Chapter 23
Twenty-Three
Deja
“I’m going to the soccer field in the park,” Brandon yells to no one in particular.
“You need a ride?” I ask, saccharine sweet.
“It’s the weekend, Deja. Don’t I have to deal with you enough during the week?”
“Suit yourself!” I say. “Mom, I’m going to the mall.”
Not waiting for an answer, I exit through the front door and get in my car, taking my time to adjust my mirrors and pull up the directions to where I’m going.
Brandon will be leaving through the back and wending his way along the forest track to a spot where I can pick him up.
I don’t know why we’re going to all this trouble.
I doubt the parents would see anything strange about us going somewhere together.
Twenty minutes later we’re on the freeway headed out of town.
“Where are we going, exactly?” I ask. “I thought you and your mom lived in Old Town.” Old Town is the most rundown part of town, where the brick is faded and crumbling, the sidewalks are cracked with dying grass poking through, and there are way more people standing on the corner or sitting on stoops than you ever see anywhere else.
On the long slide down the socioeconomic ladder, Old Town is rock bottom.
Man, does the knowledge that Brandon lived there for years feel different now that I care about him.
It’s a wonder Brandon didn’t fall in with a bad crowd.
Or maybe he was just lucky enough to make the right friends, like Mello.
“We’re heading to the place where she’s living right now. It’s near the University.”
“Oh. Did she get a new job?”
I guess things must be looking up for Lindsey. That area isn’t super expensive, but it’s a definite step up from Old Town.
“You’ll see,” he says. His tone is subdued, even the volume of his voice low.
He asks if he can turn on the radio and the car fills with dream pop. I wish it was something livelier because I like high energy music when I’m driving, but Brandon seems like he needs it.
As we pull into the parking lot, I look at Brandon in confusion. This isn’t an apartment complex like I was expecting, but an annex of the university hospital. I look at the sign in confusion.
“What does that mean? Palliative care? Does your mom work here?”
Brandon shakes his head. He speaks softly. “No, she’s a patient.”
Brandon explains that he comes here once or twice a week, though the days he’s able to come shift around. Years ago his mother suffered a brain injury and rather than regain function her brain has slowly degenerated.
I step inside and am immediately hit by the smell of disinfectant.
At the front desk, a woman in lavender scrubs hands me a clipboard.
She looks at Brandon and me with curiosity but asks only that I write my name in a black box and below it, his mother’s name, Lindsey Bruce.
I follow Brandon down a hallway lit by fluorescent lights.
The building looks new and is brightly lit with many large windows.
It would be a cheery space if I didn’t know it is a place for patients to be “made comfortable” when there are no longer any treatments that can help them, or when they decide the treatment is worse than the disease.
It’s quiet, but we can hear the soft sounds of people talking and televisions playing as we walk down the hallway.
At the end, Brandon opens a door, gesturing for me to go in.
The room is as bright as the rest of the building.
There’s not much in it—a hospital bed, a small sofa, miscellaneous medical equipment, and a few metal chairs with plastic seats.
There’s another door that is ajar, and through it, I can see a shower and toilet.
The walls are painted a cheery yellow, and there is a vase with fresh flowers on a side table.
Brandon’s mother sits in a wheelchair, her black hair held back in a neat French braid.
Her blue eyes, so much like Brandon’s, stare off into the distance.
She doesn’t react to our entrance. She sits so still that a chill goes down my spine.
If it wasn’t for the tiny wrinkles around her eyes and her rounded figure, one might think she was a mannequin.
She has a kind of raw beauty, but you can also see the signs of a hard life: wrinkles around her mouth, calloused hands, and coarse skin.
“Mom,” Brandon says softly, “this is Deja.”
No reaction at all. Brandon grimaces. He crouches next to her and whispers something I can’t hear, but she still doesn’t respond or even change her focus.
“I’m sorry,” Brandon says, standing up. “She’s been like this more and more lately. It’s like she’s not here.” Like her body is an empty shell, I think, and the thought makes me shiver.
“She might come out of it before we leave,” he continues.
“Don’t worry about that.” I walk over and hug him from behind, letting my actions speak for me. I’m not sure I could say anything to make him feel better anyway.
Brandon’s body relaxes into my embrace, and we stay like that for a while, watching his mother in silence.
I can tell he’s grateful for the gesture, even if he doesn’t say it.
I take a deep breath and glance around the room, trying to distract myself from the sadness that hangs in the air.
From the window, I can see the back garden.
The leaves on the trees outside explode with autumn colors—red, yellow, and orange in different shades.
There’s a goldfinch standing on the edge of a bird feeder that sways with their slight movements, but the bird is unbothered by its unstable perch.
Brandon’s mother suddenly stirs, her eyes flickering to life as if she’s coming out of a deep sleep. She blinks a few times, and then focuses her gaze on her son.
“Brandon,” she says, her voice raspy from disuse. “Why aren’t you at school?”
“I just got home, Mom,” Brandon says, pulling me to his side. “Are you feeling better?”
“Have I been sick?”
She looks at me for the first time, her eyes taking me in with curiosity and suspicion. “Who is that girl?”
“This is Deja,” Brandon says. He doesn’t explain who I am. But some spark of memory fires in his mother’s brain.
“You look just like Jules,” she says, cocking her head. “How is he?”
“I don’t know who Jules is,” I say, apologetically. Am I going to upset her by contradicting her? Brandon didn’t correct her about the day of the week or where we are.
“Jules and Devin, like two peas in a pod,” she says in a sing-song voice, “and then came Nia.” She laughs, the sound jarring and too loud.
I feel Brandon stiffen. Have I done something wrong? My face heats.
“It’s nice to meet you,” I say, extending my hand to her.
She takes it, her hand shaking and her grip weak.
It’s not just her mind, then, that’s affected, but her body, too.
I don’t know why I expected her to have old woman hands.
Maybe it’s hard for me to wrap my head around someone so young fading away like she is.
Her nails are neatly trimmed and recently painted coral pink.
I feel a spark of gratitude that someone here cares for her enough to do that and to fix her hair so beautifully.
“You’re very pretty,” she says, gesturing for me to sit next to her. “Tell me about yourself.”
I tell her about school and cheerleading, being Brandon’s math tutor, and my plans for college, though I can see as I go on that I’m losing her.
“Do you ever have dreams, dear?” she asks. I blink in confusion. “Do you ever have dreams that you’re back in the basement of the house on Goshen. You’re a passenger in your own body, and someone else is driving?”
I stare at her dumbfounded. What is she talking about?
And what does she mean the house on Goshen.
I lived on Goshen Ave until my dad died, stabbed in the service alley next to our house by a mugger.
It had been such a shock to everyone that something like that could happen in Twin Oaks.
How could she possibly know that I’d lived on Goshen unless she’d known my parents back then?
“It’s time for your medication Ms. Lindsey,” a broad woman with short brown hair and friendly eyes says, bustling into the room. She’s holding a tray and smiles when she sees us. “Hello, Brandon. Is this your girlfriend?”
“Yes,” he says, “this is Deja. Deja this is Glory. She’s the nursing assistant that takes care of my mom. She’s awesome.” He says this last sentence abashedly, as if he’s embarrassed to give the compliment but feels compelled to do so.
“It’s nice to meet you,” I say, still a bit shaken by Lindsey’s comment. “Did you do Ms. Bruce’s hair?”
“Yes,” Glory says. “You don’t like hair in your face, do you Ms. Lindsey.”
Brandon’s mom doesn’t answer. She looks confused, searching our faces for something familiar, I think. Just as suddenly as she joined us, she is gone. She seems to recognize Glory, or at least find her familiar, as she takes her pills with minimal resistance.
Brandon squeezes his eyes shut and watches Glory tend to his mother, wheeling her to the bathroom to get ready for dinner.
“I’ll see you next week,” Brandon says.
His mother doesn’t turn around. Glory smiles and waves goodbye.
I take his hand and lead him back down the hallway and out the front door.
“Oh, my God, Brandon. Have you been dealing with this the whole time? How long has she been like that?” I say once we’re outside.
“A few months now. You never know what it’ll be like,” he says. “Sometimes we sit and talk for the whole hour; other times, she doesn’t react to me being there, or even worse, she’s scared of me and screams for help.”
“That’s awful.”
“Yeah, well.” He clears his throat. We walk back to the car in silence, each of us lost in our own thoughts. We sit in the car, watching traffic drive past on the busy road outside the hospital.
“I’m so sorry,” I say. “Is there anything I can do?”
He shakes his head. “Just be with me. Just be you with me, that’s all. There’s no fix for what’s wrong with her.”
“What caused it?”