"The Fool on the Hill" by the Beatles

 She opens her eyes to a gray ceiling, pain immediately shooting up her body. She starts her days by rolling off of the futon (that is perpetually folded), and shuffling to the bathroom. She does not pick up her feet. I’m sure she takes vitamins or a gummy that won't work while she’s in there. Maybe she’ll shower but it’s not a given. Because maybe she showered the night before. And besides, she doesn’t need to rush. It’s not like she has to go to work today: that’s only on Sundays. So, she stands at the kitchen counter while the keurig hums. She makes her coffee with non-dairy powdered creamer…she hasn’t moved on from that. She takes her mug, one that she used when I was a child, no doubt, and makes her way into her bedroom. She flicks the lights on as she sits on the edge of her bed, and swipes open her phone.

I open my eyes to a gray ceiling, soreness immediately saturating my muscles. I roll off of my mattress/box spring combo, and shuffle to the bathroom. I take daily medications and vitamins. I like to think the vitamins work. I have to think my medications work. Sometimes, I shower in the morning, if I’m not too cold. I don’t have to rush; my day doesn't start until 11 a.m. I have around five hours to get myself together. I mosey on into the kitchen, and set the keurig to brew. I sit at the nearby dining table as the coffee spurts out. I stir in some sugar and cream when my coffee is done. I make my way into my bedroom, careful not to spill, and sit in the center of my bed. 

I think about her all the time. My mother. I live in my own apartment. She lives alone in her apartment. When in doubt, I sweep my floors, but upon some introspection, from whom did I learn that? The answer is not someone that I am proud of. One time, at a First Communion party for my cousin, a mother of my mother’s friend came up to me. She was arm in arm with my mom, and proceeded to gush:

“Oh, let me tell you, Marguerite? You are so lucky to have her as a mother. Anytime she was at my house, she’d be doing the dishes. Ugh, I love it!” 

The woman’s eyes are crazed, my mother is sheepish, yet proud. Cue uproarious laughter from them.

“Any time I would get into fights with my mother I’d go to her house to do dishes,” my mom explained as the other lady sipped at her drink, definitely checked out of the conversation that was definitely intended to last for the entirety of her two sentences. This adage was boring her. I don’t blame her. It was boring me. “It calmed me down,” my mom giggled. She was drunk. The other woman was drunk. All of the adults were drunk, even my mind was swimming. She could have reacted to my new knowledge of her in any way, and the rest of the night is still in limbo. I keep quiet during small menial interactions such as these. A charming quip could turn into a crack across the mouth. I didn’t care that my mom was revered for her dish cleaning skills, I thought that was silly. The angry woman in my life who used her children as outlets for her aggression has always been an angry woman that requires an outlet for her aggression? What a shock, really, I’m surprised. 

Pathetically, she tries to replicate old recipes of her mothers. And the thing is, she used to be a great cook. Somewhere along the line, the boxed Chablis turned into coconut Svedka over ice turned into shitty weed cookies. The trays of baked ziti, the lemon drops, all stopped long ago. Now, when she tries to tell me about the “sunday sauce” she made, I can’t help but roll my eyes. Sunday sauce for one. And god knows what it tastes like now. 

Does she think about me, though? I try not to think about her. It makes me sad to think about her, because then I start thinking about myself. I think about how my life, at this moment in time, is as similar to hers as it’ll ever be. The only difference is, I am on the come up and she is on the downtick, but I am the child and she is the, what exactly? It’s hard to say now. I don’t want to think about how, the only thing I have consistently done is tried not to be like her, and in trying so hard, I have sabotaged my own efforts. I didn’t see that I was turning into her backwards, or upside down. I turned into the side I empathize with first, but I thought I would be safe from the dread of life she feels, I thought I had time before I had to give in to morphing into her with age. I’ve watched her sob into her hand on the couch, babbling about how bad of a mother she is, how she’s sick of the sorriness that she feels is life. I’ve thought, I could never be so pitiful. But then I catch myself high out of my mind on twitter, going back and forth between laughing and crying depending on the tweet, and I realize I don’t pity my mother because I myself don’t want to be considered pitiful. No matter the spin I put on it, though, the parallelism is glaringly obvious. 

She starts her night by leaving work at the fish market and pulling a hard right into the liquor store. For, well, liquor. And scratch offs. She buys about $30 worth of scratch offs, more on a good night, and her liquor of choosing. Sometimes a handle. Sometimes a pack of those little airport shooters. Sometimes, it was a seasonal release: I’ll never forget about peppermint twist Smirnoff! She stands under the awning outside of the liquor store and lights up a Newport, juggling her several totes, bottles and keys rattling. She stuffs her phone in pocket and digs out a dime, for good luck. For Papa Mike, she says. She walks home, and for the fifteen minutes she’s on the move, she is scratching away. And somehow, she wins! She wins on scratch offs a lot, but only because she buys them a lot. She makes it home, steps into her house and groans as she walks to the kitchen table. She drops her stuff on it, plops down in a chair. She toes off her shoes as she goes over her winnings. 

I start my night by going into work at the bar.  I don’t even have to make any extra trips to a liquor store. I immediately hit both of my vapes and push my way past patrons into the bar kitchen. One time I had a pumpkin spice Geekbar. It was terrible, but I got it because it was fall. I throw my purse onto the chest freezer. My phone is close to dying. Over the course of the four hours that I am working, I make about $30 in tips on a good night. There’s always lots of quarters in the jar.  I close up the kitchen, I hand the drawer money to the bartender. I walk up the stairs, sighing with effort. I walk into my house, lock the door behind me, and fall into the armchair that’s right off of the front door. I shrug my purse off my shoulder and let it sag next to me. I reach into it for my wallet, and place it into my lap as I reach for the tips in my pocket. I toe off my shoes as I count my earnings from the night. 

We are all sitting in the living room watching the Office finale. It is mine and my siblings’ first time seeing it, since we were too young to watch it when it originally aired. Family TV nights were pretty nonexistent in the Boccone family, but every now and again, there was a special episode or Wipeout, and we would all sit down to watch it together. My parents watched the Office as I grew up, I watched them watch it, hungover over the occasional greasy plate of diner breakfast. I then went on to watch it on my own time, as did my siblings (as did everyone). It connected all of us. I was thinking about this as I sat there on the couch, and emotions ran even higher when I internalized what it meant that the show was ending. The vague symbolism had me misty-eyed, and for varying reasons, there was not a single dry eye in the house. And then Michael Scott appears on the screen.

“YAYYYYYYYYYYYYYY!!” My mother exclaims, actually rising out of her seat, fists in the air a little. She really said the word, “yay”. She was the only one to make a sound at all. It was such a genuine reaction, and it was what everyone else was thinking. I know I was thinking it. Feeling it. But we all turned to her, glared at her. I’m pretty sure my father shushed her. I watched her face fall as she eased back into her seat. I remember rolling my eyes at what I could only assume was drunken hysterics. As I turned my attention back to the television, I felt a pit in my stomach open up. I felt a quiet panic rise, a panic that cut deeper. Why were we all so mean to her? Why was I so mean to her?  In that moment, she became human to me. I realized, with dread, our sameness. Michael Scott turning up in the finale should have been symbolic of the memories of the show within the family narrative. She ruined it, she broke the silence and ruined it. Or I ruined it?

And then my phone will ring an hour before work, as I’m trying to get myself together, and I will look at the screen, and it will say, “mom”. I will pick up the phone and be bombarded with questions about work (yes I have it. Yes tonight. Yes. yea till 1.) and then struck with silence on her end, the interrogation lapsing. She’ll ask what else is up, and I’ll be dumbfounded, because how can you ask someone that when you call them every 3 months. What do you mean, “else”? You don’t even know the first thing! And then she’ll give me an annoyed hello, and when I say hello back, she’ll laugh and scoff. I’ll feel sick. I don’t know what’s up, I’ll tell her, I’ve just been working, I guess. Which isn’t even true, won’t ever be true, because I do so many other things. But the one thing that she can remember is work. My job. My hours. What I do, how it compares. How much do I make, do I remember when I worked with her? When am I working. My job. My money. Do I need another job? How she wishes I never quit singing. And now this is my job, my life. Her job, her life. I am her daughter. 

“Okay…” I’ll say, “Anything else?”

Sighs. 

“No, Gianna. I guess not.” 

Clicks.