Grandma closed the book and put it next to her on the immovable pile on her bed. Isn’t that wonderful? she said. I nodded. We didn’t talk. I didn’t know if it was wonderful. I lay next to Grandma with my head half on her arm and half on her chest. She smelled like a coconut. I thought about what Grandma had told me. What she has inherited. We watched three episodes of Call the Midwife and Grandma fell asleep during the second one. Her snoring was louder than the screaming mother and screaming baby combined.
Mom came home late from rehearsal and she and Grandma whispered together in Grandma’s room.
5.
Today when I woke up, Mom was already gone, but she’d left me a note saying she was sorry for being such a shitty mother, that she loved me so much and that things would get better. But what things? She wrote words in quotation marks that said, “It is important to fail at mothering or else your child will not pass from illusion to reality: the mother teaches the child to handle frustration by being one.” Then she drew a smiley face and a heart and the words Ha! Ha! And she added a P.S. that said, That’s D.W. Winnicott’s concept of the “good enough mother.” She wrote, Love, Mom.
I ran downstairs to show the letter to Grandma. She’s gonna kill herself! I said. Grandma said honey, honey, she’s not going to kill herself. She’s telling you she’s sorry for being weird, as you say, and that she loves you so much. In fact she’ll be home very soon. She’s just gone out to get coffee filters.
Yesterday Mom brought home Raptors jerseys for me and Grandma. We tried them on and played catch for ten minutes with Grandma’s exercise ball. Grandma said hoooooo, I’m Larry Bird, who are you? I’m worried she’s starting to get demented and Mom is gonna kill herself. Grandma’s leg really hurts right below the knee and she doesn’t know why, it’s a new thing. She checked to make sure she had enough bullets in her purse so she can go out to play cards all day today with her friends. When she swallows her pills she pretends they’re tiny soldiers sent off to fight the pain and sometimes she holds them up and says to them, thank you for your service, lest we forget, and then she swallows them and says play ball ! There’s a bathroom right next to where she and her friends play games all day, she said. So that’s good. She said she’s always had a good bladder, not like her sister-in-law Henrietta with her dodgy waterworks who always had to know where the washrooms were in Panama City because there were very, very few public washrooms there. Grandma could go all day without having to use the washroom. You were the winner! I said. Grandma said there are no winners or losers when it comes to bladder control.
Grandma’s friends came to pick her up and they all hugged and laughed at the door and gave me a bag of buns. They spoke their secret language with each other. They were in cahoots. Grandma winked at me as if to say relax, don’t worry, everything is ridiculous!
When she was gone I felt frozen, like a bug in amber, and I didn’t know what to do.
I sat on the stairs and thought. I wrote the word freewheelin’ on my jeans in two parts on the spaces above my knees. Free was bigger than wheelin’。 I should have measured it out. Grandma says to keep everything freewheelin’。 But how?
Then Mom came bursting through the door. Oh no, scorched earth. But she was happy! She was smiling and stomping her feet. She acted as though being alive was obvious. Maybe she wasn’t gonna kill herself after all! She asked me what I was doing. Just sitting here on the stairs? she asked. And writing and thinking, I said. Let’s go, she said. She pulled me up off the stairs. She hugged me. She asked me if I’d been crying. Obviously not! I said. Have you? She laughed and then whoosh! She had me by the hand. We were out the door. Critical interventions! she shouted. I looked around to see if anyone had heard her. The smoking guy next door smiled. He started singing the song he always sings, about not wanting to go to rehab. Me and Mom walked and walked. We passed the cop parked on the Walnut Street side. I told her not to do anything or say anything. She said no, no, no, I won’t, but believe it or not she did do something, I don’t know what, but the cop smiled and nodded like okay, crazy mother lady. Mom could write her own book about taking care of children if all you have to do is make them frustrated so they get used to reality. Then we walked through the park, past the dogs in the off-leash pit, and then around past the outdoor market where we bought cookies and then down to the lake where we bought hot dogs and then back past the roti place which was packed and all the way downtown where we bought Nutella crepes and she did most of the talking. She wanted to tell me things about herself. She wanted me to know she wasn’t going to kill herself. Did Grandma tell you to tell me that? I asked her. Not exactly, she said. She told me you were worried about it. Well, are you? I asked her. Going to kill myself? she said. I didn’t nod or say anything. I didn’t want to talk about it. I just wanted her to say no. No! she said. Never. Well, maybe when I’m old and in horrific pain with no end in sight, she said. You mean like Grandma? Now I was worried again! Grandma will kill herself! No! said Mom. Not like Grandma. She’s going the assisted dying route, I said. With all her friends. Listen, said Mom. People die. I sighed and slumped over. I know that! I said. I already know that!