Mom was a bit of a neat freak. Not overwhelmingly so, but she always wanted things to look nice. Tidy up at the end of the day, vacuum and dust once a week. Not bad, but there was never a good enough excuse to skip it. I picked up some of her habits, but there was definitely an occasional excuse good enough to skip it. Usually good sex, good booze, or a combination of the two. I discovered both of them in plentiful handfuls when I left for college.
When I was growing up I had to play by her rules, which was fine because they were the only rules I had ever known. “Make sure you put everything in it’s place before you go do bed, then you’ll know exactly where they are when you want to play with them tomorrow,” she would say. Made sense to me.
I didn’t mind tidying up, and vacuuming seemed cool. I’d draw the most beautiful designs in the carpet and mom would finish up. She made it a game. Mom made everything a game or a puzzle or an adventure. Except for dusting. Dusting was a chore, and I hated it.
“Don’t forget the corner. It’s where the dust bunnies like to collect.” She said.
“It gives me a headache! Why can’t I just skip it? If we dust everything else, there won’t be enough dust to make bunnies!” She did occasionally regret those puzzle solving skills.
“They will come anyway, dear. I know it’s not fun, I know, but it only takes a second and then we’re done. Just a quick swipe, problem solved, and we can go about our day. Just don’t look too hard and it’ll be a cinch.” She was right, of course, it really isn’t that hard. So I’d brave the headache and swipe and be done. It was horrible.
We never had much money. Dad died young in an accident at the factory. The union got mom a small pension out of it, but it wasn’t really enough to live on, and when the PBGC took it over there was magically even less, so mom took a job cleaning other people’s houses. She loved it, and it filled in the gaps.
Sometimes she would bring things home for me to play with. Broken things, mostly. Mom thought it was important to earn your enjoyment, and to learn to enjoy the challenge of it. Also, we were broke and people throw out broken things. To me, though, it was heaven. All the puzzles and games and adventures instilled a deep curiosity in me and a longing for challenge.
A broken toy was never just a broken toy, it was a puzzle and a challenge. You had to figure out how the thing worked, then figure out how to get it back in order, then you had to figure out how to make it strong enough to play with again. It was joy. For weeks on end I would carefully disassemble every new bobble mom brought home and lay it out in a grid, labelling and photographing everything at every step. Once everything was neat and tidy, I’d find the broken bits, clean them up, reattach what needed attaching, and methodically rebuild it. Then I’d just put it up on the shelf as another trophy of me conquering the big, messy world.
“Loren, you amaze me every day. I can’t believe how much you have learned. Your father would be so proud of you!” She said, checking my trophies for dust while a shade passed over her. “I should have done better for you. I should have gotten a better job or gone to school so you could have nice clothes or a computer. You would probably be a millionaire by now if I had just done a little bit more. It’s just, when your dad died…”
“Mom, I love you, and if you had done anything else I wouldn’t be who I am, you goof!” I meant it, too. I never felt like I had a bad life, and I don’t know where these moods came from.
“You are sweet and kind, but I want you to get an education. Look at all those stories about people going off to college and discovering amazing lives! You can learn all about how to put things together and maybe you’ll find out you’re a lesbian or a man or something! You never know!”
“I think people know, mom.”
“Ok, ok. I’m just saying. Be happy. Find love. Live an amazing life. Also you skipped the corner.”
The corner. It always gave me a headache. It’s so hard to look at. It’s like there’s something wrong with it. You know how sometimes you look at the laundry line and your eyes are a little crossed from focusing on something else but you don’t notice so the line looks like it’s out of depth? It’s like that, but when you shake your head it doesn’t go away, and it hurts a little to look at it.
Don’t look too close, just give it a quick swipe.
I went to the state school. I actually got accepted to a number of very prestigious institutions, but state tuition is cheaper, the engineering school here is very good, and I didn’t want to live far away from mom. I never told her about the other schools. In the end this is exactly what I wanted. I got some scholarships and grants and took out a small loan to cover the rest. I wanted to live at home to save money, but mom insisted.
“You should be out there experimenting with sex and drugs and new ways of living. That’s how you find the good life! Why would you want to stay here with me?” She said.
“I mean, I could do all of that here…”
“No you definitely cannot. I love you, but you are still my daughter and there are things I don’t want to know.” And that was that.
She was right about having space. The only thing better than getting everything in the right spot was trying to find the right spot to get things in. Like I said, good sex and good booze. Never too much, but it was lovely all the same. Still, I still spent one night a week at home hanging out with my mom and telling her stories and adding to my collection of well repaired goods.
“You skipped the corner again.” Mom said.
The corner. The more I look at it the more convinced I am that something is happening. There’s something wrong with it. It feels like a hangover. It smells like pennies. She’s right about the dust bunnies, they tend to congregate there. Whispering conspiracy theories, no doubt.
I tied a string to a screw eye and screwed it into the bottom of the lowest shelf. At the end I tied a small brass washer and dangled it in the corner. It made it a little bit easier to focus on the corner, but it still hurt to look at.
I found mom on the floor when I came home the next week. I don’t know how long she’d been there, but I’d guess at least a day. There was a puddle of urine stretching out and soaking the carpet and she had developed a small sore where her hip connected with the carpet. I called the ambulance and spent the weekend sitting in uncomfortable chairs listening to doctors talk around me and then to me.
She’d had a stroke. There was significant damage to her brain, but they weren’t sure yet how it would effect her in the long run. In the short term she will have significant difficulties communicating and will have severe difficulties with mobility. Over time they expected some of her motor functions to return, but had no idea to what extent. Occupational therapy would help. Her communication issues were a problem voluntarily moving the muscles involved in speech. There’s no paralysis, it’s a problem with the brain making the mouth make words. She understood words but couldn’t make them. They recommended speech therapy, gave me a stack of pamphlets that didn’t really explain anything, and sent me a bill I would never be able to pay off.
I spoke with my professors and made arrangements so I could stay at home with mom but still keep up with assignments. The next week was a blur of conversations with deeply unhelpful social workers. It’s not that they didn’t care, I could tell they cared, but what was there to be done? Nothing.
“She needs more help than I can give her. I’m missing school for this.” You could see a shade pass over mom’s face as the words left my mouth and floated across the radio waves of my phone.
“Well, you can get her in a home. We can get the money for that, but they are all understaffed. If you do that, you should prepare yourself. Most people who enter an assisted care facility die within a year,” she said.
“But what if she gets better? The doctors said she could recover some.”
“Assisted living isn’t a temporary solution. If you think she could recover, you should do everything in your power to keep her at home. There is some funding for home health aids, but they are terribly difficult to find. It’s high stress work with poverty wages, and the current generation is reaching the age where they need help faster than we can find people willing to work in poverty. In the meantime, I strongly recommend you sign up to be a home health aid so you have some income,” she said.
“What about school? What should I do with school? Mom wanted me to get a degree and go on adventures. It’s important to her!” Another shade passed over mom, and I felt it’s chill for the first time.
“I can’t help you with that. I’m sorry. I can only tell you what options are available.” She was telling me that there were no options. She was telling me that I could allow my mother to die in an understaffed assisted living facility while I had my freedom or I could take my mother’s place and care for her like she did for me. It’s a trolly problem. Which way do I flip the switch?
I took an incomplete for the rest of the semester in hopes that I could come back, but everyone, including myself, knew the truth of it. It doesn’t matter how hard I work or how hard I study, wether I do things the right way or not, this is where I am going to be for a while. It’s ok. Mom’s pension still comes in and the wages for being her home health aid help. I got a job cleaning other people’s houses to fill in the gaps. I would bring home their broken things, fix them, and sell them on eBay for beer money.
And so it went. Every morning we’d do our exercises, try to sing, I’d feed her and bathe her, and then go clean someone else’s house. Every night I’d tidy up and go to bed. Once a week I’d vacuum and dust.
The corner. I’d almost forgotten about it, but there it was, brass ring glinting in the sunlight. The dust bunnies were on parade. How could there be so many? I keep this place spotless. Where is all the dust coming from?
I sit and look at it. Take it in. It hurts. I smell pennies. There is something wrong here. Something is broken in the world, and it’s spitting out dust bunnies and hangovers. I shoo away the bunnies and shine my phone’s light into it. It hurts. There’s nothing there and it hurts. There are so many nothings there, vibrating in their absence. A symphony of absence. There is something wrong and the more I look the more I see there is so much here and it’s all missing and wrong. My stomach turns and I see 15 corners in one corner and 13 other corners in the same corner, pointed in a direction I don’t understand.
I hear a knocking and turn to see mom in the doorway. A quick swipe and it’s fine. Except that it’s not. There’s something wrong there. Mom looks worried. I get her into bed, pour myself a glass, and settle in for the night. There will be more of the same tomorrow and plenty of time to worry about it.
The next morning I set out to conquer the corner. It’s a puzzle, a game, and all I have to do is figure it out then everything will be right in the world again. Mom and I try to sing and dance. I go clean someone else’s house. I come home. I look in the corner. Dust bunnies and hangovers.
It’s a good enough place to start. I collect a dust bunny and bring it over to my fixing table and take it to pieces, one bit at a time. An eyelash. A gauzy piece of webbing. A small piece of sand. A small bone and something I don’t recognize. There is a dampness on my chin and I recognize my nose is bleeding.
Out to the kitchen to take care of it. Mom looks at me with concern.
“It’s fine, mom. Just a nosebleed. Winter is settling in and the air is dry. You know how it goes.” She doesn’t respond, but I get the feeling she knows better. Moms always know more than you think they do.
Tidy up. Put mom to bed. Pour a glass. Get some sleep.
There’s a ball of something that might be nothing sitting on my desk and I don’t know what to make of it. Everything else from the dust bunny has been categorized, examined, and labeled. It’s just a dust bunny, but the nucleus of the dust bunny is something I don’t understand. It’s like a thing that is missing from space. Like if you stared at the sun too long and there was an empty spot in your vision, except this empty spot is on my desk where I put it yesterday. It’s like all the normal dust bunny stuff has congealed around a space of lack. Maybe it’s trying to fill to void? I don’t know. I put it all in a spreadsheet and swipe it away into the trash.
The corner is still there. No dust bunnies yet today, but it is vibrating softly when I look at it. There is a hangover, and the smell of pennies, and a slight vibration. A shaking vibration, spread out in 15 directions and 13 more that I don’t understand. I remove the washer and try to measure the distance from corner to corner. It changes. I pull the tape to the corner, turn my head to note the distance, and when I look back it’s grown. I can’t get the tape to the corner. I can get half way there, but there’s always more, and it’s vibrating. A vibrating moreness of nothing because there’s nothing there and it’s just a corner but there are so many corners and so much nothing and I’m throwing up right now I’m sure of it.
Tidy up. Mom to bed. Pour a glass. Sleep. Dance. Laugh, a little less. Work. Home. Corner.
A mote of nothing hangs in the air where the washer used to be. There’s nothing there. Behind it, nothing more. Just a corner and nothing else, but there is so much nothing. Today I swim in nothing, feeling the full support of nothing while I drift through nothing and fall through nothing. There is nothing here and nothing to be done and I still find more nothing. I breathe nothing. It smells like pennies and hangovers. I can hear mother knocking. She has to use the bathroom, but I am full of nothing and there is so much nothing to catalogue.
I swipe it away and help mom with the bathroom. She looks sad all the time now. I feel a chill all the time now. Am I sick? Who will take care of mom if I am sick? I clean her up, turn on the television, and return to studying and learning and cataloguing and fixing nothing. There are 15 nothings and 13 more in a direction I don’t understand. If I breath through the nothing I can manage the headache and the pennies, but I have yet to find out the size of the nothing or where it comes from. Why is there so much nothing? My vision tunnels. I hear mom. I see nothing. There is nothing. So much nothing. I turn to go back and cry to mother and find nothing in my way. There is nothing stopping me, it is wrapped more tightly around me than anything I have ever experienced. There is so much nothing.
I scream as loudly as I can and nothing.
I take a quick swipe at the corner and turn back for mom. She’s right. There is so much nothing, it’s best to ignore it.