“That’s funny how we remember foods more than anything else.”
He squeezes my sides. “That’s why I love this. I mean, I love this for a lot of reasons, and I kinda saved your life and all.” I poke him in the ribs and he grins. “But I love that we make memories. Someone we’ve served in the last few weeks will remember what we made for them for the rest of their life. And we don’t know who or what, but I like knowing that.”
I think about how true it is, and how, before Max, I never gave two shits about strangers. Other people were kinda just there for me and Pam and Kayla to make fun of. Now I see people more. More clearly. Not all the time, maybe. But I’m gonna try. To remember that they’re basically like me, and I’m basically like them, and yeah. In a way I think Max taught me that.
“Me too,” I say. “I like how —”
“Is Lydia Edwards here?” asks a man in a green T-shirt, holding a clipboard. He’s standing at the order window. His shirt reads Tylers Towing. No apostrophe. Genius.
“No,” I say. “That’s my mom.”
“I gotta take the truck,” he says.
I laugh. “Um, no you don’t,” I say.
“But I do. There’s a title loan out on it and no one’s paid and we can’t reach her. It’s not yours anymore. Sorry.”
He walks over to the passenger side and attempts to board, and I lunge over and hold the handle so he can’t. “Wait. What?”
“I just told you. Not your truck no more. Tell you what. I’ll give you five minutes to grab your stuff and get out.”
“We’re not giving you anything until you show us proof,” Max says, and I nod my head, so glad he’s here with me.
The man shrugs, walks back over to the window, and hands the paper through to me.
I read it. Max looks over my shoulder and reads it too.
The amount listed is $27,500. My mom’s signature is at the bottom. The date is May twenty-seventh. Which would be the day after Max and I took over the truck. My stomach drops into my groin, and without even thinking, I crumple the piece of paper up and throw it at the guy.
He shrugs. “We have copies, so, yeah. Throw all you want, kid.”
I look at Max. My throat goes dry. In his eyes I see resignation, which is so not what I want to see. I want him to have the answers. I want him to point out to me that this is obviously a mistake, because it has to be. Why would Mom take a loan out and not tell me, and still make me work the truck and give her money to pay off the mortgage? If she took out a loan, she must have paid it already. Right? Right?
But his eyes look sad, and in them I understand something that is unfathomable to me, and I swallow, look around the truck, and say, “Let’s take the meat and cheese, at least. Can you call an Uber?”
He does.
As we watch Poultry in Motion get towed away, I feel almost nothing. I say nothing. Max reaches down and holds my hand, and he squeezes, but my hand remains limp. Everything feels numb.
We take the Uber back to my place. Mom is on the couch, eating Sweetos and watching an old cartoon. Tom and Jerry, I think. Tom is trying to bop Jerry over the head with a sledgehammer.
She doesn’t turn when I come in. She doesn’t stop chewing. She just yells, “Hey!”
I walk over and sit on the arm of the couch near her head.
“Mom,” I say softly.
The way I say it seems to impact her, kind of. Like she pretends to keep eating but she slows her pace, and I can tell I have her attention.
I repeat it. “Mom.”
“Jordan,” she says, a little edge in her voice.
“You took out a loan on the truck,” I say.
I see her throat constrict. She doesn’t answer. Her eyes stay on the television.
“You did, didn’t you?”
She closes her eyes and pauses the TV. “It’s complicated, Jordan.”
“Mom,” I say. “Mom. What did you do? What’s happening?”
She turns off the TV, but she doesn’t sit up. She just stays staring at the set even though it’s off. “It’s bad,” she says. “It’s really, really, really bad.”
“Mom,” I whisper. “Tell me what’s up. Tell me what you did.”
She closes her eyes. “It’s worse than you think,” she says.
I sit, motionless, as she explains. I know Max is behind me, and I’m half-glad he’s there, and half wish he weren’t because someone else hearing it makes it more true, and I don’t want it to be true.
I should have known. How had I not seen it? Denial is a funny thing.
Of course. My mom has gambled away all the truck money.
I feel like I’ve been robbed at gunpoint. I feel gutted. Like someone has come and taken everything I have, cut everything inside me out. I feel like I want to scream, but screaming is useless.
“The money I gave you for the back mortgage?” I whisper, because my voice is gone.
“I have a problem, sweetheart. I’m so so sorry. You have no idea how sorry I really am.”
“Um,” I say, light as a feather.
“Every time I leave Casino Arizona, it’s like I get on the 101 and the shame is so deep that I just think, ‘I should turn the wheel all the way left.’ Slam into the guardrail. End this all. You’d be better off. Everyone would be. I failed. I failed at life, Jordan, and I know that, and I know it doesn’t help you that I know that, but I want you to understand. I get it.”
The voice that comes from my mouth is not mine. Someone else’s. “Um.”
“For what it’s worth, nothing you could think about me is worse than what I think about me. The level to which I hate me right now? It’s like, an insane amount, Jordan. I beyond want to die. Beyond, Jordan.”
I don’t even repeat um this time.
The rest happens really quickly. Too quickly. I don’t have time to say good-bye. I don’t have the words for it. I guess it’s good that my mom gets that, because it would be worse if she cried. But also it’s not enough. Time. Not enough anything. How do you say good-bye to your world in less than two minutes?
“So I’m gonna go,” I say.
“Probably a good choice,” she says.
I look back at Max. I want him to hold me. I want him to never touch me again. These are not thoughts that go together. This is not a scene that goes together. It’s all jumbled, disjointed. Unfitting.
I turn back to my mom. “Maybe we call nine-one-one?”
“Mercy,” my mom says, and I have absolutely no idea what that means. I should have mercy? Call them because she’s had enough? No idea. I just call, and tell them to come and pick up my mom because she’s a danger to herself. I say this in front of her. She does not stop me or contradict what I’m saying. She looks small, and scared, and not mine. Not anymore.
I mouth Bye to her but the word doesn’t come out. She isn’t looking at me anyway. I focus on her profile. Her left eye, half-closed like she’s wasted. Her expression oddly blank. Then I grab Dorcas’s leash, which makes her run over to me. I leash her up, turn, and walk to the door. Max takes my hand and squeezes. My mom hasn’t moved. She’s not going to. I finally have to look away.
“You’ll stay with us,” he says, and I’m too far gone to say anything other than what I say.
“Thank you.”
Ms. Gutierrez is standing in the doorway waiting for us when we get back from the house where I no longer live. Max must have texted.
She envelops me in an all-encompassing hug. I wrap my arms around her but don’t squeeze. I can’t cry. Bone-dry like the fucking desert we live in.
“I took the rest of the day,” she says, holding me tight. She’s dressed for work. “Of course you can stay here,” she says, answering a question I guess Max must have asked her via text. “As long as you want. As long as you need.”
“Thanks.”
Dorcas shakes her neck collar as if to say, “I’m here too.” Max’s mom pets him.
“Of course you’re welcome too.”