Gina stumbles into bed late and drunk. She knows she’ll wake up feeling rough, real rough. In the distance, the phone rings. She puts the pillow over her head. The answering machine takes the call after three rings. Five minutes later, it starts ringing again.

Gina grabs the phone. She growls, “Whoever this is, it better be good.”

“Gina, it’s me. I’ve been trying to get hold of you all night. Your mother is in the hospital. She’s really bad, you better get here right away, or you’re never going to see her alive again.”

“Yeah, so? I’ve been dead to her for years.” 

“Gina, come. You need to make this right for yourself if nothing else. There’s a ticket waiting for you at JFK. It’s leaving in two hours. I texted you the information. I’ll meet you at the other end.” The phone disconnects.

Gina is sweating now, her stomach is churning, and she reaches over to her bedside table and grabs the nearest bottle. It’s a warm bottle of Johnny Walker. She throws it back in one swallow, choking. She wipes her mouth with the back of her hand. Mumbles, “Fuck me, fuck me.”

She rolls out of bed and makes her way to the bathroom. She turns on the light and winces, covering her eyes. They feel like hard-boiled eggs. She throws cold water on her face and relieves herself. She pictures her mother on her deathbed; it seems impossible that evil can’t die. She feels nothing for her mother. She ceased to exist for her so long ago. it almost seems like another life, someone else’s life. Gina pulls a brush through her hair. It’s a lost cause. She leaves it.

Her bedroom closet is another disaster. She pulls her suitcase out and throws it on the unmade bed. She opens it. It still has clothes in it from some long-forgotten trip. Gina dumps the clothes on the floor. They join all the clothes that met a similar fate. She kicks them out of her way.

Then Gina empties her underwear drawer into the suitcase and whatever clean clothes that remain in her closet. Throws on a pair of jeans and a somewhat clean T-shirt from a long-ago concert. She grabs her boots and plops down on the bed hard, regrets it immediately. Her head starts spinning.

She makes a run to the toilet. Johnny Walker comes rocketing out, just missing the toilet. Gina groans as her stomach lurch. She opens the cabinet for some pills of any kind. But only finds a bottle of aspirin and an old prescription of oxy. Two left. She dry swallows them both. They burn all the way down, but they stay down.

Somehow, she makes it back to her bedroom and pulls on an ancient leather jacket some one-night stand left behind years ago. She takes one look around and spots her purse on the back of the couch. She grabs it and her keys and heads out the door.  Slams the door closed. It bounces back open. She keeps walking.

Gina makes it to the airport in record time. By the time she gets to the long-term parking, her car is running on fumes. She opens the trunk and pulls her suitcase out and slams the trunk closed, and locks the door.

The painkillers are kicking in. She makes it to the check-in counter at the last possible moment and carries her luggage onto the plane. Gina pitches unsteadily down the aisle and finds her seat. She jams her suitcase under the seat.

She lands in the seat relatively unscathed and falls immediately into a drugged sleep. She floats dreamlessly through the flight and wakes up only when she feels the plane landing. There are only a few other passengers on the plane. They all look as if they had a bad day and expect only bad days to come.

Jimmy is the only occupant in the receiving area. He would be hard to miss either way. Jimmy is big, really big. His head is bald and shining. He’s in his motorcycle gear. Gina hadn’t seen him in years, but she would recognize him anywhere, anytime. He’s the only member of her family that ever gave a damn.

“Crap, please tell me that you didn’t come here on your Harley, Jimmy?”

“No, Gina, I didn’t. I borrowed my friend Skit’s beater. Let’s go. We’ll go straight to the hospital.”

As they leave the icy cold air of the airport, Gina follows Jimmy through the revolving door and immediately hits a wall of superheated air. It takes her breath away, and she feels her stomach heave. “Sweet Jesus, we have stepped into the bowels of hell. I hate this fricking place. How can you still be living in this swamp?”

“It’s home, Gina. Let’s go; the car’s in short-term parking.”

As they drive towards the hospital, the sun starts to rise. It is a surreal mixture of pinks and golds. “Gina, your mom doesn’t look too good. She’s been awake on and off for the past couple of days. She has been hanging on for you.”

“Me, why would she give a damn? I haven’t heard from her in years. So, am I supposed to be the prodigal daughter returning home and pretending to give a shit?”

“You’re here, aren’t you?”

Gina doesn’t say anything else for the duration of the trip. She looks at the landscape in the early morning light. Row after row of strip malls and ugly scrub pines line the cracked and bumpy highway. Some things change, but some things remain the same, just like her mother, no doubt, deathbed or not.

They pull into the parking lot, and Jimmy leads the way. He speaks to a weary-looking old man at the reception desk and comes back with two visitors’ cards. Let’s go. We don’t have time to waste.”

They take the elevator to intensive care. Jimmy makes a left out of the elevator. It looks as if he has taken this path many times before. As they enter the dimly lit room, Gina sees what looks like a corpse lying in the first bed. God, this could not be her tough-as-nails mother. Jimmy walks past the corpse-like woman.

He walks over to the second bed. Gina holds her breath, not knowing what to expect. She looks down at the bed, and there she is, her mother or what’s left of her. Her skin is almost translucent. Her hair thinly covers her scalp. Her eyelids flutter open. At first, she seems to stare blindly, then her eyes focus, and she whispers, “Gina?” Her voice gains strength. “Well, it’s about damn time, girl.” The fire is still in her eyes.

Gina looks straight into her eyes. “Yes, mother, it’s about damn time you ask to see me. You know it’s been over ten years. I can’t say it’s good seeing you. You look like hell.”

“Well, girl, you’re not looking too good yourself. You look like you been rode hard and put down wet.”

“Yeah, you always had a way with words, mother.”

“OK, girls, play nice. I’m going to go get a coffee. I’ll be back in a few.” He turns and walks out of the room without looking back.

Gina pulls up a chair next to her mother’s bedside. She moves from side to side in the chair and tries to find some comfortable way to sit. There isn’t any. “Fucking hospitals, I hate them.”

“Nice mouth you got on ya, Gina.”

“Yeah, who do you think I got it from? So why am I here? Why now?”

“Why now? If not now, when Gina?”

Gina stares back at her mother, still feeling a little buzz from the oxy and a little sick from the booze. She can’t imagine what she’s supposed to do or say in this situation. She decides to wait. Her mother will eventually tell her what she wants. She waits. There was always a price to pay with her mother.

“Gina, here’s the thing, the docs have told me I don’t have long. I want you to stay until I’m gone. Then I want you to take care of the funeral arrangements, the house, and all the other shit that needs to be done. I have it all written down. It’s in my bedroom closet in a shoebox marked Tony.”

“So, I haven’t heard word one from you in ten years, and you want me to hang around here and watch you die. For all you know, I was dead. Then you want me to take care of all the shit you left behind. Why didn’t you ask Jimmy to take care of it like always? Why me, Mom?”

“I knew where you were and what you been up to. How do you think Jimmy knew how to contact you? I’m asking you because you are my only daughter. And I wanted the chance to make things right between us before I died; that’s it.”

“That’s it, that’s it? What are you going to say to me that would ever make things right between us? Growing up in our house was like growing up in a war zone. You and Dad were always fighting. You were drunk half of the time, not giving a shit about me. How are you going to make that right? How?”

“Look, Gina, I know I wasn’t a great mother. I wasn’t the mother you deserved, but I was the mother you got. I did what I did. I can’t change that. But I always loved you. I want you to forgive me, for yourself, not me. I know I don’t deserve it.

Maybe then you can try not to make the same mistakes as me. Stop drinking and partying, get a regular life, find somebody who loves you, and be happy.”

“Be happy, yeah, right. I wouldn’t know happiness if it came up and bit me on the ass. I’ll stay here and take care of your business. Then I’m out of here. Thank god, here comes Jimmy.”

As Jimmy walks into the room, he walks past the living corpse. And he takes a look at Gina and his sister, Betty. He hands Gina a hot coffee. Be careful; it’s hot as hell and tastes like mud. But it’ll do the job.”

He pulls up a chair on the other side of the bed. He looks down at his sister. She is out of it. Her breath is shallow. He looks at Gina. Her mouth is pursed. She looks beat. They wait.

Three hours later, Gina wakes to an alarm and looks at her mother. Her skin is damp and gray. Her mouth is slack. People come rushing into the room. They push them out of the way and tell them to wait outside. They wait. There is nothing left to say.

The nurses and the doctor come out of the room. Jimmy and Gina look at his face. It has no expression. He walks up to them and says, “sorry, she’s gone. There was nothing we could do for her.” And he walks away on his way to deliver bad news to somebody else’s family, no doubt.” Gina, do you want to go in and say goodbye to your mother?”

“No, I said all I’m going to say to her in this life. Let’s go. I need to get some real sleep and then get a shower. I’m not staying long, and I will take care of her business, then I’m out of here.”

Jimmy drives them over to his sister’s house in silence. It’s been a long day that followed other long days. “Here we are. Here’s the key. Do you need some money? I don’t know if there is any food in the house?” He hands her some crumbled-up bills, leans past her, and opens the car door. He pops the trunk. And he says,” I’ll call you later today or tomorrow.”

Gina gets out of the car and walks to the back of the car, and pulls out her bag. Slams the trunk closed a little harder than was necessary.

She walks away and waves goodbye to him while driving out of sight. She makes her way up the sidewalk, which is strewn with yellowed newspapers and trash. The grass is overgrown and adorned with broken beer bottles and unidentifiable garbage. It’s been there so long that whatever odor it once had no longer remains. “Home sweet home.” Gina jams the key home into the lock, and it turns reluctantly.

The door swings in, and so does Gina. “God damn, it looks worse inside than out.” Gina glances around at the chaos and walks slowly up the stairway to her old bedroom. The carpet on the stairs is stained and worn through in spots. It’s the same carpet that was there throughout her childhood. Puke green looks like it hasn’t seen a vacuum since she left ten years ago. As she is walking down the hall towards her bedroom, she thinks, hell no, I don’t want to live like this, end up like her. Shit, shit, shit.

Her bedroom is covered in dust and filled with boxes of god knows what. She kicks them out the door and down the steps. Stuff falls out of the boxes and tumbles down the steps. Gina steps over to the bed and pushes off all the crap that is on it. She strips the bed and walks out to the hall closet, and finds some sheets that look like they might fit the bed. The sheet design screams the 1980s, with gaudy colors and an insane mixture of patterns. She makes up the bed and falls into it without even bothering to take off her clothes.

When she wakes up, the burning sun is streaming through the window. The mini-blinds are at half-mast on one side. The other side has long ago ceased to function. Gina is covered in sweat because she forgot to turn on the air conditioning last night. And the room is steaming and stinking.

She throws her legs over the side of the bed, and that’s when her head starts pounding, and her stomach starts roiling. She makes her way carefully to the bathroom. “Shit, what a fucking hole this place is.” She makes her way back into the hallway and, by some miracle, finds a clean towel.

Back in the bathroom, she looks in the medicine cabinet and finds an ancient bottle of aspirin and throws a handful in her mouth, and chews them. She turns on the spigot, and the water runs brown, then yellow. When it finally runs clear, she puts her mouth under the stream and gulps down enough to get the bitter taste out of her mouth.

She takes a shower in the tub after running the water for fifteen minutes to rinse out all the crap that was on the bottom. It’s still stained. Gina hopes she won’t get a  fatal disease from it. As she stands in the ice-cold stream of water, she thinks about her mother. And this house and all the memories that are attached to it. She thinks about the box and the nightmares it might release into her already fucked up life.

After getting out of the shower, Gina wipes the fog from the mirror and looks at the face reflected there. For a startling moment, she sees her mother’s worn and broken face looking back at her. She finds a comb on the top of the toilet and pulls it through her short, spiky hair.

She doesn’t know if she has the courage to get through the next few days. She tries to summon strength from the core of her being. She reminds herself that she’s gotten through worse shit, and she can handle this crap too. Hell, this is nothing compared to what she’s endured for the last ten years. Why this is just a walk in the park?

She hears the phone ringing from the kitchen. She throws on some clothes and runs down the steps. It’s Jimmy. He left a message saying he would pick her up in two hours to go to the undertaker’s office.

Gina goes into the kitchen and looks into the frig, a couple of beer bottles, a jar of mustard, and a couple of bread crusts. She’s tempted to drink the beers but doesn’t. She looks in the cabinet and finds a half-empty jar of peanut butter, the store-brand kind. She slaps some on the bread and swallows it. Her stomach protests, but she keeps it down.

Gina goes upstairs to brush her teeth and then remembers she didn’t bring her toothbrush. She finds a tube of toothpaste and cleans her teeth with her finger. Well, the good times keep coming. She let out a harsh laugh and spit.

Exactly two hours later, Jimmy pulls into the driveway. He’s dressed in a short-sleeved dress shirt and chinos. He knocks on the front door and sticks his head in the door, and calls out, “Gina, it’s me, Jimmy.”

Gina comes through the living room to the front door, “come in, Jimmy.”

“Hey, it looks different in here. What happened?”

“What happened I just spent the last two hours throwing out all the trash down here and trying to clean it up as much as possible. This house was an absolute pigsty. When was the last time my mother cleaned this place up, the millennium?”

“Your mother was never much for housework. She spent most of her time throwing back beers and playing cards with her cronies.”

“They played here. Wow, that’s hard to believe.”

“No, they played at her friend Ginny’s house every Tuesday and Friday, then they hit the bars and stayed until closing time.”

“Wow, she enjoyed her golden years, didn’t she? You know, there’s no way I’m going to end up like this. Living in your own filth in a purple haze. There has to be something better than that.”

“Gina, your life is whatever you make of it. You have to stop blaming your mother for how your life has turned out. You have been calling all the shots for the past ten years, not her. Maybe you should decide what you want out of life and then find ways to get there.”

“Well, haven’t you turned out to be quite a preacher? I think you’ve been known to keep a few bars open late yourself.”

“Gina, I’ve been clean for eight years. You can clean up your act too. You don’t have to end up like your mom.”

After meeting with the funeral director Jimmy and Gina went to Al Joe’s for lunch. A waitress who looks as if she’s working here all her life asks,” Do you need to see a menu?”

“No, I’ll have a Poor Boy with all the fixings and ginger ale.”

“Yeah, I’ll have the same, thanks. Could I have a coffee, black? ”

After eating, Jimmy says, “did your mother ask you to do anything special for her funeral?”

“She told me there was a box in her bedroom closet with instructions, but I haven’t got the nerve up to go in there yet. I’ll do it tonight; then I’ll let you know.”

“Ok, if you’re finished, I’m ready to go.”

“Yeah, I’m ready. Let’s hit the road. Jimmy, I want to thank you for always being there for me when I needed somebody.”

“Hey, we may be a dysfunctional family, but we’re still family. That’s what it all comes down to, doesn’t it?”

“I don’t know about that, Jimmy. You’re the only person that ever gave a good goddamn about me.” Jimmy hugs her as they stand up to leave. They head out the door. The heat hits them in full force as they leave the air-conditioned restaurant. “God, I just can’t believe anyone would choose to live in this little bit of hell.”

When Gina gets back to her mother’s house, she refuses to think of it as her home. She pulls whatever reserves she has left within her to go up to her mother’s bedroom.

She opens the bedroom door with some difficulty. She has to pull it with both hands on the doorknob. When the door finally opens, she holds her breath against the smell of sickness, old age, stale cigarettes, and beer. She looks at the room, and aside from ten years of accumulated grime, it’s pretty much the same as when she was a kid. Cheap furniture, an overstuffed chair with Chintz cabbage rose print and a TV with rabbit ears circa 1970 something. “God damn.”

Gina walks over to the bedroom closet and looks inside, and sees clothes from every decade hanging limply on wire hangers. The newest looks to be from the late 1990s. She grabs the footstool and steps up on it and roots around the top shelf, and finally grabs a shoebox labeled Tony from Neiman Marcus in NYC.

“Well, shit, who would have thought she ever owned anything that didn’t come off the clearance shelf of Walmart.” Gina carries the box over to the old chair and sits down. She hesitates before she opens it. Fearing at the last moment what might be in the note from her mother.

In the box, there is delicate tissue paper sprinkled with small yellow roses. Underneath the paper is a pair of white satin shoes with kitten heels, lined with pale pink silk, size six. Outlining the edge are small cutouts of hearts and ribbons. There is a pink bow on the back of the shoes. They’re the most beautiful shoes that Gina has ever seen. Gina tries to imagine her mother ever wearing anything so fine. She can’t. And she picks up the shoe and smells it. There is a faint smell of honeysuckles that still lingers.

Inside one of the shoes is a small photo. The picture is of a young girl, perhaps sixteen years old, wearing an old fashion prom dress. The dress is fitted to her small waist and flares out into a tea-length skirt. Her light brown hair is pulled up into a chignon with bangs framing her heart-shaped face. She looks so young. The smile on her face reflects the happiness she must have been feeling at the moment this photo was taken. The effect of that smile is so mesmerizing that Gina almost feels pulled into that frozen moment. She turns over the photograph, and in a delicate hand is written Elizabeth’s senior prom 1962.

“Elizabeth, who?” And then Gina realizes that this must be her mother on the night of her senior prom. Gina does not remember a smile that wide and radiant ever gracing her mother’s face in her life. She wonders what happened in the years between the time this picture was taken and the time she was born. Gina realizes she has never really thought about her mother as ever being more than just her mother. That she, too, must have been a young person with hopes and dreams of her own. That somewhere, it all went wrong for her.

Gina feels a tear roll down her cheek and lets it fall. She cries for her mother’s lost dreams and wasted life. She cries for the mother whose love always seemed so elusive. She cries for all the lost years. Hopes that her mother had more than this brief moment of happiness in her life. She is about to put the shoes back into the box when Gina glimpses a note among the tissue paper. Gina unfolds the note it reads.

 Dear Gina,

 I’m leaving these shoes for you as a reminder that life is fleeting, and you have to hold onto those happy moments. No one can give or make you happy. Only you have the power to bring happiness and love into your life. Only you can imagine your dreams and make them happen. Happiness is a gift that you give to yourself. I’m leaving you this house and my life insurance policy. These small gifts won’t make you happy, but I hope they can give you a new start. I know you don’t believe it, but I always loved you very much and wished only the best for you. Love. Mother

Gina folds the note and places it inside the box with the shoes, and puts the lid on. She thinks that this might be one of the happiest and saddest moments of her life.

A week after the funeral, Gina puts up For Sale sign outside the house and settles all the bills. Jimmy drives her to the airport and gives her a big hug as she boards the airplane. “Gina, please don’t be a stranger. Give your old uncle a call once in a while.”

“I will, Jimmy, I love you, and I’ll be in touch.”

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