In Nightmares We're Alone (24 page)

And then if I start to walk through a doorway to where we’re out of each other’s sight, she screams.

Funny what the brain can do.

* * * * *

Saturday night Arthur and I go out to dinner. My old friend Ellen watches Mom at home for a few hours so we can be away from her at least for a little while.

“I don’t like to say it,” says Arthur, “but maybe we could put her somewhere, you know? I don’t think it’s helping her any to be with us. If she was in a home, people could look after her all day, professionals could decide whether it’s healthy to leave her alone once in a while, she’d be in a controlled environment, it’s… I don’t know. Would it be so bad?”

“We don’t have the money, Arthur. And even if we did, it would be awful for her. She won’t even go out the front door for a walk around the block. How are we going to get her to get in the car and leave for good?”

“We’d just have to present it to her as the only option. Tell her we need to leave and she can’t be left alone. She doesn’t want to be left alone anyway. I think that scares her more than leaving the house. I know that all sounds terrible but it would be better for her, wouldn’t it?”

I quaff my wine. “No. I don’t think it would, Arthur. I’m sorry, but I don’t. She’s lived in that house her whole life. Even if we’re not doing her any good, the house is. She was a little girl there, she had fifty years of marriage there, and she’ll… die there.”

“But what if she could live longer, and maybe not be so panicked all the time?”

“She’d be more panicked. Do you really believe that? In an unfamiliar place with nobody who knows her around all day? It doesn’t matter if there are professionals who know what drugs to give her. She’s barely clinging to her familiar world as it is. You can’t thrust her into an unfamiliar one.”

“Maybe you’re right. It was just a thought.”

“Well, we can’t do it.”

I know what’s going on in his mind as he stares at me from behind his plate. After twenty-odd years together we can communicate more or less telepathically. He’s saying the reason he really brought it up is because it would be better for us, me in particular. Because the last few months with Dad and now Mom have put so much stress on both of us that we’re losing our love for each other and for everything else in the world. He’s saying we need our time, but he knows it’s a vile thought—a human thought, but still a vile one—and he won’t speak it out loud. He’s arguing for its merits from Mom’s perspective because he can’t say out loud the horrible sentence that’s on his mind, even if it comes from a place of love.

The real sentence is:
If you don’t have the strength to keep dealing with this, we can take the coward’s route and I will never judge you.

It’s at least mildly hypocritical for me to judge him for that sentiment, but I can’t help pitying him just a little for suggesting it.

This is a responsibility. It comes with life. Mom and Dad looked after me even when it wasn’t easy. And now I’ve looked after Dad, and damn it, I’ll look after Mom for as long as it takes.

Of course, there’s a vile but human thought in my mind too, and I’m sure Arthur can see it as well as I can see his.

My vile thought is:
I just hope it won’t be much longer.

* * * * *

“She’s a sweet woman,” says Ellen. “She’s been nothing but friendly.”

“That’s good to hear. No outbursts or anything, then? No incoherent statements about people watching her?”

“No, no. She’s been the picture of health.”

Ellen has watched Mom a couple of times before. She’s the only friend I have left who is willing to do this sort of thing, a college friend. We went to high school together but never spoke. Then when we found ourselves in a lot of the same classes in university, we started talking.

What is it about those first twenty-some years that they’re always the ones you spend gathering up the friend circle you take with you for the rest of your life? Why is it always the ones who come to us when we’re young who stick around forever? Why, when we lose old friends and find new ones along the way, do we so rarely find one who comes to mean as much as that little girl we met when we were young and hopeful and stupidly optimistic?

Maybe I just answered my own question.

“Age considers; youth ventures.”

Rabindranath Tagore said that a hundred and fifty years ago. He was an Indian poet, the first non-European to win the Nobel Prize in Literature.

I learned all that in college. Unfortunately I also learned how to stop venturing and start considering, and all it got me in the end was decades of life spent treading water.

College made me old, ended my ability to strike up exciting friendships. At least Rabindranath Tagore told me why, I guess. But not even Rabindranath could tell me how to forget everything I learned and become young and adventurous again.

No, they don’t teach you that in college.

“Did you and Arthur have a good time?” Ellen asks.

“Well, that’s not the way I’d put it exactly, but we had a much needed time. It’s tough when you can’t be in a room together without your mother present for even a minute.”

Ellen laughs. “Say no more.”

I wonder for a second if she thinks I’m alluding to sex, but I don’t care enough to ask. A couple hours a week spent in the company of my husband without my mother present, I wish my life were fulfilling enough to want to spend them in a hotel room like I was twenty-one again, but no. Arthur and I are of the age where time is better spent arguing over the possibilities of rest homes and avoiding the ugly truth that we’re only on the subject because it’s the closest legal alternative to euthanasia.

So sure, if Ellen wants to think I’ve had Arthur’s wrinkled body between my sagging thighs all night, she can think that. It’s a less disgusting thought than the reality.

Even a friend who’s been at your side since youth doesn’t need to see every despicable detail of you. But I guess that’s old age talking again. Consideration over adventure.

“Well, I should get going if you don’t mind,” says Ellen. “It’s late.”

“Sure,” I say. “She really never talks to you about it? The house? Or people? Anything?”

Ellen sighs. “Not to me. She’s just a sweet old lady and she says at her age you don’t want to be left alone for a second for fear you’ll hurt yourself.” She sees my uncomfortable expression and shakes her head. “I mean, she acts peculiar. She walks through doorways with me like you say, but… I don’t know. Maybe she just trusts you enough to open up.”

“Strange thing,” I say. “Strange thing.”

Ellen smiles and we exchange pleasantries and she heads out the door telling me she’s always there if I need anything or if Mom needs anything and she’s happy to help because she knows I’d help her. But she can’t help with the things that really get to me.

Four or five times now Ellen has watched over Mom for the evening, and every time it ends like this. This conversation. This uneasy feeling. Every time, it bothers me that Mom only acts funny around me and Arthur.

And every time we have this conversation in private while Arthur is in the other room with Mom and afterward Arthur asks why I look troubled and I never answer him. Tonight, more than any other night, I know I won’t tell him. It would only add weight to his thought that Mom might be better in a home.

All day with Mom it’s talk of people watching her and the house being ready to take her when she’s left alone. Then when Ellen looks after her, a woman she barely knows, Mom’s the picture of perfect mental health. Is it me and Arthur, driving my own mother mad? Is it the familiarity? Maybe following the comfortable tedium of a life spent in the same house with the same people, the mind does its best to hold tight to that tedium. Maybe familiarity makes it a simpler task for the brain. Maybe the delusions are as much the result of the familiarity of the house and her daughter and her son-in-law as they are of the loss of her husband. And maybe, just maybe, ejecting her from the house and putting her someplace unfamiliar is exactly what she needs.

And still, still I can’t entertain the thought. I know I won’t do it.

But I have to wonder: am I insisting on keeping up that comfortable tedium for her sake, or for mine?

* * * * *

“How was your night, Mom?” I ask when we’re both showered and lying on that firm mattress I feel like she’s had since I was a little girl. “Did you enjoy having Ellen over?”

“Oh, it was fine, dear,” says Mom. “I hope you and Arthur had a nice time together.”

There it is again. When you’re burdened constantly by the presence of a loved one whose health is slipping; when you can’t discuss your feelings without censoring them for her benefit, save for the occasional quiet whisper when she’s napping; when you have to take turns sitting with Mom so one of you can lock the bedroom door and cry or go walk to the woods and scream; when you truly love the woman who is tearing apart your life; when you take all the anger and stress that’s building and turn it on yourself or your spouse because it’s more humane than aiming it at your dying mother; when you only have three hours out of the week to be alone with your spouse and let your guard down and really talk; then tell me, how are you supposed to have a nice time?

Is that cynical? Is it a terrible, petty thought? Is it an absurd question answered as easily as it’s asked with a shrug and a cute little string of words like “Don’t worry; be happy” or “Make every second count?” Glass half empty, glass half full? All that crap?

Maybe. Maybe I’m showing my true colors by even asking, outing myself as a cold and sad old woman.

Maybe, maybe, maybe.

Seems like I don’t know anything for sure anymore.

Confucius said,
“Real knowledge is to know the extent of one’s ignorance.”

That’s a quote I learned in college, but it’s taken years of applying the knowledge I thought I’d gained from my expensive education to appreciate the extent of my ignorance. In college, they sure as hell don’t teach you how ignorant you’ll be of everything that matters the day you get your degree.

Oscar Wilde said,
“Education is an admirable thing, but it is well to remember from time to time that nothing that is worth knowing can be taught.”

College taught me the quote. Life taught me that any time you have a thought, you can rest easy knowing somebody smarter and more successful than you already articulated it better than you ever will.

Or as Ralph Waldo Emerson put it,
“All my best thoughts were stolen by the ancients.”

Before my parents started dying, these were the thoughts that kept me up at night.

“It was good to have some time alone together,” I tell Mom.

“I’m sorry I keep you so cooped up all the time,” she says. “I hope you don’t hate me for it. It’s not fair, but I just can’t go with them yet. You understand that, don’t you?”

I sigh and nod. Already she’s back to this esoteric talk. Perfectly sound all day with Ellen and as soon as we’re alone together, this. “How are you feeling, Mom? I mean, really?”

“Oh, I feel fine. I know you think I’m just a crazy old woman, and I’m sorry. I hope when they come for you someday, in a really long time, I hope they won’t be so vengeful.”

I shudder. I don’t want to talk about
them
anymore. I don’t want to lie next to the woman who brought me up and listen to her talk cryptically about vengeful things that want to take her away as soon as she’s left alone. I don’t want her to believe it. I don’t want it to happen for her.

I turn on my side, facing away from her, and I fight back the tears. And that vile thought I wish would go away comes back.

I just hope it’s not much longer.

Another day here. Another week there.

I grade Social Studies tests while Mom and Arthur watch soap operas in the living room.

I drink tea with Mom and reminisce while Arthur goes off to see his psychic, a silly superstition he’s had as long as I’ve known him. I gave up giving him guff about it a long time back.

I go to school and deal with students, teach them their multiplication tables and how to spell “light.”

A phone call home to Arthur during first recess here. A few words with Mom during lunch there.

Arthur goes out and drinks with an old poker buddy while Mom tells me about
them
and I try not to cry.

A glass of wine here. A shot of vodka there.

A late afternoon nap. A sleep haunted by dreamlessness.

One day I come into the classroom in the morning and there’s a quote written across the board in big block letters:

“Any idiot can face a crisis—it’s day to day living that wears you out.”

Anton Chekhov. Apart from solidarity, it offers nothing. But when you get down to it, there’s never much to be offered in life beyond solidarity.

What Chekhov is doing on the chalkboard in a second grade classroom I have no idea. Apparently someone’s using my room after hours for something with a much more complex curriculum. Feels like the appropriate spirit for the current state of my life though.

I erase the text as the students come in.

At recess Arthur calls me sounding exhausted and I ask, “Is everything okay?”

“She’s been bad today,” he says. “Really somber. She’s talking about going with them, saying she doesn’t know why she keeps holding out. I think… I don’t know.”

I trace a hand over my desk and dig for strength. I wish I wasn’t here, sitting in a classroom while the real world runs its course without me. I wish I was at home with Mom more often for her time of need. I wish things were more peaceful for her, even if she was dying. I wish I wasn’t so angry all the time. I just wish. All the time, I just wish.

“Do you want me to talk to her?” I ask.

“She’s asleep. I don’t know, Edna, this is just… It’s getting really hard for me. Every day.”

“I know that. You think it isn’t hard for me? She’s my mother.”

“I know. I know it is, but you’re not here with her all the time like this. It wears on you.”

“That is…” I look around to double-check no students are in the room. “That’s bullshit, Arthur. You don’t get to be the one suffering right now. She’s dying and I’m losing a mother. Don’t tell me how it wears on you. You don’t know.”