From the living room, I heard my mother, Carmen, proudly addressing a crowd.
“My son bought me this brand new dress, saying that now that he’s doing so well, his mother should look good too, and in this apartment, one truly lives like a queen,” she said.
My mother had moved in with us a year earlier from Baltimore.
She was sixty-two, suffered from knee pain, and possessed an extraordinary ability to make me feel guilty whenever I questioned her.
When she first asked to stay with us, Jessica agreed immediately.
Then things slowly changed.
Jessica lost weight and began wearing long sleeves even in the Phoenix heat.
Olivia, once a child who ran noisily through every room, would suddenly become silent whenever she heard her grandmother approaching.
Whenever I asked what was wrong, my mother always answered before Jessica could.
“Your wife is simply too delicate because she doesn’t work outside the home, yet she gets tired of everything,” she would say smoothly.
