She didn’t used to be like this, looking in the mirror Marlow scrutinized the
woman glaring back at her. Her yellow teeth once sparkling white. Her hair used to fall
into soft perfect curls which are now frizzy and wild. Time was her enemy, always
ruining anything positive in her life. Her love life was not much better as boyfriends
always traded her in for what they would call a ‘newer model‘.
“Have I really gotten that old?” Marlow asked herself. Studying her once youthful
and beautiful face she saw crow’s feet lining the sides of her once luminescent blue eyes.
Her shrivelled lips, permanently wrinkled brow and limp auburn hair was a depressing
sight for Marlow. Looking beyond herself and through the mirror she glanced at her
nightstand where she had set out a bottle of sleeping pills and a bottle of Jack Daniels to
wash them down.
“Where had I gone wrong?” Marlow wondered, “was it after I had Marissa?”
Marissa’s father could be one of the many men Marlow had met while working at
Lucky Lou’s bar. She had been tending bar there for twenty years. This is where Marlow
fell under the influential pull of drugs, alcohol and temporary men. She recalled the day
she was given her toxic job. Every smell, sight and especially her first encounter with Lou
himself.
“So you want a job here huh”, Lou asked.
“Yes I do”, Marlow replied promptly.
“What’s in it for Lou if I give you a job tending this here bar”, Lou bargained with
his whiskey stained breath.
“A hard worker, who knows her way around a bar.”
“Just how hard do you work exactly”, Lou grimaced, satisfied with his perverted
inquiry.
“I may work the night shift but I am not a lady of the evening. I’m a bar hand,
looking for a job. I have seen that your help wanted sign has been up in the window for
over a month now. So you need me and I need you on a strictly business level. Now do I
have the job or not”, Marlow shot back. Lou smiled his yellow toothy grin and retaliated.
“Of course you do sweetheart, and you will come around. They always do.”
“When do I start?”
“Tonight and sweetie make sure you wear something real tight and showy.”
Lou looked her up and down while licking his lips and slicking back his thinning
black hair.
“Real tight, show us what you’re made of.” Another shiver went
down Marlow’s spine.
‘Alright then, see you tonight.”
“I’ll be counting the minutes until I see your pretty face again sweetheart.”
Turning to her side Marlow stared at her seemingly too thin translucent frame.
Gone was her shimmering tan. Gone was her beauty and youth that she saw reflected
perfectly within her daughter.
“God help her if she turns out anything like me.”
Flexing the little arm muscle she had, she stretched the mermaid tattoo she had gotten one
drunken blurry night in Tijuana. A couple months after having Marissa she dropped her
off at her mom’s house for an ‘afternoon visit’ that lasted three months. How Marlow wished she could take that time back, too late now, she was always too late. Walking over
to the night stand which held her pending death, she slowly opened the pill container,
shook a handful out and popped them into her mouth. Then took a long hard swig of Jack
Daniels to wash it all down.
After swallowing the contents of the pill bottle Marlow began to feel the effects
of her body slowly shutting down. She stumbled out of her dark red bedroom and into the
small yellow kitchen to call Marissa to apologize and say goodbye.
When mom called me, I knew something was wrong. She always did this but this
time something was different. She kept going on about how sorry she was that she
couldn’t have been a better mother. Typical. But there was banging in the background,
something shattered then silence.
I had to walk home from school along the leafy sidewalks and through the
magnificently coloured trees. There was a crisp chill in the air, making my bones shiver.
It was all I could do to keep warm with a tattered jacket and torn mittens. When I had
finally reached the edge of our front lawn I noticed things I didn’t normally. The lawn
hadn’t been cut since August when my mom’s last boyfriend, Skip walked out. He was
tall and handsome, but just like all the other men that had walked in and out of our
lives.
The ten steps to our front porch felt as if I was crossing the Atlantic. Our
beautiful old cottage needed a new coat of white paint and the cement was cracked and
filled with clover. The charming rose bushes which lined the cement walkway needed to
be watered and tended to, but were still beautiful. Roses always reminded me of my
mother, like the ones from our garden, beautiful to look at but dangerous to touch.
She didn’t used to be like this, she was luminescent and dazzling and when men
saw her they couldn’t take their eyes off her. Now, she was wasting away and nothing like
the woman I was once so close with. We used to do everything together and our sad old
front porch was proof of that. In front of our old worn wicker chairs, where we used to
drink hot chocolate and watch as the leaves fall from the trees, was the wind chime we
made out of old spoons, forks and crystals. My small blue handprints were still above our
copper door bell which was ‘indefinitely out of order’ as my mom would call it. In other
words it was never getting fixed. As I walked up the two creaky steps of the porch I
noticed our hand painted welcome mat, we couldn’t afford a real welcome mat so we
painted the porch floor instead. We worked all afternoon on it and it still looked amazing,
even though the ‘W’ was wearing away into a misshapen ‘V‘.
Slowly I pulled my key out of my white book bag and slid it into the keyhole. I
was bombarded with memories of how many times I had come to her rescue. I was all she
had, and she was all I had. Cautiously I turned the handle and opened the door to our sad
little living room which contained only an old TV set and a dated smelly couch from the
70‘s. That’s when I saw her, lying on the floor covered in shards of glass from our
sliding door, still clutching the telephone.
All my blood began rushing to my head, my mouth parched and my hands were
shaking as I ran towards my mother, using the wall of our tiny hallway for support. I
began screaming and crying at the same time. I was furious with her for doing this and
uncontrollable sobs came from my chest at the fear of losing her. I fumbled to get her
away from the glass but, when I dragged her out from the mess I just kept
cutting her even more. I didn’t know whether or not she was going to gasp for air and
look at me with bulging, shifty eyes like she always did or if she was really gone.
Steadying my hand I gently brushed away her messy hair from her face and placed my
two fingers against her neck to check for any life left in my mother.
Nothing, she was really gone this time. I sat there in silence, cradling my mom in
my lap. Hot tears ran down my face, if I called 911 they would just take her away from
me. I wasn’t ready to lose her, not yet. Looking down at my mother I saw her differently.
Her face was calm and her lips were stretched into a tiny smile and the wrinkles in her
brow were smooth. She was at peace.
That day I know my mom went to heaven, where she will be waiting for me with
open arms. She’ll be healthy and excited to see me. We will be far away from our old
cottage that needs a new coat of paint, Jack Daniels and Lucky Lou’s. It will just be my
mother and I, for all of eternity.
