Let Sleeping Dogs Lie. Suzann Ledbetter

Wexler dropped the box of macaroni and cheese on the counter and shut the cupboard door. She stepped down from the wooden stool, then side-kicked it in front of the refrigerator.

      Someday she’d have a kitchen where all the food, especially junk food, lived on her level. For her, using drawers as ladder rungs to reach the cereal and a bowl to put it in was a climbing stage you never outgrew. Not when you’d stopped at four feet ten.

      Count your blessings, she reminded herself. Like the man who complained about having no shoes, until he met the man who had no…

      The TV in the living room went mute. “Di-na,” her mother called. “When you get a minute, would you bring me the TV Guide? I left it in the bedroom and there’s a show on at four o’clock I want to watch. For the life of me, I can’t remember what channel it’s on.”

      Dina grabbed the potato chip bag off the top of the fridge. The crackling cellophane mocked her frazzled nerves. She rested her forehead on the freezer door’s cool metal face. It was only one-thirty, for God’s sake. Lunch was a half hour late, as were her mother’s medications that must be taken with meals.

      In the hallway, a fabric mountain of laundry banked the utility closet’s bifold doors. The yard needed mowing. Both bathrooms were a mess. The kitchen floor hadn’t been mopped in recent memory.

      Breathe in, Dina thought, breathe out. Make yourself one with the refrigerator. Better yet, be the refrigerator and chill the hell out.

      The mental image of herself standing on a kid’s alphabet step stool getting Zen with a major appliance brought a whisper of a smile. No wonder Peanuts had always been her favorite comic strip. Charlie Brown refocused his chi with his head against the wall. She bonded with freezer compartments.

      “Sweetheart?” her mother called, concern in her voice. “Are you all right?”

      “Sure, Mom.” Dina sighed and stepped down on the ugly starburst linoleum. “Everything’s fine.”

      A Park City car dealer’s commercial now wending from the living room reinforced their unspoken bargain. Harriet Wexler could keep pretending that her daughter was a human Rock of Gibraltar; Dina wouldn’t let her mother see it was a prop made of chicken wire and papier-mâché.

      She put a saucepan of water on to boil, then spread some diet saltines with sugar-free peanut butter. Laying them on a saucer, she sidled past the early-American dinette set and into the living room.

      The vacant midcentury modern duplex had seemed open and airy when Dina toured it with the landlord. The narrow galley kitchen dead-ended at a window painted shut a couple of decades ago, but the dining area’s merger with the living room gave an illusion of spaciousness. Off the hallway was a full bath, a small bedroom and the larger master with a private three-quarter bath.

      A security deposit and two months’ rent had been scraped together in advance, and then there’d been furniture. Truckloads of Harriet’s dog-ugly, alleged heirlooms that Dina and her younger brother wouldn’t wish on a homeless shelter. Their mother’s insistence that her circa-1978 pine-and-Herculon-plaid home furnishings would go retro any day was attributed to the side effects of digitalis.

      Dina pushed back the tide of prescription bottles, moistening swabs, tissues and assorted medical paraphernalia to make room for the saucer on the metal TV tray beside Harriet’s glider rocker. On the opposite side, another tray table held a cordless phone, paperbacks, a water glass, a dish of sugarless candy, the current crochet project and the queen’s scepter, otherwise known as the remote.

      The cushioned ottoman supporting Harriet’s feet was surrounded by a paper trash sack, a tripod cane, bags of yarn, her purse, a discarded pillow and a mismatched pair of terrycloth slippers.

      “Gosh, Your Majesty,” Dina teased. “The throne’s getting kinda crowded, isn’t it?”

      Harriet made a face, then pointed at the crackers. “I thought you bought bread at the store yesterday.”

      “I did.” Dina peered into the plastic drinking glass—half full. “I’m working on lunch, but you need to take your pills.”

      “I can wait.”

      Dina knuckled a hip. “So can I.” The water began to bubble on the stove. She pondered the tardy renter’s insurance premium and what effect a semi-accidental kitchen fire might have on their coverage.

      Harriet nibbled a corner off a cracker. Nose wrinkling, she plinked it back on the saucer. “It’s stale.”

      Petulance was as wasted as the coral lipstick she swiped on to disguise her mouth’s bluish tinge. “No, it isn’t,” Dina said. “I just opened a fresh box.”

      She hadn’t, but it wouldn’t matter if elves had just carted them over from the magic bakery tree. The issue was that her mother couldn’t be trusted to take her meds unsupervised. Harriet’s newest shell game was removing the pills from their bottles and stashing them in her bra, the way Dina had palmed brussels sprouts at the dinner table and hidden them in her socks.

      Harriet Wexler wasn’t senile. A bizarre sense of empowerment derived from outfoxing a caregiver she’d given birth to thirty-two years ago. On some levels, Dina understood and sympathized. On most, the pharmaceutical roulette drove her nuts.

      Her mother glowered up at her, snapped a cracker in half, then shoved the whole thing into her mouth. “There,” she mumbled around it. “Are you happy now?”

      “One more, and I will be.” Dina shook the appropriate pills from their amber bottles. The cost of each equaled a month’s rent and utilities. “Clean your plate and I’ll applaud.”

      Sips of water, fake choking, a bit of breast-beating and voilà, the medicine went down. “I hope you’re proud of yourself, Dina Jeanne. You’re nothing but a bully.”

      Dina recited in unison, “Thank heaven your father isn’t alive to see how you treat your poor old sick mother.” Leaning over, she kissed a prematurely white head that smelled of waterless shampoo and hairspray. “Daddy’s definitely rolling in his grave knowing I’ll bring your lunch, test your blood sugar, hook up the nebulizer, change your sheets, tuck you in for a nap, do the laundry, fix a snack, give you a shot, poke down three more pills, walk you twenty-five laps up and down the hall, then start dinner.”

      As she straightened, her mother’s never warm fingers circled her wrist. “Oh, sweetheart, I’m so sorry.” Tears glistened in eyes once as blue as a summer sky. “I don’t know why I say such awful things to you.”

      Because now I’m the parent and you’re the child and you hate needing the snot-nosed kid you potty-trained to help you to and from the bathroom sometimes.

      “It’s okay, Mom.” Dina swallowed audibly, then cleared her throat to mask it. Aged ears dulled to soap opera dialogue and the radio remain subsonically attuned to the slightest emotional nuance. “Besides—” she forced out a chuckle “—when have I ever listened to a word you say?”

      “Humph. If you ever did, you never let on.” Harriet plucked at the sheet draping her legs, as though the air conditioner was set at sixty-two instead of eighty-two. “I thought Earl Wexler was the stubbornnest critter that ever walked on two legs. You bested him from the day you were born.”

      Dina tapped her toe, waiting for the upshot. It came right on cue. “I don’t know what I’d have done if Randy hadn’t been such a happy, sweet-natured little fella. Hasn’t changed a bit, either, in spite of all the disappointment and heartache he’s suffered.”

      “Uh-huh.” Dina turned and started for the kitchen. “Life doesn’t get any tougher than playing drums for a wanna-be rock band for ten freakin’ years.”

      Her younger brother was everything she wasn’t: tall, blond, charming, funny, gifted and as irresponsible as a golden retriever puppy. Harriet outwardly adored the child who’d needed it more, thinking the daughter who denied being anything like her would be stronger for being pushed away.