***
March
April
May
June
I called Kathy’s house phone. She had caller ID, so I could imagine her pushing ignore every time my number would show. She used to do that to her mother, until she regretted it when her mother died.
“Hello?’ an unfamiliar female voice answered.
“Hello, is Kathy there?” I said.
“Yes.”
“Well, put her on!” I snapped as I fixed my hair in the mirror.
“No!”
“Listen, lady, I’m her daughter, Lily. She has a grandson now and it would be nice if she, the evil beast, called sometime.”
“Well, Lily, you didn’t seem to care about her all those other months. You never returned her calls.”
“Because…um…I was working,” I lied. “But, I’m not working anymore.”
“I really don’t care,” she paused, “well, if you want to see her come visit her then.”
I sighed, “No, put her on the phone now.”
“She can’t come to the phone.” The woman hung up on me.
“Fine,” I said to myself. “I’ll come see the old bat.” I grabbed my keys and went to get Simon from his crib.
I decided to go see Kathy—I had not seen her since before the wedding. I honestly wanted to go to her house, just to slap that rude woman who was on the phone. I sped the car to seventy miles per hour—which was unusual for me—I was a slow driver.
I did not recognize Kathy’s house from outside. I had to recheck the street address to see if I were at the right house. The grass was a dirty yellow. The once large colorful garden was now brown, and from the outside, the home looked vacant.
As if I was in a bad neighborhood, I got out the car with busy eyes. I wrapped Simon in his favorite blue blanket and snuggled him in my arms tight. I looked down the unfamiliar street, and the unwelcoming wind froze my face. I pushed the doorbell two times. The once loud ding-dong now had no sound, so I banged the double doors as the police once did when I was younger. I could hear someone’s feet running against the wooden floors toward the door.
A tall slender woman with a calming smile in scrubs answered the door. Her black hair was in a short bob cut, that went in uneasy directions. She wore thick black framed glasses that covered her whole face—but I knew that she was the lovely scumbag who had attitude with me over the phone.
“So, you’re that lady?” I said.
“Lily?”
“Where is Kathy?” I shoved the door open, letting myself in.
She was intending on slamming the door on me until she noticed I was holding Simon in my arms. As I paced around the house, I noticed the home was empty. Boxes filled the once glamorous living room. The flat screen television that used to be on the wall was now broken on the floor into pieces. The once red carpet on the stairs was lonely in a corner.
“What’s all this?” I pointed at the boxes. “Is she planning on moving?” I ran around the home looking to confront Kathy.
“It’s just things, Lily…”
“Where is Kathy? Kathy! Kathy! Is the witch hiding from me?” I ran through the rooms downstairs. “Where are you—” I slammed open the last bedroom door to witness Kathy’s unrecognizable lifeless body. She was in a hospice bed hooked up to tens of machines. As I approached her, she did not move an inch—she did not speak. “Why is she laying there? What is wrong with her?”
“She’s ill.”
“Ill? She is not ill. Crazy maybe, but ill…no she isn’t.”
“She is.”
I walked closer to her bedside and I felt the heavy stone in my heart. She looked as if she weighed no more than ninety pounds. I could see her cheekbones through her skin and her hair was completely gone. Her eyes twitched a bit as I brushed my hands across her cheeks. I thought they were going to open but they did not.
“Kathy…mommy?”
“Lily…” the woman touched my shoulder. “Um, how do I say this calmly?” she paused, “Kathy is dying.”
“No she is not!” I fell to her bedside, almost dropping Simon out my arms. “She is stronger than this!”
The women grabbed Simon from me so I would not drop him. “I’ll leave you alone with Kathy.”
“You are much better than this,” I whined. Without moving any of the medical machines, I kissed her hand; then, her face, then her forehead. She did not move at all—I lost her. I stared at the machines and realized those were the only things keeping her alive.
She was gone. Kathy was really gone and I never got to say goodbye.
I believed I talked to her for about two hours. Of course, I got no response from her. Bought time I left her room, my eyes were red again—they hurt to touch. My nose felt as if it was about to fall off and the stone in my heart stayed—I deserved it.
“Are you okay, Lily?”
“Yes, I will be.” I wiped the tears off my face. “How long has she been like this…you know, ill?”
“A while,” she sighed. “I’ve been taking care of her. When she could speak, she would always talk about you a lot. She really loved you. She would always say how when you became a teenager you did not want her going to award shows with you. She would laugh so hard. She loved you. I’m Camilla by the way.”
“What’s wrong with her?”
“Cancer…lung cancer.”
“She used to smoke a lot when I was younger, but then quit and would only suck on cigarettes.”
“She told me about that.”
“This is sad for her to die alone without her family.”
“It is.”
Camilla squeezed Simon’s cheeks. “You look too young to be a mother.”
“I am young,” I laughed. “I’m eighteen and I’ll be nineteen next month.”
“Whoa, that—”
“Sucks?”
“Nope, you’re lucky. I can’t have children…why am I telling you this?” she laughed. “I sometimes just tell people my business. It’s a bad habit.”
“Um, yeah and I'm sorry.”
“He looks like you. I can imagine you as a baby looking just like him.”
“No, he looks like my mom.”
“Yeah, he does look like her too.”
I tried to catch my breath as I watched Camilla play with Simon. “When did Kathy go on life support?” I finally spoke.
“Months ago, but Frank doesn’t want her to go.”
“My dad?”
“Yeah, he visits a lot.”
“That’s odd, considering he hated her.”
Camilla rolled her eyes, “Oh yeah? He would visit her a lot with Leslie. Kathy would tell him to visit you, but I’m assuming he never did.”
“That’s the oddest thought. He didn’t even visit me when I had my baby.”
“How is Jason? Kathy would always talk about him too.”
Jason? I thought about a lie I could say. I had not seen him in three miserable months. He up and left one morning when I was sleeping because he said he was sick of me. He told me how afraid he was to be in the same house as me—afraid I would try to harm him. No one knew that though. Of course, no one knew, I blocked everyone out my life. I did not have anyone to care. That was just like my mother—to always block people out her life.
However, Jason would send me text messages of how he loved me and would come back to Simon and me eventually—he never called though. I had missed having him around the house, but I felt safer too. I did not have to worry about him coming after me when I was sleeping. On the other hand, he being gone made me feel ailing. He was probably scheduling my murder with Jerry—a gruesome dirty murder.
“He’s good,” I lied and grabbed Simon from her arms. “Jason is fine.”
“Really? Kathy always said she had a bad feeling about him.”
“Like what?”
“She just would say, I wish I could warn her,” Camilla said.
“Warn me about what?”
“I’m not s
ure, but mother knows best, right?” she giggled. “I wouldn’t know, though.”
“Hmm interesting,” I sighed as I walked to leave. “I guess I should leave now.”
“Oh yeah, I will call you with updates.”
“Yeah, I love updates,” I said sarcastically knowing what the next update would be.
I cried on the way home. My eyes were so blurry; I thought I was going to crash at any moment. That might be a reason any normal person would pull over to a restaurant; but then again, I wasn’t normal and kept driving. Simon’s screaming in the back seat didn’t help much either—it just made me angrier.
“SHUT UP SIMON!” I shoved a pacifier in his mouth, which made him scream even louder.
When I got home, I dialed Jason’s number for the nine hundredth time—it really was. Like usual he did not answer his cell phone. I called him again from a private number.
“Hello?” he answered.
“Jason?”
“Lily? What do you want now?” he said over the loud cheers and music. “I’m sort of busy.”
“I’m tired of this! I am tired of acting as if we are still together! I want to divorce,” I cried. “You said if I hate you, then I should divorce you. So, I want to.”
“No, no, no. I’ll come home,” he pleaded. What was he up to now?
“No, I don’t care about you! I don’t want you.”
“Okay, listen, I’m sorry. Seriously, how is everything? How’s baby Simon?”
“Horrible.”
“Okay, I know it’s been what a few weeks—”
“Three months!”
“Okay, it’s been about three months, but I’ve been busy. I’m doing this thing in China and my brother is going through this family stuff—it’s intense.”
I laughed in the phone. “You’re in China? What the hell are you doing there?”
“I’ll be home. I love you, bye!” He hung up before I could reply.
“Wait, don’t hang up!” I redialed his number, but of course, all I got was the dial tone.
I knew Jason was up to no good. I thought of how he could have been planning my death these past few months. And me? I had not made any plans for when he would come back. Honestly, I never thought he was coming back.
To be honest, I did not want him.