needs of Estelle Winter – a woman who had been either disruptive or absent in their lives for as long as Shelby could remember.
Talia stalked past Shelby, went down the hall and stopped in the living room of Shelby’s spacious high rise apartment. She looked around critically and her gaze fell on an overnight bag that was packed and sitting on a gray suede chair.
‘Where are you going for your vacation?’ Talia demanded. She was fifty years old and looked sixty. Her short, sensible haircut was salt-and-pepper. She was dressed in her work clothes, a shapeless polyester pantsuit and plain blue shirt, probably purchased at Wal-Mart. Her unsophisticated appearance was deceiving. Talia ran the computer lab at Franklin University in Center City. She had a PhD and was considered to be an expert on artificial intelligence. Talia had always had a brilliant mind and an abysmal lack of social skills.
Shelby tried to keep her tone reasonable. ‘I told you. Chloe and Rob are going on a cruise. I am taking care of Jeremy while they’re gone.’
‘You need to come and see Mother,’ Talia said. ‘She’s getting worse by the day. She spends most of the time in bed now. Yesterday she didn’t recognize me.’
‘I’m sorry, Talia, but I can’t,’ said Shelby. ‘I told you about this months ago. I gave my daughter and her husband this cruise as a Christmas gift. They’ve been planning it for months. And I’ve been looking forward to spending this time with my grandson.’
‘I wouldn’t mind a vacation myself,’ said Talia pointedly.
‘So take one,’ said Shelby. ‘It would do you good.’
‘With mother this sick?’
Shelby sighed, and did not reply.
‘Besides, I could never just go off and leave her with strangers,’ said Talia.
‘They’re not strangers. She knows those caregivers as well as she knows anyone else. They come every day.’ Even as Shelby pointed this out, she knew that it was futile to try to reason with Talia.
Talia looked at Shelby as if she had not heard a word. ‘You can bring the boy with you if that’s what you want. It’s her grandchild, after all.’
Shelby wanted to shout out, never. I would never subject my grandson to her. But Shelby knew better than to get into this with her sister. She would never completely escape the web of guilt and duty that kept Talia prisoner in that gloomy house with their incoherent mother. But Shelby did her best to resist it. Since Estelle’s diagnosis she helped pay for caregivers, and she made the occasional perfunctory visit, but that was all. Talia was apparently intent on sacrificing her life for their mother. Shelby refused to feel obliged by her sister’s choice. If that’s what she wanted to do, that was her business.
‘I’m certainly not going to bring a four-year-old around someone who is that ill,’ said Shelby. Not to mention drunk, she thought.
‘Never mind what would be good for mother,’ said Talia.
Shelby raised her hands. ‘I’m not discussing this. I have to get to Chloe’s. Why don’t you get in touch with Glen? Maybe he’ll come see her.’
‘Oh, Glen. Right.’ Talia snorted, put her hands on her hips and glanced around the apartment. ‘It crossed my mind that he might be here with you.’
Shelby looked at Talia in disbelief. ‘Why would he be here? You think he’s hiding from you? You know that Glen does what he pleases. I haven’t seen him in months,’ said Shelby. Their younger brother, Glen, though highly intelligent, was jobless, aimless, and had no permanent address. In his late thirties, he still had many friends who let him crash on their couches or housesit their homes. He showed up periodically and always persuaded Talia that he was worried about their mother, and undyingly grateful for Talia’s stewardship. Shelby perceived little sincerity in his show of concern. He did it to keep the peace. ‘Look Talia, I have to be going.’
Talia peered at Shelby. ‘Why doesn’t the kid come here?’
‘The kid?’
‘Your grandson.’
As she often did, Talia had stumbled upon, and prodded, a sensitive subject. Shelby would have preferred to have her grandson at her own, comfortable apartment. But her daughter, Chloe, had gravely insisted that she didn’t want any upheaval in Jeremy’s life, so Shelby had agreed to stay at their row house in Philadelphia’s Manayunk neighborhood. Shelby was not about to argue the point. She was simply glad to have a whole week with her grandson. ‘He goes to school near their house,’ Shelby said, hating the defensiveness she heard in