Chapter 9
The study was colder than the foyer. My son pushed my chair in himself, both hands on the handles but asking first, and I heard the soft click of the brakes when he locked them beside the desk. He didn't look at me when he woke the tablet. He'd pulled the leather chair out for Maria, and she stood beside it instead of sitting, her hands clasped at her waist, the white bow at the back of her black dress still perfectly tied.
I kept my cane across my lap. The room smelled like old paper and the lemon oil they used on the shelves.
He tapped the screen twice. "House keeps thirty days," he said. His voice was low. "Foyer camera only. Dad had it put in for packages."
Maria didn't answer right away. She breathed once, shallow. "Yes," she said.
The first clip was from last Friday. The time stamp read 6:42 p.m. I remembered that night because they'd had the caterer in early.
On the screen, the chandelier was lit, every candle bright against the marble. I was already in my chair under it. I hadn't realized how still I'd been sitting. The blonde woman came into frame in a different dress, a dark green one, and she didn't speak at first. She just put both hands on the push handles and turned my chair three inches to the left. Then she stepped back, tilted her head, and turned it back. Then three inches to the right.
I watched my own hands on the screen. I was holding the cane the same way I was now.
"She wanted the light on your face," Maria said quietly. She wasn't looking at my son. She was looking at the tablet. "For the photographer. He was coming at seven."
My son rewound it ten seconds and played it again. This time the audio was up just enough to hear. Not shouting. Her voice was even, almost pleasant.
"Just a little more. There. No, don't move now. Hold that."
I felt my shoulders tighten remembering it. I'd wanted to say my back hurt from sitting so long under the center of the room like that, but I hadn't.
He tapped to the next saved clip. Wednesday, 9:15 p.m. The foyer was empty except for me. I was trying to wheel myself toward the hallway to the kitchen, my hands on the rims. She entered fast from the left in loungewear this time, hair down, and stepped behind me and took the handles without asking. My hands slipped off the wheels. She pushed me back toward the center, under the chandelier, and parked me facing the staircase. I didn't see my face clearly in that angle, but I saw my right hand tighten on the cane.
The audio was clearer here because the house was quiet.
"You're in the way of the runner. Stay here until he gets home. I don't want you in the kitchen after nine."
It wasn't a slur. It wasn't a curse. It was that flat, controlling tone I'd come to know, the one that made everything sound reasonable if you weren't the one in the chair.
My son's jaw moved. He didn't pause the video. He let it run until she walked out of frame and I was left there, centered on the marble inlay like a vase someone had placed.
He glanced at Maria. "Has she done this every night?"
Maria finally sat, perched on the edge of the leather chair. "Not every night. Most nights she moves you for pictures or when someone is coming. She said you liked being in the center. That you could see everything."
"I didn't," I said. It came out smaller than I wanted. I cleared my throat. "I didn't like it."
I heard heels in the hallway before we saw her. The study door had been left open two inches and she pushed it without knocking. She was still in the gold gown, but she'd added a wrap over her shoulders. Her smile was already on when she came in, the one she used for the charity photos.
"There you are," she said. Then she saw the tablet lit on the desk, the foyer frozen on the screen with my chair in the middle of it. Her smile didn't fall. It thinned, just at the corners, and her eyes went to Maria and then to my son's hand on the desk.
For a second nobody spoke. The chandelier in the video glowed, reflected on the polished floor even on the small screen.
"Oh," she said, and her voice lifted. "You're looking at the security. Did something go missing?"
My son didn't cover the screen. He turned the volume down one notch, not off. "We were checking last week," he said.
She understood exactly what was happening. I saw it in the way her hands came together and her chin tipped, the way she breathed in through her nose and let it out slow.
"I've been meaning to talk to you both about this," she said. She stepped closer, but not behind my chair this time. She stood where we could all see her, under the warm lamp on the desk that made the same yellow as the chandelier candles. "I've been overwhelmed. I know I've been short. I've been short with everyone."
She looked at me then, directly, her eyes wet in a way that seemed practiced and sudden.
"I'm so sorry if I made you feel pushed around, honey," she said to me. "That's the last thing I ever wanted. I thought I was helping position you so you weren't left out. I realize now I should have asked."
She turned to my son. "I already called an agency this morning. A night nurse, licensed. Someone kind, so Maria doesn't have to do everything and so your mother has a real professional overnight. I want her to feel safe."
Maria's hands tightened in her lap but she kept her eyes down.
May you like
I didn't answer right away. The tablet still showed me sitting alone under that light, holding my cane, waiting to be moved again. My son looked from the screen to his wife, and I could feel him wanting that offer to be enough, wanting it to explain everything in one neat solution paid by the hour.
I rested my palm on my cane and felt the wood warm under my hand. I knew what that offer was. It wasn't care. It was someone else to watch me so she wouldn't have to be seen doing it.
