My 81-year-old mother hired a biker covered in tattoos as a caregiver – When I found out why, my knees dropped
In twelve years spent washing it, feeding it, lifting it and holding it in my arms, I had never heard it speak to me like that. It was me who had no place in this room.
Outside, through the window, Louis was kneeling in his flowerbeds, tearing off the weeds as if he had always lived there.
The next few weeks looked like a slow war in a low voice.
Louis was evolving in our house as if he had always been part of it: he filled Mom’s glass with water, adjusted his pillows, read his old garden magazines out loud. Mom had taken care of everything herself — the paperwork, the payroll, even the backup key — before I came home on that first day. When I thought about asking for references, the contract was already signed.
I watched it from the door openings, from the corridors, from the corner of my eye during my morning coffee. I was waiting for him to take a wrong step. This eager look on his I
I watched it from the door openings, from the corridors, from the corner of my eye during my morning coffee. I was waiting for him to commit an odd. An avid look at his jewelry box. A phone call to an accomplice. Anything.
This never happened.
“You don’t need to watch me so closely, Miss Margaret,” he told me one afternoon, without wickedness. “I’m not going anywhere. »
“That’s what worries me,” I said.
He agreed to acquiesce, as if my hostility was a weather phenomenon to which he had learned to adapt.
Mom, on the other hand, was flourishing. She laughed at her stories. She finished her meals. His cheeks, hollow for years, filled up a little.
And every time I entered the room, their voices went out.
“What were you two talking about? "I asked one night.
“Just old songs,” said Mom in a sweet tone.
Louis slipped something into the pocket of his vest. A little leather notebook. I had seen him write there, always when he thought I wasn’t looking at him.
I called Brenda from the kitchen that night, in a low voice.
