Chapter Eight
“Uncle Jake, why was Grandma so confused?” Lily spoons mac-n-cheese into her mouth. The remnants of our take-out dinner litter Rachel’s table.
Rachel answers Lily’s question. “Honey, it’s the Alzheimer’s. Sometimes she doesn’t know who she is or who she’s with.”
“That’s why she always thinks I’m Mommy and calls me Rachel and Uncle Jake Richard?” Lily says.
Rachel nods.
“What does whore mean?”
Rachel coughs on her wine. “It’s a grown up word that we’ll discuss later.” She gives me that bug-eyed mom look that asks ‘what the hell happened’ without saying the words. “Lily, honey, go get on your jammies and brush your teeth. It’s almost time for bed.”
Lily slides from her chair and heads toward the stairs. We both watch until her feet disappear from view.
“What happened?” Rachel carries the three plates to the sink. I stack containers and walk them to the trash can.
“Same as always. Mom thinks I’m Dad and that Dad had an affair with that mom in Lily’s class, what’s her name? Kendall. Don’t you remember the music performance last spring?”
“I got a call from Mrs. Bennett on the way home.”
“She looked pissed after Mom did her thing.” I dump the bio-degradable containers into the trash.
“She doesn’t think it’s appropriate for Mom to come to the school if she’s disruptive. It’ll upset the children.”
“Bullshit snobby private school,” I mumble.
“You have no idea how hard that’ll be if I can’t take Mom into the classroom. I take Lily to summer enrichment and Mom to her day program before I go to work. I can’t do that now. I can’t swing by and pick up mom and then drop Lily, because I can’t leave Mom in the car when I drop off Lily.”
I cross my arms over my chest.
“We need to get her in a placement,” Rachel says, scrubbing the plates in the sink before loading them into the dishwasher.
“Isn’t she on the waiting list for—”
“Right, I know.” Rachel’s voice is sharp. “But that’s a waiting list.” She stops scrubbing and her shoulders drop. Her lips pucker tight and I see her shaking shoulders before I hear the tears in her voice. “I can’t do this,” she says, her voice quivering on each syllable. “I can’t do all this on my own.”
“Hey.” I move in to hug my sister. It’s part of keeping Rachel on the rails where her life is concerned. How she manages this juggling act I have no idea, but she does, and most of the time she makes the entire act look easy. She elbows me away.
“I don’t need a hug, I need some help.”
“Okay, want to hire a driver? Want me to—”
“No, I don’t want you to hire a driver. I want you to drive Mom. I want you to take her in the morning and pick her up after her elder enrichment appointments. I want you to start looking for another place for her to live, in case we’re on this wait-list for too long. Really, what I want, what I need, is to not worry about any of it for a while.”
I get what Rachel is asking, but I’m not sure why she’s asking it. “Rachel, there are people we can hire to help. People we’ve hired to help, why can’t—”
“Because you’ve gotten a free pass for five years. Being generous about helping to pay for mom’s care isn’t the same as caring for Mom.”
Her words sucker punch me in the gut. I want to disagree with her and argue that my money makes Mom’s life easier, but what my money does is make my life easier for me.
“I want you to spend more time with Mom and not because I want to spend less time with her, but because I don’t have any more time to give.”
“Mommy, can you braid my hair?”
Lily stands in the doorway with a brush and two rubber bands. She wears her unicorn pajamas. The truth hits me, from five a.m. to eight p.m. every day of Rachel’s life, she takes care of other people. Entirely and completely. While she’s at work she cleans up societal messes in her courtroom. At home she takes care of Lily and Mom. She even takes care of me when I’m losing my shit.
When does anyone take care of Rachel?
Even now, after her long-ass day, Rachel smiles, dries her hands, and walks over to braid Lily’s hair. She wants to hold Lily and hug her and put her to bed, but then what will Rachel get? Maybe thirty minutes of alone time before she collapses into bed and sets her alarm for 5 a.m. so she can get up and do it all over again?
I’m a little-brother slacker. Rachel takes care of everything and everyone and it’s usually not until times like this, when she’s completely overloaded between work and Mom and Lily, that I actually realize that maybe I should stop being a self-involved a-hole and offer to help.
Yeah. She takes care of our entire family over and over and over, day in and day out and I forget to notice until she’s on the edge of collapse, because that’s what you ladies do. That’s who you are. You make all this self-sacrifice and continual quiet labor for the people you love seem so fucking effortless, all the while the weight of the world is on your shoulders. Sisyphus wasn’t a man holding the weight of the world. Naw. Sisyphus was a woman.
“No problem. I’ll take Mom in the morning and pick her up in the afternoon.”
Gratitude washes over Rachel’s face. I don’t deserve her gratitude, because it’s Rachel that keeps this entire family, or what’s left of it, on the rails and out of jail, and somehow functioning in our own happy, yet dysfunctional way. “Monday, Wednesday, and Friday?”
Rachel nods. “Thank you.”
And I feel grateful that I’ve done something for someone else simply because I love them, and I haven’t done that in a long while.