I got under one arm and Valerie got under the other and we got my mother to her feet.
“There you go,” Valerie said, all chipper. “Feeling better?”
“Better?” my mother said. “Better?”
“Well, we're going now,” Valerie said, retreating to the foyer. “Don't wait up. I've got a key.”
My mother excused herself, went to the kitchen, and smashed another plate.
“I've never known her to smash plates,” I said to Grandma.
“I'm going to lock up all the knives tonight, just to be safe,” Grandma said.
I followed my mother into the kitchen and helped pick up the pieces.
“It slipped out of my hand,” my mother said.
“That's what I thought.”
Nothing ever seems to change in my parents' house. The kitchen feels just as it did when I was a little girl. The walls get repainted and the curtains replaced. New linoleum was laid down last year. Appliances get swapped out as they became unrepairable. That's the extent of the renovation. My mother has been cooking potatoes in the same pot for thirty-five years. The smells are the same, too. Cabbage, applesauce, chocolate pudding, roast lamb. And the rituals are the same. Sitting at the small kitchen table for lunch.
Valerie and I did our homework on the kitchen table, under my mother's watchful eye. And now I imagine Angie and Mary Alice keep my mother company in the kitchen.
It's hard to feel like a grown-up when nothing ever changes in your mother's kitchen. It's like time stands still. I come into the kitchen and I want my sandwiches cut into triangles.
“Do you ever get tired of your life?” I asked my mother. “Is there ever a time when you'd like to do something new?”
“You mean like get in the car and just keep driving until I get to the Pacific Ocean? Or take a wrecking ball to this kitchen? Or divorce your father and marry Tom Jones? No, I never think about those things.” She took the top off the cake plate and looked at her cupcakes. Half chocolate with white icing and half yellow with chocolate icing. Multicolored spinkles on the white icing. She mumbled something that sounded a little like fucking cupcakes.
“What?” I asked. “I couldn't hear you.”
“I didn't say anything. Just go in and sit down.”
“I was hoping you could give me a ride to the funeral parlor tonight,” Grandma said to me. “Rusty Kuharchek is laid out at Stiva's. I went to school with Rusty. It's going to be a real good viewing.”
It wasn't like I had anything else to do. “Sure,” I said, “but you'll have to wear slacks. I've got the Harley.”
“A Harley? Since when do you have a Harley?” Grandma wanted to know.
“There was a problem with my car, so Vinnie loaned me a motorcycle.”
“You are not taking your grandmother on a motorcycle,” my mother said. “She'll fall off and kill herself.”
My father very wisely didn't say anything.
“She'll be okay,” I said. “I've got an extra helmet.”
“You're responsible,” my mother said. “If anything happens to her, you're the one who's going to be visiting her in the nursing home.”
“Maybe I could get a motorcycle,” Grandma said. “When they take away your car driving license does that include motorcycles?”
“Yes!” we all said in unison. No one wanted Grandma Mazur back on the road.
Mary Alice had been eating her dinner with her face down on her plate because horses don't have hands. When she picked her face up it was covered with smashed potatoes and gravy. “What's a lesbian?” she asked.
We all sat frozen.
“It's when girls have girlfriends instead of boyfriends,” Grandma said.