanned the minimal crowd. The moment he laid eyes on me, he pointed. “Devereaux, I swear to god.”
I held up my phone, an unspoken promise that I was calling my mother right away.
It wasn’t good enough. Even as I hit connect on her number, the sheriff barked, “I shouldn’t have to drive over here every goddamn time she needs you.”
“Then don’t. No one’s making you.”
Except my mother was not one to be ignored. Not everyone had my stamina, and when Stella Devereaux decided she required police intervention because her son was ignoring her texts, it was easier to perform a courtesy call to Salty’s than suffer her wrath.
No one could figure out why she didn’t call the bar directly. I had few haunts in town, but the Salty Orange was my main squeeze—pun intended—but for whatever reason, Bobby’s phone never rang. I suspected he’d contacted the phone company and had her number blocked years ago.
My mother answered on the first ring, breathless, like she’d been racing from one corner of the county to the other trying to find me.
“Ozrik, is that you?”
Oil Slick landed on the table again, earning a wrathful glare from Bobby.
“Mother, you have caller ID. You know it’s me.”
I pointed at Slick, and Vern took care of the cat.
“Oh, sweetie. I’ve been trying to get a hold of you for hours. You know how worried I get. I thought you’d died in a ditch. Are you feeling okay? Does your head hurt?”
Yes, I thought.
“No, Mom. My head’s fine.” I locked gazes with Sheriff Barclay.
Seemingly satisfied, he spun on his heels and stormed out, nearly colliding with Vern, who was returning inside after depositing Oil Slick in the parking lot again. A moment later, gravel pelted the window as the sheriff peeled out of the lot, enunciating his fury with a heavy foot on the gas.
“Are you fevered?”
“No. Never felt better.” Twenty-four years living with a mother whom I, in my amateur Google research, had diagnosed as having Munchausen syndrome by proxy had taught me that whatever I claimed didn’t matter. She was the ultimate authority on how I felt, not the other way around.
We spoke for fifteen minutes under the humiliating stares of my best friend, who treated my suffering like it was manufactured for his enjoyment.
I answered all her nagging questions, about my temperature, my morning bowel movement, my urine, my fiber intake, and more.
Only when I agreed to come home right away so she could look at me, only when I promised to drink a minimum of seventy ounces of water before supper, and only when I assured her that I would provide a pee sample in the morning for her to take to the lab did she relent and let me off the phone.
Vern’s beer was gone, my Coke was empty, and Bobby didn’t seem interested in serving us any longer.
Suddenly exhausted, I shoved my empty glass to the edge of the table. “I gotta go.”
“Not yet. I have news. It’s why I hunted you down.”
“Unless you’ve won the lottery and plan to share the windfall so I can move to another planet, it will have to wait. Stella needs to look at me and touch my forehead and prod my liver.”
I moved to stand, but Vern’s next words stopped me in my tracks. “Not a windfall, but your dreams are about to come true.”