[LSPoorEeyorick]

The Amigo

Escapism was the chosen method of passing the hours sandwiched between Thanksgiving and the nauseating drive back to school for the final stretch of exam preparation. Unpaid-bill neck tension melted away at the sight of Dad’s crinkled eyes, warm and blue and welcoming. The nightmarish stacks of The Modern Novels--yet unread before the scheduled blue-book exam-- dissolved into happier dreams of dark meat fox-trotting with butternut squash. And the spiteful call from a newly-engaged ex-boyfriend became eclipsed by pumpkin pecan cheesecake and drizzly caramel sauce. One could imagine away any number of things while clasped in the embrace of a parent’s arms, or a parent’s refrigerator, or a parent’s wallet.

The wallet in question-- or its owner, my mother-- had decided that, after we’d gorged ourselves on leftovers for the third meal that weekend, it was time to shop. To her, holiday break meant that she’d have another woman readily available to navigate her wheelchair through narrow aisles of local stores, stopping to peek at the little treasures my speed-shopping father would never have noticed. She’d summoned all the energy she had after whipping up the holiday feast, and she’d taken extra steroids to make the trip. After she’d showered (and rested for an hour) and pasted on enough foundation to hide the pinpricks of petichae on her cheeks where the internal bleeding showed through (and rested for another hour) and drew on her eyebrows, we were ready. I took her plump, purple-tinged arm and walked her carefully to the Lincoln, taking breaks so she could catch her breath, gulping the crisp air and grinning at me.

We found ourselves at a sprawling example of the warehouse store trend: everything you need, crafted by small third-world hands at half the price, all available under one roof. It wasn’t the kind of place that either of us would really choose to shop for an afternoon. But we knew we’d only have two, maybe three good hours before exhaustion from the low platelets would put and end to our excursion. With an auto-immune disease, one-stop shopping was the best you could hope for.

Parking-spotting, a gift with which I was not blessed, was especially challenging in the days post-turkey mortem. Every blue-lined spot at the front had already been taken-- some by curiously sporty cars with conspicuously absent disabled licenses. We were left with a spot at the back between two SUVs in a pissing contest over which could park more over the line. Leaving as much space as I could on her side, I mashed my various chub sideways out of Dad’s Silver Bullet and popped the trunk. The wheelchair, a worthy adversary of shopping trips past, glinted and sneered at me.

“You know, we can always change our minds,” Mom called from her seat. “I don’t want you to have to push me around.”

“No worries. I’ve got it.” I seized the wheel and yanked upwards, catching the handles on the top lip of the trunk. I grappled with the handles and the armrests scraped the bumper. I yanked up by the armrests and finally the vile thing let loose-- but not before the wheels spun out and pinched my pinkie finger. I bit my lip and swore silently, and took a breath to clear my head before I wedged her chair into the space between our car and the neighboring monstrosity so that she’d only see a smile that said we were ready to move inside.

The doors and the mass of crowds parted as we rolled into the garish lighting of the superstore. A besmocked twenty-something with dead eyes and a pasted-on grin stood watch over a line of shopping carts. I grinned back with my own pasted-on grin. “Happy holidays how are you today,” he monotoned. I mumbled something back, pushing the chair towards the awaiting aisles.

Mom jerked her hand up to stop me. “Back up, go slower,” she murmured. “Let’s take our time.” A little confused, I rolled her back a few inches. “Farther,” she coaxed. Another step wasn’t enough, so I turned towards the door and, dodging an influx of shoppers, yanked her back until she finally felt satisfied. I looked up to see that we were again facing the zombie greeter. “Good morning,” Mom bubbled. “How are you today?”

The bewildered greeter gaped at her for a moment before registering that she was actually talking to him. “Um, I’m… OK. How about you?”

“Happy to be out.”

“Happy to be out today?” Greeter asked.

“I don’t get out too much anymore.”

“On a day like today, though… The crowds are rough.”

“Only if you’ve been standing on your feet greeting for… how long have you been here, anyway?”

He groaned. “Since five this morning. This isn’t exactly the easiest weekend for shopping.”

“Ah, but it’s the best. My girl’s home from college today.”

“That’s nice. Can I help you with anything?”

“She’s studying theatre. Runs a Shakespeare company.”

“Mom! Nobody wants to hear about that.” I rolled my eyes at nobody in particular.

Greeter smiled an actual smile at me. “Wow, a theatre company.”

“She directed Hamlet this year. And now here she is, shuffling me around town in this awful wheelchair.”

“It’s not an awful wheelchair, mom,” I sighed, though I knew it was. Greeter straightened his back and craned his neck towards the customer service window. I was certain the next words out of his mouth would be “let me find somebody else who can deal with you,” or perhaps “why are you talking to me, again?” But Greeter waved at a frizzy-haired woman behind the counter and called out to her.

“Jodie! Can you bring me an Amigo?”

Mom let out an audible gasp. “An Amigo? You have Amigos here?”

Greeter puffed up his chest a little. “We just got them in last month.”

“Are you selling them, or…”

“They’re for people to borrow while they‘re here.” He leaned in conspiratorially. “But we only let the goodies use them.”

“Aw, I’m no goodie,” she grinned, and blushed a little through her lacquered makeup.

A humming noise came up from behind us as Frizzy Jodie wheeled towards us in what I recognized as an electric wheelchair. A shiny, zippy electric wheelchair… the kind that Dad’s insurance had denied us several times on the grounds that my mother wasn’t bedridden and therefore didn’t require more help than a squeaky plus-sized wheelchair and a family member to push.

“She’s a beaut!” Mom exclaimed. Frizzy Jodie hopped down and offered her a hand. “Oh, can I really give it a spin?”

“She’s all yours,” Jodie said, and tugged at her right arm as I tugged at her left. Trying not to put any weight on the joints that suffered her steroids and body mass, she winced and plopped from one seat to the other.

“So many bells and whistles! What do they all do?”

Jodie pointed out the forward and reverse, and an inverted triangle with a picture of a rabbit at the top and one of a turtle at the bottom. Mom pushed the curser up to rabbit and tore off towards the aisle of holiday knickknack gluttony, giggling as she zoomed.

I called after her. “You might want to try turtle first.”

“Who really wins a race by being slow and steady? Last one to the Christmas Tree aisle makes dinner!”

Greeter smiled at me. “You’d better get going.”

“Eh, how hard is it to warm up leftover turkey?”

“Well, some of us have trouble boiling water.”

“Then some of us are in luck. No boiled water necessary for reheated bird.”

“Unless it’s turkey carcass soup, which I’ll make today if you don’t hurry up!” she called from down the aisle.

“I had better get going, then,” I said, handing him the wheelchair. “Floating bits of stuffing isn’t all that appealing.”

We chuckled and watched the amigo disappear into the fluorescent horizon. “Is she always that…”

“Warm and bubbly? That’s mom.”

He pushed shopping cart in my direction. “You’re lucky.”

I nodded and trudged off in the direction of artificial pine and icicles and mom’s giddy laugh, wondering how long my luck was going to last.

(Continued on next post.)