The Will

While chatting on the phone with Ma, I played Scrabble Blast on the computer with the sound turned off. I made sure to un huh, and yeah in the right places. Ma was riding the gravy train again, how she was going to win $2 million this week. It's always this week. Un huh.

I used to try to reason with her, to tell her people didn't gift you with huge sums of money. Her little trolley wouldn't slip the track, and I ended up with that familiar, pulsing pain behind my left eye. The Brother, ever the brilliant tactician, gave me a way to cope and to save me a pain blinding run to the Excedrin bottle. He said when she starts in on something (no one does anything for me, no one helps, I'm winning $2 million) just say "Oh, wow." Simply elegant.

She was saying Nostradumbass told her she was born under a lucky star. Oh, wow. Didn't PT Barnum of circus fame say there was a sucker born every minute? The conversation took a turn onto the no one does anything for me spur. I tuned Ma out concentrating instead on how to make a word with 4 eeees.

"You do things for your father, but you won't do them for me." She was still sore that I wouldn't take her pile of sweepstakes entries to the post office.

"You know that's not true. You didn't push your walker to the emergency room when you fell and broke your wrist. In fact, I was a God send that day because I almost decided not to visit, but I got a feeling something was wrong so I showed up." She likes the supernatural and it's a handy hole card so I played it.

There was some grumbling. "When I get my $2 million, I'm going to go to a lawyer. I'm gonna have a will made. All I'm leaving your father is $1, so you better make up your mind."

"About what?"

"Whether it's him or me. You jump when your father asks you to do something, but you never do anything for me. So you better make up your mind!"

"I'll take the dollar."

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