"Hi, Mom."
"Finally! I've been calling all day. You never answer anymore." I wedge the phone between my shoulder and ear and try jiggling my stupid, sticky lock.
"I was at work."
"That boss of yours is working you too hard. You know Mrs. Guerrero's daughter just got a job at a bank? Nine to five, weekends off. Maybe you should—"
"Mom." The lock finally gives. I fall into my studio apartment, which looks even smaller and shabbier than usual. "It's been a really long day."
"Oh, I'm sorry. Am I bothering you? Your mother who raised you alone, who sacrificed everything, who just wants to hear your voice once in a while?"
I close my eyes as that familiar guilt comes whirring to life low in my belly.
"No, Mom. You're not bothering me."
"Good. Because I need to talk to you about something."
Here it comes. There's always something. A bill she can't pay. A repair she can't afford. I sink onto my futon, already calculating how much I have in savings, knowing before she even says another word that it won't be
enough to satisfy the endless void that is my mother.
"The landlord is raising the rent again," she complains. "Two hundred dollars! Can you believe it? Highway robbery is what it is. I told him I've never missed a payment, but does he care?"
"How much do you need?"
"Well, if I don't pay by Friday, he says he'll start eviction proceedings. I need the increase, plus last month—I was a little short, you remember—so about eight hundred total."
"Mom, I sent you five hundred last month."
"I know, baby, and I'm so grateful. But the car needed new tires, and the price of groceries these days… I'm doing my best here."
She's always "doing her best." That's the problem. "Her best" involves a string of terrible boyfriends, jobs she can't keep, and financial decisions that would make a teenager cringe.
But what the hell am I supposed to do? She's my mom. The woman who worked three jobs to keep a roof over our heads when Dad left. She made mac and cheese feel like a feast when it was all we had and she never, ever let me see her cry, even when I knew she spent nights sobbing into her pillow.
"I'll transfer it tonight," I hear myself say.
"Oh, thank God. Thank you, baby. I don't know what I'd do without you. You're such a good daughter. Not like Nancy Patterson's girl who moved to California and never calls. She was just telling me…"
The guilt trip continues for another ten minutes. How hard things are. How lonely she is. How proud she is of me but also how worried that I work too much, that I don't have a boyfriend, that I'm wasting my youth in some office.
"Actually, Mom, about work… I might be making some changes."
"Changes? What kind of changes? Erica, you have a good job. Don't go throwing that away for some pipe dream."
One minute, she's telling me to leave my job; the next, she's telling me to stay. She's never consistent, never in one place for more than a second. It's been like this for twenty-seven years.
"It's not a pipe dream. I got offered… a promotion. Kind of."
"A promotion! Oh, that's wonderful! More money?"
"Yes. Significantly more."
"How much more?"
I can't tell her the real number. She'd either think I was lying or immediately start planning how to spend it.
"Enough to help out more.Maybe get you into a better place."
"Oh, Erica!" she crows. "You're too good to me. I don't deserve a daughter like you."
"Mom—"
"I just worry about you, all alone in that apartment, working yourself to death. What happens when you get sick? Who takes care of you?"
The irony makes me want to vomit. Who takes care of me? I do, Mom. Because you never have.
In three months, I'll be blind, and she has no idea. She's worried about theoretical illnesses while I'm facing actual, imminent disability.
"I take care of myself, Mom."
"But for how long? You're twenty-seven. When I was your age, I had you. I had a family."
"And look how that turned out," I say before I can stop myself. I cringe in the silence that follows. "I'm sorry," I rush to add. "I didn't mean—"
"No, you're right." She's whispering now. Her voice is small, wounded, a.fluttering little bird that just got mauled and left for dead. "I've made mistakes. God knows I've made so many mistakes. But you… you were
never one of them. You're the best thing I ever did."
My eyes burn. "Mom—"
"Take the promotion, baby. Take it and don't look back. Don't end up like me, always scrambling, always behind. You're smart. So much smarter than I ever was. You deserve good things."
"So do you."
"Ship's sailed on that one, honey. You still have time, though. Don't waste it." Eighty-eight days as of midnight, my brain supplies helpfully. That's how much time you have.
After I hang up and transfer the money—leaving me with $242.83 in checking—I sit in the growing darkness of my apartment. I should turn on a light, but there's something fitting about sitting in the dark, rehearsing for
my future.
A million dollars.
I can pay off my student loans. I'll get Mom into a decent apartment, one where the roof doesn't leak when the snow melts. And when the time comes, I'll be able to pay for whatever treatments might help me, even if
they're experimental. Until that happens, I can travel, see things—really see them—before the lights go out for good.
All I have to do is survive three months with Andrew Simon.
I pull out my phone and open the email app.
Subject: Re: Your Offer
Mr. Simon,
After careful consideration, I accept your terms. Ninety days, as discussed. I'll expect the contract by tomorrow morning.
Regards,
E. Jones
I hit send, then immediately want to throw up. What am I doing? Making a deal with the devil, that's what. A devil who makes Gordon Ramsay look like a teddy bear.
My phone pings. That can't be him, right? It's been thirty seconds.
Subject: Re: Re: Your Offer
I've already prepared the paperwork.
We both knew you were always going to say yes.
—Andrew