“Do you even care what happens to your mother, Jen?” My name is spit out in a disdainful, overly familiar way by the boy in his twenties who has somehow been put in charge in my family.
I wouldn’t be talking to you right now if I didn’t, would I, son? I’d be on a beach in a country with no extradition treaty sipping on a fruity rum drink.
Instead I’m being yelled at by an abusive boy with a taste of power and seething contempt. I could be his mother.
A few months into the pandemic, my mother decided she wanted to move. She got it into her head that the building’s management was terrible, that they were drastically raising rents and rates. She would show up at my house every day yelling at me that I needed to find her somewhere else to live. This would be after she’d called once or twice to yell at me about the same thing. Then sometimes she’d call to yell at me about it again later in the evening.
Sometimes she would also bring me pictures of the sunset from the night before.
I had actually been concerned about where she was living, but not because of the management or rents. Those were all actually fine. She’d fallen in with a bad crowd, ladies who didn’t really believe in the pandemic. The residents had been told not to hang out in the lobby. The seating had been moved apart and the socializing room locked. Mom and her gang ignored the rules, crowding the chairs and sofas, sharing baked goods, chatting through the afternoon. After complaints from other residents, the sofas were turned to face the wall. The ladies would turn them back around or perch on the backs of them.
It would have been hilariously heartwarming in a movie about spunky seniors. Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin would have made it seem sassy and inspiring. You’d be rooting for Dame Judy Dench again the mean people who wouldn’t let her sit with her friends.
Except there was this pandemic, and behavior like this could lead to a brutal, isolated death.
Then there was the alcoholic woman who kept getting my mom to buy her cases of beer. Mom would drive to the liquor store, buy the case, and load it into her car somehow. Then she’d unload it onto one of her building’s courtesy carts and bring it to this woman’s door. The woman would then drink it all and terrorize the building.
Neighbors came to Mom’s door and asked her to please stop buying alcohol for this woman. So Mom stopped buying the cases of beer. She just gave the woman a glass of wine, or maybe two, when she came to visit. Which was every day.
I’d be moving Mom again, and this time during a global pandemic.