Mom froze.
The spoon hovered halfway to her mouth. I said his name quietly. A warning.
He laughed. He said he was kidding. He said Mom knew he was kidding, didn’t she?
Mom put the spoon down. She ate two more bites and said she was tired. I helped her back to the guest room.
I sat on the edge of the bed, held her hand, and told her he was just stressed about a deadline at work. She nodded and said, “Of course, baby. Of course.”
But she wouldn’t look at me.
I closed the door and stood in the hallway and counted to ten before I went back to the dining room. He was still sitting there, scrolling on his phone. “Why would you say that to her?”
He looked up like he was genuinely confused.
He said it was a joke. He said I needed to stop being so sensitive. He said Mom was a grown woman and could take a joke, and if she was that fragile, maybe she shouldn’t be staying with us.
That was the first night. There were six more. The second day, he refused to use the guest bathroom because Mom’s medications were on the counter and her toothbrush was in the cup.
He said it felt like staying in a hotel where someone else’s stuff was everywhere. He started using our master bathroom exclusively. Fine.
The third day, he came home from running errands and made a big deal out of the smell in the house. He said it smelled like an old folks’ home. I had been lighting a eucalyptus candle to help with Mom’s breathing.
He blew it out and opened all the windows, even though it was thirty-eight degrees outside. Mom, sitting on the couch with a blanket over her legs, watched him do it. She didn’t say anything.
I went and put another blanket over her shoulders. The fourth day, he came home with takeout. He’d gotten dinner for himself and me.
Two entrees. He’d forgotten Mom. He said it like it was an honest mistake.
“Oh, I didn’t think… was she going to eat?”
Mom said it was fine. She wasn’t very hungry anyway. She’d just have some toast.
I gave her my dinner. I ate toast. The fifth day was the worst.
I’d had a long meeting on Zoom. And when I came out of my office, I found Mom standing in the kitchen, dizzy, holding onto the counter, trying to wash a single coffee cup. She said she felt bad just sitting there.
She wanted to help. My husband was in the living room watching SportsCenter at full volume. He hadn’t gotten up.
I helped Mom back to the couch. I went into the living room and stood in front of the TV. “She almost fell,” I said.
He looked around me to see the screen. “She’s a grown woman. She can wash a cup.”
“She has vertigo.
She has bronchitis. She just got out of the hospital. The doctor said she shouldn’t be on her feet without supervision.”
“Then maybe you should supervise her better.”
I didn’t say anything for a long moment.
I just looked at him, and he looked at me, and I saw very clearly that he meant it. He wasn’t joking. He wasn’t lashing out.
He wasn’t stressed about work. He simply thought my mother was my problem, and he was annoyed that her presence was disturbing his evening. I went back to the kitchen.
I made Mom a cup of tea. I brought it to her on the couch. She thanked me and patted my hand and asked very quietly if maybe she should go home a little early.
Maybe my brother could fly out for a few days, even with the new baby coming. She didn’t want to be a burden. She kept using that word.
Burden. I told her she wasn’t a burden. I told her she’d stay as long as she needed to.
She left on day seven anyway. She insisted. She said she felt much better, and she did, a little, and that she needed to get back to her own bed and her own things and her own routine.
She said it with a smile. But I knew. I drove her home to Charlotte that Saturday, and she held my hand the whole way, the same way she had at the hospital parking lot.
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