Janie

I take a deep breath, and unclench my fists. Looking down at the stinging in my palm, when it opens I see the deep crescent indentations of my fingernails. Since I was a little girl, that sight was more or less the definition of home.

Inside the little brick single-level cottage, behind the yellow, ratty yard, I can already hear my stepfather screaming. I’m still on the sidewalk, so chances are everyone else within a three-house radius can hear him as well. Why he was there when my mother called me, I can’t imagine.

Mom called me about a panic attack.

George is pretty much the opposite of helpful for that.

No one knows I’m here yet. I look back at the car — I could still leave. No one would know. I could just say I got busy, or that someone quit at the restaurant and I have to cover. That’s what the owner does; what I always do. They’d believe me.

But no amount of fantasizing actually will make that dream a reality. Pushing the chain-link fence gate open with a sigh, my heels tap up the cracked walkway through the dead yard and up to the screen door where I don’t bother to knock. It’s not locked.

Besides, Gloria’ll just tell George that I’m lying if I try to make something up. And George would ask. George is an asshole.

“Jesus Christ, Gina,” George is barking when I open the door to the scene. “You said you were dying! You get a little nervous on your own. Can’t you just piss in a corner like a dog instead of — what the fuck are you doing here?” He turns on me the moment I close the door.

I give George a long, flat look. It‘s better not to engage. So instead I turn my eyes more softly on Gina. “Sorry it took me so long, Mama,” I say. “You know you didn’t have to call anyone else.” I shoot George another brief, flat glare.

Gina takes my hand when I’m within arm’s reach, her pale lips widening into a wobbly smile. Her eyes are still wide, her pupils small, and it doesn’t look like she’s showered today. After almost fifteen years, George still can’t tell the difference between “nervous” and a full-blown panic attack by looking at it. The sleeve of Gina’s sweater is frayed from constant picking, which she’d have been doing for hours before the worst of it finally peaked.

“Oh, Janie,” my mother breathes, her bony hand squeezing mine as she says my name like a prayer. Probably a prayer for deliverance. Her eyes are red and puffy from crying, but by now her cheeks are dry. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have called you. George… he came over, so… I just never see you and I think this time I… I just missed you and you know how I get. I just — ”

“Shh, it’s okay, Mama.” I let her draw me close, until she kneels by the old recliner she’d been sitting in and smiles up at me.

It’s not true; I drop everything to come and help her manage panic attacks sometimes as often as twice a week. During really bad weeks, it can be three or four visits. But she rarely retains much in the way of clear memories of the worst attacks.

This time looks to be one of the easier ones, George’s outburst notwithstanding. I’ve come through for my mother on everything from flies wriggling through the window and porch screens, to checking every closet in the house to assure her there’s no one lurking in the dark corners of the house. Once, I had to check the gas lines in the basement and prove that the house wasn’t in imminent danger of burning down.

Every time I do it, I know I’m enabling her, letting her get through another attack without having to self-manage the symptoms the way her many therapists have taught her to do. But I’m a problem-solver; a chronic micromanager. It’s true at the restaurant, it’s true at Mom’s house. Hell, it’s true of ordering takeout and getting my clothes dry-cleaned.

“Come on, Mama,” I urge as she stands, tugging her up to her feet. “You’ve got to be exhausted. Let’s get you to bed.”

“Yeah, right,” George grumbles. “I come all the way home from work, and you tuck her in for a nap. I ain’t on salary, you know.”

I roll my eyes and ignore him.

“You come in here when there’s a problem, sure,” he goes on. “Now you’re a big shot, you can’t be bothered to come spend time with your mother. That’s why she gets these fucking attacks in the first place. On account of you think you’re better than us. How do you think that makes her feel, you coming in here in your fancy dress and high heels like you’re — ”

Drawing myself to my full height, with said heels on, I’m at least at eye level with my stepfather, and when I want to I can put the fire in my eyes. When I turn them on George now, his teeth click shut. I force my hands to relax, again.

“The least you could do,” I say, struggling to keep calm and rein in my fury at the man, “is not be a complete bastard when she’s vulnerable like this, you self-centered son of a bitch. Go the fuck back to work. I can take care of my mother.”

In the typical fashion, George sneers at her, but says nothing. When George Acropolis speaks, people listen… or he pretends not to have spoken in the first place. What a keeper.

“Janie,” my mother whispers.

I bite the inside of my cheek, and draw her toward the back of the living room, to the hallway where the bedrooms are. “You’re okay, Mama,” I say as she clutches her arm for the trip. “Do you have your pills here?”

Gina hesitates before she gives a nervous affirmative.

“Mama, you have to take your pills,” I sigh. “If you take them like the doctor said, this won’t happen.”

“George doesn’t like me on them,” she says. “He says they make me lazy. And they do.”

“No, Mama,” I say, trying not to grit my teeth, “they make you normal. George is… he just needs to understand that.” It doesn’t matter what I say about George, or how often I air my opinion of him to my mother. All it does is make her more agitated.

Almost the same time I open the door to my mother’s room, the front door slams, startling us both. George is going back to work, at least. Hopefully it’s one of the days he works overtime. Or, maybe he has a mistress. I don’t even care as long as it keeps him away long enough for Mom to get some much-needed rest.

As she takes her slippers off and lies down on top of the blankets, I dig through the bedside table for her pills. I find the orange bottle nearly empty, and as I tip one of the little pills out and hand it to my patient, I frown. I grab a plastic cup from their bathroom, fill it with water and bring it back to the bedside.

“Take your pill, Mama,” I say.

She does, and then lies down on the bed, still breathing heavily but no longer quite so pale. It’s like the life comes back into her when George is gone.

He’s the reason she’s been having more and more frequent panic attacks. I get called for the worst of them, but the lesser ones, the attacks she just needs to hear a voice to get her through them — for those she calls my brothers — one of the twins, Chris or Derek. They answer about half the time.

Not for the first time and likely not for the last, I have to remind myself not to try and convince her to leave George and come stay with me. She’d just go back to George in just a few days, claiming they’ve worked it all out and that his temper won’t be an issue again.

No. All I can do is what I’m already doing — being supportive, and helping her cope with her growing list of irrational fears. A list that I worry is one day going to encompass everything.