Magical Midlife Madness (Leveling Up 1)

Grimacing, I edged farther into the house. I set my bags down, closed the door, and headed to the kitchen, the first place I always looked for my mother. She stood at the sink, suds covering her yellow gloves, ear buds in her ears, and her phone tucked into the back pocket of her jeans.

“Hey, Mom,” I said, raising my voice over the sound of the TV in the other room. They had a circular open floor plan, in which a wall separated the kitchen from the living/dining room combo, but there was plenty of air and sound flow between the two spaces.

“Mom!” I said, just a little louder. I knocked on the dated cream square tiles climbing the wall to my right. It didn’t help.

I walked closer as she bobbed her head to the music. She scrubbed a pan with gusto.

“Mom,” I repeated, this time tapping her shoulder.

She jumped, screamed, and let go of the pan. It clanged into the sink, throwing up a sploosh of water that covered her front. She rounded on me with wide eyes.

Not turned to me.

Not flinched from me.

Rounded on me, as though this seventy-year-old woman was about to beat the ever-lovin’ crap out of me!

“Oh, Jessie, it’s you!” A smile replaced her look of crazy. She pulled her ear buds from her ears. “How are you?”

Her hug soaked the front of my shirt, and her gloves wet my back.

“Martha, what are you doing in there?” my dad hollered. “The race is on. I can barely hear a thing!”

My mom rolled her eyes. She didn’t bother to reply.

“Let me just finish this up and I’ll show you to your room,” my mom said, gesturing at the sink.

I scanned the loaded dish dryer perched over the second sink…and the dishwasher beneath it. “You have a dishwasher, why are you doing these by hand?”

“Your father never wanted to waste the electricity on the dishwasher, remember?” She turned back to her task. “I’ve always had to do them by hand. Well, since I retired, I’ve had just about enough of chores. He barely earns any money any more, did he tell you? He doesn’t take a paycheck most of the time. I don’t know why he doesn’t retire. Anyway, we’re living off of my retirement. So I thought, you know what? If I want a machine to make my life easier, I’ve earned it.” She nodded adamantly. “But the thing was so old, it broke after the second wash.” She sighed. “So I went to Wired Right down on the square there. You know the place. With the green awning?”

She turned back to make sure I was on the same page so I nodded even though I had no idea.

“Well, I bought the very best they had,” she said. “With all the bells and whistles. Cost me an arm and a leg, but you know what? To heck with it. And he can’t say anything, because he spent all that money on that new motor. So there.”

“Right…” I leaned against the counter. “So where is it?”

“Delivers on Tuesday. Boy will I be glad to get these dishes out of my hair. Then I can go upstairs to my sewing room and shut the door. You can barely hear yourself mutter down here.”

“Cool. I can just head up to…my old room, right?”

“Just wait there. You want a beer?” She paused and drew her hands out of the soapy water, white bubbles shivering on her yellow gloves.

“Sure,” I said, because that’s what this house did. If people came over, everyone drank a beer. What else did I have to do? The future stretched wide open ahead of me. All I needed was the courage to walk into it.With one beer down and another in my hand, I followed my mother up to my transitionary room. My dad still had no idea I was home, but all the dishes had been dried and put away.

Why I needed a guide, I did not know. I’d stayed in this house multiple times with Matt and Jimmy for the holidays, and we’d always slept in my old room. This was the first time I’d been given guidance. It made me suspicious.

We tread up the worn russet-brown carpet that had long since put up the white flag. My mother had started painting the wall beside me a turd brown, only she hadn’t finished, possibly hoping my dad would get the ladder and finish it up. The project cars out front apparently hadn’t made an impression on her. The wall looked like a crap-striped zebra, white stripes between the brown, but nobody seemed to notice or care.

Speaking of noticing or caring, the cool painting I’d given them three years ago sat in the little alcove that overlooked the living room, resting on the ground against the scuff-marked wall.