Chapter 5
CHAPTER FIVE
I smile when my grandmother rounds the corner. She does not smile back.
This is the first time I’ve seen her since last night, and that hardly counts. If I wanted to search Lovie’s face for markers of fatigue as she ambles toward her spot at the table, I wouldn’t be able to.
It’s not just the people that age—everything about them turns tired too. Her skin sags, around her mouth and chin especially, and it’s so paper thin that if she sneezed too hard it would rip. I got her eyes—the color of dark chocolate and just as bitter. Her hair is cut short and pure white, and the wisps curl around her ears, but it used to be a shade of red close to my current one. For my sixteenth birthday, she dip-dyed her ends blue to match mine.
I round the island and give her a hug. I’d squeeze her tighter if she didn’t seem so breakable. “Hi, Lovie. I missed you.”
She pulls back first, grabbing for her chair. “Hi, dear.”
“Did you sleep well?” I ask. Expectant. Hopeful. Cheery.
“Yes, I’m fine,” she says breezily, gesturing to Adam, who’s plating the food. She doesn’t meet my eyes. “This young man made me a lovely breakfast.”
I bite back a snort. I can’t imagine Adam doing anything that’s lovely . “Well. Let’s dig in, then.”
A few minutes later, Adam and my grandmother are situated at the round oak table, a full breakfast spread on each of their plates.
“Is there creamer?” I ask. I’m going to need something to help this black tar go down, and forgoing the coffee altogether is not an option after last night.
“In the door,” Lovie says.
I bend, examining the contents of the refrigerator. There’s every condiment known to man, a few old butter containers that haven’t contained butter since 1987, lactose-free half-and-half, and what’s left of the eggs. No creamer in sight.
My brows knit together as I glance over my shoulder. “Where’d you say?”
Adam stares at me. I can feel him restraining himself from looking at my butt.
“She’s talking about the heavy cream. Which expired four months ago and is now in the garbage.” His tone is nonchalant, unbothered.
A hot flash of annoyance licks up my spine. “You couldn’t have said something before I spent the last two minutes bent over searching?” I grab the lactose-free half-and-half and shut the door with my hip.
“I don’t know what you mean.” He rounds out his eyes, the picture of innocence, but they darken a shade or two as he tears a chunk of toast with his teeth.
Two can play at that game. “If you wanted to look at my ass, Adam, all you had to do was ask.” I turn so he can get a better view, look over my shoulder at it in appreciation. “It’s a nice ass, don’t you think? I do squats.”
He chokes on his toast, sputters his way through recovery, and glances at Lovie to see if she’s bothered by my statement.
She isn’t.
After I pour the half-and-half into my butterfly mug, I move around the island and behind Adam to claim my seat and own plate. If I happen to bump his shoulder, well—oops.
And if he happens to choke on his toast again … I guess it’s good he knows the Heimlich.
Across from me with her back to the kitchen, Lovie tucks a lock of hair behind her ear. These days she’s good with a simple weekly set-and-style, and I know Angie’s started doing it recently as opposed to taking her to the salon. For all the times my grandmother washed my hair, cut bubblegum out of it, helped me fix it for prom, it will be nice to return the favor.
Sipping my coffee, I peek at her plate. There are two slices of bacon and scrambled eggs, all untouched. “Are you not hungry?”
Lovie is not the kind to blush, so she just throws up a hand and waves off my concern. “You eat. I’m fine.”
“Do you want me to make you a smoothie?”
“No.” There’s a hint of firmness behind her words now.
I’m hungry enough that anything I say would be in retaliation, so I choose to stay quiet, picking up my fork instead.
The three of us—Lovie, Grandpa Bobby, and me—ate almost all our meals at this nicks-and-scratches kitchen table. There’s a nail-polish stain conveniently covered by the knitted doily in the center, which I flick up with my thumb, just to confirm it’s still there. It settles some of the unease in my bones as I stare at my grandmother, waiting for recognition. A light in her eyes.
As stubborn as Lovie is, she would never admit to not knowing me, or anyone for that matter. If she ran into a stranger at the store, she’d come away with an invitation to their grandkid’s birthday party. And she’d go .
“If you keep staring at me,” Lovie says, “your food’s going to get cold.” As if she didn’t just dismiss that exact claim from my mouth, about her.
It’s such a mom thing to say.
Hell, Lovie is my mom. Lovie is everyone’s mom. That’s just the kind of person she is. She passed out Popsicles to neighborhood kids, gave cookies to the postal workers at Christmas, and wrote thank-you notes for my teachers on the last day of school. She held me together the first time a boy broke my heart and held back my hair the first time I had a hangover.
To appease her, I bite off a chunk of bacon. “What do you want to do today?”
“Gardening,” she says simply.
I grimace. It’s October now. “I’m not sure that will—”
“That sounds fine,” Adam interrupts, and I wish there were a butter knife on the table so I could stab him with it. “I’ll bring you your meds in half an hour, okay?”
Through gritted teeth, I say, “Just give them to her now. She won’t remember later.” In the beginning days of her diagnosis, she’d forget altogether if they weren’t sitting next to her orange juice.
Adam stares at me, contempt making his eyes appear black again, the way they were last night. “I’ll remember. They settle in her stomach better if she lets her food digest for a bit.”
That might be believable if Lovie had bothered to pick up her fork in the last ten minutes.
He sips his coffee leisurely, like we are anywhere else, talking about anything else. “Anyway, I won’t bother you with the drug names.” His words are sharp, crisp. Like he’s trying to remind me of something I would have already known, had I been paying attention.
“Oh, please do.” I abandon my food, resting my elbows on the table and popping my chin into my palm. “Is she still on the cholinesterase inhibitor twice a day?”
Now is Adam’s turn to grit his teeth, and he shifts in his chair, facing me more fully.
“It’s three times,” he corrects. “And a glutamate regulator.” His left eyebrow raises in challenge.
I nod, so over this conversation. “For cognitive issues. And a low-dose antipsychotic for anger and aggression.”
In my periphery, Lovie’s eyes volley back and forth between us, merely a spectator in this conversation that wholly concerns her.
Adam swallows, gives an agreement in the form of a single, brief nod. “But none of those are DMTs. Not the fun kind you and your city friends take at music festivals. A DMT is a—”
“Disease-modifying therapy. And I know that because I was the one who signed off on it in the first place.” I’ll be damned if I let this man come in here and act like he knows my grandmother better than I do.
Lovie stares at me, her eyes catching on, of all things, my hair. I give her a halfhearted, closed-mouth smile before trying to focus on my food, although my verbal sparring with Adam has stolen what remained of my appetite.
When Lovie doesn’t do the same with her own meal, I look up again.
She’s glancing between Adam and me faster than before, hardly moving her head. A deep groove settles into the space between her thin eyebrows, mouth moving over unspoken words.
For as ignored as I’ve felt by her so far this morning, now I am itchy under her microscope. “Is something wrong?”
Lovie grins, the waxy yellow of her coffee-stained teeth appearing between her chapped lips. “I just remembered where I know you two from.”
I’m done eating, I guess. There’s no more room in my stomach with all the disappointment.
Lovie didn’t remember me.
Doesn’t remember me. Raising me, taking me to dance recitals or to get my braces off. I knew this day was coming, but reading about it online, hearing it from various doctors, does nothing to ease the pain once it arrives. It’s been a possibility—an inevitability—since the beginning, and still, it’s a direct hit to the heart. And knowing it’s not her fault doesn’t make this pill any easier to swallow. It might be going down harder. Maybe that’s what’s lodged in my throat.
“And where is that?” Adam asks, thumb dancing along the rim of his plate. There’s a chip there from when I was twelve. I’d tried to wash the dishes to surprise Lovie but hadn’t realized the china was so heavy. I chipped it on the counter and hid the broken piece in a flowerpot outside, convinced she’d never know.
She knew.
She always knew.
Lovie scoffs like the answer should be obvious. Like we’re the crazy ones. “You’re Lovie and Bobby, of course.”