Meghan Custer tipped the vial of pills into her hand. Only three left; no matter how many times she checked the bottle, there were always only three magic bullets. She didn’t miss the fact that she thought of them as magic bullets. Over the past few weeks, as she entered her third year of this version of herself, the crippled version, the idea of a real bullet had begun to have some traction. She knew where her father kept his guns. She certainly knew how to use one. Idly, she wondered if it was possible to miss the weight of a rifle, its doglike constant companionship and protection. Meghan had been very good with her service weapon. When that politician did the blindfold assembly of his rifle as some kind of political statement, she’d laughed out loud. Easy peasy. Who couldn’t do that? What did that prove except that the United States military schooled its soldiers very, very well?
Only three pills left in a prescription that was supposed to last until the end of next week. If she’d had any independence at all, she would have found another doctor to write her another script. Too bad docs no longer made house calls. The bigger problem was that her mother wasn’t blind to Meghan’s opioid use. The scourge of mankind, according to the press. It seemed sometimes that the opioid epidemic had come along at exactly the wrong time for Meghan. A few years ago, the physicians would have been more than happy to keep her supplied, but now, not so much. They suggested alternative therapies, like yoga, for God’s sake. Meghan clutched the three little pills in her fist, then placed them, one by one, back in the vial.
“Mom!” Meghan took a little satisfaction in the sound of the dishwasher being slammed maybe a titch more energetically than it needed. Her mother was a saint. Everyone said so. Forced back into motherhood, the physically demanding motherhood of dressing her daughter; the emotionally challenging one of having a thirty-six-year-old daughter with the mood swings of an adolescent, the unkindness of a teenager, the self-pitying funk of a preteen. Meghan wasn’t unaware of having become a difficult person, but she couldn’t find a way out of it. “Mom!”
“What is it, honey?” Her mother leaned into the bedroom doorway. She didn’t look like someone whose every activity was vulnerable to interruption. She looked, as always, ready to help. It pissed Meghan off no end, this eternal patience.
“I dropped my phone.”
Evelyn Custer knelt to retrieve the wayward phone from under the bed, where it had bounced. She handed the phone to Meghan and then straightened the unkempt bed. The bed, a high-tech multiposition one, wasn’t supposed to be called a hospital bed, but, for all intents and purposes, it was, and it was hard to keep it neat. “Would you like to have grilled cheese for lunch?”
“Yeah, sure. Fine.” Meghan opened Facebook and scrolled down, looking for something interesting.
“Whenever you’re ready.”
“This is getting old, isn’t it?”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“Me. This.” Meghan swept her hand across her lap.
“Of course not.”
“Don’t be a martyr.” Meghan didn’t look up to see if her rottenness had had any effect. It was as if she was trying to be a bitch. And her mother just kept turning that other cheek.
“Meghan?”
“What?”
“Yeah, I am. Tired of it. Tired of being the mom with the wounded warrior feeling sorry for herself.”
Meghan kept her face away from her mother. She never cried, not once, except for the men who were lost that day. Not once for herself. Now the tears that stung still weren’t for herself, but for her mother. She withheld the tears that just might be in regret for the bitch she knew that she’d become.
“But, Meghan, I don’t consider it martyrdom. It’s a challenge, yes. Pleasant? Not so much. But I love you and I’m so grateful that you are a grump instead of a memory.”
“Sorry. I don’t know what gets into me.” She maneuvered her chair to face her mother.
“You need a break.”
“We both do.”
Later, Meghan found her mother in the laundry room, folding a basketful of towels. She grabbed a lapful and got busy. As simple a task as folding still-warm towels from the dryer made her feel a little more useful. A little less of a child. Less of a burden. Her mother had been right; she needed a break. A break from being dependent. As well-meaning as her parents, especially her mother, were, in some ways Meghan felt as though they were contributing to her dependency on them. It wasn’t being ungrateful, no. It was a growing suspicion that she was being coddled. She, who had endured the untold discomfort of boot camp, who had once been able to carry more than half her weight in body armor and equipment, now had a parent practically wiping her bum for her. She desperately wished that they all could take a break from this.
A flicker of memory teased at her, a vague taste of an old desire. She suddenly remembered how it felt in those long-ago days when she was aching to leave the family home and strike out into her adult life. It felt like this, like this stage of her life must soon come to an end. In high school, she could see the way out each time she filled out a college application. There was no such scripted way out of this stage unless she could regain her independence.
Meghan handed her mother the short pile of folded towels and reversed her chair out of the laundry room.