Willie explains to me — often — how she spends her day. 

See, Willie hates her apartment.  

The apartment I picked out for her after her little walk last December. The apartment with the newly installed plush rose carpet. The apartment with the view of the forest. The apartment with the cozy chair I nestled in the corner so she could watch TV. 

Willie, um, hates it. 

She wants to be back in her old apartment, the one with two bedrooms and kitchen bigger than the one we had in our house. Her friend Katherine was across the hall. Mabel was next door. Another friend was a floor below.  

Those friends — and Willie’s boyfriend — come over to Willie’s side of the Temple of Doom. A few times a week, they play Pinochle together. They eat together. They visit. 

Willie’s side of the Temple of Doom has a beautiful common room. Its glinting windows, cathedral ceiling, and toasty fireplace give off Swiss-ski-chalet vibes.  

I can almost imagine skiers crossing the hardwood floors to the cozy corner coffee station, their ski boots clunking and echoing in the grand space. 

But that clunk and echo is just a wheelchair, or a walker, or some other thing most definitely not Swiss ski chalet.  

Each day, Willie abandons her wretched apartment to have breakfast with her cronies. After breakfast, they all retire to that common room. They chat and gossip until lunch, then settle back into the plump sofas by the common room fire. At dinner, they make the familiar trek back to the dining room.  

Then it’s the common room until somebody declares it’s bedtime. 

Let me be clear. 

I hate this for Willie. 

If I was a different person, or Willie was, I’d have Willie here, with me, like Willie did with her mother. 

But I’m very afraid of going to prison. 

So Willie stays put. 

But I visit. I bring Willie Starbucks. I take her to get her hair done. I take her to movies. I take her to church, where her fellow parishioners insist I’m Willie’s niece. 

During one of these visits, Willie and I sat chatting with three of Willie’s friends from her side of the Temple of Doom. 

They told me they were having salmon for lunch that day.  

This being assisted living, in very short order they again informed me of their pescatarian lunch. 

For good measure, they told me one more time. 

Then a fourth friend approached. Willie and her crew told this fourth friend about the salmon. 

“Would you,” this fourth friend said, “shut the f*** up?” 

I mean, at this point, I was kind of with her on that one. 

I think everyone else was, too, because nobody said a word. 

They just went right on talking. 

Willie and I were discussing a book I loaned her a few weeks prior. It was Gone Girl. I told Willie once she finished, I’d bring over my iPad so we could watch the movie. 

And, no. Willie can’t come to my house to watch Gone Girl. I have a whole stair situation that would break Willie’s neck. 

Yeah. It’s awful I can’t let Willie in my house. 

It’s a little bit worse knowing I’ll never have my mom in my home again. 

But on the bright side, that means I’ll probably never go to prison. 

Willie couldn’t remember what she had done with Gone Girl.  

While I appreciated Willie’s keeping with the theme of stuff gone missing so aptly portrayed in Gone Girl, I actually knew where the book was. 

Willie’s walker has a basket. The contents of that basket roughly approximate — in looks and content — one of those clothing donation dumpsters in supermarket parking lots.  

I rooted through the basket, looking for Gone Girl. 

What I found was $90. 

Huh.  

Willie has no access to cash. She’s not allowed to have it. Has no need for it. Only my brother and I have access to her cash, and neither one of us gave her $90. 

“Willie,” I said, “where did you get this money?” 

“I probably tapped MAC,” Willie said with a dismissive shrug. 

Well, Willie doesn’t have an ATM card. Or a car. She doesn’t even have a driver’s license. Also, it’s not 1986. So I know she didn’t “tap MAC.” 

But I do know that before Willie left independent living, she was — with raging success — hitting up her Pinochle crew for cash. 

Although Willie was able to get cash every Wednesday when her bank visited the Temple of Doom, by the time the end of 2024 rolled around, Willie couldn’t execute the steps needed to access that cash. 

I’m sure this was embarrassing for the fiercely independent Willie. 

So she told her friends that I’d taken all of her money and wouldn’t let her have it.  

Apparently, raising such an abominable human was less embarrassing than a disease no one can control. 

Yes. I’m rolling my eyes when I say that. 

Willie’s sob story hit her neighbors just right. They ponied up cash like Willie was a bookie at the racetrack. 

I was kind of thinking that exact scenario was why I was now holding $90 while salmon cooked in the kitchen and Willie’s friend spouted expletives. 

I reported it. Of course I did. Afraid of prison, remember? 

But the Temple of Doom management tells me if the independent folks want to give Willie money, there’s not too much that can be done. 

Leave it to Willie to be demented, on a guardianship, barred from driving … and still find a way to make a living. 

I can’t wait to do her taxes.