Surrender to You

by Shawntelle Madison

  All the houses along this street were smaller cottages, most of them no more than tiny boxes with brick and wood façades. I spotted my mom’s home right away: the lawn, with patches of brown dirt intermingled with overgrown grass, hadn’t been mowed in months.

  “Here we are. Wayland,” I said.

  We weren’t technically in Boston anymore.

  Mom stayed in the front seat since she didn’t have any suitcases. She’d apparently worn her clothes to the procedure so she now wore them home.

  At first, I thought she’d walk right up to the house and leave me behind to lock her door, but instead, she leaned against the door with a painful grimace.

  “Here.” I offered my hand since I knew she hated anyone touching her torso.

  Slowly, she got out of the car. A sheen of sweat lined her brow already. She’d pushed herself to reach this far. Her feet took each step one at a time up to the house. I stood close behind her, ready to catch her. By the time we reached the door, I wished I had rented a wheelchair.

  Her face was ashen by the time we got to the front door. She reached into her purse and I waited patiently. The need to ask her for the keys kicked me hard, but if she was as stubborn as I was, she didn’t want any help.

  And then she dropped the keys.

  “Well, fuck,” she grunted.

  As deftly as I could without seeming helpful, I bent over and picked them up. I placed them on my palm as if she was picking them up from the ground.

  She didn’t say thanks either, merely unlocked the door and ambled inside.

  Since the outside wasn’t that big, I wasn’t expecting a mansion, but this place felt cramped and stuffy. We walked into an open living room and kitchen. To my left, the living room’s two windows were drawn shut with yellow, pink, and black curtains. Dust blanketed the air. Her furniture was nondescript, like the kind you’d find at a garage sale.

  Patty ambled to the nearest spot to sit, her dining room table. The table was covered in papers, a box of cereal, and various VHS tapes. A bunch of John Hughes movies sat on the top.

  At least she had good taste in movies.

  “Need some water?” I asked her.

  She was breathing pretty hard. According to the nurse though, she wouldn’t be due for another dose of pain meds until this afternoon. She’d have to hold out for a while.

  “Yeah.” She pointed to her right toward the kitchenette.

  I left my purse on the couch and headed into the dim kitchen. Finding a light switch turned into a game of hunt and peck until I spotted it behind a dusty bread box with a stack of small boxes on top. There were papers all over the counters and the dirty dishes overflowed in the sink.

  I frowned and my stomach sank. She’d lived by herself in this mess while going to chemotherapy every week.

  “There might not be any clean cups,” she admitted. “Just rinse one out.”

  She tried not to sound embarrassed, but behind her gruff manner, even I could see it.

  “These two don’t look too bad.” I held the only two glasses that didn’t have food crusted on them or matter growing along the edges. I filled a cup with cold water and gave it to her.

  She took a long drink. “Thanks,” she mumbled.

  “Sure thing.” I hadn’t called her “Mom” since we’d left the hospital. Calling her that only pissed her off. Since we’d come to a bit of a truce, I didn’t want to be the first one to open fire.

  For a moment I stood in the middle of the room, unsure what to do next. Of course, my apartment wasn’t the most perfect of spaces, but I had housekeeping service and they vacuumed and dusted once a week.

  My eyes scanned from the old food containers on the coffee table to the mountain of papers under the kitchen table. Damn, this is bad. What about the places I hadn’t checked yet, like the bathroom or the fridge?

  One step at a time.

  I shrugged off my running shoes and left them near the door.

  First things first, I needed to get her comfortable.

  Initially, she didn’t want to move, but finally, with my help, I walked with her through the hallway to her bedroom. I ignored the mess in that room, too. We walked over dirty clothes, past a few piles of cozy mystery novels, and then to the queen-sized bed.

  Her covers didn’t smell clean.

  All this time, my mom hadn’t lived in a mansion like in my fantasies or a quiet house with my dad where she baked cookies like Betty Crocker.

  She’d lived like this battling cancer.

  I blinked rapidly, trying to clear my head before I lost it.

  “Get some sleep, Mo— Patty,” I began. “I’ll see about some warm soup for lunch.”

  Mom mumbled a bit, but she drifted off not long after hitting the sheets.

  I glanced around the room before forcing myself to leave. I had so much work to do. I tried to close the door after myself and failed—there was too much stuff. I gave up and left. Down the hall from her bedroom was the bathroom. That room wasn’t too bad. The sink was covered in old toothpaste and soap scum. Towels had been used over and over again and smelled musty.

  At the far end of the hallway was a pretty big storage room with the furnace and water heater. Boxes and such had been crammed into every space available.

  So that was it. The place where my mom had lived all this time.

  Reality dropped into my lap with a heavy thud.

  —

  Not long after Mom fell asleep, I was left alone in a house that threatened to suffocate me.

  I missed Tomas, too.

  Since it was evening in the U.K., I placed a phone call to check on my business there. Everything was running smoothly. Of course, I smiled and nodded, not really wanting to hear about the parties I’d missed or the networking opportunities that had slipped through my fingers.

  This was the place I was needed the most.

  Standing around wouldn’t fix the current situation, so I took things one step at a time over the afternoon. I opened every window that could be opened—most were painted shut. I grabbed a trash bag and threw away TV dinner containers. She didn’t have dish soap or a dishwasher so I made a trip to the local discount store and foraged for supplies. Goods in hand, I managed to do the dishes and clear space on the stove so I could warm up some beef broth.

  When I opened the door to her fridge, I was prepared for a mess, but what I didn’t expect to find was a bunch of boxed meals with the words “gluten-free” on the sides. Her loaf of bread, which wasn’t recognizable as bread at this point, was also gluten-free.

  I scanned what little food she had in the cabinets and found more of the same.

  Oh fuck.

  I shouldn’t have been surprised, and yet I was. All of the gluten-free food had expired, though. She hadn’t eaten any of it. I cleared out the old food and put in the food I bought.

  Fresh food is good for the soul, Tomas had said. Especially after a long day. He was right.

  A bit of sunshine streamed into the house and revealed the cobwebs in the corners, but the cozy home came alive a bit. I wished Tomas could see how much I’d accomplished.

  I was about to check on Mom when the man on my mind texted me: You’re not home, are you all right?

  Had he stopped by my hotel again with a meal? I grinned briefly, but my smile faded away as I poured some of Mom’s soup into a bowl. The food he’d brought me last time…I tried to recall every single thing he’d pulled out of that bag. That night I’d craved normalcy and he’d presented a miracle, but none of the food he’d given me had gluten in it.

  My throat stuck mid-swallow. Does he know?

  He couldn’t. That wasn’t Tomas. He would’ve confronted me about it.

  I texted back: I’m at Mom’s house. It’s a mess. I will drive back tonight.

  Need me? he replied.

  I gripped the cellphone tighter.

  Just type “yes,” I thought.

  I bit my lower lip.

  Oh, how I wanted to type back “yes,” bu
t I typed, I’m good, instead.

  I had to handle this on my own. If Tomas got involved, I’d be deeper in his debt.

  I drove back to Mom’s place every day after work for the rest of the week. After that, we settled into a rhythm for the next two weeks. When she wasn’t complaining, she was actually calmer.

  “Where did you put my medication?” she asked from the bathroom.

  “It’s in the medicine cabinet—where it belongs.”

  “I leave everything on the counter so I see it in the morning.”

  “The bottles were covered in toothpaste.” I was busy making her dinner. It seemed like she was doing well with the broth. So far the bowls were empty when I came the next day.

  “This is where I brush my teeth, you know,” she griped.

  I laughed. “Are you having a toothbrush party?” I left the food on the now cleared kitchen table and went to check on her.

  She was standing in front of the mirror, clad in a ratty bathrobe, and her scarf was off. A bit of reddish peach fuzz covered the top of her head. My heart lurched at the sight. She’d lost so much to cancer. I kept my gaze on her face.

  My throat grew dry as my stomach hollowed out. Why couldn’t I have met her before she was like this? As I took in the lines next to her eyes, and the moles along her neck, I tried to imagine what she’d looked like when she was younger. Had she looked like me? My birth mom’s eyes still flashed with a spark of rebellion, but time sure had made her grumpy.

  “Leave my medicine alone.” She pointed at the meager counter space. “You’re messing everything up.”

  “No problem. Come eat.”

  “I’ll come when I’m good and ready.”

  “Then get ready faster or the broth will be cold.”

  She could throw any barbs she liked. I was far better.

  “Who was the lady who knocked on my door yesterday?” Mom asked when she sat down at the table.

  “Did she come around one?”

  “I dunno. She kept babbling about how she was here to tidy up the place.”

  “Oh, that was from the maid service I called. She was supposed to pick up and make you some lunch.”

  Mom tsked. “I don’t need any strangers coming in here and messing up my things. You already do a bang-up job of that.”

  “Of course I do. Like when I killed that massive spider creeping around your bathroom.”

  “Now that was a mercy killing. I’ll give you kudos for that one.”

  I snorted. “Thanks?”

  A hint of a devilish grin touched her lips, and I couldn’t resist smiling in return while I watched her eat the broth. Every time she bent over though, she cringed a bit.

  “Have you taken your pain meds yet?” I asked.

  “Yeah, I took some this morning, but I need—”

  I slipped her another dose. The label on the bottle said she could have at least six today.

  “Thanks,” she mumbled.

  “When do you need to see the doctor for a follow-up?”

  “I don’t remember,” she admitted. Fatigue pressed into her features.

  “I’ll call Dr. Craft and find out.”

  She only nodded.

  I washed the dishes and touched a small landscape painting on the wall. “When did you move into this house? This is a nice neighborhood.”

  She slurped her soup. “After Frank died, I traveled like I used to do when I was younger. After he passed, I ended up here. The area had fewer properties back then. Now a bunch of liberals are taking over.”

  I had to laugh at that remark. She did get a bunch of mail from the local Democrats. She was probably hiding a liberal inside of her. She was far from conservative.

  “Where did you go when you were younger?” Prying was hard not to do, and bit by bit I tried to draw things out of her.

  “All over the place. Mostly small towns with the band.”

  I turned to look at her. “You played in a band?”

  “Oh, no! I was a groupie who sort of graduated into becoming the band manager. That’s how I met Frank.”

  I held my tongue and waited for her to keep going.

  “Back in the late eighties, traveling was so much more fun compared to today. Of course, when our truck died, we couldn’t perform, but we had a blast seeing the countryside. Now folks get on a computer and they can see shit that used to be a speck on a map.”

  “That’s true.” I wanted to ask so badly why there weren’t any photos of her or my dad around the house. I wished I could’ve seen what she looked like when she was younger. Even more questions swam around my head: What about my grandparents? Did my mom have a good childhood?

  Instead of asking what I really wanted to know, I asked a question I knew she wouldn’t mind answering.

  “What was the band called?” I asked.

  “Rutger Rose. Not my idea.”

  “Not bad. Not badass, but not bad.”

  “They weren’t too bad. The lead singer, Dan, had some real nice pipes. A nice ass, too.”

  “I think most hair bands in the eighties required tight pants and nice asses. What about the other band members?” Yep, I could be sly when I tried.

  “There was Quincy on keyboards—I had to move heaven and earth to keep him with us. He hated all the smaller gigs we had. Aaron was on the drums, and my Frank played bass.”

  “A decent size.” I could imagine my mom, around my age, traveling around with a band. My heart sank a bit. Had she chosen that life instead of taking care of me?

  Instead of letting my thoughts fester, I grabbed my phone, searched the band name on the Internet, and found a few hits. Including some pictures.

  “Is this the band?” I asked.

  I showed her an image of four guys, most of them thin and wearing enough guyliner to put a makeup artist out of business.

  “Oh, yeah.” A smile really brightened her face. “That tall guy in the front with purple leather is Dan, the black guy is Quincy, and the short guy in the back is Aaron. The guy on the left is my Frank.”

  She took the phone from me when I backed up. She stared at the picture for a bit. I was just as transfixed on the man who was my father. Before, I’d only had a name and known he was dead. Now I had a picture.

  “I can’t believe some dumbass made a fan page.” She scrolled down the page. “They never played at venues bigger than a few hundred people.”

  So they never made it big. How sad.

  “Oh wow, this is old.” I glanced over her shoulder and saw a woman with beautiful curly red hair. She sat on the back of a truck with band equipment all around her. Her crop top and hair-sprayed locks screamed eighties, but she was gorgeous by any standard.

  “That’s you,” I whispered.

  “I didn’t think anyone would have this picture.” Her voice grew quiet. “I could barely run a comb through that thing.”

  I couldn’t either, which was why I had my hair pressed, but looking at the glow in her eyes and the way she smiled at the camera made me smile, too. I waited for her to say more, but she clammed up. Maybe she was remembering better times. Old photos did that to me, too. Sophie had kept a few pics from when we lived in our old apartment in NYC. Every time I saw them though, I never saw our exuberant faces—I only recalled how hard we had to work to pay the rent and scrape together money for food.

  Our youth should’ve been a golden time in our lives. The reality was far bleaker.

  “Do you want more broth?” I finally asked.

  “Naw, I’m good.” She got up and headed back to the bathroom.

  I used the time to clean up her room and then moved into the kitchen, but when she left the bathroom, she went into the bedroom and didn’t come back out again.

  At least she’d opened up a bit.

  —

  The next day, I couldn’t shake the image of my mother sitting on the back of that truck, the light shining on her red hair. All day at work, the Rutger Rose fan page distracted me. They were nothing more than a bar rock ba
nd that never hit it big, but it was my mom’s image that stayed with me.

  By the end of the day, I couldn’t take it anymore.

  The salon in the hotel was booked solid for the rest of the month, but one of the ladies took pity on me when she saw my hairline.

  “You work at the concierge desk, right?” one of the hair stylists asked.

  “Yeah, I’m the assistant chef concierge.”

  She made a face and touched my hairline. “You can’t go out like that, girl.”

  Since I had yet to make time to get my hair handled, I’d been wearing a headband. I had forgotten it today, which meant I’d spent most of the day flashing horrible hair. The straight to frizzy had to be ghastly.

  “Come back in an hour,” the woman declared. “I’ll work on two people at once.”

  So I came back in an hour, ready to do something I hadn’t done in a long time: I was going back to my natural hair color.

  The stylist was busy, as she’d told me, but one of the assistants washed my hair first.

  Next came the hard part. My hair had been dyed blond and straightened, which meant a longer dyeing time. As I sat in the chair, I hoped my mom would remember to eat dinner.

  The temptation to call the house to check on her was there, but she likely wouldn’t answer the phone. When I was there, she never answered the phone unless she recognized the number.

  Five hours later, my hair hung to my shoulders in thick curls.

  “Are you sure you don’t want me to press it straighter?” the lady asked.

  “Nope, I’m ready for a change,” I declared.

  When she turned my chair around and I saw myself, I smiled again and again.

  My makeup was gone and my cheeks were peppered with freckles. My naked lips stretched into a smile.

  This was the Carlie I remembered.

  By the time I left the salon, it was late at night. I still called Patty. She didn’t answer so I gave in and drove to the house.

  Is she all right? In a panic, I was mad at myself for not checking up on her.

  I arrived to a house in darkness.

  The kitchenette was clean and I noticed she hadn’t warmed up any food. I peeked in on her. Her lamp was on and she was curled on her side.