Page 4 of The Bargain

Nobibimbapfor me tonight.

2

BYRON GRAHAM

“Sharon Rogers is a cunt.”

This was one of my mother’s favorite complaints.

Mary Graham hated her neighbors. She’d hated them the day they’d moved in ten years ago, and she’d hated them every day since. I wasn’t even sure of the reason anymore. I thought she didn’t like their dog, who’d passed away more than five years ago. Not her doing. The dog was old, and I’d sent them a condolence fruit basket.

Of course, she’d found out and had hated me for about four months and then forgotten about it. She’d never stopped hating the Rogerses, and that hatred had taken on a new ferocity when Sharon had replaced her old dog with two yappy puppies.

As I drove her home from the jail, she went on rambling, a mostly incoherent tirade about neighbors, police, and ungrateful children who didn’t take proper care of their elders. Most of it went in one ear and out the other. I’d heard all her tirades before—they were part of her coming down from being drunk. She was going through withdrawal and hurting. I tried to have sympathy, but I was sorry to say that a lot of my sympathy had dried up from years of episodes like this. Alcoholism was an ugly disease.

I pulled my beat-up fifteen-year-old Toyota into her driveway and sighed. Everything seemed as it was the last time I’d been here four days ago. The tiny saltbox house with two bedrooms and a single bathroom was built in the fifties, and it didn’t look like much had changed with it since then. Old, dingy white paint was fading and chipping thanks to age and weather. The windows were filthy and perpetually covered with heavy curtains to keep out the sun. A scattering of weeds grew in the yard and poked up between the cracks in the sidewalk.

After I slipped out of the car, I walked to the passenger side to help her. As soon as I got her to her feet, she slapped my hands and pushed me away, claiming she could do it herself. Except she struggled to do it on her own. I walked behind her, my hands extended to catch her if she fell. My mom was fifty-two, but she looked and moved as though she were in her seventies. Life had not been kind to her, and she’d chosen to deal with it the only way she knew how—with booze.

We stepped into the living room, and the smell of alcohol assaulted my nose.How? How did she manage it?I’d been here four days ago, and I’d cleaned out her stash. All the local stores knew they weren’t allowed to sell to her. She’d lost her license and sold her car years ago. How was she getting it?

Forcing my gaze away from the empty bottles of hard liquor and beer on the table, I called out, “Mom, how about I make you something to eat before you lie down? You’ve got to be hungry and tired.”

She grunted as she shuffled to the kitchen. “Ain’t nothing to eat.”

I bit my tongue as I followed her. That couldn’t be right. I’d dropped off more than a week’s worth of food not that long ago. She couldn’t have gone through all of it. But as I pulled open the fridge, I found a bottle of vodka, eggs, and a bag of salad that was at the end of its lifespan. I snagged the bottle of vodkaand marched to the sink, where I poured out its contents to the sound of her shouts and calling me every name under the sun.

When she ran out of steam, she stomped off to the bathroom and slammed the door. I used the opportunity to ransack her room, where I found two unopened bottles under the bed and three opened bottles hidden in her closet. By the time she left the bathroom and stomped to her bedroom, where she slammed the door yet again, I was pouring the last of the booze down the sink.

For a moment, the weight of it all threatened to crush me. The endlessness of this endeavor: I’d find the bottles and empty them. I’d talk to all the nearby liquor vendors and tell them not to sell to her. She was on a strict budget. She didn’t drive. After hours of searching and cleaning, I’d leave the house empty of booze and refilled with food. She would go a few days, maybe a few weeks, without alcohol, and then we’d be right back here. I’d tried getting her help, but she would give up too quickly or refuse the help completely.

What she needed was to be put in some kind of assisted living or even have a nurse checking on her, but I couldn’t afford either option, so I was left with no choice but to make regular trips to check on her and dump out her booze.

Fuck this.

Enough of the pity party.

I shoved away from the sink, took off my suit jacket, and hung it on one of the kitchen chairs. After rolling up my sleeves, I submitted an Instacart order for some groceries to be delivered, and I set about cleaning her house. Carpets were vacuumed, surfaces were dusted, and floors were scrubbed. I opened windows to let in a cool spring breeze, hoping to push out some of the sour despair that clung to the house like black mold.

A peek into her bedroom revealed her asleep on the bed. I gathered up the clothes I could find tossed about the room and threw them into the wash. By the time I was moving them tothe dryer, a delivery person had dropped the food on the front porch. I prepared a few meals that she needed only to heat in the microwave and wrote out some instructions for them.

It was after five when I was done, and she hadn’t stirred. I peeked into her room to make sure she was still breathing. It wouldn’t have been a surprise if she were pretending to sleep so she wouldn’t have to deal with me.

As I walked to my car, my phone vibrated, and I almost cried at the name on the screen.

“Hello, Dr. Willard,” I said, trying so hard not to clench my teeth as I leaned on the driver’s side door. The quiet neighborhood had grown a little busier as people rushed home at the end of a long day. Overhead, the sky was a bright blue and the late-spring leaves rustled in the mild wind, but the happy May day did nothing to remove the growing knot in my stomach.

“Hello, Byron. How have you been?”

Shit, Dr. Willard. It’s been a shit day, and I know you’re calling to make it worse.

But I didn’t say that, no matter how badly I wanted to. Because I knew he didn’t care. He wasn’t my doctor, and I wasn’t his problem. Ronald Graham Jr. was.

“I’m fine. How are you?”

“Not too bad. I’m sorry to bother you today, but I’m calling to let you know we need to increase Ronnie’s meds again. He had another violent episode with one of the orderlies.”

My muscles tensed, and a chill swept across my skin. “Shit! Was anyone hurt?”

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