Page 6 of Jack

She didn’t know how to be herself. All her life, she’d been told what she should be and that had gotten her married and a child. Then, the only person she’d been trained to take care of had died of a massive stroke, and she was left with a child that she wasn’t sure she even wanted either. It wasn’t until one day she seemed to wake up and Taylor was taking care of her that she realized that she could learn to be what Taylor wanted. However, that never worked out. Taylor, like Jeri, wanted her to find her own path, and she’d been wandering listlessly since then.

Trying new things and fades had gotten her a name for being flighty. When she would give up, say the diet of eating only healthy, it was just one more thing that she could blame on Taylor—she wouldn’t help her get her head on straight, and it left her to wander around like some thoughtless being that had no idea how to live. She didn’t even know how to make her bed, run the dishwasher, or, for that matter, do a load of laundry.

Taylor could. And she did when she came by her place to check up on her. Not only could she get her house in order but she helped her fill out her checks for bills and get them off to the post office. Taylor had wanted her to set up online paying, but she couldn’t make that work either. Something about having to get on the computer once in a while to make sure that things were being paid would mess her up.

Gilda Jane didn’t have credit cards for the same reason. She’d forget there were balances on them and not pay them off at the end of the month. If she wanted anything, she’d have to find either Henrietta or Taylor to go with her to use their credit cards so that she’d have nice things all the time.

Taylor had admitted that she’d made it so that her mom would have to depend on her foreverything. And she was sorry for that. Gilda Jane wasn’t sorry. It made is so that she would get to see her daughter more often. Of course, even when Taylor had set up things for her like her groceries being brought to her, she would mess up the order just to bring her daughter running. It was why she messed up all the things in her life so that her daughter would come to her and bail her out. It was her thing to see her more often.

Of course, she could get upset with her, too, like last month when she’d ordered a gross of oranges. Gilda Jane knew that was a great many oranges, but for two days, Taylor helped her get out of the order and she loved that like the car that she had too.

She hated to drive. It would make her crazy to have to remember all the rules about it. Where to park and stop. How to find her car when she drove it someplace and parked it. No one would ever know that she had been pretending that she had forgotten her car just so she could be the center of attention for Taylor when she was lonely. Now she was living with Henrietta, and she wasn’t allowed to be there too.

Taylor had told her that she needed to learn the businesses that her grandmother was leaving her. Not understanding how it could be that hard to run a business. She’d seen some of the business owners sitting around at their desks all the time when she’d been out and about. She didn’t even know what Henrietta did, for that matter. The woman didn’t seem to do much of anything anyway. Picking up the phone to call Taylor, she wasn’t happy with the way that she answered.

“Mom, I told you that I’m much too busy today to help you. I’ll be there on Friday, and I’ll bring some lunch, and we’ll go over your accounts again.” She told her how Jeri had left her, and she didn’t want to be alone. Then asked again if she could please move in with her and her grandmother. “No. I don’t have the energy to help you and help grandmother as well. You have friends around you there. Go out to lunch with one of them and have some fun.”

“They’re busy.” She didn’t know if they were busy or not, but that’s what they said when she told them that she was lonely and that she wanted one of them to move in with her. No one wanted to be her friend when she was lonely anymore. “Taylor, I should mean more to you than your grandmother. If she’s really dying, which I don’t believe for a second, then she should just get it over with so that I can have you all to myself.”

“What a terrible thing to say, mother. I can’t believe that—why are you being so selfish? Grandmother took care of us after Dad died, and you told me that she made it possible for us to have his insurance money when it was needed.” She told her again how lonely she was. “Right now, I don’t care how lonely you are. You’re being selfish and mean, and I don’t have time to be your mother again. Grow up.”

When the line went dead, Gilda Jane couldn’t believe her ears. “There must have been something wrong with the phone, that’s all. There is no way that she’d hang up on me like I’m no one to her. Silly girl. I need her to take care of me like she always did.”

Gilda Jane had been talking to herself since she’d been a small child. When she was looking for a husband—her parents were looking for a husband for her, they told her that she would have to stop doing that. And for years, right up until Henry Paul died, she’d not spoken to herself at all but in her mind. Now, if she didn’t speak to herself at least three times a day, she couldn’t function. It was the way that she got things done. She remembered her mother having a talk with her about her getting married.

“We’re too old to keep caring for you, Gilda Jane. You need to find yourself a husband so that he can take care of your needs. And please don’t have any children. I don’t think that you can handle having someone depend on you as much as a baby will. Just get yourself a man and marry him so that we can go on peacefully in our golden years. It’s been too much for us to raise you now that you’re in your late twenties.” She tried to reason with her mother, telling her that she was happy with the arrangements. “Well, we’re not. It’s been several lifetimes of caring for your every slightest need. It’s time for you to grow up and be on your own.”

It didn’t happen that way for her. Not only did she find a husband that didn’t want to take careof her every need but he didn’t want to have to have her around him all the time when he was trying to make a living. She couldn’t see why she couldn’t go to work with him daily. She had promised him that she’d be quiet and good. But he didn’t allow it, so she had to be stuck at home all day. Then, the baby came along.

Gilda didn’t know anything about babies. She’d never babysat for one. Never had any sisters or brothers of her own to hang out with. And even though she’d been told that it wasn’t Taylor’s fault, she demanded things that Gilda Jane couldn’t understand why someone else didn’t come in and care for them both.

But as Taylor got older, about six years of younger, she began to take care of her, and as her mother was thrilled when there were no more chores or work for her to do to raise a baby. Even after Henry Paul died, Taylor had set aside her grief and had made sure that she was first in everything she did. Even setting up a meeting with her grandmother so that they could have a nice place to live. There were servants there as well that helped. But when Taylor moved out on her own at seventeen, she had to leave as well. Henrietta didn’t want her around messing with her plans. Plans that seemed to never cater to her needs but those of her grandmother-in-law.

When her phone rang again, she thought for sure it was Taylor telling her that she was on her way. Instead, it was a sales man that was asking her if she had any property near the ocean. She told him that she did and then asked him if he did.

Thirty minutes later, he’d hung up on her. She couldn’t get him to come to her house to visit with her nor would he tell her what sort of house he had. When he did hang up on her, he seemed to be very angry and pissed off. Telling her that she needed to get a life. Mean people didn’t understand what it was like to be her. Not even her own family understood how it was to be in her life.

Gilda Jean was going to mess with her grocery order again just to get Taylor to realize how much she needed her. But she told her then that if she did it again, she was going to have to go and buy her own things at the store and then bring them home for herself. That was entirely too much trouble for her and she decided that it wasn’t worth having Taylor coming over and being mean to her either. Sitting in the living room, she read the instructions on how to turn on the television and get to the station that she liked. Taylor had even made her instructions on how to turn the volume up and down, too. She supposed that she did love her at times.

She didn’t dare make herself some popcorn. The last time she’d done that, she’d burnt up the microwave and had done damage to the rest of the place. Now, all she had were bags of already popped corn that she could enjoy, too. But she was alone and popcorn never tasted as good as it did when she had company.

By evening, she was waiting for her dinner to come to her. It was Wednesday so she’d have pizza for her dinner and her lunch tomorrow. Another thing that Taylor had set up for her so she didn’t have to worry about cooking. While she was eating it, sitting at her dining room table for six, it just made her upset that she didn’t have anyone to share with. Or even to have a long conversation with someone. She didn’t even care if it was the weather they talked about. It would be nice to have—Gilda Jane heard someone down at the pool and decided to find herself a seat with the others and pretend that she was there with their families.

She’d done it before and had been asked to not put herself in a situation of whipping a child that wasn’t hers. Well, the kid wouldn’t listen to her about the things he was eating and she decided to teach him while he was young. The boy’s mother didn’t see it that way and had called the police on her when she smacked him on the cheek for talking back to her. Taylor would never have done that, and he wasn’t going to get by with it either.

Almost as soon as she was seated, one of the mothers told her that there were plenty of other seats to have. Why did she have to sit between them? Ignoring them for covering her skin up from the terrible sun, she laid back and smiled. They’d get used to her being around soon enough.

“Ms. Murphy?” She must have fallen asleep and looked up at the man towering over her. “Ms. Murphy, my name is Jack Tucker. I’ve been asked to come and see you by your daughter. She wantsme to take you home. You’ve disrupted the pool party enough.”

“I’m not bothering anyone. I was just lonely.” He asked her if she’d eaten the cake and ice cream. “Yes. It was there, and I’m right here. I saw no reason why I shouldn’t partake of it either. And I only ate a bit of both. They’re bad for you with all the sugars and such in them.”

“It’s time to go home.” She gathered up where stuff with his help. Mostly he was picking things up on his own and handing them to her. “Taylor said that she’d talk to you tomorrow, but you’re to stay in the condo without bothering anyone. She said you know what she’ll do if you don’t behave yourself.”

“I’m a grown woman.” She thought he said for her to act like it but she wasn’t sure. “Well, that’s all right, I guess. You’ll come and stay with me until Taylor calls, and we’ll make a night of it. I’m lonely, you see.”

“I’m not staying. I have my own place to stay.” She pouted at him, which usually worked on men like him, but he only took her keys from her and opened her door. “You heard what I said to you, didn’t you? You’re to stay in the house until she talks to you. Otherwise, she said that she’d take you to task.”

“I wonder at times if she remembers that I’m her mother.” She pouted at Jack again. “Can’t you just stay until I go to sleep? I won’t bother you, I promise.”

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