An Uncertain Inheritance by Nell Casey

Author:Nell Casey
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780061843129
Publisher: HarperCollins

April 1999: We were moving. We’d decided it would be easier on us and on her to have her on the same property but in her own little house. Far from the liquor store. As it was, we were running back and forth between her apartment and our rented house ten times a day, and when I was at my house I could feel the force field of her loneliness emanating from the direction of her apartment like a tractor beam.

There was a gap of about a month between the time when the lease on my mother’s apartment would be up and the time when we’d be able to move her into the new house (my brother arranging the incredibly complicated financing from afar). So we had to move her out of the apartment, pack all her stuff, scrub and clean the place so we’d get the deposit back, and temporarily stash her in the run-down little studio in the backyard of the old house—all in the midst of packing up our own life detritus, tossing it feverishly into boxes like fleeing refugees, stuffing it into the car, and taking it up to the new house, trip after trip after trip.

I was still struggling with my manuscript, three more chapters to go, so Mitch had to do most of the packing. I’d sit at my computer in my ransacked study and write for a few hours every day while he tramped nonstop past my door carrying furniture and huge boxes and my mother wandered in and out, her confusion multiplying exponentially, no idea at all what we were doing or why, presenting me with tattered grocery lists from months before.

We moved the washer and dryer, cages of yowling cats (ten—yeah, I know), dressers that fell off trucks, scattering socks and underwear in the street. We stayed up until 4:00 A.M. three nights in a row cleaning and scrubbing the old house. Then we moved my mother into the master bedroom of the new house while Mitch and I, a couple of stumbling zombies, burrowed in among piles of books and clothing in the spare room. Meanwhile, a carpenter was converting the garage into a “granny unit” for my mother, my brother again handling the financing. As soon as that unit is finished, we told ourselves, everything will be fine. No more running back and forth between house and apartment in town. She’ll be snug in her own little place and we’ll be just a few steps away.

One evening shortly after we moved in, Mitch made a little joke to my mother about “room ser vice” when he brought her a snack on a tray. She laughed, accepted the snack, and pretended to tip him. Aha, I thought—a little moment of normalcy. I was pathetically grateful.

The next morning, she was dressed and sitting on the window seat in the living room.

“There’s no need to stay here any longer,” she said. “We should check out now.”

I was barefoot, in my bathrobe, hair mashed, a Breathe Right stuck to my nose.

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