Kathryn
One arm braced on the counter, she strained to reach the peanut butter. It was on the second shelf up, and it should have been within easy reach. The hand on the counter turned progressively whiter as more and more of her weight was taken up by it. She grimaced and stretched her other arm again, trying to grab the damn jar.
Her fingers touched the base, spinning it slightly, moving it closer to the edge at the same time. One more and she would have it. Pushing hard she reached up, tilted it, and saw it come toward her outstretched hand.
Got you.
The last of her strength gave out, she popped her wrist painfully, and collapsed back into the chair, which wheeled backward into the kitchen table with an uncomfortable bounce.
“Ow!” she yelped, cradling her sore wrist.
In front of her the peanut butter jar lost its balance, toppled forward, and hit the ground. The lid exploded off and the thick brown paste-like substance splattered nearby.
“Charlie, no!” she shouted as their dog raced for it, gobbling some up with a hearty lick of his tongue.
Almost immediately it backed off, smacking his tongue and mouth together, the sticky nature confounding the poor creature. She wanted to feel bad for him, but footsteps announced her mother entering the kitchen, and that combined with the pain in her wrists and lower body was just enough.
Her mother—a short bustle of well-meaning energy—immediately took in the situation, shooed the dog out, and started to clean up the mess.
“Kathryn,” she said gently. “You should have just called me. I could have gotten it for you.”
Behind them the toast popped, announcing it was ready. Without asking her mother, she took some of the peanut butter still in the jar, spread it gracefully from crust to crust on the two slices, and put it on the table next to her.
“I should be able to get it myself!” she snapped, angry at her own weakness and not her mother’s kind words. “It’s just fucking peanut butter.”
“Watch your tone!”
She rolled her eyes. “I’m a thirty-five-year-old woman, Mother. I know a few cuss words by this point.”
“If your father were still here, he wouldn’t approve.”
Kathryn laughed. “You’re joking, right? Dad would have been right here cussing with me.”
“I prefer not to believe that.”
“Oh Mom,” she said, seeing the smile on her mother’s face as they both remembered the big booming belly laughter of her father, a jovial factory worker who had somehow never succumbed to the depression that afflicted so many others in his life. Unfortunately he had succumbed to cancer three years earlier, after over three decades of fatherhood and forty years of marriage. They hadn’t had much to begin with, but the tiny little house had always been full of love.
Now it was full of misery. Her misery.
“You’re pushing yourself too hard. You didn’t rest long enough after walking to get the mail, and you know it.”
Kathryn looked away, knowing the truth of the matter. She could walk now, which was a very welcome change, but only for short periods of time, and then she would have to rest in between. She’d gone to the end of their short driveway and back no more than ten minutes earlier, and she’d paid for it now by being unable to stand up long enough to get the peanut butter, and consequently hurting her wrist by trying to support all her weight on it.
“It’s okay, Katy, you’re home now.” Her mother came and sat in one of the kitchen chairs so that they were at the same level. “I know this sucks for you.”
“Understatement of the decade,” she grumped, hating herself for her weakness, but hating herself even more for having had to move home and become a drain on her mother once again. It was embarrassing, not to mention financially tough on her sole remaining parent, who had little except her father’s pension and small Social Security benefit to live on. Trying to stretch that to cover a disabled child was pushing everything to the limit.
“You’re making progress, though. Two months ago you couldn’t walk at all. Now you’re able to go get the mail.” A hand gripped her forearm, giving it a tight squeeze of what she was sure was supposed to be support. But Kathryn couldn’t see it as anything more than pity.
“And in another two months we’ll be broke from you trying to look after me!” Now was not the time for tears, she told herself, blinking hard to keep everything calm.
“We’ll find a way, honey. We always do.”
“That way if for me to find a job, Mom. I need to start contributing.” She braced herself for the counterargument. It was a discussion they’d had several times already.
Kathryn knew it was a necessity, but her mom was in all protective-mother mode since she’d come back to live with her after her accident and failed marriage. If you could call an engagement called off just weeks before the wedding a marriage at all. She was refusing to acknowledge that the money wasn’t there, and that Kathryn would need to provide some of it if they hoped to survive. Just like she had when she was younger and her mom had gotten laid off from her office job.
“What will you do?”
It wasn’t the normal response, and for a moment Kathryn didn’t reply, unsure of what to say. What would she do? Standing for long periods of time simply wasn’t in the equation.
“I don’t know.” It wasn’t a great answer, but it was honest. Kathryn hated lying to her mom. “I’ll find something. There has to be somewhere that can make use of me. Anything would be of help right now.”
The money was necessary for them to live, but on a personal, psychological level, Kathryn needed to be contributing. She would not allow herself to be dependent on anyone anymore. Even if that person was the most loving mother she’d ever met. It was time she stood up—perhaps figuratively for now—for herself and stopped being a drain on others. She wanted to be a provider.
“Speaking of help,” her mother said in that sly, parental tone that indicates to any child old enough to be aware that they are completely and totally screwed by the words about to be spoken next.
“What did you do?” she grilled, dropping into interrogation mode.
The wrinkles around her mom’s eyes from years of big smiles blossomed into full life once more, the small woman just beaming with energy. Running fingers through hair filled with grays that she called “life-hairs,”—meaning she’d lived a good life if she got them—Audrey Pine winked at her daughter. Uh oh. Whatever it was, it was bad.
“I signed you up to a program one of the ladies at my bingo night suggested. You remember Janet Krazinski, right?”
“No, Mom.”
“Sure you do. She got her hair dyed bright pink two years ago and for whatever reason it bleached into her skin? We called her Cotton Candy for months after that.”
“Mom!” she said, horrified. “That’s terrible!”
“Nonsense. Janet found it hysterical. Anyway, she does some sort of work with the healthcare system, and recommended this to me.”
“So far you’ve done a wonderful job of dancing around what the program is, Mother,” Kathryn ground out, trying to steer the conversation back on track, a difficult job against a master like her mother.
“Right. Well, it’s a program that pairs volunteers with those in need of assistance.”
Kathryn’s eyes narrowed. “That sounds expensive.”
“It’s not.”
The reply came just a bit too quickly, and her eyes narrowed further until they were little more than slits. It had sounded like a truthful answer, which meant…
“If it’s not expensive, then that means it was free,” she mused. “Just who is this program available to?”
“It doesn’t matter.” Her mother was getting defensive now, and Kathryn knew exactly what that meant now.
It was a program for poor people. The less fortunate. Those in need. Term it however you want, but Kathryn knew full well that’s what it was. Their socioeconomic status meant they qualified for it for free.
She wanted to cry all over again. Kathryn knew how much her mother tried to ignore the fact they had no money, by simply living her life with the attitude that scrimping and saving for every penny and reusing things until they could no longer be reused again, and then reusing them again, was completely normal. She never treated herself to anything nice, and the only money she spent on herself was the five-dollar buy-in for her weekly bingo night.
So for someone like that who prided herself so heavily on making a life out of next to nothing to have gone and signed up for this program, knowing full well it meant admitting to others that she had no money, must have been hard. Beyond hard.
“Anyway,” her mother said, breaking up the somber mood that had filled the tiny kitchen with its little oval table and handmade wooden chairs. “We were selected.”
“So what exactly is this volunteer going to do?” She wondered if it was another rehabilitation specialist or something of the sort. Kathryn hated her biweekly checkups, but thankfully they were all covered by the insurance of the person who had hit her.
She hated all drunken drivers, but thanked her lucky stars that this one had been fully insured, because it meant that she was completely covered until she was healthy again. So many others—those that survived, sadly—were left to fend for themselves.
“Oh you know. Come around, help you with this and that. Things you can’t do. Stuff like that.”
Kathryn bowed her head, holding it in her hands. “You have got to be joking, right? Please tell me you’re joking, Mother.”
“Why would I joke about something like this? That seems rude, doesn’t it?”
“Mom. You got me a nanny?” she groaned, feeling more embarrassed than the time she’d soiled the hospital bed before the nurse got there just after surgery. “Please tell me that’s not what it is.”
“That’s not what it is.”
She glared. “Then what is it?”
The matronly older woman picked the toast off the table and handed it to Kathryn, who reluctantly started to eat it. She was hungry after all.
“It’s not a nanny.”
“I’ll repeat my question,” she said around a mouthful of melted peanut-buttery goodness. “What is it?”
“It’s a Rehabilitation and Mobility Assistant Specialist.”
“That sounds like a really fancy way to say nanny.” She wolfed down the rest of the slice, her stomach growling with contentment as it was finally fed.
“It’ll be good for you, honey. You need to get out and do stuff, and I just can’t leave the house. There’s lots to do here.”
She rolled her eyes. Of course there was lots to do there. It just never got done. The leaky faucet needed fixing. Most of the doors hung at odd angles and wouldn’t close. Or if they did they closed and needed to be body-checked back open. It was a convenient excuse, is what it was.
“I know, Mom,” she told her with patience she didn’t feel, picking up the second slice of toast. “So when does it start?”
Maybe she could call the program director up or something, and have them cancel her application.
Her mother’s demeanor turned way too calm for Kathryn’s liking as she responded to the question. Fear coiled in her stomach as she waited for the answer. “Today. At three thirty.”
Kathryn’s eyes shot to the little windup clock on the wall—batteries cost money after all. It read 3:27, or maybe 3:28.
“This is a joke, right? A cruel, mean joke. Have you seen what I’m wearing?” she gasped, looking down just as a dollop of peanut butter dripped from the toast onto the raggedy gray shirt she was wearing on top of her dirty black sweatpants.
She shoved the rest of the toast into her mouth and wheeled for her bedroom, thankful that at least they lived in a one-story house.
The whole situation bothered her, but Kathryn knew it was too late to back out now. Besides, if her mother had sucked up her pride to go and sign up for this program, the least she could do was honor that and give the program a try. Her mom had done so much for her, and to say no to her help now would do little more than insult her.
The front door thundered as someone knocked on it, the rickety framing job amplifying the noise, making it sound like a giant was banging on it.
“No!” she gasped, stopping at the door into her old room, not having had anywhere near enough time to change. “It’s not fair.”
Her mother had totally planned it this way, that conniving old woman. She’d distracted her with all the talk in the kitchen, knowing full well what time it was.
“Kathryn, it’s for you!”
Feeling depressed and knowing full well she was helpless to stop this scene from playing out now that her mother had orchestrated it, she awkwardly turned the wheelchair around and pushed her way to the front door with one hand, while frantically trying to lick up and then cover the peanut butter stain with the other. It wasn’t working.
All her efforts and other thoughts evaporated into thin air as she rounded the corner and saw the man standing in her doorway. It was a mistake. It had to be a mistake. The world was not so cruel as to provide her with such a gorgeous-looking “assistant” while she looked like a dirty tramp who couldn’t even eat peanut butter on toast without spilling all over herself.
“Kathryn, this is Callan,” her mother said, turning to face her so that she could make a face about how hot he was.
“Uh, hi,” she said, staring way up into his face, utterly enraptured with him already.
“Hello.” He slowly stuck out a hand, never blinking the entire time.
Twin circles of deep, dark blue stared down at her, nearly purple they were so dark in color. Kathryn caught her breath at the way they sparkled in the late-afternoon sun, streaming in from outside to try and brighten the faded-yellow flower wallpaper of her mother’s house.
“Kathryn,” her mother said, nudging her gently.
Absently she stuck out her own hand, noting how far down he had to come to be able to take it. He was tall. Not just tall—he towered over Kathryn, her mother, and just about anyone short of a professional basketball team. He had the long, lean looks of someone like an Olympic swimmer who had turned to working out to put on some extra mass after retiring perhaps. Perfectly sculpted biceps stuck out from under the tight pale-green V-neck T-shirt he wore, and though it wasn’t skin-tight, Kathryn could imagine the rippled rows of his abs, just based on the rest of him.
His face was cute in an adorable sort of way. A little blocky and rectangular, almost like a boxer, but filled with a boyish charm that belied the fact he was likely somewhere in his forties. This was a man that liked to laugh—but the way his features were scrunching up and emphasizing his wide, solid chin made her think otherwise.
“Is something wrong?” Had she screwed up already?
“Uhh,” he said, peeling his hand away from hers to inspect it.
Kathryn watched in horror as he sniffed at the brown substance on his hand. “Is this peanut butter?” he asked, sounding slightly miffed.
She’d shaken his hand and smeared half-licked peanut butter all over him.
What a start.