Chapter 3 - The Permanent Guest
|
Lorraine had moved in with us after claiming that severe back pain made it impossible for her to live safely alone in her Syracuse apartment. The initial agreement was supposed to last exactly six weeks while she completed a regimen of physical therapy.
Six weeks quietly dragged into six months, then a year, and eventually, two full years.
Miraculously, her debilitating back pain subsided enough for her to enjoy long shopping trips, attend weekly church events, and go on weekend bus tours with her friends. But somehow, it was never quite enough for her to return to her own home. She contributed absolutely nothing to the household budget—no money for groceries, utilities, property taxes, repairs, or general maintenance.
Every single time I gently suggested to Andrew that it might be time for her to start preparing to move back, he would shake his head and say the timing just wasn't right.
"She already lost her father, Claire," he would often remind me, using a hushed, sympathetic tone.
Andrew's father had passed away nine years prior.
Grief had somehow become a permanent, unquestionable passport that allowed Lorraine to cross any boundary she wished, whenever she wished.
On the morning of my birthday, Andrew was supposedly at the lake cabin. Lorraine, however, expected me to be awake and fully dressed before six o'clock to prepare his favorite complicated breakfast for his return. I had worked a grueling 12-hour shift at the clinic the day before and had planned to sleep until eight.
When she didn't find me dutifully working in the kitchen, she marched into our bedroom without knocking. She started screaming first. When I calmly told her that I was going to spend my birthday morning exactly how I wanted, she grabbed the heavy pot she had bizarrely carried upstairs and threw it directly at me.
Later, she would claim it merely slipped from her hands.
May you like
But every single motion in that violent swing had been deliberate.
|
