My mother’s lawyer called me this morning which came as a surprise because I didn’t know my mother had a lawyer or would have a need for a lawyer or even knew any lawyers. As a matter of fact it wasn’t the lawyer, a Mr. Defiore, Esq., who called but his secretary, introducing herself as Linda McDonough and saying “I’m sorry to disturb you but Mr. Defiore told me to get in touch with Mrs. Mahedi’s next of kin to iron out” and here in a flash I saw the hot iron, the board, and all our kin, living and dead, flattened upon it, “some discrepancies in her story, as a matter of legal due diligence” this Linda said this Defiore had told her to tell me.
But I wasn’t quite up to the task of ironing out anything let alone for a supposed lawyer and his secretary because it is summer in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula and my husband is due in tonight from Chicago. Our summer routine: he stays in the city during the week managing money for Midwest real estate tycoons and the founders of regional business empires like Dr. Tom’s Vegetarian Beef and Loretta’s Deep Dish Knish Pizzas and other chamber of commerce types, assessing risks in his office in the Financial District while I start my day with Bloody Marys and from the deck of our second home look out at the dunes with grass poking through the sand like hairs from a mole. Beyond that, the algae blooms on Lake Michigan. I think about our daughter Nina not six-months dead, passed, deceased—whatever the grief counselor recommended I call this “event” which didn’t occur in my life so much as overwrite it, subsume it, leaving me a distant husband and these mucky waters and my demented mother who somehow escaped her nursing home in Kalamazoo long enough to cause enough trouble to need a lawyer, Linda said Defiore told her to tell me “Mr. Defiore said your mother was wise to come to us because Mr. Defiore isn’t any old lawyer hanging his shingle in some backwater but a specialist in these sorts of crimes.”
I finished my third Bloody Mary and watched the sun pierce the western side of our house, all this pricey glass perched on an even pricier bit of real estate and for what? I said to Linda, this Defiore’s secretary, “What the hell are you talking about? What crimes? My mother is 78 and lives in a nursing home and only ever leaves to go to Target and buy some new sweatpants or hair dye or maybe to take the senior shuttle to Uncle Ernie’s Pancake House to drink weak coffee and eat half of a mediocre omelet for Christ’s sake and don’t tell me otherwise because I know my mother.”
Linda cleared her throat then softened her tone, a true legal professional, and said this Defiore told her “The judge will throw out the case even though it could be construed as shoplifting.”
I took a second to rifle through our ZLINE refrigerator my husband insisted we buy because his partners all swore by it. Daryl, the founder of the firm, considered himself some sort of amateur chef and gourmand and didn’t respect anyone who didn’t own a ZLINE not that this stopped our daughter from smearing crayons onto its French doors or duct-taping her book reports to them and if I run my hand over the stainless steel I can still feel the remains of the adhesive, “Shoplifting” I said to this secretary Linda, “you’ve got to be fucking kidding me, we pay eleven-thousand bucks a month so she can live in one of the best nursing homes in Michigan, hell, in the Midwest, and you’re telling me my mother is shoplifting.”
I really refused to believe this because she didn’t want for anything and even when she did, as a little girl in Damascus for example, before her parents, my grandparents, fled to America, to Chicago, and opened a small shoe repair shop that was respected, even beloved, by all its customers because my grandfather treated everyone and all their shoes with genuine care and respect and had the touch of a true cobbling craftsman because his father and his father’s father all worked with leather in one fashion or another, making or curing or selling and everything in between, even when she did, want that is, as a little girl in Syria, she had a true and noble heart, always knew right from wrong and wasn’t afraid to let you know it. So, no. No, I couldn’t believe this shoplifting business to the point that I began to suspect Linda, if that was even her real name, of trying to scam me or mother.
Linda once again quoted Mr. Defiore this alleged lawyer “It could be construed as shoplifting, Mrs. Mahedi, could be, ‘could’ being the operative word of which Mr. Defiore insisted I remind you, but it won’t be, because it will never go to court—mind you this is me saying this, about the case going to trial” Linda said, “but my own opinion is as close as can be to Mr. Defiore’s assessments and he’s seldom wrong when it comes to legal matters, that, Mrs. Mahedi, you can bank on.”
The word “bank” made me think of my husband again, working himself into a coma so he wouldn’t have to think about our dead child or his depressed wife living off vodka and tomato juice and celery stalks. I began to wonder for the first time really if he had another woman in Chicago and all these nights over there in our graystone Wicker Park home weren’t quite so lonely for him. Maybe some of my big-heartedness on this matter was a product of the three Bloody Marys I’d already consumed, fine. But I realized I didn’t care if he had another woman. No, I’d even be happy for him because it meant he could still feel something. He didn’t kill our daughter, cancer did. If anything, it was only his money, whole stinking heaps of it, that kept her alive long enough to see her seventh birthday so I just hoped he had a woman and she was loving and kind and his heart wasn’t too barren to return some of that kindness, that love, because mine was.
I asked this Linda “So what is it exactly that my demented mother is supposed to have stolen, huh?”
“The object in question, the contested purchase, if you will, is a small pair of leather shoes, a child’s dress shoes, but quite expensive, I’ll have you know or, rather, Mr. Defiore thinks it pertinent you know,” she said.
I started laughing and began making another drink, taking a long, strong sniff of the Worcestershire sauce and thinking about the tamarind and anchovies, the little empire in a bottle. “A child’s shoes? My mother wears nothing but slip-on sneakers and Ugg boots around her nursing home, a child’s shoes, come on” and then I heard my mother in the background, there in that office in Kalamazoo and I imagined the diploma on the wall and the squeaky leather chairs and some fancy leather-bound books I doubted Mr. Defiore, Esq., ever even opened much less read and I said “Is that my mother?”
“I’m not sure of Mr. Defiore’s opinion on informing you of your mother’s geographical status at this juncture.”
I yelled into the phone, loud enough for half of Kalamazoo to hear “Mom, is that you? Mom, what the hell are you doing there?” and I heard my mother reply but too softly for me to glean any meaning from it.
Linda said “Your mother says she had to pick up shoes for Nina, that Nina wanted these shoes in particular because they looked like the shoes some cartoon character wears and when Nina was here visiting, she said, ‘O Bachan.’”
I interrupted Linda, angered now at the thought of my little girl’s memory getting dragged through this lawyer’s office mud. “What the hell is an O bachan?”
Linda asked my mother and said “It’s Japanese for grandma, she says Nina called her that and the cartoon was Japanese but she can’t remember the name.”
I was growing more and more flustered because my mother very often couldn’t remember anything let alone her granddaughter or what sort of shoes her granddaughter once wanted on a whim or what sort of cartoon she watched. Yet I could tell from my mother’s quick responses and Linda’s equally quick replies that while my mother was experiencing a moment of preternatural lucidity, she nevertheless was claiming her granddaughter, her only grandchild, my only child, was still alive and this was more than I could bear so I yelled at Linda “My daughter is dead, don’t you get it? Dead.”
Linda, this scrupulous secretary, said “Mr. Defiore wasn’t aware of your daughter’s status, I’m afraid.”
The word “status” struck me as so odd, so ill-fitting, as if we were talking about a dating profile and not a dead child, that I started laughing again and took a shot of vodka with a splash of Worcestershire sauce and a splash of tomato juice, a half-assed and unmixed Bloody Mary to calm my nerves because this Linda might be an insensitive grifter but I needed to make sure my mother returned to her nursing home in one piece. I didn’t want to spend the whole day driving down the length of Michigan to deal with this when there were Bloody Marys to drink here and little ripples in this great lake to watch with no one but me and my grief in this expensive house to watch them and to mark their swift passing. I said “Linda, I apologize.”
She said, bless her, this unflappable woman, “No apology necessary, Mr. Defiore understands, I’m sure, and your mother claims she thought she’d paid for the shoes already and given her cognitive impairment we’re certain the case will be dismissed and you may even be able to sue for defamation and undue stress and emotional damage from the experience both for you and your mother.”
I agreed with her internally that we Hamedi women were all sorts of damaged but I said, adopting some of her legalese “While I concur such a case could be made, Linda, I’m afraid neither my mother nor I have the strength to see it through at the moment, so if you’d be so kind as to have a cab collect my mother and take her back to her nursing home, I’d be very grateful and of course I’ll pay for your and Mr. Defiore’s time, for the fine effort you’ve both invested thus far in my mother’s well-being and rights and so forth” and the sun was reflecting in my Boston shaker and its tomato-bloodied sides with such subtle beauty, the vodka tickling my brain in such a lovely way, that I truly meant what I said to Linda about my gratitude. I even felt grateful to my husband’s mistress if he had one and grateful to Maja the sturdy Georgian aide in the nursing home who took such good care of my mother and grateful even to Daryl, my husband’s food snob boss, because this extravagant fridge did keep my vodka extra cold in style.
Then I heard my mother’s voice through the phone, almost inside my head, shaky and frail but still confident in her opinions no matter how shriveled her brain had become “Boo-boo,” she said, “we won’t all fit in the cab so you have to come and get us with your van.”
“Who’s we?”
“Me and little Nina and my father, I asked him to come because you know he knows leather.”
I wanted to shout at once “stop this nonsense, Ma, and listen to me” but my voice caught in my throat like a mouse with its neck snapped in a trap because I realized that for my demented mother my little daughter was still alive, still had whims and wants, could still wear a pair of shoes, and in this fantasy my grandfather was alive too and got to not just meet his great-granddaughter but go shopping with her and teach her the ins and outs of leather curing and solid shoe construction and I envied my mother in this moment, envied her delusions, her shoplifting with and for ghosts so I said “OK, mom, you wait right there and I’ll be down to pick you all up, I’ll be down in no time” and I cried as I heard her say to her phantoms which are also my phantoms for we’re a family, the living and the dead “Nina, don’t worry, your mother is on her way.”
Mini-interview with Jon Doughboy
HFR: Can you share a moment that has shaped you as a writer (or continues to)?
JD: Spending years submitting to various presses, contests, magazines, and agents and being met with rejection or silence quashed some of my scribbling hopes, freeing me from the delusion of writing as a viable career. It was tough but necessary medicine. I enjoy writing much more now, without that pressure and those expectations. My writing is better too. Less self-important, looser, freer and more fun.
HFR: What are you reading?
JD: I read a lot of stories online from writers I’ve come across on Twitter/X. I like BRUISER a lot. I enjoyed the ANONYMOUS series minor literature[s] ran over the summer. LEAN is doing some interesting stuff. I like the short stuff over at scaffold and the horror at ergot. I’m currently reading Petersburg by Andrei Bely. I like the voices, the shifting perspectives, the repetitions, the color saturation.
HFR: Can you tell us what prompted “Your Mother Is on Her Way”?
JD: I’m not sure. Most of my stories start with a sentence, an image, a sound, idea or feeling. I can’t remember what originally prompted this one. Maybe my elderly relative getting arrested for shoplifting? Maybe just the word “Kalamazoo”?
HFR: What’s next? What are you working on?
JD: I’ve had some stories out recently. A Max Beckmann in Cleveland tale in the summer 2025 edition of Rougarou. A horny Kierkegaardian leap in BRUISER. A paranoid 80s night at the Detroit Symphony in Maudlin House. A dementia dialogue in Don’t Submit. I have a story called “The 9/11 Roadshow” coming out on 9/11 at farewell transmission. I’ve got more stories I’m sending out too, a little multivocal geologist serial killer story, a story inspired by Robert Pogue Harrison’s podcast Entitled Opinions, and a sleazy supernatural noir detective story among others.
HFR: Take the floor. Be political. Be fanatical. Be anything. What do you want to share?
JD: The Consortium of Concerned Hobbyist Scribblers is partnering with the advocacy group Citizens for Prose to combat the Lived Experience illuminati, a shadowy organization whose goal is to cripple writers’ imaginations and lock them up in the cell of their biographies. Learn more about this campaign to reject essentialism and liberate imaginations @doughboywrites.
Jon Doughboy is a literary slug leaving a slime trail of prose and poems across the digital undergrowth @doughboywrites.
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Heavy Feather Review 