“And they just left us on the docks!” Stepmother said. “Can you believe it? There I was with a concussion and they just left us and took off!”
“Everyone was very nice in the hospital,” Mother said. “I didn’t have anywhere to go, and I hadn’t brought any money because it is illegal for an American citizen to spend money in Cuba. But they just assume that when you go to the hospital you bring someone with you to take care of you, so they made me a bed next to Stepmother, and every time they brought her meals, they brought me one, too. I was responsible for changing her sheets and bathing her. That’s just how they do it down there. But Girl, their hospital was so poorly equipped. They only had little samples of medicine. Sometimes they gave Stepmother Tylenol, sometimes Advil, depending on what they had.”
“I am going to organize a shipment of medication and send it to Cuba,” Stepmother said.
“So when the doctors said Stepmother was okay to leave, we had to call Stepmother’s parents to send money. They had to wire money to ‘an itinerant American living in Cuba,’” Mother said.
“There I was, fifty years old, and having to wire my parents for money,” Stepmother said. “It was so embarrassing.”
“So we had to call the US embassy, and NASA sent a really old plane down to get us. It was the scariest looking plane I have ever seen. I didn’t think it would make it back to the United States.”
“I called Mary and her husband again to apologize, even though it wasn’t very nice of them to leave us like that when I was injured,” Stepmother said. “But they won’t speak to me. I think they should apologize to me!”
Girl just rolled her eyes.
a different kind of commitment
Mother and Stepmother spent the winters in Key West, and returned north to a little cabin an hour outside of Rochester in the summer. While they were gone, Mother and Girl spoke on the phone nearly every day. Girl noticed a change in Mother. She and Stepmother were fighting more, though Mother wasn’t very vocal on why.
“I started throwing dishes,” Mother said. “It feels really good to throw dishes—it’s really quite satisfying when they crash. You should try it.” Girl was astonished, but also kind of proud of her. It was about time Mother stood up for herself. The next call surprised her, though.
“Girl, I just wanted you to know that I have committed Stepmother against her will at dePoo Hospital. I talked with her psychiatrist, and Stepmother is very angry with me, but we agreed that it was necessary.” Slowly, the story came out.
Stepmother had fallen back in love with an old lover, the one with the long red hair. Stepmother was calling her and writing her love letters, and even sent the woman ten thousand dollars to help her pay her bills. Mother had asked her to stop communicating with this woman, but Stepmother refused. Mother and Stepmother had broken up, and when it became apparent that Stepmother was abusing her medication, Mother committed her to the mental-health center.
“I don’t think this woman did anything wrong,” Mother told Girl. “I think she was as baffled by Stepmother’s behavior as I was.”
“Your mother cried a lot when Stepmother was in the hospital,” one of Mother’s closest friends told Girl. “But she never said she missed her. She only said over and over that she didn’t want to rebuild her life again.”
Girl was strangely sad. She had wanted for Stepmother and Mother to divorce for her whole life, but she didn’t expect to feel any sort of loss over it. Still, when they reconciled a few weeks later, she was disappointed. She wanted so much better for Mother than how Stepmother treated her. But Stepmother was regulated now—Mother had explained that Stepmother had increased her meds in order to feel high all the time, but the doctors had gotten her levels back to normal—and Mother of course took her back. The next time Mother called Girl, she told her that they had sold the trailer and bought a large house on a canal on the other side of the island. “It may seem sudden, but it was something we’ve discussed for a long time,” Mother explained. This became a pattern: every time their relationship was on the rocks, they resolved it by purchasing something big and expensive: a new cabin, an RV, a bigger house.
an un-commitment
Girl woke up at 2:00 a.m. because Samson wasn’t there. Even in her sleep, she was waiting for him to come home and pull the blankets back, waking her just enough to resettle herself against him. But he never came, and so Girl woke alone in the empty bed. She called his work and his coworker said that Samson had left on his motorcycle hours ago. Terror flushed Girl’s face hot; her pulse quickened. She finally registered the missed call notification on her phone, and she dialed in to her voicemail with shaking hands. She had known it would come to this sooner or later. The recording said, “Will the family of Samson Chevy please call Strong Memorial Hospital …”
Just say he’s not dead just say he’s not dead, she chanted in her head as she dialed the emergency room. Samson was Superman. Girl couldn’t imagine any instance that would keep him from calling himself. This was the man who rode a wheelie into a brick wall and gave himself a concussion, all without dropping the donuts he carried on his handlebars. This was the man who ripped his hamstring in half and was still walking around, asking if his bike was okay.
“Your husband’s been in an accident,” the nurse said. “He’s awaiting surgery. That’s all we can tell you.”
Girl was wearing his red-and-black, muscle-man workout pants, one of his Harley-Davidson T-shirts, and white gym socks. She didn’t stop
