Part 5 (1/2)

”Those can be broken”

”You've hired ”

”Yes, but we can undo all that”

She rubbed her temples ”Can we please, please, just not talk about this?”

The apartdale had lasted only a year It was too far from Waterville, as I'd known it would be, even before I saw it We'd tried toher to dinner every week or so and including her in school plays and other activities involving her granddaughters, as well as college events like the annual Carols and Lights holiday festival Most i our usual routines Saturday was for grocery shopping, just as it had been in southern Illinois, after which she and I went out to lunch, so she always looked forward to And of course we talked on the phone during the week Still, she dale,up fast Though there were a lot of wodale co women from Maine were provincial and clannish and dull They cared little for politics, less for sports, nothing at all for fashi+on They liked their seafood fried and their pastries dense They were sluggish and self-satisfied They gossiped incessantly about people my mother didn't know, and they weren't interested in her opinions

So when an apartment not far from our house in Waterville came on the market, Barbara and I immediately checked it out on our own That way, if it was a sty, there was no reason to get her hopes up But it was lovely, half of the downstairs of a large, ra old house, and the landlord and his wife lived just up the street About twice the size of the cras and tall s, a fireplace, and a nice front porch for su Naturally it was more expensive, but ere happy to ht she'd be happy there Lovely, you see, is in the eye of the beholder, and Barbara was shaking her head in disrown alhnow The fixtures in the kitchen and bath were of the sa Street in Gloversville, and the fridge wasn't frost-free There were outlets in the unheated utility room for a washer and dryer, which my mother, a confirmed apartment dweller, didn't own The beautiful oak built-ins would have to be dusted Ditto the hardwood floors My , since you could run a vacuum over it

”You think she'll hate it?” I asked

”Not in the lease”

Which is prettyin the kitchen, the landlord and his wife awaiting our decision in the living room, she'd raised all the pertinent, predictable objections Her back wouldn't allow her to defrost a refrigerator (That was fine, we'd get her a new one) And she had no way to get to a laundromat (No problem, we'd scout out a nice used washer/dryer unit) And she hated wood floors (A few area rugs would do the trick) Knoould come next, Barbara left the room ”And of course the whole place will need a professional cleaning,” she said, sotto voce, drawing her index finger across the surface of the stove ”There's a layer of grease over everything” (From the next room came the voice of the landlord's wife, ”What did she say?”)

So we signed a lease and later, back at our house, my mother called Gloversville to tell my aunt about her lovely new place, howStreet house, and how close she'd be to us To hear her tell it, this roeary of the half-hour drive to Farether in Waterville, and she'd really be part of Eain Her enthusiasiving herself one of her talkings-to, convincing herself that she was doing the right thing, that all would at last be well

For a while things were better, but then ultimately worse It was an old house, so the tall hile elegant, didn't glide up and down slass panes rattled when the wind blew or a big truck rumbled by Summers, the street was too hot and noisy to sit out on the porch, or so she claihbors weren't elderly, which meant they made noise The woman in the upstairs apartment was heavy-footed and played music, and on the other side of her bedroom wall my mother could hear the tenant in the adjacent apart-lost boyfriend I visited regularly and never heard any of this, but the house was old and full of sounds

There were other disappointh she was closer to us now and saw her granddaughters h school and had full lives with their friends Barbara was by then working full-ti, so even though she was now three minutes away instead of thirty, she didn't see ten tiined arithmetic was false, as it always seemed to be where she was concerned And now that she wasn't in a seniors' complex anymore, when she went to the e to talk to, even in passing, about the weather and who'd come doith a cold or had visitors over the weekend When I called to check on her at the end of the day, she'd say, before hello, ”Do you realize that yours is the first voice I've heard today that didn't come from the television?”

Then one day a bat came down the chimney, and that was that; ere off to Winslow, ten minutes away, on the other side of the Kennebec River, where I'd been tracking a sht Truthfully, we hadn't expected this apartely because ainst all odds, had e, also ”from away” and therefore unattached Dot was kind and had a terrific sense of hureat reserves of patience this friendshi+p would require She had fa to be closer to them, talk that always sent my mother into a tizzy

Dot was one ofparticularly dubious about this upco to rocery shopping and out to lunch and wherever else she needed to go Soht have to make the trip twice, a strain, sure, but doable And of course we could talk on the phone as needed There was no guarantee she would find somebody she liked as well as Dot in her new place But my mother believed she could read the future If she remained in Winslow, Dot would leave, and then she'd be alone Okay, I said, but wouldn't that be the ti as she could? Because, I was given to understand, if there was the possibility ofin the future, that would o If she didn't find another friend, well, she'd do without

”There,” I said, taping the last of the boxes shut ”Done”

”You should go ho up one of her despondent soing to walk away from this,” I reminded her ”I'll be here an hour before theto pack everything here and unpack it at the other end”

This new epresent for both the loading and unloading, as if her physical presence and attention to the se to objects that, once put in their proper and accustomed place, would reconstitute her s spike in her anxiety levels in the weeks prior to a move made her impossible to live with, and naturally she'd be wiped out for weeks afterward, too tired and worn out even to eat Over the last few years she'd become wobbly, unsteady on her feet (in need, actually, of the wall railings her new place boasted) Alwaysto position herself in doorhen the et through, she was a danger to both herself and theot dirty or scuffed on the truck, she'd squeal in horror at the se and demand that it be cleaned then and there, before it entered the apart halt The placement of every stick of furniture was a battle in itself, and common sense was not allowed onto the battlefield If the cable plug was on one wall, she'd invariably want her television by the opposite one, requiring the cable company to send out a technician to provide a second outlet No feng shui enthusiast could take eht to her, irrespective of function If there were only two electrical outlets in the room, you could rest assured of my mother's intention to cover them, after which another electrician would have to be hired

I was deter her out of the Winslow apart her at our Cas were off-loaded at the new apartment Toward that end I'd drawn a schematic of her new place and asked her to decide where theshe wouldn't be held to any decisions and that anything could be repositioned later if need be

”Really,” I reassured her ”There's nothing for you to do Nothing for you to worry about Callcomes up”

But I only had to look at her to know that her i wild What if they cut off her utilities too early? What if she couldn't reach me? What if, what if, what if?