Chapter 36
I’m going through employee reviews when I get the call. It’s my least favorite part of the job—rating employees like an app on a phone—so my phone buzzing across my desk is a welcome distraction. After dinner with my mom and the conversation with Andie afterward, I hoped to feel surer about decision day. It’s only a few days away now, and I thought surely I’d know my answer.
Or rather, surely I’d know Andie’s answer by now. She hasn’t said she’s changed her mind about the divorce money. She hasn’t told me she wants to stick it out and see what we can be. She hasn’t told me that she loves me. Nothing like that. Even after I told her I was all in.
Hell, she knows I may be jetting off to Italy for work and won’t even ask me to stay. I thought, with everything we’ve uncovered, we’d be farther along than this.
All we have is a couple of weeks of nights in bed together and a handful of experiences from the show stitched together with the thread of our first crash and burn.
I hope it’s enough.
“Hi, Lisa.” I answer my phone because I never ignore a call from Mom’s home nurse and sink heavily into the expensive leather chair at my desk. The penthouse is even emptier than it used to be, with my sparse belongings nestled in a closet beside Andie’s. “Did I forget to pick up a prescription again?”
“Kit.” Lisa’s voice is firmness wrapped in crackling cellophane. It puts me on edge. “Your mother fell while trying to dust the tops of the cabinets this morning.”
I bolt upright, the employee reviews blurring in front of me. “What? She can’t reach the tops of the cabinets.”
“If she’s on a stool, she can.” Lisa is so calm, my skin prickles with the anticipation of a storm.
“She wouldn’t be so—”
“I found her when I got here thirty minutes ago. She was disoriented and in severe pain.”
My vision begins to narrow, growing dark at the edges. My voice cracks. “Is she—?”
Lisa seems to understand my fractured attempt at information gathering. “I called an ambulance. They’re taking her to Emory.”
“Thank you.” I hang up before Lisa can tell me any more. I’m already spiraling. My hand shakes, so I toss my phone onto my desk and stare at it. The dark screen reflects the ridiculous luxury of my surroundings back at me.
I knew I should have taken Mom out of that trailer. I should have brought her here and kept her close. She was so stubborn, though, and I didn’t want to make the one parent I had left angry, so she stayed. No matter what I offered her, she insisted on living there.
“What’s the point of living if I can’t do it on my terms?” she asked me the last time I suggested an assisted living facility.
At this point I’ve lost track of how many times I’ve offered her more than what she has, and she refuses every one of my attempts. Emotions are swelling in my chest so quickly I’m not sure how I’m going to keep breathing. I’m pissed and I’m scared and I’m hurt and I feel so, so small.
I need to do something. To run. So I stand, snap my laptop shut, and stride out the door to meet Mom at Emory.
Mom is dwarfed by the large hospital bed. She’s hooked up to monitors, beeping in a chorus around her. I’m not sure what any of them mean, but the cacophony is enough to put me on edge. The doctors have been by, as well as the nurses, and they’ve all explained to me that she broke her hip when she fell. Nothing else. Her brain is fine.
It’s a simple enough procedure to fix it, and they’re booking her for surgery first thing in the morning tomorrow. It would be tonight, but with her cancer diagnosis and course of treatment, they want to make sure everything is in order.
So that leaves me sitting by her bed as she dozes off, holding her hand in mine. The IV is taped haphazardly over her hand, and I run my thumb over the tape edges as if that will bring any more order to the scenario. My foot taps relentlessly against the linoleum floor. Running while my world screeches to a halt.
We talked for a while after she was admitted to the hospital. She was in pain, but once she had some morphine on board, she was back to being stubborn. I asked her what she was thinking, and she replied she was bored and might as well clean.
I was so furious with her, my jaw began to ache with how hard I clenched it. Didn’t she understand? I’ve already lost my dad. I can’t lose her too. I can’t.
Now, her eyes heavy, she gives my hand a squeeze.
“Where’s Andie?” she asks, her voice a mere rasp among the machines.
“She’ll be filming soon,” I mumble.
My mother, however, sees right through me. “She doesn’t know you’re here.”
“She’ll understand,” I say out loud, willing myself to truly believe it. “I’ll call her once you’re settled.”
“If I get any more settled, I’ll be dead.” Mom pins me with a knowing look.
“Mom.” My voice breaks under the stress and tears well hot behind my eyes. “Don’t joke about that. Please.”
She squeezes my hand. “I’m okay, Kit. Good as new in no time. The doctors all said so.”
“For your hip.” I wipe a tear off my cheek with the palm of my hand. “We’re going to have them check everything again. Twice.”
“We don’t need to do that.”
I bury my face in my hands, trying to keep the last pieces of my sanity intact. “Plagued by stubborn women.”
“I’m not the only one who’s stubborn,” she counters. “You got it from me, you know.”
“Mom,” I scold, suddenly exhausted. I don’t have the energy or the heart to tell her that I think Andie is still leaving. That I tried my hardest, but it’s not enough. Andie can’t find it in her to love me, not like she used to.
Mom tuts. “She’d be here if she knew.”
“You don’t know that,” I mutter to my feet. She knew about my dad’s death and still wouldn’t let me in the fucking door.
“I do.”
“You met her once. For about three hours.”
“I can tell by the way she looks at you.” Mom shifts in bed, then winces. She sees me stand, ready to call a nurse in, and waves it off. “I’m fine, Kit. Sit back down. Call your wife.”
I fall back into the uncomfortable hospital chair and frown. When did I become everyone else’s nuisance? Andie doesn’t want my help, and my mom doesn’t either.
When I look at my feet, I notice a scuff on my shoe. All I can think about is rubbing it away, making it perfect again. I want to explain to my mom that Andie may look at me like she’s … I don’t know, thinking of caring about me. But that’s not a prize. Andie cares deeply about everything; it’s why she’s so careful about who and what she lets in. It doesn’t make me special.
She may look at me like she cares, but for the first time I’m wondering if the looks are enough. If the nights in bed are enough. Not for her, but for me. I’ve been willing to take any scrap of attention she can give me. But here in a hospital room with my mom, I realize how close I am to losing her, and all of Andie’s looks wouldn’t be enough to keep me afloat. I need more than that. I need her trust, her time, her love. Openly and unabashedly. I don’t want to spend the rest of my life tiptoeing around what I really want to say, how deeply I really feel.
When the chair creaks as I stand to get my cell phone from my bag, my mom says, “Thank Christ. You had me thinking I raised an absolute nincompoop.”