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MORE THAN THIS
MY MOM WORDLESSLY kneels to gather scraps of drawings from our game of Honor
Pictionary and stacks them into a neat pile. She keeps the best (defined here as either
really good or really bad) ones from each game. We sometimes look through our
collection nostalgically, the way other families look through old photos. Her fingers linger
atop a particularly bad drawing of some sort of horned creature hovering above a circle
with holes in it.
She holds the drawing up for me to see. “How did you guess ‘nursery rhyme’ from
this?” She chuckles with effort, trying to break the ice.
“I don’t know,” I say, and laugh, wanting to meet her halfway. “You are a terrible
drawer.”
The creature was supposed to be a cow and the circle was supposed to be the moon.
Truly, my guess was inspired, given how awful her drawing was.
She pauses stacking for a moment and sits back on her heels. “I really had a good time
with you this week,” she says.
I nod but don’t say anything back. Her smile fades. Now that Olly and I can’t see or talk
to each other, my mom and I spend more time together. It’s the only good thing to come
out of this mess.
I reach out and grab her hand, squeeze it. “Me too.”
She smiles again, but less fully now. “I hired one of the nurses.”
I nod. She offered to let me interview Carla’s potential replacements, but I declined. It
doesn’t matter who she hires. No one’s ever going to be able to replace Carla.
“I have to go back to work tomorrow.”
“I know.”
“I wish I didn’t have to leave you.”
“I’ll be OK.”
She straightens the already perfectly straight stack of drawings. “You understand why I
have to do the things I’m doing?” Besides firing Carla, she’s also revoked my Internet
privileges and canceled my in-person architecture lesson with Mr. Waterman.
We’ve mostly avoided talking about this all week. My lies. Carla. Olly. She took the
week off from work and tended to me in Carla’s absence. She took my vitals every hour
instead of every two and slumped with relief each time the results were normal.
By day four she said we were out of the woods. We got lucky, she said.
“What are you thinking?” she asks.
“I miss Carla.”