by S. A. Cosby
“She doing. She over at the nursing home. Her cancer done slowed down but she still smoking like she got a bad ring in her engine,” Beauregard said.
“Damn. That cancer, boy, it just takes ’em down inch by inch. Louise went down so fast. Doctor told her she had it in March, she was gone by September. How long your Mama had it?” Boonie asked.
“Since ’95.” Beauregard said. He thought his mother was going to outlive them all. Unlike Mrs. Boonie, she was too mean to die.
“Ella was always tough as shoe leather,” Boonie said. He smiled at his own joke.
“Well, I guess I should get on down the road, Boonie.” Beauregard stood.
“Hey, hold up, let’s have a drink real quick,” Boonie said. He swiveled in his chair and grabbed a mason jar out of one of the drawers in the filing cabinet directly behind him.
“It’s 11 o’clock.”
Boonie unscrewed the lid. Two shot glasses had magically appeared on the desk as well. “Hey, like Alan Jackson says, it’s five o’clock somewhere. I’m sure glad we been able to catch up,” Boonie said.
He filled both glasses. Beauregard picked up a glass and clinked it against the one Boonie was holding. The shine was smooth as the glass it was held in. A warm tingle wound its way down his throat.
“Alright. Well, keep me in mind if you hear anything,” Beauregard said.
“You sure?” Boonie asked.
“What?”
Boonie put the mason jar back in the drawer.
“Just saying maybe it’s a good thing I ain’t got nothing. Like I said, you different from your Daddy. You don’t live for this. It ain’t all you got,” he said.
Beauregard knew Boonie meant well. Nowadays he was a connect. A guy who could put you in touch with some other guys. He also hired out Chompy One and Two as garbage disposals. They disposed of the kind of garbage that bled and cried for its mama before it died. He was the guy who could help you move your loot without charging an exorbitant finder’s fee. He was also Beauregard’s de facto godfather. Boonie had helped him refurbish the Duster. He’d given Kia away at their wedding because her father was doing twenty to life in Coldwater for killing her mother. Boonie was the third person to hold Javon when he was born. Boonie did all the things Anthony Montage should have done. So Beauregard knew he meant well. But Boonie didn’t have a daughter graduating from summer school next month. He didn’t have two sons who seemed to grow six inches every night. Or a wife who wanted a house with a foundation before she died. Or a business that was one month from going under.
“Yeah, I’m sure,” he said.
He left.
THREE
Kelvin rolled up to the shop around eleven. Bug wasn’t there yet, so he went across the street to the 7-Eleven and got a chicken salad sandwich and a soda. He slipped into a weathered booth and ate his sandwich and sipped his soda. Most 7-Elevens didn’t have a place to eat but this one had once been a diner. When the Egyptian family that owned the 7-Eleven bought the building they had kept the booths. It was a scorcher today. Not for the first time, he contemplated cutting off his braids. But he knew he had an odd-shaped head with a few too many indentations to rock the bald look. By the time he finished his food, Bug still hadn’t arrived, so he walked back across the road and opened up the garage. They had a transmission to put in for Lulu Morris that was going to be a bitch. Shane Helton had dropped his truck off complaining of a shimmy in the steering column. Kelvin thought it might be the rack and pinion. Bug was of the opinion it was just the velocity boot on the driver side. Bug was probably right, but a velocity boot was only 300 bucks. A rack and pinion was at least 1500.
He hoped to God it was the rack and pinion.
Kelvin raised the three garage doors on the three repair bays and turned on the overhead air handler. Whistling, he drove Shane’s truck onto the hydraulic lift. As he was hopping out, he saw a faded blue Toyota pull up to the first bay door. The car stopped and a short thin white man got out and walked into the garage. He stopped just in front of the tire changer. He had longish brown hair and a scraggly brown beard. His muddy brown eyes darted from side to side.
“Beauregard?” he asked with an inquisitive inflection at the end.
“Nah, I’m Kelvin. He ain’t in yet. Can I help you with something?”
The man licked his dry lips.
“I really need to talk to Beauregard,” he said.
“Well, as he ain’t here can I help you?” Kelvin asked.
The man ran his hand through his hair. He stepped a little closer to Kelvin. He smelled like cigarettes and old sweat.
“Just tell him my brother Ronnie is looking for him. Wants to talk to him, patch things up, maybe have some work for him,” the man said.
“Ronnie who?” Kelvin asked.
“Ronnie Sessions. He know him. They used to work together,” the man said.
Kelvin sighed. He knew who Ronnie Sessions was, or at least he had heard the name. Ronnie was a crazy-ass good ol’ boy from Queen County down on the back heel of the state. Ronnie was known for two things: his twenty-three Elvis tattoos, and stealing anything that wasn’t nailed down with titanium fasteners. Last Kelvin had heard, Ronnie was doing five years up in Coldwater on a burglary charge. Robbed a marina or something. This was after he screwed Beauregard over on a job.
Bug had not been pleased.
So Kelvin couldn’t imagine why in the hell Ronnie wanted to be within one hundred feet of Bug. Let alone tell him he was back in town. Maybe he had a fetish for getting his teeth kicked down his throat.
“Alright, I’ll tell him,” Kelvin said. Ronnie’s brother nodded his head up and down rapidly then turned and headed for his car. He stopped halfway and turned back around.
“Hey, you wouldn’t be holding, would you?” he asked.
“Why would you think I’m holding? Because I’m black?” Kelvin asked.
The man frowned. “Nah. It’s just most everybody in Red Hill be holding. I was just asking,” he said. He got in his car and slammed the door. He tried to spin his tires on the gravel but the car stalled. He started it again and eased out of the parking lot.
Kelvin chuckled. He hit the “up” button on the lift and raised Shane’s truck until he could walk under without ducking. “He gonna spin tires like I offended him. Motherfuckers will look high and low for a reason to feel disrespected,” he muttered as he began inspecting the undercarriage of the truck.
* * *
The Lake Castor Convalescent Home took great pains to not look like a nursing home. The front of the building had an elaborate brick portico that covered the automatic doors at the entrance. Lush green boxwood shrubs that appeared to have been trimmed with lasers lined the sidewalk like verdant sentries. The brick carport had a pair of flying buttresses at each end. The whole campus seemed more like a small community college with a decent alumni organization than a nursing home. Beauregard stepped through the automatic doors and was smacked in the face by the pungent scent of urine. All that fancy architecture couldn’t do anything about the smell of piss.
A blond receptionist smiled at him as he entered the building. He didn’t return it.
“Hello, sir, can I help?” she asked.
“I’m going to see Mrs. Talbot,” he said without breaking his stride. He was intimately familiar with the patient coordinator’s office. He had hoped that putting his mother in the nursing home might make his life just a tiny bit easier. She could yell at the staff not putting her drink on a coaster or being too rough wiping her ass. The fact that she only had one coaster or that her hemorrhoids were inflamed never seemed to cross her mind. Instead putting her in the home made her meaner and in turn made his life harder. In the two years she had been in Lake Castor, he had been called in for corrective-action meetings at least thirty times.
Ella Montage was not a model patient.
In the beginning, he had smoothed things over with an extra payment here or donating a piece of equipment there. A few times he had even s
traight up handed the administrator an envelope. The money had been rolling in and he had still had some savings from the jobs he had worked. Those days were long over now. He wondered if this was the day they finally rolled his mother out to that lovely exposed aggregate sidewalk and told him to take her. He could see the administrator telling him she didn’t have to go home but she had to get the hell out of there.
He knocked on Mrs. Talbot’s door then checked his watch. Almost noon. Kelvin was probably already at work but it would take two of them to get Lulu’s transmission out.
“Please come in,” Mrs. Talbot said. Beauregard did as he was told. The slim and neat woman sat at a glass-top desk. She had her hair pulled back in a severe bun with a pair of decorative chopsticks jutting out of the back of her head. She stood and extended her hand.
“Mr. Montage.”
Beauregard gripped her hand lightly and shook it.
“Mrs. Talbot.”
She gestured toward the chair and Beauregard sat down. It struck him how many times his life had been changed by sitting across from someone at a desk.
“Mr. Montage, I am glad you could come in today to discuss this issue,” Mrs. Talbot said.
“You didn’t make it sound like I had much of a choice.”
Mrs. Talbot pursed her lips. “Mr. Montage, I’ll get right to the point. There is a discrepancy with your mother’s Medicaid coverage.”
“No, there isn’t,” he said.
Mrs. Talbot blinked a few times. “I’m sorry?” she said.
Beauregard shifted in his seat. “You said there’s a discrepancy. That makes it sound like some books ain’t adding up. My Mama’s Medicaid ain’t got no discrepancy. Now is there something wrong with her coverage?” he asked.
Mrs. Talbot’s face reddened and she leaned forward in her chair. Beauregard knew that he sounded like an asshole, but he didn’t like the way she had framed the situation. Mrs. Talbot didn’t like his mother and Beauregard couldn’t really say he blamed her. At the same time, it was no need to make it sound like his mother was a thief. Cruel, insensitive, manipulative, yes. Thief, no. The Montage men held down the thievery crown in his family.
“I’m sorry, I used a poor choice of words. Let me phrase it this way. Your mother kept up a life insurance policy that she didn’t declare when she entered the facility that now puts her over the asset limit for Medicaid assistance,” Mrs. Talbot said.
Beauregard’s mouth went dry. “Can’t she just cancel it? Or cash it out?”
Mrs. Talbot pursed her lips again. “Well, she can cash it out but it’s only fifteen thousand dollars. The discrep—um, the mistake was noted by Medicaid two months ago. They immediately ceased subsidizing her care. As it stands now, she has an outstanding balance of…” She touched a tablet sitting on her desk. “Forty-eight thousand three hundred and sixty dollars. She could cash out but that would leave her owing—”
“Thirty-three thousand three hundred and sixty,” Beauregard said.
Mrs. Talbot blinked hard. “Yes. The facility is requesting that payment in full by the end of next month. If you and your family can’t find the resources to pay the outstanding debt, Mrs. Montage will have to leave the facility. I’m sorry,” she said. She didn’t sound sorry to Beauregard. She sounded positively delighted.
“Do you know if my mother has agreed to cancel the policy?” he asked. His mouth was so dry he felt like he could spit sand.
“She has been made aware of the situation, but she insists this is an inheritance for her grandchildren,” Mrs. Talbot said. The arch of her eyebrows told him she didn’t believe that any more than he did. His mother tolerated her grandchildren. No, that policy was all about control. His mother reveled in being in control. Whether it was not allowing him to get his license unless he broke up with Ariel’s mom or holding on to a life insurance policy, Ella Montage liked having leverage. She might quote the Bible from time to time but that was her religion.
“Let me go talk to her. Could you print me something with the date the money has to be paid on it and I’ll pick it up on my way out,” he said.
“Of course, Mr. Montage. If you like, I could also print you up a list of nearby facilities and their waiting lists.”
“Yeah, sure,” he said. He didn’t need to see a list of other places. If his mother got kicked out of here, she would probably be dead before a bed opened up somewhere else.
Beauregard got up and headed for his mother’s room. As he walked down the hallway, he thought about what Boonie had said. A quiet, dignified death in one of these dimly lit rooms didn’t seem so bad. That is, until you realized that no death is dignified. It’s a messy process. The Grim Reaper sneaks up behind you and squeezes you until shit fills your adult diaper and an artery bursts in your chest. He works his bony fingers in your guts and makes your own cells eat you alive from the inside. He skull fucks you until your brain retreats inside itself and you forget how to even breathe. He guides the hand of a man you’ve wronged and aims his gun at your face. There is no dignity in death. Beauregard had seen enough people die to realize that. There’s only fear and confusion and pain.
The door to his mother’s room was open wide. A CNA was standing next to the bed. He heard his mother’s three-pack-a-day voice loud and clear. The CNA could too, and by the way her neck and shoulders were knotted up, she didn’t like what she was hearing.
“I’ve been pushing that ‘call’ button for forty-five minutes. You girls up there with ya nose buried in a phone while I’m sitting in piss. I’ve pissed myself. Do you know how that feels? Do you understand that? I’m sitting here in a puddle of piss.” She paused to take a deep hit of oxygen from her nasal cannula. “No, you don’t, but don’t worry, one day you will. You all cute and pretty now but one day you gonna be right here like I am and I hope somebody lets you sit in your own piss like your privates in a stew,” she said.
“I’m sorry, Mrs. Montage. We just so short-staffed today,” the CNA said. She sounded genuinely apologetic. That was a mistake. Ella was like a lioness on the Serengeti. She could sense weakness.
“Oh, I’m sorry, chile. You’re short-staffed. I’ll try to die more quietly,” Ella said.
The CNA made a wet strangled noise and rushed out of the room. She brushed past Beauregard mumbling to herself. He caught the words “miserable” and “witch.”
“Hey, Mama,” Beauregard said. He stepped just inside the door.
Ella appraised him from top to bottom with a gentle flick of her eyes. “You getting skinny. I never thought that girl knew how to cook,” she said.
“Kia cooks just fine, Mama. How you feeling?”
“Ha! I’m dying. Other than that, I’m feeling great,” she said.
Beauregard inched farther into the room. “You ain’t going nowhere,” he said.
“Get my cigarettes out that drawer,” she said.
“Mama, you don’t need them cigarettes. Didn’t you just say you was dying?”
“Yeah, so a cigarette ain’t gonna hurt nothing,” Ella said.
“Have you been smoking with your oxygen on? You know you could blow this place up, right?” Beauregard asked.
His mother shrugged. “I probably be doing most of the people here a favor,” she said. Beauregard had to chuckle at that one. That was the thing about his mother. She could be emotionally manipulative one minute then making you laugh the next. It was like getting hit in the face with a pie that had a padlock in it. When he was a kid, she had combined that acerbic wit with her looks to pretty much get whatever she wanted. All children think their mother is beautiful, but Beauregard had noticed fairly early on that other people thought his mother was beautiful too. Long coal black hair like an oil slick ran down her back to her waist. Skin the color of coffee with too much cream told the story of her varied ancestry. Her light gray irises gave her almond-shaped eyes an otherworldly appearance.
Cashiers always seemed to have extra change if she was short at the grocery store. Cops always seemed to give h
er a warning even if she was doing the speed of light through a school zone. People always seemed to want to do what Ella Montage told them to do. Even if she was telling them to go fuck themselves. Everybody except his Daddy. She once told him that his father was the only man to ever put her in her place.
“I loved him for it. Hated him too,” she would say between puffs on her omnipresent dark brown More cigarette. He could remember sitting on her lap as she told him over and over again how they met. He never got fairy tales as a kid. He got Sturm and Drang epics set against the backdrop of sultry country nights. Eventually he realized his mother considered it some kind of weird therapy. She had her very own captive eight-year-old psychologist.
The cancer and its subsequent treatments had taken her hair first. She wore a black scarf now. Then it withered her skin. The stoma in her throat stared at him like the mouth of some strange parasite. A lamprey eel that was trying to crawl out of her neck. Only the gray eyes remained untouched. So light they sometimes appeared blue. Smart eyes that never forgot anything they ever saw. And they never let you forget it either.
“Mama, why didn’t you tell me about this policy?”
Ella fixed those cool eyes on him. “Because it wasn’t none of your damn business.”
Ella stretched her thin arm out to the drawer beside her bed and pulled out a pack of More cigarettes and a lighter. She lit one up and inhaled deeply. A thin trail of smoke leaked out of the hole in her throat and encircled her head like a dirty halo. Beauregard rubbed his hand over his face. A long sigh hissed out of his mouth.
