Mom bought a new pair of shoes. Little warning flags went up all over my brain. Mom, the biggest miser on the planet. Wearing the same clothes from 1985 because they still fit. Something was wrong, and I had to figure it out. When grandma died several years ago, she bought a new TV. And a blu-ray player. And an iPad. When her sister developed lung cancer, she splurged on a new car. The 18-year-old cat died. She bought an android phone. When dad moved out for 3 weeks after a fight, I came home from a weekend camping with friends to find the entire house had new carpeting. Each and every one of these big purchases started with little things. Buying packs of gum, ice cream, and cookies even though she hates treating herself. Then maybe a rare sight; new clothing. Leading up to the new car, she even bought a new set of wine glasses made out of crystal. Every time something catastrophic happened, she released her anger and frustration with the world, God, and herself, by buying things. Sometimes for us. Mostly for her. I guess it was all those years of denying herself the pleasure of having nice things. The only concern she seemed to have was that we were better off than her. She bought my older sister a new car for college while she still drove a crappy Nissan Sentra from 2001. And whenever I tried to get her to buy new clothes, she would buy clothes for me and insist that she didn’t need any. But when the tragedies in life strike hard, she cracks. Buys the things she’s secretly been dying to have and indulge in; her way of coping. My younger self never understood why, but this time I knew something was up. My thoughts jumped to my parents’ marriage. Then my grandpa. My uncles? Cousins? Sister? Younger brother? My mom had been watching a lot of depressing movies lately and reading sad books. Immediately the worst thoughts filled my mind. Death, bankruptcy, car accident. Remembering that it was only a pair of shoes, I took a deep calming breath to steady myself.
“Wow mom those are some cute shoes. What’s the occasion?” I lightly asked.
“Who needs an occasion for cute shoes” she replied with a flash of a smile and a quick wink.
“sometimes I just like to splurge a little bit. Don’t worry I think I will wear them to work tomorrow.” Her eyes were bright and her smile wide. Perhaps I had imagined it, but for about half a second her smile seemed to droop, her eyes became the pit of tartarus. As quickly as I noticed it, it was gone. Mom was just her usual chipper self.
Things were definitely worse than I thought. She was hiding something behind the veil of her eyes. Something was dwelling deep down, locked inside her prison mind. Her mouth was the prison guard. Her eyes the prison walls. But in that short moment, the Count of Monte Cristo was making his escape. Andy Dufresne was crawling through the sewers. The criminal was escaping. She quickly shut it out, but the damage was done. Something was wrong.

Several hours later, I found myself waving goodbye to my parents and younger brother as they left for a basketball game. They swallowed up my half-hearted insists that I was bogged down with homework. The hungry lion roar of the car turned into ocean waves and finally silence. I ran upstairs to my mother’s room, worry filling me. I would start here and search the whole house until I found out what was going on. Opening her closet door, I ran my hands over all the clothes that still fit her, hence, she couldn’t get rid of them. They were from the 80s and 90s mostly. Occasionally a few new articles as reminders of the rough time she was going through when she bought them. Here was her favorite outfit, a knitted wool sweater paired with a cozy pair of mom jeans. All her socks were perfectly folded, the underwear neatly stacked. I opened her jewelry box. Her grandmother’s rings, a couple necklaces from my father, some cruddy jewelry made by us kids in grade school. I lifted out my personal favorite piece- a brooch my dying aunt gifted to my mother in the last few weeks of her life. The cold, hard metal was strangely comforting. Quietly placing the jewelry back, I shut the lid and slid over to my mom’s bedside table. The top drawer was full of books; Wuthering Heights, The Bell Jar, and Hamlet to name a few. The bottom drawer opened with a slight squeak. It was full of odds and ends. Some dark chocolate, a few pens, a notepad, buttons, headbands, scarves and some ticket stubs. I sifted through the pile of crap and brushed against something cold and metal. Clearing away a thick scarf, I found it.

The prisoner hadn’t escaped, he blew up the prison and took everyone with him. The cold, unforgiving eyes of a gun barrel stared back at me.