Page 4 of Good Days Bad Days

Charlie

Present Day

“Good morning, Betty. Look who I have here for you. Visitors!” The nurse’s tone is cheerful and bright, reminding me of how the elementary school teachers speak in my kids’ classrooms. I clasp my hands together to keep them from shaking.

We duck around the half-closed privacy curtain and step into a sunny room with a hospital bed in the back corner, covered in a stitched blanket tucked neatly around each edge.

There are two small side tables with pictures of my mom and dad, their house, and a picture of me when I was young.

There’s another table on rollers covered in a nearly finished puzzle.

The Game Show Network plays on the TV with the volume turned all the way down.

In the corner is an overstuffed green armchair that looks like it came from my father’s shop.

It is definitely antique and well preserved.

That’s where she sits—my mom.

She’s holding a cup of coffee, dressed in a loose pair of tan slacks and an untucked green blouse.

Her hair is a light gray, nearly white, thinning at the top and sides.

She looks as though she’s had a trip to the hairdresser recently.

Her cheeks are overly rouged and her lipstick a touch askew, but she seems ready for guests.

Her skin is pale and so thin I can see the veins running up her arms and neck where exposed.

Like my father, she is very slender and looks so frail that a single slip on the ice might snap her in half.

She’s like a dried-out rose that’s still beautiful but could crumble to dust with one touch.

“Well, hello,” she says warmly to all three of us, looking confused but bright eyed. She sets down her mug and gazes at us expectantly as if she’s waiting for an introduction. I anticipate a flicker of recognition from her, but none comes. A wave of relief washes over me.

“Betty, Greg and Charlotte are here to visit you today.” Dad and I hang our coats and stand a few feet away waiting to assess her mood.

“Oh, hi! Lovely to meet you,” she says, smoothing her pants.

I’m not surprised Betty doesn’t recognize me, but I find the blank look she gives my father a little unnerving.

There’s something else new about my mother, a lightness in her expression that makes it seem like I’m meeting her all over again.

“Hello, Betty. This is Charlotte, your daughter.”

“My daughter?” she asks, bemused, eyeing me skeptically. “I don’t have a daughter.”

She says it like it’s a fact, not a bitter reference to our falling out.

Nurse Mitchell gives me an empathetic look.

I’m sure most visitors find it difficult to be forgotten by their loved ones, but strangely, it doesn’t faze me.

It’s fascinating being in the same room as my mother without the undercurrent of negativity that always fed the electric fence around her.

“It’s Lottie, hon. She’s come to visit,” Dad says, using my childhood nickname, stepping toward Mom’s chair. She rolls her eyes like an annoyed teen and then zones in on me.

“Your hair is very shiny,” she says with a friendly smile.

I can’t remember my mother saying something positive about my appearance since I reached puberty.

Though our house was a mess, or maybe because of it, she insisted I always looked perfect when I went out in public.

One of our last fights was when I tried to go to school in stylish ripped jeans that my friend Lacey gave me.

“You look unkempt,” she said. “Plus, it shows your thick thighs. Skirts are far more flattering until you lose a few pounds.”

I ran out of the house, causing several of her treasures to crash behind me, which always set her nerves on edge.

I slammed the door as hard as I could. That day at school I talked to my counselor about it all.

She already knew something of the hoarding.

It’s impossible to keep that kind of thing under wraps in a town filled with mansions and millionaires for very long.

She saw me run into school late, crying, and pulled me into her office.

She was the first one I’d ever confided in about my parents’ house, but the truth poured out of me that morning, and two days later, Mrs. Lavarito from Child Protective Services showed up on our doorstep.

After her home visit, I was removed, carrying one garbage bag of belongings and my school backpack.

It was supposed to be temporary. Mrs. Lavarito comforted me with promises of support from social services and mental health professionals.

But I never saw my school counselor again, my mom or my house.

I had no idea a pair of jeans would change my life so drastically, bringing me to this moment over thirty years later.

“Uh, thank you,” I say to this friendly version of my mom and then offer back, “I like the color of your lipstick.”

“Oh, thanks. I’m going to a dance later and it matches the dress I got from Gimbels.”

“A dance? That sounds fun,” Nurse Mitchell replies while writing a note on the whiteboard. I can tell from the look on her face that there’s no such dance here at Shore Path Memory Center.

Unstuck in time, that’s what the nurse said before we headed back to see Mom. This person I’m talking to is technically my mother, but I think she’s reliving a moment from years before I was born.

“I guess. I’m going with Nicky Sheridan, so I don’t know if it will be fun, but my dress has a crinoline, and”—she leans in and whispers—“it’s a full inch shorter than the dress code.”

“Whoa, Betty, you’re a rebel,” Nurse Mitchell responds, meeting my mom in her own reality.

She giggles, which is an odd sound from my mother.

“Wanna try it?” She holds the tube of lipstick up and squints to read the label. “Defiant Coral. It sounds sassy and I like that.”

She gives her shoulders a little shake. I try to stop my laugh, but it puffs out. My dad holds back a smirk.

“I rarely turn down sassy,” I say with a shrug.

She points to an aluminum and plastic chair across the room. Nurse Mitchell drags it over, saying something about how we’re doing just fine. She excuses herself.

My mom takes the cap off her lipstick and gestures for me to sit, insisting on applying the color herself. I follow her instructions and give her a slight pucker as she uses her shaky hand to smooth it on.

“Press them together, hon,” she says, and I comply. She makes a sweet cooing sound. “Perfect! That’s a great color on you.”

I have no idea what the color actually looks like since there’s no mirror handy, but I don’t care if I look like a clown.

“Wanna play gin rummy?” She reaches for a pack of cards sitting on the short table beside her.

When I was little my mom would play game after game of solitaire, but we never played games together as a family. My throat is thick and sticky.

I take a deep breath and answer, “Yes, I’d love to play.”

My dad brings a side table over and puts it between us, and my mom starts passing out the cards.

Dad does that shoulder squeeze thing again as he sits beside me, which doesn’t exactly make it easier to keep my feelings under control.

She picks up her cards and looks at me long and hard, as if she remembers something.

I hope she’s not remembering who I really am.

After a long pause, I look at my dad. He puts down the first card, starting the game. Immediately, Mom engages in the activity, and I play with both of my parents for the first time in my entire life.

As the game progresses, I watch my mother suspiciously and wait for her charming facade to drop. As the hour goes on, I find myself relaxing, enjoying myself, even. When it’s time to go, my mom puts her arms out as though asking for a hug.

“I’ve missed you so much,” she says, her eyes misty and sincere. I know I should respond in like and tell her I’ve missed her as well, but I can’t.

The Betty I met today is the kind of mom I always wished I’d had. I’d missed out on that mom—the “I’ll do your makeup” mom, the “let’s play gin rummy” mom. But this coral-lipped, friendly woman isn’t my mom. I silently lean into the embrace. She smells of coffee, peppermints, and baby powder.

She whispers, “Where have you been for so long, Laura?”

I pull back without an answer.

Laura? Another random memory, but I don’t mind. I think I’d rather be Laura right now, whoever she is.

“See you again soon?” she asks. And though it’s likely a lie, I tell her I will.

Dad walks me out, past Nurse Mitchell, past the front desk girl who asks for a selfie, and back into the cold.

Now we’ll visit the house. We have a meeting scheduled with the social worker and a city official for tomorrow morning, and I told my dad I needed to know what the situation looked like before I agreed to help.

“I looked Lake Geneva up. Sounds like a cool place. We should come visit . . .” Olivia, my college freshman, says on the other end of the line as I drive across town to my parents’ house.

We. I loved it when she started saying “we” when referring to our little family.

She was twelve when I met Ian, and for a while we were a perfect modern family, at least when we weren’t off shooting Second Chance Renovation in some out-of-state locale.

It all went sideways after we moved into a big house in LA and she had to get used to the little four-year-old twins that came along with her new stepdad.

With Olivia in middle school, we had to leave her at home with her dad during our work trips, and because they were still so little, we’d take the boys all over the country with us for weeks at a time.