I took Ember’s advice and followed Mercy.
After parking and explaining my reason for being there, a staff member gave me the room number I needed. Poised to knock right outside of the door, I heard the helplessness in Mercy’s voice and lowered my fist.
“My name is Mercy, Miss Marilyn,” she was saying gently.
“Mercy,” the woman replies. “Unique, it suits you.”
“My mom really loved Marvin Gaye,” Mercy says with so much sadness I was surprised the sky hadn’t opened up with rain. When the woman began to sing it all clicked into place and my heart broke on her behalf.
Stepping away, I moved just enough not to scare her but when Mercy came out she hadn’t even noticed me.
Placing her forehead on the door, both palms on either side, in agony she whispers, “I love you, Mom.”
Before Mercy exhaled, I was there taking her into my arms.
Curling into me, I felt her shudder followed by a sob of total loss.
Scooping her up, I carry her back to my truck setting her in the passenger seat. It took a solid ten minutes for her to calm down enough to say, “I miss her, Dion.”
“How long has she –”
“She’s struggled since I could remember but she’s been here almost five years. My dad couldn’t take—she doesn’t remember us so he had to –” taking a deep breath she finishes. “For her own safety, she needs round the clock care.”
“Where’s your dad?”
“He’s my next stop,” she says twisting her hands in her lap. I understood now why she shut me out earlier but the next step was hers to take. As much as I wanted to demand she let me help her, it needed to be Mercy who asked for it. I wasn’t strong-arming her on this one. So, when she faces me and says, “Will you come with me?” on the inside my heart swelled in joy but instead of kissing her senseless, I simply said, “Tell me where to go.”
She explained the care her mom needed was so expensive that her dad sold her childhood home, cashed in all of his stocks and savings refusing to take a dime from his daughter. She also went to explain that her piece of shit ex-husband found the money she’d been saving to take over her care and fucking blew it at the track. I swear to God, I wanted to turn around, drive to his house and gut him.
Lost in her own thoughts, when she started to really open up, I made it a point to drive slower.
“She lashed out about forgetting and misplacing things because she knew the day would come when she wouldn’t even remember who she was, who I was. I can’t even imagine how scared she must have been. How do you fight Alzheimer’s? It’s the mystery I cannot fucking solve.”
The rest of the drive was made in silence and when she directed me to turn into the cemetery, I followed her directions with our final stop being her father’s grave. Jumping down from the truck before I could take her hand, Mercy squared her shoulders and I watched her prepare herself. Turning to me, she extends her hand and seeing my chance to comfort her, I do. “Can I ask how?”
“Stroke,” she confesses quietly. “He never got over losing my mom.”
“Do you always visit them both on the same day?”
“Yes, one day of me wallowing is enough. I can’t imagine what spreading it out would do.”
“You’re allowed to grieve,” I promise her.
“All I do is grieve, Dion. Every time I visit her, I lose her all over again. Only she’s not dead. She’s existing in a world I’m not allowed access to. He’s gone from this earth and some days I don’t think she knows what earth is. And then there’s me who wanted someone of my own so badly that I actually married Nick.”
“Mercy –”
“Just let me get it out, okay? I need you to understand why I am the way I am.”
“Alright,” I say pulling her close.
“It wasn’t love for me, it was fear. I wanted someone who’d remember me and don’t think for a minute Nick did. I worked eighty to ninety hours a week to save money for her care. I just told you that son of a bitch took the money and blew it on horses, Dion. Nick can sniff out a nickel in a shit storm, so Ember and I bought the shop not just for income and office space but to keep his fucking hands off what’s mine. Do you know, to this day he still has the balls to drop my name when he runs into trouble? Who does that? It makes me ask myself, am I really that forgettable? Then I meet you and I feel things I’ve never felt before. I want the very things I’m terrified I’ll forget. But you know, if my dad could have met you, he’d have seen for himself that I not only found my someone, but that he treated his daughter like a queen. He’d have died with one less worry on his heart.”
Tilting her chin up, I kiss her nose and explain, “You see a woman who is forgettable but I see a woman who was waiting for me to adore her. I was worth the wait, Mercy and you need to understand that all my life I’ve been waiting for you too.”
When she closes her eyes, the tears flow freely and gripping my waist, Mercy buries her face in my chest mumbling, “Today was hard.”
“I know it was, beautiful.”
“But you made it easier.”
“Not a God damn thing I wouldn’t do to ease you, Mercy.”
“I know something else that would ease me.”
“My cock, right?” I ask hoping to cheer her up.
Biting her lip and giving me a wink she says, “Ellen.”
An hour later, Mercy and I took our seats at the Ellen DeGeneres slot machines.
Let’s just say the kind of therapy my woman liked was expensive because Ellen was not in a giving mood.