In Nightmares We're Alone (28 page)

“How have your kids been treating you?” asks Ellen. She calls my students that. My kids. Neither of us ever reproduced, and I think it bothers her more than it does me.

“Well enough, I guess. My mind is mostly turned off at school the last few months. That’s my time off.”

“Sure.”

“And yours?” Ellen’s kids aren’t kids at all. She teaches university like I always thought I would. My grades were better, but her personality puts mine to shame.

“Not such a great bunch this semester, but there are some diamonds in the rough.”

I nod my head and stare through the windshield. This small talk. Think of any date you’ve been on and remember how fast we run out of thoughts to communicate when we discuss the present. The solution of the young is to speak of the future because their pasts are empty. The solution of the old is to talk about the past because their futures are empty. But when you’re old and sick of remembering, there’s nothing left to talk about at all.

A friend is a person you’re happy to sit with even when there’s nothing to say.

My education fails me, but I’m sure somebody’s said that better than I just did.

“I can’t believe Arthur,” I say. “Cowering outside the house like a child and refusing to go back. I married a toddler.”

Ellen laughs. “He’s got that childlike wonder in him. Always will. You knew that when you married him.”

“I guess.”

Yeah, I guess I even used to have it myself. I was supposed to be a writer. An artist. I was supposed to live in a fantasy world in my own head and it should have been easy married to that basket case. I had to go and grow up.

Arthur didn’t answer his phone when I called after work. I got him the cell phone but it’s always a crap shoot whether he charges it or takes it with him. The house phone and the cell both, he missed. He better not be expecting me to come home and make him dinner tonight. Even if he wants to bail on our shared responsibilities, I won’t. I’m not quitting until this house is packed, cleared out, and sold.

Then it’s a new life. Free of all the clutter of space and mind. No more past to weigh down the present. Maybe I’ll even sit down at that typewriter again.

Who am I kidding? That manuscript I tore up at sixteen was the most substantial work I ever did. The past dies in pieces, and it always feels like your favorite pieces die first.

* * * * *

I jump when I come up onto the porch with Ellen and see Arthur through the window, sitting on the couch. He’s got that pale look on his face and he’s staring down at the floor between his feet.

“What the hell?” I whisper.

Ellen stands next to me and looks in at him. She says nothing.

I unlock the door and as soon as I push it open I see him snap to attention and jump to his feet. He comes to me in the foyer and kisses my cheek.

“Edna,” he says. “I thought I’d come by and get some packing done while you were at work. I was going to meet you. I guess I lost track of the time.”

I look around. Maybe a few more boxes have been packed, I guess. The place looks about the same as it did yesterday.

“Wow,” I say. “I didn’t expect you to… How long have you been here?”

“A few hours. I was sitting at home not doing anything and it just seemed like… I mean, I thought… Hi, Ellen.”

“Hello.”

Something’s wrong here. I can tell when Arthur is keeping something from me. Still, there’s no subtle way of bringing up his lack of progress, even given the fact that there’s no doubt he already knows it’s what I’m thinking.

“So, what, uh… what room… have you been working on?”

“A bit of the kitchen,” he stumbles. “I, uh… Yeah, a bit of the kitchen. I was just having a little bit of a rest when you got here, and…”

“Arthur…”

I’m about to ask what he’s really doing here when Ellen cuts me off. “Well, there’s three of us here then. We should be able to make some real headway by tonight.”

“Yes we should,” says Arthur. “Yes we should.”

I nod my head and abandon my thought process. Oh well. If he’s here, he’s here, and if he’s willing to help then why rile him up?

I glance at the typewriter. No paper in it. Of course. Why would there be? I don’t even know why I looked.

We spend a few hours moving things out into the three piles in the living room.

High school yearbook.

Storage.

Mom’s ancient wedding dress.

Trash.

Set of screwdrivers.

Home.

Dad’s gramophone.

Yeah, Dad’s gramophone. That ancient thing sitting in the corner of the living room he used to play when I was a little girl and he’d come home drunk. And half the time he’d play
his
dad’s music. Stuff from almost a century ago.
Barney Google, with the goo-goo-googely eyes.
And he’d sing along and dance with Mom or me right there in front of the couch. He’d lift me up and kiss my cheek and then ask if I was ticklish before he nibbled my neck to make me laugh and squirm.

For a second I hear the music playing, the way I felt Mom’s touch in my hair the other day, a fantasy at first that becomes increasingly real until it scares me. Then I can feel Dad’s hands around my waist and smell the liquor on his breath. I feel his teeth on my neck and it’s so real I have to crook my neck to one side and put a hand against it in defense.

I spin around and everything goes back to normal. I’m standing in the living room with Ellen and Arthur and there’s nothing to see. Just an empty house where my parents used to live.

Stanislaw Jerzy Lec said it best:
“You can close your eyes to reality, but not to memories.”

One thing they never taught me in college was how to forget.

Dad’s gramophone goes in storage, with all the other things I can’t trash even though there’s no point in having them anymore.

* * * * *

“Are you guys getting hungry?” I ask at the end of three hours. It’s almost seven o’clock now.

“Not really,” says Arthur. “I say we keep working.”

“I could eat,” says Ellen after a pause.

“Yeah, I think it’s about time for dinner,” I say. “We’re making pretty good headway. Let’s all go out to a restaurant. We can sit down somewhere and reward ourselves.”

Arthur sighs. “There’s still a lot of work to be done. Why don’t we just order out?”

“I think I’d rather go out somewhere. Ellen?”

“Let’s go out.”

“Well, of course you know she’s going to agree with you.” He sounds sour.

Ellen and I exchange glances.

“Is something wrong, Arthur?”

“No. No. I just don’t think it makes sense to stop. We’ve got a few hours left before we need to be home, so why not keep at it? We could just about get this puppy finished tonight if we really put our backs into it.”

“I’m pretty tired,” I say. “Let’s go get a bite to eat and if we feel like it we can come back after. Otherwise, I mean, a day or two and we should be finished with it. What’s the big rush?”

Arthur grumbles. “Well, why don’t you two go out then and have your dinner and I’ll stay here and keep working.”

He goes back to throwing miscellaneous junk into a trash bag, ignoring us. I look over at Ellen, who gives me a confused look and a shrug.

“Arthur, can I talk to you in the other room?” I ask.

He drops the bag, frustrated and follows me into the dining room.

“What’s the problem?” I ask him. “Yesterday you told me you weren’t even coming back here. Today I can’t get you to stop. What’s going on?”

“Nothing. I want to be done with it. Is that so hard to understand?”

“A little bit. I told you I’d take care of it. It’s not—”

“But you would have been upset about it.”

I fold my arms and tap my index finger against my upper arm, an old nervous tic. “Not
that
upset. You’re acting strange.”

“No I’m not. I’m acting like I want to get done with all this and be out of this house. I told you I don’t like being here. I’m going to finish.”

“So if you don’t like being here then come with us and get out of the place for a while. You don’t even have to come back if you don’t want. Ellen and I can handle the rest.”

He thinks. “I…” He pauses and looks toward the window, searching for words, I guess. He sighs. “No. I need to work.”

I shake my head. “Okay. I guess if that’s what you want to do.” I start to head back into the living room.

“I wish you wouldn’t go,” he says.

I have to stop and turn back to him. There’s a sick feeling in my stomach all of a sudden and I’m not sure exactly why. Or maybe I just won’t let myself acknowledge it.

“I’m going,” I say. “You can stay or you can come, but Ellen and I are going to dinner.”

He stands there looking like a sad child as I head back into the living room and get my coat.

* * * * *

Ellen drops me off after dinner and we say our goodbyes. I’m heading up the steps to the porch and looking in through the window and I see Arthur sitting there on the couch in the living room, same as he was when I arrived with Ellen hours ago, staring at the floor between his feet. I shudder.

“Ready to go?” I ask as I open the door.

It doesn’t look like he got much organizing done after I left the house. There’s still a day or two of work left to be had. I don’t want to think that he spent all of the last two hours sitting alone in the silent living room staring at the floor, but, well, it’s the first thought that occurs.

“I’m not going,” says Arthur, refusing to look up at me.

That sick feeling in my stomach again. And suddenly I can’t blind myself to why it’s there.

“What do you mean you’re not going?”

“I can’t. I have to… stay here. I can’t go.”

“Until when?” I ask, trying as hard as I can not to sound terrified.

“Until I don’t know when. When we’re done, maybe. It’s… I shouldn’t have come back. My medium today told me he was a fraud and that there isn’t a spirit world, so I thought I could come confront this and get past it but… I wish I hadn’t come. I think… I think it has me.”

“Arthur, what are you saying?” My voice breaks as I ask him.

“I don’t know. It’s that feeling I had yesterday. Something has a hold of me. It won’t let me go.”

I’m overwhelmed by a combination of terror, grief, and anger I don’t know if I can take. I start pacing and breathing hard. “Oh, Jesus. Don’t do this, Arthur. Don’t. I can’t take this from you right now. Not from you.”

“I’m sorry.”

“No. I just lost a mother and a father. You don’t get to do this to me now. Not after that. We’re going right now. You said it felt worse when you got here. So it’ll feel better back at the apartment. Get your jacket. We’re going.”

“Edna,” he finally looks up at me. There are tears running down his face. It’s a little boy’s face. He looks younger than he did when I met him at twenty-two. “I can’t go. I’ll die if I go. You have to believe that.”

Seeing him crying like that, my eyes well up and my lip starts shaking, but I refuse to let myself break.

“Goddamn you, Arthur,” I say, and then I have to scream. “Goddamn you! How can you sit there and talk to me like this? How can you?”

“I don’t know what to do,” says Arthur, his voice shaking. “It has me. I’m so scared.”

I almost start crying, but I tell myself I won’t. I put a hand over my eyes for a moment and then wave it up over my shoulder. “I’m not doing this,” I say, heading for the door.

“Oh God, please, Edna. Please don’t leave me.”

I turn. He looks so pathetic there, sitting on the couch in the living room. His cheeks are curled down into a boyish frowning mask and there’s snot running out of his nose and I start to smell urine but I can’t bear to let my eyes confirm what I already know.

This isn’t fair. It isn’t fair to me. Months of looking after two senile parents and guiding them to the other side and when we’re this close to packing up the house and being done with it, my psychotic, ghost-befriending husband is going to sit in the living room blubbering and pissing his pants as he echoes their symptoms. It’s wrong. He’s too young for dementia and it’s cruel of him to get weak enough to put me through this. I’ve buried my father and mother and I’ve watched them suffer and spiral into death ungracefully. I can’t watch a husband do the same thing. Not now.

I force myself to look away from him and my eye catches the typewriter with a new sheet of paper in it. I rush to it and rip it out of the carriage.

“When did you write this? Why?” I ask Arthur.

“W-what?”

“This quote. It wasn’t here when we left. I looked. Why did you write it?”

“I didn’t. I… What does it say?”

“Nothing. Gibberish.”

“Let me see.”

“It’s just a quote by Yeats.” I wish I hadn’t mentioned it to him now. I wish I’d ignored it. I don’t want to show him these words.

“Edna, let me see it.”

I hesitate. When I can’t think of anything better to do, I hand it to him.

It reads:
“The world is full of magic things, patiently waiting for our senses to grow sharper.”

“But they’re not patient,” says Arthur, crying. “It’s a lie! They’re anything but patient! They’re merciless!”

I look him in the eye. “I’m leaving. You should come with me.”

“I can’t,” he says. “Edna, I’m begging you. Stay with me. I’m so sorry. I need you to understand.”

“Arthur,” I say, and for the first time I feel one of those tears break free and run down the side of my face. “Arthur, please.
I’m
begging
you.
”

He just sits there in that puddle of his filth, looking at me with those infant-like eyes, and I stare back trying to control the flow of tears as best I can. And after a while, when he doesn’t answer, I walk outside. As soon as I do, the wind blows the door shut behind me. I take one last look at him through the window before I get in my car and go back to the apartment.

It’s the first night in a quarter of a century that I sleep without Arthur in the house with me. It won’t be the last.

I wish Arthur had his cell phone with him. I wish I’d woken up early and stopped by the house to check on him before I went to class. Brought him his cell so I could call him at recess and ask how he’s feeling.