Blacktop Wasteland(13)

“She has been made aware of the situation, but she insists this is an inheritance for her grandchildren,” Mrs. Talbot said. The arch of her eyebrows told him she didn’t believe that any more than he did. His mother tolerated her grandchildren. No, that policy was all about control. His mother reveled in being in control. Whether it was not allowing him to get his license unless he broke up with Ariel’s mom or holding on to a life insurance policy, Ella Montage liked having leverage. She might quote the Bible from time to time but that was her religion.

“Let me go talk to her. Could you print me something with the date the money has to be paid on it and I’ll pick it up on my way out,” he said.

“Of course, Mr. Montage. If you like, I could also print you up a list of nearby facilities and their waiting lists.”

“Yeah, sure,” he said. He didn’t need to see a list of other places. If his mother got kicked out of here, she would probably be dead before a bed opened up somewhere else.

Beauregard got up and headed for his mother’s room. As he walked down the hallway, he thought about what Boonie had said. A quiet, dignified death in one of these dimly lit rooms didn’t seem so bad. That is, until you realized that no death is dignified. It’s a messy process. The Grim Reaper sneaks up behind you and squeezes you until shit fills your adult diaper and an artery bursts in your chest. He works his bony fingers in your guts and makes your own cells eat you alive from the inside. He skull fucks you until your brain retreats inside itself and you forget how to even breathe. He guides the hand of a man you’ve wronged and aims his gun at your face. There is no dignity in death. Beauregard had seen enough people die to realize that. There’s only fear and confusion and pain.

The door to his mother’s room was open wide. A CNA was standing next to the bed. He heard his mother’s three-pack-a-day voice loud and clear. The CNA could too, and by the way her neck and shoulders were knotted up, she didn’t like what she was hearing.

“I’ve been pushing that ‘call’ button for forty-five minutes. You girls up there with ya nose buried in a phone while I’m sitting in piss. I’ve pissed myself. Do you know how that feels? Do you understand that? I’m sitting here in a puddle of piss.” She paused to take a deep hit of oxygen from her nasal cannula. “No, you don’t, but don’t worry, one day you will. You all cute and pretty now but one day you gonna be right here like I am and I hope somebody lets you sit in your own piss like your privates in a stew,” she said.

“I’m sorry, Mrs. Montage. We just so short-staffed today,” the CNA said. She sounded genuinely apologetic. That was a mistake. Ella was like a lioness on the Serengeti. She could sense weakness.

“Oh, I’m sorry, chile. You’re short-staffed. I’ll try to die more quietly,” Ella said.

The CNA made a wet strangled noise and rushed out of the room. She brushed past Beauregard mumbling to herself. He caught the words “miserable” and “witch.”

“Hey, Mama,” Beauregard said. He stepped just inside the door.

Ella appraised him from top to bottom with a gentle flick of her eyes. “You getting skinny. I never thought that girl knew how to cook,” she said.

“Kia cooks just fine, Mama. How you feeling?”

“Ha! I’m dying. Other than that, I’m feeling great,” she said.

Beauregard inched farther into the room. “You ain’t going nowhere,” he said.

“Get my cigarettes out that drawer,” she said.

“Mama, you don’t need them cigarettes. Didn’t you just say you was dying?”

“Yeah, so a cigarette ain’t gonna hurt nothing,” Ella said.

“Have you been smoking with your oxygen on? You know you could blow this place up, right?” Beauregard asked.

His mother shrugged. “I probably be doing most of the people here a favor,” she said. Beauregard had to chuckle at that one. That was the thing about his mother. She could be emotionally manipulative one minute then making you laugh the next. It was like getting hit in the face with a pie that had a padlock in it. When he was a kid, she had combined that acerbic wit with her looks to pretty much get whatever she wanted. All children think their mother is beautiful, but Beauregard had noticed fairly early on that other people thought his mother was beautiful too. Long coal black hair like an oil slick ran down her back to her waist. Skin the color of coffee with too much cream told the story of her varied ancestry. Her light gray irises gave her almond-shaped eyes an otherworldly appearance.

Cashiers always seemed to have extra change if she was short at the grocery store. Cops always seemed to give her a warning even if she was doing the speed of light through a school zone. People always seemed to want to do what Ella Montage told them to do. Even if she was telling them to go fuck themselves. Everybody except his Daddy. She once told him that his father was the only man to ever put her in her place.

“I loved him for it. Hated him too,” she would say between puffs on her omnipresent dark brown More cigarette. He could remember sitting on her lap as she told him over and over again how they met. He never got fairy tales as a kid. He got Sturm and Drang epics set against the backdrop of sultry country nights. Eventually he realized his mother considered it some kind of weird therapy. She had her very own captive eight-year-old psychologist.

The cancer and its subsequent treatments had taken her hair first. She wore a black scarf now. Then it withered her skin. The stoma in her throat stared at him like the mouth of some strange parasite. A lamprey eel that was trying to crawl out of her neck. Only the gray eyes remained untouched. So light they sometimes appeared blue. Smart eyes that never forgot anything they ever saw. And they never let you forget it either.