11. Keith #4
“Wait, so Gladys was the one with the stranglehold on the knitting group? Or the water aerobics instructor who refused to be aged out?”
“No, no, no, Gladys was the former Regina George of this place who I had to deal with when I first got here.”
Wait… my mother knew about Mean Girls?
Wait, I knew about Mean Girls?
“Georgina was the one who thought herself the queen of the knitting group and wouldn’t allow anyone else to use synthetic yarns, and Giralda was the water aerobics instructor who was so old, she kept falling asleep on her towel beside the pool.”
As strange as it was for me to hear my mother call someone else old, I remembered that saga. It was right before my mother had to bust up a love triangle she unwittingly got involved in when Marcus and Phillip, two bachelors in the home, set their sights on her.
“Ah, okay, I got it now. Sorry, just a lot of names.”
“How many siblings do you have again?”
The laugh that left Olivia was sharp and surprised. “Point taken! Pot meet kettle and all that.”
My mother reached over and patted Olivia’s hand. “My dear, you are a whole cauldron, and don’t you forget it!”
I didn’t know if that was a compliment or not, but with the way Olivia was smiling, she certainly took it as a positive so I did too.
“Promise I won’t.”
As they spoke, I continued to daydream, and more than once I had to turn my thoughts into more safer-for-work territory.
“Really? She’s only in her twenties?”
“Yeah, but surprisingly, it’s not an issue. I don’t feel too old to talk to her and she says I don’t make her feel too young. She’s very funny and always has a random fact to tell you that’ll probably rock your perception of the world.”
I turned back in when the conversation turned to Amanda. While I had only seen her a couple of times since my workshop ended, Olivia still met up with her regularly. Granted, we all gamed together from time to time even though I was absolutely terrible at everything they chose to play.
“Well, it just goes to show, age is just a number,” my mother said, cheeks pink as she sipped at her wine.
She didn’t indulge often—alcoholism was apparently a big risk for lonely elders, and even though she wasn’t lonely, she was cautious about it—it was nice to see her a little tipsy.
Her getting to enjoy adulthood had come late, but at least it had finally arrived.
“It’s not how old you are, but how you are old.”
“Might need to get that tattooed. Do you think it would be odd to get my first one at sixty-two?”
“I don’t think it would be odd at all!”
“Goodness, when did the sun go down? I hadn’t even noticed!”
I blinked and looked out the windows of the day room. It had become less of a day room and more like a “watch the twilight descend” room, sans any sparkling vampires.
My mother was right. When had that happened?
“Time flies when you’re having fun, I suppose,” Olivia mused, also looking out at the deep, cool colors of the night taking over the verdant oranges and golds of summer. “Would you want to go catch a movie or something? Keith said they were fairly casual about sign-outs after curfew.”
I was deeply flattered at the suggestion. Maybe I was na?ve, but it seemed like Olivia and my mother’s connection was truly genuine, and I couldn’t be more pleased.
I didn’t like to think that I had a small life, but I did have a very contained one, and I wasn’t sure I could have a lasting connection with someone if they didn’t gel with my mother. Maybe that made me a mama’s boy, but I preferred to think of it as a matter of compatibility.
My mother smiled as she yawned, and I was transported back to when I was a kid heating up a microwave meal for her after she came home from her second job, exhausted from all her hard work.
Except this time her tiredness was from playful chatter, good food, and maybe a touch too much wine.
“As much as I would love that, I’m afraid I’ve adopted the early to sleep, early to rise methodology since coming here, so I’d be asleep before we ever made it to the theater. Raincheck?”
“Raincheck,” Olivia confirmed.
We stood, hugging and saying goodbye. I didn’t know the exact term for the feelings that rose in my chest when Olivia and my mother embraced, but it was a good one.
“Can I walk you to your room, Mom?” I asked.
“No, no. I’ll have Enrique escort me,” she said, gesturing over to one of the attendants who was reading a book by the door.
I liked that the workers weren’t required to be on their feet and at attention the entire time.
Made the place feel more lived in and less sterile.
“You walk your lady out and get her home at a decent time.”
Neither of us mentioned that she was spending the night at my place. Not because my mother would have a critical opinion of it, but because it wasn’t necessary.
“All right then,” I said before kissing her cheek. “Are you sure?”
“I am, my dear. Go, go, and thank you for the lovely evening.”
“Of course, Mom. Anytime.”
“And I’d love for us to catch that movie,” Olivia added.
My mother flushed happily, giving a tipsy little wave, and we watched as she headed over to Enrique.
Plenty of people had parents in their seventies and even eighties who had far fewer mobility issues than my mom, but she hadn’t had the easiest life and her joints had been shot since she was a very competitive track and field star as a kid.
Just a little too bendy, she’d always told me.
While I was happy that she was happy in her social little senior community, I knew it wasn’t the place for me.
That had left me feeling lost for so long, but now…
well, now I felt less so with Olivia at my side.
The future wasn’t a worrying, unknown mire hanging over my head anymore, but something to look forward to.
To dream about.
“Well, I think that went wonderfully,” Olivia remarked as we headed out arm in arm. “Your mother is really lovely.”
“I’m glad you think so,” I said with a wide grin. “I’m quite fond of her.”
“I would hope so. It’d be a big red flag if you weren’t.”
“You think so?”
If I was petty, perhaps I would have made a comment about how I had yet to meet her family, but I didn’t. I trusted Olivia. I was sure that if she hadn’t suggested us getting together that there was a good reason for it. I just needed to be patient.
Besides, it wasn’t like I didn’t have important issues to focus on like, for example, how exactly to give her the ring I had hidden in my sock drawer at my place.
Yeah. That was probably one of the biggest riddles I needed to puzzle out in my life.
And I couldn’t believe that I was lucky enough to do so.