If I were deaf, words would wash over me. Instead they stab like knives, like voodoo pins– piercing my arms, my leg, my heart.
“Mother,” says Randolph. “Remember the garbage. The garbage goes out on Thursdays.”
My hand flies to my ear. “The mortgage? You forgot to pay the mortgage?”
Like a raccoon, my son. The black circles under his eyes. The twitching nose. The snooping hands. Rearranging the trash in the can now. Swatting the flies. Poking and prodding in places he doesn’t belong.
“They won’t take the garbage if the lid’s not on,” says Randolph. “Remember. You’ve got to close the lid.”
A plastic wrapper sails out of the can. We watch it soar to the clouds, turning upside down and sideways.
“Cheetos, Mother. Really? Cheetos? Aren’t you supposed to be watching your weight?”
For every push there is a pull. Once more, the hand flies to the ear. “Your prostate? You’re having trouble with your prostate? Your father, may he rest in peace, dripped like a percolator. Drip. Drip. Drip. Five times a night the endless dripping. ”
Finally, his fancy Japanese import backs out of the driveway. We share a duplex. He’s on the top floor and I’m on the bottom. You’d think he’d appreciate the arrangement, the shared utilities, the nice backyard. But no.
My son is moving, he says. All the way from Woodmere, Long Island to Denver. A mathematical genius, my son. Like his father. Only Randolph fixes computers while my husband fixed boxing matches, football games, Keno cards. Anything with numbers, he could fix.
That night Randolph calls me. I place the phone five feet away and listen. Somewhere in Colorado his head is sticking out a hotel window, his voice is so loud. The job interview went great.
“They’ll ship my car,” he gushes.”Pay for my plane ticket. Even my moving expenses. I don’t have to leave a thing behind.”
If I were mute, silence would swallow his voice. Instead I cough and choke and spit it back out. “Car? Moving?”
“Did you remember to shut off the stove, Mom? Did you remember to leave on the hall light?”
If I were blind, the path would be easy. How can something be a problem if there’s nothing to see? Instead my fingers feel their way to the front door. I stumble over a nest of newspapers, duck under the mountain of magazines, crawl over two decades worth of unopened mail. Then I sneak outside when no one’s looking. When I reach the driveway, I about-face the trash bin and wheel it inside.
If I were weak, my work would go undone, the demands screaming for my attention unnoticed. Instead it takes ten minutes to drag the big green monster into my living room. Gritting my teeth, flexing muscles I haven’t used in years, I manage to dump the contents on the floor. Max III–my mini schnauzer poodle bichon combo–takes a nosedive and plants himself right in the middle. He slurps and slurps and slurps and after an obscene amount of circling and smelling leaves a beautiful pile of poop right on top. Flags on Everest look less impressive. We call it a night and watch TV.
The next morning, I ease my way into the kitchen. The cabinets proceed in chronological order and each one tells a story. Starting with the year of Randolph’s birth, they work their way to the present.
First, the 1980’s. Swollen cans of baby formula. Clumps of used diapers. Jars of Gerber’s applesauce with blackened tar around the rims. Then the 1990’s are next. While newspaper headlines beat like a drum– Kuwait, Chechnya, Kosovo– inside my pantry, order was restored. Three hundred cans of tuna. A thousand Band-Aid boxes. Enough rubbing alcohol and hydrogen peroxide to cleanse the world.
The new millennium is stored in the refrigerator. Max I and Max 2 are in the freezer. My husband’s aftershave and cologne fill the vegetable bin. His clothes are neatly shelved among the bread and eggs. I reach inside and find the peanut butter. The expiration date is November, 2002. Since Randolph’s allergic it’s never seen the light of day. But 2002, I suddenly realize is a vintage year for peanut butter. Peanut butter manufactured in 2002 is just finding its peak.
If I were senile, I’d find a cozy place to nap. Instead I dig up the key to Randolph’s top half and let myself in. Then I take that jar of peanut butter and slather it all over. A smudge on his bathroom towel. A dollop in the milk carton. Door knobs. Faucets. Handles. Everywhere his hands touch, I leave the tiniest trail.
Just to make sure, I find the EpiPens and throw them in the empty green bin. It’s the last place he’ll look. And the last place anyone else will look is downstairs. They’ll steal a glance and a sniff and race for the exit. They always do.
And the old woman?
“She’s deaf as a doornail and blind as a bat,” her neighbors will say. “With dementia to boot. A pathetic loner with a bad heart and worse knees.”
Did I tell you about my knees?
Marlene Olin‘s short stories have been published or are forthcoming in journals such as The Massachusetts Review, The Water-Stone Review, Upstreet Magazine, Steam Ticket, The American Literary Review, and Poetica. She is the winner of the 2015 Rick DeMarinis Short Fiction Award and is both a Pushcart and a Best of the Net nominee.
–Art by Ashley Holloway