All for Mother

Last Line Journal, Issue 8, Winter 2022

Her mother, sitting at the table in her wheel chair awaiting her breakfast, didn’t know it, but the first letter sat on the desk in the furthest bedroom at the end of the long back hallway.When the phone in the front hall rang, Harriet stood at the stove scrambling eggs, her middle-aged back aching.

“You going to get it?” her mother said, her hunched back facing Harriet.

Harriet would not get it. She knew exactly how her mother liked her eggs. They had to be just so. The phone could wait.

“Probably just spam, Mother,” she said. She lifted the pan at an angle and gently nudged the eggs onto a floral china plate. She layered two slices of extra buttery toast (also just how her mother liked) on the side. She placed the plate down for her mother and went to the phone.

Holding the receiver to her ear, she pressed delete at the first sound of the familiar voice.

Back in the kitchen, she enjoyed the shiny, well-polished table, the squeaky clean countertops. She derived satisfaction from  the juice glass, the coffee cup, the pill plate, all lined up in front of her mother. Harriet had done it all, all by herself. Sun trickled in through the clean, clear windows. She switched on the favorite news show.

“You’re such a good daughter,” her mother said, putting her wrinkled hand on top of her daughter’s matching one.

Harriet went back to the sink to wash the egg pan.

 The morning progressed as it did every day. The grandfather clock held court in the front hallway, standing at attention while Harriet’s mother pushed her walker back and forth, back and forth, trudging from one end of the house to the other.

Harriet vacuumed and dusted, snapped clean sheets over the beds, emptied the commode and wiped down every surface of all three bathrooms.

Soon, it was time for lunch, so Harriet cut the crusts off her mother’s preferred bakery bread, shaping the slices with a knife into triangles on which she spread homemade tuna fish, Grandmother Sharp’s recipe (with pickles). Harriet arranged the sections on a plate warm from the dishwasher. Her mother held a shaking cup of milk to her lips. Harriet covered her mother’s silk blouse with a light blue towel to capture any drips.

All of this, and then the mail fell through the slot in the door to the smooth tile entryway floor. Harriet caught the sound, went to the spot to retrieve.

Amidst the catalogues and political adverts and restaurant menus, an envelope-another letter. Harriet slipped it in her apron pocket, gathered the rest of the mail and brought it to  the kitchen. Her mother took pleasure in sorting through it while she ate her lunch.

 At one o’clock Harriet’s mother went down for her nap. Harriet stood beside the large bedroom window, glancing at the tiny frail form curled like a small letter c in the bed. Harriet adjusted the shade, transforming the bright sunlit room to a hazy muted one.

“Have a nice rest,” Harriet said, feeling a little like a mother saying goodnight to her child. A little.

 Harriet moved down the hall, past the childhood sketches of her sister and her done at some long-ago fair. Passing the room that was now a sewing room, Harriet shivered with emptiness. She had not spoken to her sister in ten years.

Her own room smelled as it had since childhood-like pine and mothballs mixed together. She could never seem to change that. She looked around at the bed, closet, dresser, desk - comfort, despair, loneliness, anger - all mixing in her chest. Her friends, the books, lined the shelves. She’d been a teacher once, but that had to stop, what with Mother and all. Harriet repeated her favorite mantras- Home is best. The best place is home. Home is the place to be. Home. Home. Home.

It was time. She approached the desk, removed the letter from her pocket, lined it up with the first. She sat down, slit them open with her father’s gold letter opener. She scanned the pages - the familiar, looping cursive in blue ink, the strings of I’m sorrys and May I come for a visits begging her, poking at her heart.

Harriet looked at the letters for a time, then tightened her lips together, shook her head slightly. She put the pages in a pile with their envelopes, straightened and positioned the first piece for insertion. She pressed the nearby button.

The shredder roared to life, grinding the letter into tiny pieces of confetti.