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I still think of him as Red Shoes, but his name is Richard. We’ve been together four times now. I’m teaching him how to touch me without taking me over. When he pushes into me, I resist the idea that he’s also pushing into my mind, taking possession, unscrewing my brain and rearranging things. Usually, I like the merge and mingle. Usually by this time, I’m in love. Clara says that the fact that I’m not proves my meds are working.
Richard and I are in bed when he says he’s sure he’s met me before. “When I was young and beautiful?” “You’re still beautiful, and who could forget that stare?” “That stare? Don’t you mean the bottomless blue of my eyes, or the deep and solemn expression?” I get this a lot. One guy told me I seemed so deep, it scared him. “Nope. It’s the stare of some wild thing selecting a particular victim.” I don’t know whether to take this as a compliment or not, so I throw it back to him, “You do a variation on that, you know. You don’t blink, not hardly at all.” He wraps me in his arms. That circle of skin and sagging muscle is my new favorite place in the world, except that right now it feels too clammy and way too tight. “If I blink I might miss something,” Richard says. When he looks at art, he doesn’t miss much, I’ll grant him that. He can identify the influences in my work, knows the differences between abstract and German expressionism. It’s what he’s yammering on about right now. I wait until the lull in his stream of words tells me it’s my turn to speak. “Yes, they call me an expressionist, but I’m not just that. There’s subjectivity, realism and logic in my work, too.” He agrees, but then he launches into pseudo art-speak, starts in on the quality of controlled randomness in my work. He compares me with Degas. “I think of that Degas painting where the dancers are arranged in what seems to be a sort of randomness, but the composition is still very much controlled. That’s what I’m getting at,” he says as if I’m the one somehow missing the point. As if his opinion matters to me. Not yet, it doesn’t. My turn. “Talking about controlled randomness, I find that same quality in nature, too, like the trajectory of a star. There is some chance in my work when I put, say, white acrylic over grey chalk and charcoal, slashing the white with more charcoal to finish up with a texture and a degree of dark- light that works well with the whole thing. That moment of chance is stored as experience.” He cuddles up real nice, drinking in every word I say. When I’m done, I get the sensation that, in this moment, we’re all the other one has. I read once that we’re ghosts driving skeletons of stardust; so what the hell do we have to be afraid of? I begin to touch him the way I’d like to be touched. He gets the idea, and we stop talking entirely. Afterwards, I am still empty of words and I hope he doesn’t start speaking again. He has the ability to pick up where he left off, conversation-wise, no matter the nature of the interruption. I really don’t want to hear any more of his opinions on art, but when he casually mentions that he has pull with some people at the local art museum, I perk up. “Why haven’t you gotten me a show there, then?” I demand, arms crossed over my bare chest. My mind supplies the rolling pin and bandana. Ordinarily, I’d let him tease me with possibilities, but ordering people around comes more naturally to me now. Maybe it always did, but I vaguely remember a time when I was polite. Considerate. Demanding what I want is a more efficient means to a quicker end these days. No crossed wires or ambiguities. “I’m one step ahead of you, babe.” He snaps to attention and salutes as if he’s here to serve me. I like that, but I hate it when he calls me babe. He gets up and goes to his desk. He opens a heavy notebook and runs down a list of dates. “How’s the 22nd? Give you enough time to get enough work together? The 22nd is my birthday, by the way!” He grins, and years fall from his face. “Is it? Well, yeah. That would be fun to have the show on your birthday.” I can afford to be charitable here. We get dressed and I take Richard to the house for a studio visit so I can pick out pieces for the show. He’s impressed by the beauty of the house, the beams and cathedral ceiling, the original sixties fixtures that once looked futuristic and now look retro. We go into my studio. It used to be the room my sister and I shared when we were girls, before Clara wanted her teenage privacy. I still don’t know what for. I never took up much space in our white canopy bed. Anyways it’s my studio now, and I keep it locked up. I think Richard understands that I am making a rare exception to my own rule by ushering him in. It is overflowing with canvases. They aren’t the only ones; the room where Steven used to sleep is stacked high with pictures, too. And the studio he built for me in the garage is also chock-full. Plus, there’s the storage room I rent for a monthly fee, to keep my most daring work safe. So I think I have enough for a show at the little local museum! “These are wonderful!” he says, picking each canvas up in turn and peering closely at my marks. “The colors are so rich. How did you get this red? I want to eat it!” “Careful of those. They’re still wet.” “OK. Look at this one. Interesting. Still the luscious color, but the subject is so dark.” “Really? What do you think you see?” “The green figure in both of these seems to be tormenting the second figure.” “Maybe the second figure deserves it.” “Ha! I wouldn’t want to be on your bad side, baby girl.” “No, you wouldn’t.” It’s probably only in my imagination that the hair on the back of his neck seems to stiffen. “So, what about pricing the pictures?” “Oh, you won’t make money from this exhibit. Did you really think you would? No, the pictures are always donated or at least lent by the artist.” “I don’t want to just give them away!” “They would be seen in a prestigious place. Otherwise they’re warping in a locked room in your mother’s house, right? Like beautiful Rapunzels in a fairytale tower.” He picks up a painting and examines the stripping I had put on it. I don’t do things like that very well anymore; it’s all kind of lopsided. Which drug made me do that again? The same one that tugged me over the curb on right turns? I can’t remember. “We’ll be framing these again at our expense,” Richard says. “I’m surprised you didn’t know all the usual conventions. I thought you had shown in museums before.” “Only two. A long time ago.” “Which ones? Or can’t you remember that, either?” Why would he needle me now about my bad memory? I thought he hadn’t even noticed it was a problem. I wrack my brain for the museum names, and finally spit them out. “The Drawing Center? In New York? What year was that?” I do a quick calculation. He says, “I was working there around that time. I may have curated your show.” He sits back on his heels and looks up at me. “Perhaps that’s why you seem so familiar to me.” He looks back down at my canvases and makes a list of the pictures he wants to include in the show. I guess I don’t get to choose. “Do you have any memorabilia from the old museum show?” he asks. “Postcards, announcements, reviews?” I think of the desk in my bedroom stuffed with the flotsam and jetsam of many shows. “If I kept any of that for a while, I’m sure I don’t have it now. There was a good review in the Times but I never got to see it. One of my friends read it, but didn’t send me a copy. She said it was very positive.” “Where is this friend now?” “Oh, she moved to the coast. She slept on a bed propped up on stilts in her apartment in NYC for a few years. The place was so tiny, she couldn’t fit her boyfriend in it, and so they moved.” “Too bad you never saw the review. So many documents disappeared when information went digital.” He finishes his list, with dimensions and medium neatly written beside titles. He takes out his iPhone, quickly duplicates the information to his files, tears off the handwritten page and gives it to me. “I’m guessing you’re not very computer-savvy, so this copy is for your records. Try not to lose it.” After Richard leaves, I tell Clara that he possibly curated my first big show. “Too bad I didn’t keep the catalogue or anything.” “You have it, actually. It’s in Mom’s big desk. She kept a record of all your successes until she couldn’t anymore. And I put everything else into a big computer file. All your reviews, articles about you, shows, grants, resumes, artist statements, image list, and magazine publications are there. Everything is up to date.” “I’d like to see that file sometime.” “Sure. How about now?” We open the drawer, and there’s the catalogue. I lift it out and search the names of the organizers and everyone involved. Though it’s such a common name, there is not one ‘Richard’ in the book. So, it’s a few days later and already I’m exhausted. Once the preparations for the show got underway I thought I could just relax and let the museum’s team take care of the details. “They do have staff for that, don’t they?” I say to Richard as he lists all the tasks he thinks are my share of the work. “Staff is severely overtaxed right now. The artists are usually glad to help with their own shows.” “We’re the ones supplying the actual work. I think that would make up our share.” I watch the storm gather in his eyes. He says nothing but looks as if he’d like to say plenty. I wonder how hot his temper runs. Not as hot as mine, I’m guessing. And he has better control, I see that already. Anyways, it turns out that I have to pitch in to make the show happen. All the tasks that come with a big exhibit—getting the word out with posters and flyers, sending invitations—most of that work falls to me. Steven and Clara volunteer to help me, but not Eddie or Mom. Mom used to do this kind of thing for her arts groups, but apparently she can’t anymore. The rest of us make postcards and mailers, and then run around town putting announcements up. After a few hours, we take a break at the coffee shop. I go to order at the counter, leaving the other two alone at the table. Over all the noise, I can still hear the rumble of Steven’s voice. It sounds a lot like Dad’s, and it carries. “I have a question,” he is saying to Clara. “Why did you have to go and put Mandy’s picture up on Facebook when she ran away last year? It was really embarrassing to see her giant face in my feed.” “Her detective suggested it.” Maybe he did and maybe he didn’t. It’s the first I’m hearing about it. “Anyhow, Facebook is a lousy place to put her art. There are always the same few people commenting. She needs a real website. Her art career is all smoke and mirrors anyway. I just hope you keep doing whatever you’re doing for her. If you stop, she might take it out on Mom.” I hold my breath, waiting to see if Clara follows Steven’s clue. She doesn’t. She rushes past it with this: “First of all, she does have an actual professional website and a blog. I know you don’t know anything about art, but she’s done well, especially in view of the fact that she’s been disabled by this awful disease for so long.” “I thought she stabilized after her first breakdown and was able to live a normal life.” Steven was good at taking a few facts and weaving them into a theory that’s plausible, but still a good distance from the whole truth. “Hardly. Mandy’s first breakdown sidelined her permanently with anxiety attacks and other fallout. But with a lot of help and the money Dad left her, she’s been able to manage. She got this museum show all on her own for instance.” “But she’s not doing it all on her own, is she? Otherwise, we wouldn’t be doing what we’re doing for her right now.” “This is like giving a friend a lift to the airport!” “It still takes time out of my real life, and yours. How long are you going to keep looking after her? Are you just going to run between her needs and Mom’s? What about your career? It looks like you’re giving up a lot for a couple of lost causes.” I don’t want to know Clara’s answer to that so I don’t listen to that part. I know my mind has lost its stickiness. My thoughts are stalled. There are traces of dead cells left in my brain from the psychosis and I can’t remember things like what Mom ate at what time, or how much. Eddie and Clara ask me and I have no answer for them. I get mad at them for bothering me, but they say they’re trying to help me rewire my brain. They think it will help my concentration back if I answer their questions. They say my psychosis scarred my brain and made me lose empathy and patience. Like when a friend was diagnosed with cancer—all I could think of to say to her was, “What are you going to do now, lie around and wait to die?” I can’t remember hardly anything, like the names of things. My logic is shot, too, and sometimes I can’t even tell. One of my friends went blind, but I sent her some of my pictures anyway. She said, “Don’t you remember I can’t see?” and I said, “Well, can your husband look at them for you?” “He can look at them,” she said, “but his ability to see doesn’t make me any less blind.” I didn’t understand the concept for a long, frustrating minute. When I finally got it, I gasped and clicked off the phone. I haven’t called her back since. Maybe I should. I’m better now, and she might like to know about my show. She might like to come. Anyways, after a day of doing these little jobs for the opening, I collapse on Richard’s bed. I glance at the threadbare, dingy surroundings. This guy is going to make me a star? “You’ve got that look on your face again,” he says, settling some pillows at his back. “What’s bugging ya? Wouldn’t want to bug ya.” He likes to incorporate song lyrics into conversations. It’s cute, he thinks, and maybe it is. I smile just in case. “Just wondering why your decorators don’t want your money.” “There have been no further renovations because I’ve had no time to oversee the project. I’m besieged with myriad tasks for a certain show.” He puts his arm around me and squeezes. I think girdle. I think python. “One wonders why you care about such flourishes. One wonders if you are experiencing the nesting impulse that so often follows mating.” He thinks I’m sizing up the place so I can move in with him? I laugh. “Don’t flatter yourself. I already have a nest, and it is way nicer than yours.” Richard removes his arm from around me, props himself up like a block of ice against the pillow. After a beat or two of sullen silence, he asks in a hard-edged voice, “Did you tack the announcements up where I told you to?” “Yes. It took longer than I thought it would. I had to make each little drawing, the ones you asked for, different from one another. That was the biggest time-sink. To think all Picasso had to do was scribble on a napkin and people would hand over all their money.” “The drawings were just a suggestion! The important thing was to put the show info on the paper. You didn’t forget that, did you, in your creative fervor?” “Of course not. My point is, it took time. My brother and sister helped me with some of the grunt work earlier, but I had to do everything else by myself.” I got up from the bed and started for the door. “Leaving, are we?” “Clara’s been calling for me to bring back her car. She says I made her re-schedule Mom’s medical appointment.” “Why didn’t she take a cab?” “Maybe she didn’t think of it.” “Strange, when that’s exactly what she expects you to do most of the time. Has she always kept you on such a short leash?” “No leash. She just trusts me to do what I promise.” It went both ways. I trust you with my life. “I’ll see you later.” I fumble for my keys. Richard comes up behind me and lays his hand on my arm. “Spend the night,” he says. It’s more like a command than an invitation or seduction, although he does remember to smile. As if it’s settled, he pats my arm with a touch meant to remind me that although I may be talented, I’m not as bright as I think I am, or even as bright as I once was. It’s a theory he’s come up with lately. Intelligence and creativity are two different things, he says. He says it when I have trouble reaching for a particular word, or when I mix up the order I’m supposed to do things in. But right now, I am fully functional, and I have no difficulty in finding the word for goodbye. An hour later Clara and I are tucking Mom in, and I pause to stretch my back. I know I’m going to regret this, but I say, “I’m not sure about Richard. He’s making me work too hard on my own show.” I don’t want to complain about him but I can’t resist it, even if Clara thinks I’ve gotten involved with yet another guy she’ll have to rescue me from. It’s happened before. I think back to the one guy my old roommate from art school set me up with. I didn’t know he was bi-polar at the time, but my roommate Brenda sure did. I thought she got us together to punish me for being a better artist than she was. She was the jealous type and it was a dirty trick. Anyways, he just moved right into my little efficiency and wouldn’t get out. Clara had to come get me. The guy argued with us the whole time we were packing up the apartment. He wouldn’t give back the key and I worried he’d trash the place after I left, but my first priority was to escape. It was winter and the roads were covered in black ice. Clara and me, we made a slow getaway, picking our way over the glassy road to the car, the guy in hot but slo-mo pursuit. So, I moved back into Clara’s and my old apartment, which I should never have left anyways, but it was a while before either of us girls felt safe again. “Your Richard probably doesn’t wield any power over the actual museum staff,” Clara says to me while we fold over Mom’s covers. “He probably has to cajole the director in letting him have one of the volunteers help him. It’s a very small museum, and they all operate on shoestring budgets.” “It may be a small museum but it’s a very big deal to have a show at any museum!” “Of course it is!” She stops her tucking-in and hugs me, as if she could gather all my broken bits together. She didn’t mean to belittle me, she never does, but suddenly her hug feels shallow and condescending. Sometimes I wonder if she’s really on my side. Richard’s voice whispers in my ear. Trust me. I want to tell him that I do, but I know he can’t hear me. “I’m getting anxious,” I announce to my mother and sister. I leave them to lie down on my bed. My excuse isn’t true for once, but I want Clara to feel guilty for ruining my excitement about the show and for not trusting Richard. For all I know, she’s the one who can’t be trusted. From my bed, I watch the red numbers on my clock pass the time. I try to let the sweep of seconds regulate my breath. When I finally fall asleep it’s to slip in and out of the skin of a dream in which Richard is a security cop in a museum. He stares at the paintings on the walls until he has absorbed all he can about art, and then he turns his back to them. All of the pictures are by me. Fakes, he mouths, and I jolt upright. Richard has a surprise. We’re in the parking lot of his complex, and he’s trying to make me guess what it is. I’m not in the mood for his games, but just before I tell him to just spit it out already, he points to the new car parked alongside us. I noticed it when we first pulled up. It’s a nice hatchback in my favorite shade of blue. He pulls the keys out of the ignition of the car we’re in, and hands them to me. “Now you won’t have to depend on your sister’s largesse.” I’m confused; didn’t he buy the new car for me? “The new blue one is mine.” He reads my face and comes to his own wrong conclusion. “We can do the paperwork whenever you feel like it. I could sell this car to you for $100 or something. If you don’t want to be bothered with any of that, you can consider it a loan.” “Thanks, Richard. I’ll think of it as a loan, then.” He had been very pleased with himself a few moments before, but deflates pretty fast from my lack of enthusiasm. I don’t really need a borrowed car. Clara lets me use hers pretty much whenever I want. Besides, her car is nicer than Richard’s. Nicer even than his new one. He’s lucky I’ve always kind of liked junkers anyways. They’ve got eccentricities I can relate to. “Oh, I made you a key to the apartment, too.” He loosens it from his chain, and hands it to me. “You can give me yours later.” “What? You want the key to my mother’s house?” “You always refer to it as your house.” “It isn’t, not legally. I’m not authorized to give out keys. My sibs make those kinds of decisions for Mom.” “Why? Do they think you’re some kind of second-stringer kind of child?” “As a matter of fact, they do.” For a moment I’m tempted to explain my medical situation, but I lose my nerve. He waits for more words, then harrumphs, “I see,” seeing nothing. Now I’ve made him mad. He can’t have really expected I’d just hand over the house keys, could he? That’s pretty presumptuous. We aren’t even officially exclusive yet. I mean, neither of us has said anything about it. Besides, the whole family lives in that house. He’s not family. We enter the apartment and he occupies himself in the kitchen for longer than necessary. While I wait for him to come back into the living room, I pick up the topmost volume from his pile of books and ledgers. All of a sudden he leaps out and across the room like a dancer, and snatches the book from me. Is he trying to make me laugh? No, that’s not it. Why would he hide the fact that he’s reading a book on the art of cracquelure? I’m just glad he’s a reader. A wise man once said that if you go home with someone and he doesn’t have books, don’t fuck him. Richard picks up another art book, this one full of color plates. He turns on the lamp and motions for me to sit beside him on the sofa. We thumb through the pages together until the rhythm of turning them begins to relax us both. We look over a painting of a woman surrounded by her children. “Did you come from a big family?” Suddenly I want to know things. “Nope. Just me and Mother.” “That must have been lonely.” “Wrong again. Mother had lots of company. My main issue was getting enough privacy.” That’s odd. “I thought I heard you telling a story about your two brothers and a sister when we were at that opening last week.” It struck me as funny, because I’m the one with two brothers and a sister. “Are you calling me a liar?” he snarls. A chill fingers my spine. I don’t want this guy to bare his teeth at me, so I casually say, “You say that like it’s a bad thing.” He laughs an unexpectedly full laugh and squeezes my shoulder. We are on the same side again. Relieved, but eager to change the subject, I point to some elements in the painting spread across my knees, deconstructing it and reconstructing it until the parts jell again and it becomes a painting once more. I make soft comments about technicalities. Technical talk seems to soothe him. “Think you could paint something like this?” He turns the page to a Francis Bacon painting. “Sure. We did lots of copying in art school. That’s all it was, basically, copying and nude modeling.” “So you were one of those girls?” “Lots of us did it. One woman who had just given birth posed for the class a lot one semester. Milk coming out all the time.” “You weren’t shy about getting naked?” “I’d get mad when the non-art students gawked as they passed the room, but you get used to the nudity.” We look at a few more pictures. “You could copy this one. It’s my favorite, and I do have a birthday coming up.” He’s mentioned his birthday a few times now. A man his age! It’s sneer-worthy, but I look at the picture closely enough to make him think I just might do what he wants. I can’t imagine why he would want a copy of someone else’s painting when he could have an original by me, though. I thought he liked my work. He’s making a point with his request. I just don’t know what it is. Later, I watch him sleep, trying to figure what goes on behind his bulging lids. In the morning, I drive back home in his loaner car. Anyways, Mom can’t really walk very well after the fracture. She lists down the hall like a shipwreck. Steven’s helping her, I have to admit. He’s like some kind of mother-whisperer. Mom seems fascinated by him without knowing who he is, and she follows him around the house, holding his hand. She still cannot call him by the name she gave him. That used to be his reason for not visiting her much. Now he is finding out there are ways of knowing a person besides reciting their name, rank, and serial number.
He’s up to something. He always has a plan. When he first got here, he shuffled through the rooms like some demoralized old man, clicking his camera at the disrepair. Now he’s hired carpenters to fix the hole in the kitchen ceiling and all kinds of stuff, to get the house up to code for when we eventually sell it. Workers barge in, all day every day. Mom doesn’t like it. She hushes everybody all the time. One morning, I’m gathering up Mom’s bedding to carry to the laundry room. Steven takes the bundle from me. They all do this, take things out of my hands to do themselves. We go downstairs to load the machine. “So, how are you doing, Mandy? I mean, really?” “I’m ok. I just came across Mom’s eyeglasses! She hid them behind her bedside table. She hides things now, like her dentures and her glasses.” “Were they damaged?” “They were kind of oddly shaped, yeah. She must have sat on them. I don’t think she can read out of them.” “Read? Mom can’t still read, can she?” “I thought she could. I thought she just wasn’t reading the paper because she didn’t have her glasses.” “You’re talking about the same paper she likes to compulsively rip to shreds? Uh, Mandy— Mom’s too far along in her disease to be able to read.” His words jolt me, but thinking about them, they make sense. “I did catch her tearing up that nice book you gave her yesterday.” “The one on the coffee table?” “Yeah.” “I’ll just move it to the piano. Tearing up stuff is an Alzheimer behavior. Is that why I heard you yelling at her? To make her stop?” I nod. I didn’t think anyone heard me yelling. I wouldn’t even call it yelling. I barely raised my voice. “Well, don’t yell at her. She doesn’t understand what you want. We just have to baby-proof the space. We did that for my kids when they were little, remember? We didn’t expect them to anticipate outcomes of their actions. Same thing here.” Steven turns from me and sets the washer going. On the way out of the laundry room, we nearly trip over some boxes he plans to take to the second-hand shop. “I think our old deck of cards is in that one,” he says, pointing. I open the lid and lift out the pack. My past leaps up dragging memories behind it. The school pool we filled with soap, the metronome left ticking slowly in our sister’s locker, shoplifting at the drug store. I didn’t know at the time we were making our best memories. We always think that one good time will lead to an even better time. We never foresee the fun ending. The empty seats I keep in my brain fill up with ghosts. “Let’s play some of those games we used to like,” Steven says. So we do. We cut, shuffle, and deal, and I feel better the whole time we’re doing it. It’s a nice moment, but it’s the lull before the storm. That night at dinner, Mom slumps forward onto the table, and loses consciousness. “Call 911!” Eddie shouts while Clara is doing just that. “Is she breathing?” she says, repeating the questions the operator asks as he asks them. “Yes, she’s breathing. I’m taking her BP right now.” Steven crouches beside Mom, holding her so she doesn’t slip off her chair while Eddie takes her pressure. “They say to get her flat onto the kitchen floor.” The brothers lift her smoothly as if they had been a team all their lives. While the paramedics speed to the house, Mom becomes so pale and still, we’re afraid that it’s the end. Steven is white as a sheet. Finally he sees what we go through. Mom wakes up just as the paramedics carry her out to the ambulance, wakes up long enough to resist. She means it too. At the hospital, she’s still making a fuss, yanking her IV out and slapping at the techs. No no no is what she says to everything. The doc says she had torpor, but can’t say much more about it. It’s some blood pressure issue and he warns us we can expect more of these episodes. They’ll keep her overnight this time. Then the doctor clears his throat and adds, “While she has not injured herself this time, I’m sorry to say that your mother has developed normal pressure hydrocephalus. Sometimes it happens as a result of head injury. Has she taken any blows lately?” Three siblings trade shocked expressions while the fourth’s head shakes a vigorous denial. “Hydrocephalus can tamper with your mother’s disposition, wreak havoc with balance, and consequently interfere with walking. It produces headaches, causes hearing loss, things of that type. We are not considering shunting, but her decline will accelerate now. I’d like to take her off Aricept, since it is obviously no longer working.” Eddie quizzes the doctor, “What would happen to her brain if her drugs were withdrawn?” “I worry more about what the drugs are doing to her body. Her sleep disturbances are probably a side effect of Aricept. Cardio-vascular problems such as bradycardia, extrapyramidal symptoms, and behavioral disturbances can all develop.” “I asked about the effect on her brain,” Eddie digs in. “We understand from friends whose parents stopped their drugs that there is often a rapid, steep decline. The patients’ personalities change and they become too aggressive to handle at home. We don’t want Mom to die in a nursing facility.” “You’ll just prolong the inevitable if you keep her on the Aricept. She has no quality of life as it stands.” “She has things she enjoys! She’s not in pain, she recognizes the family, and seems to appreciate us. Quality of life is always subjective and she’s entitled to every minute nature gives her. She doesn’t need to be hurried on her way.” The doctor, only half-listening now, offers, “We can find some place to put her. You don’t have to keep her at home.” “We want to keep her at home. It’s her house!” “As you wish,” the doctor says. When she does come back home, Mom’s more depressed than she usually is after one of these events. The emergencies take a cumulative toll, Clara says, but how can they, if Mom forgets about them as soon as they happen? Still, some trace of trauma must remain. Otherwise, why does Mom stand at the window and cry for a few minutes whenever Clara pulls out of the driveway? The sight of her at the smudged glass, watching the car retreat into an ocean of light and shadow, makes me wonder if she thinks that she has lost Clara for good, that she is never coming back. She doesn’t know that she is the one who’s lost, a woman adrift in a drowning world. A few days later, I say to Clara, “When I have no more responsibilities around here, I’m going back to school and get a master’s degree in art. I might as well go to New York for school. One of my friends lived there for a while. If he can manage NYC in a wheelchair, I can manage it with my problems. Anyways, my friend Michi might come with me if the school has an undergraduate program she’d like to study.” “Have you mentioned this to your doctor?” Clara takes her cue from whatever the doc says, I notice. She’s careful not to say anything that will upset me. “The doc says it’s a great plan, but to be careful because New York is so chaotic. I can handle chaos. And who knows− maybe I’ll meet a boy there.” I get no encouragement about that from Clara. So I drill down a little to what’s really bothering me. “I keep getting the feeling that I’m going to be left alone to take care of Mom, even though the whole family is living here again. I don’t want to be the one to watch her die.” “I’ll be here. What am I, chopped liver?” “I know you do a lot. You give Mom her bath and you feed her, you’ve taken over all my old jobs. Maybe I’m just crabby because I can’t get Dad to nod in my head lately. I ask him questions like always, but he never materializes anymore. There’s just a wavy grey light where he used to show up. I know he was only a hallucination, but I miss him.” “But that’s great news! It means your medicine is working and your brain is healing!” “Except that my head feels empty instead of clear, the way it should. It’s like the more I get involved in ordinary life, like with Mom and household chores, the emptier and more depressed I feel.” Ever since we were young, Clara’s believed my happiness was all up to her. Where do these ideas come from? She thinks for a minute and offers me her advice: “Family life can’t fill all your needs. It isn’t very interesting by itself, but it can give you structure and some peace. Maybe you should go into your studio more. That’s where the real excitement is. I can look after Mom most of the time, and we can always hire Chris the nurse to fill in the gaps. With so many helpers, none of us has to exhaust ourselves.” I take her at her word. Next time everyone goes out, I call Chris to stay with Mom so I can work in my studio without being interrupted every five minutes. I may as well work, because otherwise they will complain that I’m snapping at Mom. She’s not that hard to look after, if you really want to know. All she wants to do is sit on the big white couch anyways, but she won’t stay still. She wedges herself in the crack between the sections, and falls through onto the floor. I keep telling her not to do it, but she does it all the time. I come out of my studio at the end of Chris’ shift just as she’s getting ready to leave the house. “Your Mom sure was a handful today.” “What happened?” I say, peeling bills off the wad of money Eddie left for me to pay her. “She went downstairs even though I told her not to. Then she picked up the wastebasket and for no reason threw the junk all around. I made her pick it up, and she kinda lost her balance when she went to kneel down, and kinda fell. It was really hard for me to yank her back up. I might have hurt my arm.” She rubs it to illustrate. I open my mouth but no words come. I freeze as the scene plays out in my mind in slow motion. Chris standing over Mom, forcing her down on her ancient worn knees, destabilizing her injured back, her artificial hip twisted. Chris browbeating her, just because she can. “I made her pick up the garbage so you wouldn’t have to,” Chris simpers. I can’t move. The money is still in my hand and Chris pries it out. She changes her tone, snarling at me, “Don’t you dare tell your brothers about this. If you do, I’m quitting.” Why don’t I fire her right then and there? Slap her, trip her, push her down the stairs? Threaten to report her? Actually report her, right in front of her fat face. Instead, I ask her to come back on Thursday. After Chris leaves, I stretch out along the couch opposite Mom and try to calm down. Mom seems recovered already, but I need a pill. My down jacket is scrunched up behind the throw pillows, and I sit up and search the pockets for medication. No luck, so I get up to look in the bottles in my room, but before I go, I float the jacket over the sofa cushions over the trouble spot where they easily separate. Mom smiles and swats the jacket away. The cushions part and she falls through the crack onto the floor. A few days later, Clara is interviewing aides to replace Chris. She doesn’t really care what I have to say about the candidates. Last night, I overheard her and Eddie talking about how I’m not the nurse I used to be. They’re saying things like I staged Mom’s kidnapping, that I bark orders at her. “Did Mom fall off the couch a lot before I moved back in?” Clara asks Eddie. He says, “Never,” and I feel the urge to flee. So I borrow Clara’s car and go to the coffee shop to take another stab at getting my life back. Who knows, I might find a new face to paint. I’ll wait for a while to see who shows up. Two of the women who were regulars recently moved, another one died, and my friend Cherie, who organized the whole art salon/coffee klatch idea, rarely comes anymore. “Her husband got sick. She sticks to him like glue, now,” says her best friend Sue. I wish he’d just die so we could have her back. Today, there are two new girls here. They are sisters and they sing to patients in hospitals, hymns and all like that. I think we might be interested in one another, so I unzip my grey case to show them my new pictures, plus the catalogue from the portraits show. They didn’t go to the opening, and I get the feeling they think they should apologize for it. They should. They really don’t know anything about art, and can’t give me sensible comments, so I change the subject and start to tell them my recent medical adventures. I generally don’t want people to know how crazy I was, but some people I just like to freak out. Like these two. They shrink back and angle their bodies away from me to discourage me from talking, so I keep going. I give them the most exciting highlights from the newsreel in my head: the thousand dollar cab ride, how to recognize a warlock, all the hiding places for pills in a person’s mouth when faking a swallow. I watch the girls’ eyes the whole time. Watch them wince and widen, wince and widen. “After I’m fully stable, I’ll wean myself off these drugs.” The sisters gasp, and Susan’s eyes flicker with interest. “The state will never let you. You’re their bitch now.” “I doubt it. Did I tell you I bought a gun? I thought Eddie was going to rape and kill us, so I bought a gun and some ammunition.” Susan stares at me, hard. The new girls fidget. “How did you get cleared? You were psychotic.” “I don’t know. There was no waiting period like I thought.” “Did you write down your real name?” “Yeah.” “Didn’t they ask you about mental illness?” “Yeah, but I just lied. They never caught on.” “Where is the gun now?” “I forget. In the back of a closet, I guess.” “You’re not sure? Is it loaded?” “Dunno. Boy, I can’t believe I was ever that nutty.” “Oh well. As Alice said to the Mad Hatter, all the best people are.” Susan’s comment seems a good one to adjourn on. The two sisters can’t get away fast enough. Susan saunters out at a more leisurely pace. She wouldn’t want me to think she’s afraid of me or anything. She’s pretty tough, but I enjoy finding the limit to people’s bravado. I’m not done with my coffee, so I look around to see if there is anyone interesting to talk to while I drink it. I need to get my mind off Eddie and Clara. Their words, never meant for me to hear, grab me by the throat over and over again. I shouldn’t have responsibilities for Mom, not hardly at all, they say. I’m not up to it, they say. I don’t care. I’m a painter, not a caregiver. I look up from my mug and glance around the room. I notice the red shoes first. My eyes travel the length of the man in them. Lots of long grey hair, faded from the original blond I bet, pulled back in a ponytail like mine. Pale blue eyes, haggard face but broad in the shoulders. Beautiful hands, long tapered fingers like a violinist. He’s talking into his phone about art and auctions, furiously writing in a black ledger just like the one I record my anxiety attacks in. See, we already have lots in common. I know I’m staring. My stare usually makes people uncomfortable, like I’m sizing them up for dinner, but this guy likes it. He quickly ends his telephone call, smiles, and comes over to my table. He sits himself right down. “You’re the painter, right?” “Yeah, I paint.” “I saw your show the other day. Are you as mysterious as your work?” “Me? I’m an open book,” I say with what I hope is a mysterious smile. I flip my ponytail for good measure. His pupils enlarge. “I’d like to read that book.” “Open mic or private reading?” He’s already rising out of his chair and offering me his hand. This is one advantage of having reached a certain age. No cat-and-mouse games. We both know there’s no time to waste. We drive to his apartment in separate cars. There’s no reason for me to mistrust him—after all, his intentions are clear— but I like to have an easy exit. I notice that Clara’s car is nicer than his. With all that grey hair, shouldn’t he have a better one? Oh well, maybe he’s driving his coffee shop car, and the Mercedes is in his garage. What garage? He turns into an apartment complex like the kind my after-care organization uses for their subsidized housing program. Two long tiers of the kind of space people rent when they’re waiting for something to happen in their lives, or else when they’ve just given up. How many of these apartments are simply storage facilities? Maybe there’s a studio or two tucked in with them for starving artists living off the grid. He eases out of his parked car and motions for me to take the space next to his. He does it with a little bow and I laugh outwardly but cringe on the inside. You know how homeowners in Britain like to name their houses? I’d name this apartment Cold Coffee or something. It’s bare, beyond austere, with only the essential pieces of second hand furniture tossed like dice across the brown indoor-outdoor carpeting. “I’m in the middle of renovations,” he explains as he sets his ledger down on top of a stack of similar volumes on a table. He takes off my jacket, and then my sweater. His lovemaking is as plain as the surroundings, except for some biting, which I don’t really like. At least he doesn’t complain about creaky knees or back pain like other men our age do. He does, however, cry after we’re done. I try not to act repulsed, and simply say, “Been awhile, has it?” He acts like he doesn’t get what I mean, cocking his head and raising his eyebrows and all. I pull my clothes back on, and pull out my keys. “Was it something I said?” “What?” “Where are you going?” “Home. Aren’t we done here?” “Methinks we have not yet begun. Not if we continue with our precedent of doing things backward; sex first, getting-to-know-you afterward. I’ll make tea.” He gets up, his withering muscles desperately clutching at the bone. His chest is covered with fine white hairs that make him look blurry and soft focus. “I’m not thirsty. What do you want to talk about anyways? My sister is waiting for me to bring her car back. I’m kinda behind schedule.” “Is this going to be like dating a teenager with a curfew? One way for a Humbert like me to stay young, I suppose.” He grins, to let me know he’s being clever. I don’t think it’s very funny, and hearing the word ‘dating’ come out of his pursed lips grates on me. I’m ok with the Lolita reference, though. “You should be so lucky,” I snap back. I take a last look around the place to make sure I haven’t left anything behind. I jangle my keys at him in goodbye. I’m always amazed by how good leaving feels. When I get home, my sister is frantic. “Where have you been? I was sick with worry!” “Why? Did you think I ran away again?” She hates it when I sneer at her. She doesn’t respond in words, just folds her upper lip over her lower lip to make a long thin line. Clara is such a goody two-shoes. I throw her a crumb. “Actual men are not nearly as good in bed as hallucinations are, did you know that? They never do what you really want them to do.” I feel the air vibrate with shock as I walk out of the kitchen, laughing, into my room. I stretch out on my silly canopy bed and think about the one touch of brightness in the guy’s dingy apartment. How many pairs of red shoes did he have all lined up in his closet anyways? He kicked the door shut on them when he saw me noticing, before I had a chance to count them. Was he worried I might think he was too quirky for me? You want quirks, I’ll show you quirks. Ha! We’re sitting at the kitchen table with our mother one morning, oil pastels rolling over the large pieces of paper we’d spread out. “Remember when the three of us used to make pictures in this same spot?” Clara says, wistfully enough to make me want to shake her. “Those silly lessons! It took me years to prune away all that realism.” I look over at our mother’s picture. “I don’t know why we’re still making her do this. Half the time it only frustrates her.” “What are you painting?” Clara asks Mom gently, to show me how it’s done, I suppose. Mom holds a pastel crayon in one hand and a can of Ensure in the other, but tips her chin toward the paper. “It’s my Mum.” Clara takes the can out of her hand so she can hold up her picture to show me. “See? What’s the point?” “It’s good for her brain, Dr. Monte says. And it’s a creative escape.” “Oh, what does she need to escape from? She’s got it made.” “Escape from the pain of dying, maybe.” Clara sidesteps her own observation by pointing to my picture. “That’s lovely! Look at the colors!” “Yeah, I can’t be depressed if I’m using such bright ones.” “They’re like jewels! I like the movement here, too.” “I’ll help you,” Mom says, pulling my painting close to her. She begins to draw curly lashes on the eyelids of the only figurative face in the picture. I cover my eyes with my hands and swear softly. When Mom finishes with the eyelashes, she slaps down the paper with an exhausted little “Phew!” She looks around the room and says, “Where’s my purse?” “Right where you left it,” I say, nodding in the direction of the counter. Clara hands it to her when I don’t get up to fetch it. “Oh dear! The latch has torn off!” “I see that. Well, you have lots of other purses, Mom.” Clara goes into the closet and brings out another one, a red and gold embroidered bag. “Here’s one you like.” “It’s beautiful! We should put things in it.” We empty her old purse. There’s a battered photo of her mother in it, a tube of red lipstick, tissues, expired membership cards, an old piece of paper on which she had practiced writing out all us kids’ names, and at the very bottom, five copies of our father’s death certificate. “Has she really carried this with her all these years?” “I guess so.” I put one copy of the death certificate into the new purse and hand it back to her. “We should probably put the others in Mom’s big desk. There’s one copy for each of us.” “Maybe the safe deposit box would be a better bet,” Clara says, one-upping my suggestion as usual. I remember taking the will out of that box the time I tried to get the lawyer to make over the estate to me. Clara shouldn’t mention it. She should know it might bring up bad memories. I must be glaring at her now because my cheeks feel hot and she’s lowering her eyes. Mom takes the purse, and clatters out of her chair. Swinging the handbag, she makes for the front door. She twists and pulls the doorknob. “Don’t do that, Mom,” I say. “Why shouldn’t she? Have purse, will travel.” “Yeah, I guess,” I say, followed by a sharp “Mom, don’t DO that! Stop it, Mom. Remember what happened last time you yanked on the door.” A flicker of memory quickens the faded hazel eyes. “Yeah, what actually did happen the last time?” Steven appears, climbing up the stairs with a bag of groceries in his arms. He gives me a piercing look, the kind that could make a person believe that he can read minds. “Oh, she yanked the door off its hinges once. I must have told you that story.” Our brother stares at me, trying to read the subtext. All he says is, “Unbelievable.” I can’t decipher the look in his eyes. Those hooded lids hide everything. Steven puts the groceries away and opens a package of light bulbs. He climbs on a chair and replaces a bulb that had burned out several days ago. Mom comes away from the door to stand next to his chair, purse still dangling from her wrist, her hands cupped to receive the burnt bulb. I start to say “Don’t…” but Steven has already deposited the lightbulb in Mom’s palm. He climbs down and gently takes it from Mom, then flicks the switch on the wall to check if the new bulb works. Light floods the table, and our mother’s portrait of me as a child comes alive on the wall above it. “Remember when you were about seven years old, and you fought all the kids in your class?” Why bring that old story up? Clara jerks her head, zig-zagging a line of red crayon outside the paper and onto the table. “Damn.” “Damn,” Mom echoes. “I remember you setting up fights for her and charging money,” Eddie, just in from a run, reminds Steven. He has a mean streak. Both boys do. “How come nobody ever told me this story? How did I not know? And what do you mean when you say fighting?” Clara says. “I hit the kids with my tiny little fists,” I say. “They were all afraid of me. Sometimes I’d beat up the same kid twice on the same day. One boy even landed in the hospital. Even though I was so skinny, I’d thrown a lucky punch right in the eye he’d previously damaged, and the kid lost his sight. The parents sued Dad, I think.” “How awful! Why would you do a thing like that? You’re not the violent type!” The boys look at Clara, incredulous that she had missed the obvious for all these years. “Yes, I am. It’s my nature to be violent.” Clara is the angel and I am the devil, I told our mother at five years old. “Even after the kid’s accident, I kept beating up my classmates. I only quit it when we moved here, because I wanted to have some friends.” No one speaks while Clara absorbs the shock. I look at the painting on the wall above the table. I am seven, playing my violin, dressed in a blue velvet dress with a white lace collar. No one ever mentioned the bruises on my knuckles. A tube of rolled-up pictures arrives at The Gallery. An intern picks it up. It’s her job to investigate the unsolicited work that comes through the doors despite the warning on The Gallery’s website, now common knowledge: No unsolicited art.
The girl is about twenty, an art student with family connections to The Gallery’s owner. She is dressed in black, as usual. She is afraid of wearing anything else. Color might label her as someone less serious than the artist she wants to become someday. She carries the package through the rooms bright with white paint and carefully placed spotlights, to the smaller, dimmer room in the back. Pictures hung on the unpainted walls there are lopsided as coats on hooks. Along one section of a wall, there are samples of frames, colorful edges of cocked eyebrows. The girl hides her smile as she passes, and climbs deeper into the part of the gallery nobody ever sees. Spread out before her is expensive camera equipment, a complicated system of lights, and a white backdrop for the staff to photograph the artists’ works. The information on each piece of art shown is carefully recorded along with the corresponding photos of the individual pieces. The stack of black ledgers containing all the information is so unwieldly that none that none of the staff wants to tackle shelving the many volumes. It seems the employees’ supervisor would rather do it himself, anyway. His own people help him, several burly men not associated with the gallery but who appear as if summoned by some kind of silent whistle. The men never talk or smile and nobody has ever seen their eyes behind the dark glasses. The supervisor also takes the photographs, rather than waiting for the drink-addled pro to stagger in off the street to do it. The boss takes a pretty good picture, everyone agrees, but they are also unanimous in the opinion that there must be something wrong with a guy who does so much more work than required, especially when the pay is so minimal. Not that they’ve ever seen his paycheck. He keeps the details of his personal life quiet, too. He doesn’t do the see-and-be-seen circuit of shows. He doesn’t wear a wedding ring. There are no family photos on his desk. The only time he seems approachable is during a staffer’s birthday celebration. He makes sure the cake is ordered and decorations hung up, he always shows up on time and stays throughout the entire party. Emboldened by these isolated expressions of warmth, the intern asks him for the date of his birthday, so they can all have a celebration for him, too. He will not tell her the date. “Maybe he wants us to track it down,” says one of her friends. “What—like a treasure hunt?” says another. “On the other hand, he could be hiding something. A person’s date of birth can be used for finding out all kinds of other personal information.” “We should leave it alone, then. He’s entitled to his privacy.” This is what is on the intern’s mind as she weighs the mailing tube with her hands. She is still a girl given over to fantasies featuring happy romantic scenarios. She has a terrible crush on Richard (at least she thinks that’s his name) and finds him a tantalizing mysterious figure. She places the tube on the worn work table. It’s stained with dirt and coffee and crushed in a couple of places, but is not heavy. She grunts anyway, more as a comment on her life than from physical effort. The postmark is months old. Where in the world has this package been? There is a loosened piece of paper hanging off the outside of the cardboard, barely holding on with two strips of Scotch tape. She pries the paper off with her black polished nails and pushes her glasses higher up on her nose. Dear The Gallery, the message reads, I forgot to put this in my cover letter so I’m sticking it here. I hope you see it. I need to get a gallery as soon as possible because my brother is trying to kill me. This is no joke. I hope you like my pictures and can help me escape my brother Eddie to come to New York. I tried to drive there already, but I got lost and crashed Mom’s car. Thank you. Amanda Patterson The intern’s hands begin to shake and she drops the paper. It flutters past her knees to the floor. “What’s wrong now?” The man asking is also dressed in black, but zaps the monotony of his uniform with red shoes, one of which he places on the notepaper to trap it. He is the only one who still wears red shoes, according to the intern’s friends. It’s so cliché, worse than his ponytail. Someone should get him drunk and cut his hair. The intern would like to be the person with the scissors. I bet you would, her friends would say, collectively smirking. “It’s got a letter attached like some kind of cry for help or all like that.” The girl bends down to pull the paper out from under his shoe, and hands it to him. The man draws his features into an interested expression, not especially concerned, but curious. He flips his ponytail out of the way as he leans in closer to the note. Frowning, he opens the tube. All at once a look of delight crosses his face. “I’m aware of his woman. She’s got a good resume and lots of experience. I hope nothing awful has really happened to her.” The intern says, “It’s probably just someone who stuck the note on her submission for a prank, or it’s her own misguided way to get our attention.” “The package itself looks like it’s been on quite a trip.” He carefully unrolls each watercolor, as carefully as the intern has ever seen him handle anyone’s work. “These are beautiful! Sophisticated, expressionistic. A wonderful use of color.” She hears the satisfaction in his voice, a kind of burrowing warmth that pricks her with jealousy for the unknown artist. “Too bad we’re not taking on anyone new right now,” he says. “These fit right in with our aesthetic. Tell her that, and add something complimentary about the work itself. It’s very good. And don’t be such a snowflake, Maryann.” Something has happened back home; a misstep, a fall, a trip to the ER. So when Clara tells me that Mom has been admitted, I offer my help. She will need it during Mom’s recovery from her injury. I can move in before she gets discharged and get everything set up. We still have equipment from the time Mom broke her hip. There’s a bath chair and bedside commode, transfer belt and all kinds of useful plastic things. Besides, I should be the one to help Mom get well. I am a better nurse than Clara. I have our father’s instinct for doctoring. My sister is frazzled enough to jump at the idea. “But are you sure that you’ve gotten everything you want from the aftercare program and you’re ready to come home?” Clara loves to get me to answer her questions as if they’re my own. Here’s one—why do I get the feeling that she doesn’t really want me around? Every few months, she breezes in and upends everything. She thinks she knows what’s best for everyone and believes she’s making improvements in the way we all do things around here. Maybe Steven is right when he says she just wants control over Mom. Eddie is the one who says that Clara is saving the day by moving in. We’re supposed to be grateful for her martyr complex. But Mom isn’t that bad off. I can take her to lunch soon, the same as always, as long as somebody gives me a ride or cab fare. Clara should buy me a car. Why is she making me ask for things? She never used to. There was a time when all I had to do was look at her dessert, for instance, and she’d hand it right over. “I don’t have to stay in the program. All they’re doing is teaching me how to be poor. Shopping at Goodwill, discount movies, how to take the bus. These are the skills they think I need. And most days we’re herded together for some silly excursion. It never works out for me. Tuesday, we went swimming and I got sunburned; Thursday, there’s an outdoor concert and I know the loud music will give me an anxiety attack. The Saturday treat is usually some horror movie that only amplifies the one going on in my head. We take a nature walk and my leg hurts so much it won’t move for two days afterward. My roommate tells me I should be in a nursing home, what with all my physical problems.” “Wouldn’t you miss the group therapy with all the colorful characters?” “All they do is talk about their hallucinations.” “Do you talk about your own hallucinations?” My sister is one cool customer, but I’m a step ahead of her and her trick questions. “I don’t have them anymore. I told you.” “At all? After all these years of hallucinating? That must be a first. Hope your docs are getting a research paper or two out of it.” I’m a little shocked that she doesn’t believe me, but I don’t respond. I just wait for the next dumb question. Here it comes. “But what about the art therapy sessions— don’t you like them?” “I hate them. The other day they had us making collages that represent some issue. Forgiveness was one of the themes, like it always is, so I chose that. Nobody got what I was getting at. I’d hate to be an art therapist.” “Well, you’re already something much more to the point—an actual artist. So, if you come back home early, what services will the outreach program continue to provide?” “I’ll let my caseworker keep handling my bills, and I’ll go to the weekly support group. That’s good enough.” “And see your doctor. And take your shot. They’ll send someone to take you to the hospital if you try to skip, remember.” “Yeah, yeah. I may not remember much, but I remember that.” Once I get back home, everyone will stop micro-managing me. They will scatter. I have that effect on people these days. I’ll sit down next to somebody at a park or in a movie theater, close my eyes for ten seconds, and when I open them, the other person will be gone. It’s like they can hear the chaos in my mind. How? They can’t understand what my soft curses mean. I might as well be whispering in Greek, like Virginia Woolf said the birds did whenever she got sick. My sister says, “Speaking of which, isn’t it time to go get your injection?” So I get my shot, I see my shrink. The doctor is very sneaky when she asks me questions. She reads the answers in my face. My words don’t count. She knows everything I say is a lie. I awake on moving day and ask Dad if he’s mad that I hoped an accident like this would happen just so I could get back into the house. He shakes his head, in my head. At least I didn’t engineer the accident myself. It would have been so easy. Mom is very breakable these days. I carry my boxes out of my old room in the halfway house, and one girl grudgingly moves her broom from the front door to let me pass. I grimace, and another patient stares at me. I hope he doesn’t think I’m smiling at him. We both know I’m out of his league. And these are the people I was expected to make friends with, to prove the counselors wrong when they said I tend to isolate. I pull up at the house in Clara’s car and begin to lug my boxes up the thirteen front steps. My brother and sister won’t help me because they’re too busy getting Mom discharged from the hospital and settled in at home at exactly the same time I’m moving in. My leg hurts but everyone is focused on Mom. Finally, after what seems like hours of effort, I get to lie down on my bed and close my eyes. How many times have I moved in and out of this house? My brothers and sister, too, even Steven’s sons, have all come and gone and come back again—this house is like a dog that recognizes us even after long separations. I can’t even remember why I wanted to run away from it in the first place. It’s nice to be in my own bed again, and now that Mom is home too, I will probably sleep better. I don’t know if she will. She’s supposed to mostly stay in bed with her back brace on for the next four months. She won’t though. She’s always been restless. It’s her nature. We all have our true natures to contend with. It’s no use to fight against them—they always win. I start to doze when I hear Eddie whisper to Clara as he passes my door, “She’s baaaack.” Clara hushes him but I think I can hear her giggle. I turn on my side and sink into quicksand sleep, but as soon as I wake up, here comes Steven. He makes a showy entrance, carrying a big TV and setting it on Mom’s dresser. We already have a TV. It’s downstairs. “This one should keep her in bed. Just turn it to some gardening show or slapstick comedies. Do you still laugh when people fall down, Mom?” He smiles at her and she smiles back. He doesn’t realize that Mom won’t cooperate about that or anything else. She won’t stay in bed, no matter what show is on. She won’t drink enough Ensure. She won’t tell me or Clara when she’s wet. She’ll rip apart her Velcro back brace and kick off the blankets no matter how tight I tuck her in. So when Steven says, “You’ll do most of the caregiving, right? I’ll stick around for a while to help you. You deserve a break,” I laugh in his face. The idea of my brother as rescuer wasn’t always so laughable. He was devastated by my first breakdown, after it dawned on him that I was destined for only a limited recovery. So they all thought. I remember him bringing his little sons over all the time as an incentive to make me want to live. They were cute kids, sure, and could sometimes cheer me up. But just as often, when they banged on my bedroom door, I had to ignore them. I couldn’t stop crying for a couple of years and I didn’t want them to look at all that misery. What I remember most about Steven from those days was that he never really connected with me again. He just basically faded away. He divorced his wife, married another, and seemed to forget about his original family. He had never been able to juggle his attachments very well. A new one meant the end of an old one. But now, for some unknown reason, here he is again. That first evening, the four of us sit around the kitchen table together, updating one another on our mother. We each think we’re the world’s expert on what she needs but at least we’re all ready to pitch in. Maybe that’s a good thing. Dad used to say, “Many hands make much work light.” He nods his head in my head. I wonder when the boys will start to fight. It usually doesn’t take them long to start snarling. Clara must be nervous about that, too, from the way she’s running around dishing out the food, spilling it on the floor, the table, the rims of the plates. I feel the urge to start something to egg my brothers on. The doctors say I have poor impulse control, so I try to relax and let the hum of the familiar voices vibrate in me without trying to influence them. “So, Ed, are you living part time at your condo?” Steven asks. Small talk, ultra-polite. It always starts like that. “I go check on it every weekend, and it’s still my legal address, but I live here, more or less. Mom and the girls need me.” Steven looks at me for confirmation. I shrug. Steven grins. Eddie frowns. He’s about to deliver the fine points of his contribution to the family, I can tell. Steven distracts him by saying, “I think we should set up a fund for Mom’s future nursing care and sell all the old stuff in the garage. My kids’ bikes are still in there, my riding lawn mower and snowmobile, stuff like that. Ed, you could help me with the physical work. We could put the money from the sales into the fund.” “Oh, I don’t think there’s any hurry. Aside from dementia, Mom’s in pretty good shape. She hasn’t had to spend much time in a hospital.” “She’s already broken her hip once, and now this spinal fracture. Once they start falling, they don’t stop.” “What’s your source for that?” Ed’s face flushes. This is getting interesting. “My father-in-law, who ended up in a facility; and then there’s ordinary common knowledge and anecdotal evidence. I’ll leave it to you to look up the statistics, if you want them.” Eddie holds two degrees in science, and the family, since Daddy’s death, has considered him to be the expert on medical things. I see that Steven is no longer automatically ceding that position to him. Steven abruptly turns to me. I guess he doesn’t want to fight Ed tonight, though there’s a dangerous light in his blue eyes. I’m slightly confused. “So, how are you doing, Mandy? Do you like your new doctors? Still painting?” “Yeah, I’m ok. My leg bothers me a lot and I’ve got anxiety. I don’t get to paint enough because of Mom.” “We have a nurse, the one we used before,” Eddie says, annoyed now at both of us. “Also palliative care nurses come in every other week, and a podiatrist who comes to the house because nobody else can cut Mom’s toenails.” “Plus, I’m here for the duration,” Clara chimes in. “I gave up my place, so if you kick me out, I’m officially homeless.” So that’s that. She’s staying. She’ll probably start giving piano lessons right there in the living room, so she can stick to Mom like glue. Too bad she never got married, but I always came first with her. I’m like Mom’s Aunt Ruth. She wrecked her son’s engagement when he was young, and he never tried again. He just stayed with his mother until she died. Clara’s more stubborn than that. She’ll keep trying for a normal coupled-up life, and I’ll keep reminding her that she can always get another guy, but she’s only got one sister. We’ve always taken care of each other. Earlier tonight, I caught her looking at the long row of amber medication bottles on my dresser. When she turned away, she had tears in her eyes. I look at her face now, to see if the tears are still there, maybe hardened into diamonds in the corners of her eyes, like that Man Ray photograph. She doesn’t see me staring, because she’s also staring: the big window frames a sudden storm moving in. The boys look worried. They look for markers of climate change the way our grandmother scoured the Bible for signs that the world was ending. The boys have come to see weather as an enemy, and when lightning strikes close enough to shake the house, they lurch out of their chairs and bop against each other like balloons. We all turn away from the sight of the blinding zigzag in the sky and toward the sound of our collection of family pictures tumbling off the wall in the hallway. Broken bits of our relatives are strewn all over the floor. There is glass everywhere but it reflects nothing. I can’t breathe. I gotta get out of there. By the time I get to the gallery and out of the storm, I’m almost calm. I do not have to live exclusively in my family’s house, or in my frilly girlhood bedroom. I can wrap myself inside my other, more real life as an artist. Right now some of my work is in this show, and tonight’s the opening reception. It’s a nice, new space. Clara found it for me and submitted my slides while I was in the hospital. She wanted me to have something to look forward to when I got out, I guess. As if whatever she throws my way is my only option. But at least she knows how important my work is to me. She’s not one of those people who ask “Are you still painting?” if they haven’t seen me in a while. There’s a coffee shop and a dancefloor for the musicians here. I see the red wall where the curator’s helper hung my paintings. There are matching couches below the pictures, but nobody would mistake my portraits for over-the-couch art. I catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror behind the bar. My hair is growing in fast and thick after all my ups and downs with medications, and it’s long enough now to pull into a ponytail. Even after everything I’ve been through, the mirror shows that I don’t look my age. I look up to see the reflection of my friend Michi over by the red wall. She’s crying her eyes out, not because my work moves her, but because she can’t paint. Not that she’s ever tried. “Oh why can’t I be an artist? It’s all I ever wanted,” she whines. I think of my breakthrough show in NYC years ago. Clara, Mom, and me had traveled by train to come to the reception. It was in a beautiful space, and Clara kept thrilling to the fact that the Center had museum status. The staff had taken off the wood stripping on my pictures and framed them in brushed silver. A pony-tailed waiter, obviously a poseur wearing all black with his red shoes, circulated trays of champagne among my friends, the few who came. They were so jealous. They couldn’t deal with my success, but they let Mom buy them dinner after the reception. Freeloaders. Now I look at the young bearded artist shaking my hand like he hopes my talent will rub off on him, saying “These are miraculous! I’d be honored to sit for a portrait sometime,” I think to myself, Take a number, pretty boy. What the hell, and now there’s a mic in my face. I try to push it away, but the guy holding it is insistent. “Tell the people where you get your ideas!” “What, right now?” “Yes, the tape is running.” “Oh I dunno. Images just pop into my head.” I feel him sag with disappointment. He turns away before I can come up with something more interesting to say. This is not how it goes in my head when I imagine my shows. I never expect to get tongue-tied, but I always do. I want to say things the public eats up. I want to be applauded, really. But it’s not happening here, and now all I want is to leave, before the band starts up and gives me anxiety. I look at my paintings again, and see that somebody has done something to the lights on them. They’ve aimed footlights at them, in addition to the usual spotlights over them. They look too exposed. It’s like there’s nowhere for them to hide, and they look like they’re being tortured or something. The light hurts my eyes. I have to put on sunglasses. Michi is still crying so loud I can barely hear Tom Waits through the speakers. Luckily I don’t need speakers to hear him. I can summon him up in my head anytime I like. I could still take him away from his wife if I wanted. I’m not that crazy anymore; I could do it. Hey. There’s a guy in a belted trench coat thumbing through my catalogue at the counter. Will he say anything to me? No? He’s got an interesting face, an angular jaw his beard can’t hide, and wide green eyes. Young. Twenties? I might want to do his portrait. Did he really just put my book inside his coat? I stand behind him like a shadow. “Are you really going to steal my book?” He doesn’t blink an eye−a thick-lashed, gold-flecked green eye like a marble. “I’d rather steal you.” Well, that’s different. I put my hand through his arm and we walk out into the weather together. It’s still raining and the clouds are bearing down, heavy with a message I can’t read. The guy prattles on about how lucky it is for me that he likes older women. Cougars, he calls them. It turns out he’s an art wannabe who’s followed my work for a long time. Followed, not stalked, he reassures me. To him, I’m famous in our small town. “The director of the museum downtown called you one of the treasures of the city, did you read about that?” I hadn’t, but I like the boy’s smooth voice and I want him to keep telling me about myself. I wonder where he’s taking me. He’s old enough to have his own place, isn’t he? I wouldn’t want to meet his parents, although I’m sure they’re very nice. They’d probably turn out to be old classmates of mine. It could be embarrassing. We pass Dad’s old hospital and I wave discretely enough so the guy can’t see. Dad sees, though. He nods his head in my head. From here I can see the brass nameplate that marks his old parking spot. They’ve kept it for him all these years, like some kind of shrine. The guy suddenly veers into the lot and parks sideways across two spaces, and starts to tug at my clothes. “Wait. This is my dead father’s old parking place. Nobody is allowed to park here. Let me out.” I stand at the sign and trace the engraved letters of my father’s name. I wipe the rain away from the brass surface but other drops blur it. I look up at the lightning clawing the air. The sky flashes, the car honks. A security van is aiming straight at me, red and blue lights spinning. My guy peels out of the lot, leaving me standing beside my father’s name, the letters flickering through a sheet of rain. When I get home, I shuck off my muddy clothes the way I shucked off that boy. He did not get what he came for, did he. He did manage to make off with my catalogue, though. Maybe that was more valuable, anyways. I take my pills. In twenty minutes I should feel drowsy enough to sleep. That gives me plenty of time to check on Mom. She’s sleeping in the twin bed she’s always slept in. Clara sleeps in Dad’s bed now. They’re both up. Have they been waiting for me to come home? Only a thin wall separates their room from mine and I can overhear them easily. I listen because I want to know what they’re saying about me, but on most nights I don’t even come up in the conversation. Tonight it’s even worse than that−Mom has awakened in tears. “Mom, are you crying?” Clara says in a sleep-thick voice. “Yes.” I hear my sister bounce up from the mattress. I bet she’s holding Mom’s hand now. “What’s wrong?” Clara says. “I used to be a special person. Now look.” Mom shakes the railing on the bed. “No, Mom! You’re still a special person! That’s just a safety rail so you don’t fall again.” “I fell?” “Yes, and you had to go to the hospital. Now you’re getting better, and almost ready to walk around your house.” “I have a house? Where is it? Let’s go see it!” “OK, but wouldn’t you like to stop off at the kitchen first and have a waffle?” It’s a reliable distraction. Mom loves waffles. And cookies. “Oh yes, I would.” That’s when I come into the room. I push past Clara to help Mom out of bed. “Sorry. We didn’t mean to wake you!” Clara says. “It’s alright. I just got in from the gallery and haven’t slept yet. You go back to bed. I’ll take it from here.” “What’s happening?” Mom questions the pile of cushions on the couch as we pass through the living room on our way to the kitchen. Steven has made a temporary bed for himself on the couch, since his old room is so full of my paintings, there’s no room for him. He snores as loud as ever. Mom jumps at the sound, but she’s more interested in the shapes the pillows make in the dim light than in the stranger on the couch. The moonscape of stacked couch cushions does look other-worldly, with the big window shepherding the outdoors inside. Mom likes the strangeness of it, in the same way she likes the shadows of wind-tossed trees on the walls, and the dance of fireplace flames. We pass by her curio cabinet, and she stops to run her fingers over a favorite Hummel figurine. A collector tried to buy it from her at a generous price once, and Mom wouldn’t hear of it. “What would I be without my memories?” she said. We all say stuff that turns out to be ironic. Like that poem about the anniversary of our own death, how every year we live through the date without knowing what it will someday mean to our survivors. As I settle Mom into her chair in the kitchen, she protests, “This is not my house. Whose house is this? Does it belong to you?” “It’s your house, Mom. Daddy bought it for you fifty years ago.” What a joint! he had said on first look. “I did have a husband once. I was amazed I got someone so good! Did you know him?” “He was my father. I was his birthday present. He drove you all over the bumpiest roads to make you go into labor on his birthday, just so he could have me as his gift.” “He was very affectionate. Do you have a mother, dear?” I nod. A brief silence, then this: “Where is your mother?” “You are my mother. That’s why I call you Mom.” “I wondered why they call me that.” “It’s because you are our mother.” “I know, but I mean…” and she makes the universal gesture for pregnancy. “Yes, you gave birth to me. I am your child. You have four children, and I am your youngest daughter. I’m the skinny one who had blonde bangs, and braces on my teeth.” Mom studies my face for a long moment, and finally says, “Well, hello there! Where have you been? I haven’t seen you. Why did you leave me?” “I never did, really. I never would.” Mom seems to consider this, looking into the middle distance. Who knows what she really sees there. She yawns, all at once drooping in her chair like a blown dandelion. “I’ll tuck her in,” says Eddie, who has come into the kitchen for a snack, or else to check on me. I get out of the way so that he can pick Mom up and carry her to bed. It’s not the first time I’ve been pushed aside. Not even the first time today. Once he’s gone, I turn the lights off and sit alone in the dark kitchen. I can hear my brother and sister whispering as they settle Mom under her covers. “Did Mandy go back to bed?” “Nope. She’s sitting at the kitchen table with the lights off, having a chat with the overhead beams.” “Eddie! That’s not nice.” They don’t know the half of it. About three in the morning, the sliding glass door to my bedroom opens from the balcony, and a policeman in full gear shouts at me to get up. “What’s going on?” I try to climb out of bed and cover my body at the same time. More police burst through the unlocked front door and swarm the house. Eddie comes up the stairs two by two, already punching numbers on his cellphone. “He’s got a weapon!” one cop bellows and they all point their guns at him. He raises his hand and shows his phone. “It’s a phone. I was calling the police.” “We are the police!” “I see that. What seems to be the problem?” “An elderly woman called from this address, saying she had been kidnapped.” “Mom thinks we kidnapped her?” Eddie’s shock must have sounded convincing, because he is not thrown to the ground, nor handcuffed, nor struck with a Taser. “She’s in her nineties and we just brought her home from the hospital. She must be disoriented.” “I should check on her.” Steven appears in his underwear, draped in a blanket. An officer’s gloved hand on his arm stops him. “That’s our job.” He and his backup enter Mom’s room where Clara is holding her, trying to soothe her. I hang back until the female cop beckons to me. “Your mother needs you both,” she says. Another cop quizzes Steven. He wants to know why, if this is the family home, he’s sleeping on the couch. “We’re reorganizing. My sister’s artwork is taking up all the space in my old bedroom.” The cop pulls out his pad and pen. “Show me the room.” Steven shrugs and says, “Right this way.” In the kitchen, Eddie spreads out Mom’s house documents on the table. Besides the ownership papers, he opens a family album to a group picture. The cop laughs, “We don’t need all that.” Steven and his cop climb back up the stairs. The cop writes out a ticket and Steven whispers to me, “Did you know your pictures are a fire hazard?” “Yeah? Critics can call them incendiary as well as visionary now, I guess.” It’s hard to take any of this seriously. It’s not going the way I thought it would. The police conclude their business and leave through the front door, not my bedroom balcony. “I’m amazed Mom knew how to call 911. She hasn’t made a telephone call for months,” Eddie says after they’ve gone and the house breathes a sigh of relief. “We have the numbers in big print right on the phone, though,” I rush in to say. “So it’s possible.” “Well, obviously, since she did it. I’m just surprised she was capable.” He flips through the pages of the album on the table. We use it to help with Mom’s memories, which are like wallpaper always curling off the wall. We try to paste them up again, reciting family stories about big moments in our lives. They bind her memories, and become hers again, if only for a little while. Mom pulls the book toward her. She points to a picture of her father, and says, “I keep thinking he was not a good man. Is that true? Did you know him?” “No, Momma. We only knew your mother.” “Where is Mum?” Nobody answers, and in a moment she has forgotten her question. She lets us put her to bed easily, and then we reassemble in the kitchen. Clara wants to hash things out some more. She’s no good at letting sleeping dogs lie. “Mom must have been running on adrenaline to have figured out how to dial. I wonder what upset her this time. I never sensed her getting up again after we got her back to sleep the first time. I never forget to lock the front door, either, but the police said it was unlocked. Mom couldn’t have done that. If she tried it, I would have heard her fumbling from the bedroom. And how did I not hear her whisper into the phone? It’s right between us on the bedside table.” I glance at the kitchen phone, a reflex. I quickly look away. “I wonder if she’ll try it again. We better pull the plug before we go to bed. If she can’t make the phone work, she’ll forget how to use it pretty fast.” Steven says, thinking outside that box everyone talks about. “Or else she’ll get frustrated and break it,” I say. Three pairs of questioning eyes lock into mine. They don’t think Mom is strong enough to break anything, but I know she is. It’s the tyranny of the weak. People always underestimate the damage an impaired person can do. Seven weeks later the doctors grant me a day pass. It’s my birthday, so I leave a message telling Mom to get a cab and come pick me up. I want a birthday dinner at Papa Joe’s. I’ll have my petite filet mignon and lava cake with a candle in it. People will sing me that little song.
I wait and wait but nobody comes. I say to a nurse, “Mom wouldn’t celebrate my birthday. I called and she never called back.” “You thought she could work a phone and drive a car? All of that’s too complicated for her now.” “No it isn’t! Everyone keeps saying she’s so frail, but I just saw her last month and she was fine. She was glad to see me.” “Just because she recognized you doesn’t mean she’s fine. Dementia only goes in one direction,” says the nurse. She’s got a mean streak. Other nurses say it’s because of compassion fatigue, but I think she’s just a bully. Marie, a patient who likes to sneak up on people, taps me on the shoulder. I hate it when she does that, but she is the only one with a car in our group, so I don’t over-react or anything. I try to stay on her good side. “I’ll take you to see your mother if you look at some apartments with me.” She’s a deal-maker, that Marie, always striking some bargain or other. She’s almost done with treatment and will be taking her car with her when she leaves, so I grab my chance to ride while I can. I figure Marie will get hungry well before I get sick of looking at rentals, so we can go get Mom and celebrate my birthday at Papa Joe’s then. We go to see a few places, and we make all the landladies nervous. Marie suggests we wear sunglasses when we greet them so we look less drugged-out. It backfires. It turns out our bruised eyes only put them more on edge if they can’t see through to the pupils. One mutters something about the devil you know being better than the devil you don’t. I whisper to Marie as I push my glasses on top of my head, “She doesn’t trust people who won’t show their eyes.” “Eyes are windows to the soul,” Marie answers vacantly, and for a minute I’m not sure who she’s talking to since she still has her shades on. One landlady isn’t put off by our cloistered eyes. She looks to be a hundred years old and maybe can’t see much anyways. She unlocks a dismal little unit for us, points out the obvious, bathroom and a sleeping alcove for those who don’t want to use the pull-out couch in the living room; then she offers us tea. “I like this apartment the best of all,” she says while she clangs around in the kitchenette. “I often sneak away and have a snack here or take some rest.” I look over at the narrow iron bed. The chenille bedspread is disturbed, and I can see the impression of her body’s small comma in it. She motions us toward the chairs around the dining table. “The sun hits my favorite chair just right in the afternoons. It calms me down. I’ve been so nervous since my husband died.” Her features contract and I wait for her to cry, wondering what it would take for to her stroke out. She doesn’t. Cry, I mean. Instead, she ducks back into the kitchenette and brings out a tea tray, landing it from a weird angle onto the table. What shaky hands she has. Thin, too. It would be awful if her wrists broke with the weight of the teapot. She’d cry then, I bet. “You girls aren’t a romantic couple, are you?” She peers at Marie while pouring a stream of tea into the cup, spilling some. Marie blushes stupidly. “You can’t ask that. It’s not allowed,” she says, drawing her brows together in a frown. “She’s the only one looking for a place,” I explain. “I already have a house.” “I only ask because I can never tell about these things. I didn’t realize my husband preferred men until our first anniversary had passed and I was still a virgin.” This is vaguely interesting, so we sit there and listen. With her memory unlatched, she tells us all she knows about men and love. It isn’t much, but it takes her a long time to spit it out. She talks until our tea turns cold. Marie decides to take the place. When we’re done with her paperwork, I tell her I’m surprised that she wanted this particular apartment, with this particular landlady. The old woman already gave us her whole life history, so her entertainment value is gone, in my book anyways. “Why pick her?” “She reminds me of my granny.” “Was yours as clueless as this one?” “I don’t remember.” “You know she will just let herself into your place any time she wants to take a nap or sit in her sunbeam. She’ll tell you she forgot the apartment was yours, or deny she ever rented it to you.” They forget and deny. Who said that? I know I’ve heard it before. Next stop: home sweet home. We go to pick up Mom. She recognizes me just fine, but knows Marie is a stranger. A very strange stranger. We drive with Mom to the bank, and on to Papa Joe’s for lunch. It’s our old routine, from the days when she would pop into my bedroom before I was even ready to get up, wanting to know “Where should we go today, dear?” At the table, Marie hunches over Mom the whole time, talking nonsense. Everybody hovers over Mom because she is so pretty, and dresses so well, even at her age. She never forgets to put on her red lipstick. She must not be as bad off as everyone says if she can remember the damn lipstick. Marie keeps up a steady stream of suggestions for Mom. “You should look after your daughter,” she repeats like a broken record or something. Mom shrinks away from her and keeps looking at me like she expects me to do something. What, I don’t know. I can’t think of anything, so I go on eating my petite filet mignon. Mom hardly touches her food, but I still want us to order a birthday dessert. The wait staff sticks a sparkler in the cake when I tell them it’s my birthday, but nobody sings to me. Once home, I get rid of Marie, even though it means I won’t have a ride back to the hospital. I’ll worry about that later. Maybe I won’t go back at all. I don’t have to. I’m supposed to move into the halfway house tonight anyways. I seat Mom at the kitchen table with some drawing paper and oil pastels, and push a straw into a bottle of Ensure for her. The remains of her lunch go into the fridge. She probably won’t want her leftovers for dinner. I’ll have to eat the ham sandwich with the little crescent-shaped bite mark, and then the birthday cake with some of the frosting licked off. She’s gonna make me gain weight. I leave her in the kitchen and walk down the hall to my room, to get some springtime clothes out of my closet. The winter things I’ve been wearing are too heavy now. I stuff some cotton pants and short-sleeved shirts in a big trash bag designed for dead leaves, choke it closed, and tie it tight. When I rise from my crouch, I look at the objects and ornaments on my dresser and desk, all where I left them. Why do I feel so disconnected from them all of a sudden? I haven’t been away that long. It feels as if I left them in the past where everything fades and takes on a musty smell. I pull them back into the present, handling the objects carefully. That’s because of my tremor. The ceramic elephant pasted with tiny mirrors and the miniature Carnival mask─ I wouldn’t want to break either one or disturb them even a tiny bit. Because I know that although they are motionless now, they might come awake at any moment. They’ve done it before. The green curtains on the sliding glass door seem to move when I stare at them. The phantoms that erupted in their folds last fall are long gone now, so I know it’s just my mind playing tricks on me. I pull the curtains aside to look out over the balcony. There is a stack of firewood still in the neighbor’s backyard. I count the logs lolling in the sunshine. I can’t always count them, especially at night, because they are too black against the dark to see. How many times have I had to run outside to check them? I’d stand over the pile and count, but then lose track and have to start over. Mom was always coming out of the house to pull me away before the neighbors called the police. I don’t know why anyone would do that. I was always careful to stay on my own property, and it wasn’t like I was screaming out the numbers or anything. I bet nobody even noticed. Mom was probably the only one. The creaking of the heavy front door, opening and closing, startles me. My heartbeat quivers in my neck. Who’s there? That can’t be my sister’s voice floating in the air, can it? It sounds exactly like her. Am I hallucinating? I better not be, or somebody’s getting sued for malpractice! I step into the hall and glimpse the curve of Clara’s back as she slides into the kitchen. She senses me, turns around, and practically skips to me. We awkwardly hug, with the present she brought wedged between us. “Did you come just for my birthday?” I say, taking the box from her. What I really want to know is how long she plans to stay. If it’s long enough, maybe she can chase Eddie away. She’ll help me with Mom so he won’t have to, and then he won’t have an excuse to hang around anymore. He’s always ready to let someone else pick up the slack, anyways. “What better day to begin my visit?” I didn’t even realize she was planning a trip. Why didn’t she tell me? She should have told me. We try to make small talk as I open her gift, a soft teal sweater. “It’s just what I wanted!” I say, and pat her hand in thanks. I don’t really need another sweater, but she likes to pay for things. She smiles, and for no reason, her eyes film over with tears. She quickly wipes them away and I can read her face again. We take our old seats at the round glass-topped table. Mom is still there, drawing her picture. Clara greets her gently, instead of smothering her in a hug she might mistake for an assault. I’m sure she came prepared for our mother not to recognize her, but she looks disappointed all the same. Clara won’t push Mom for a response, though. She’s good at waiting things out. She’s got a lot more patience than I do. Mom reaches out to tug at the new sweater but I pull it away from her. Clara says, “I think she wants to try it on.” “Oh. I guess she does.” I feel a pang for the old days when my sister would give me everything, and never take anything away. It didn’t matter who else wanted whatever it was, even if she wanted it hrself. I drape the cashmere over our mother’s thin shoulders and she shivers with pleasure. “She’s cold all the time now.” “When did that start?” “I can’t remember. I’ve lost track of some kinds of time. You know, like a blackout drunk does. My counselors call drinking a kind of self-medicating behavior.” Clara winces and I register her discomfort. “I don’t do any of that anymore, in case you’re worried.” The muscles in her face immediately unclench, and I giggle at how easy it is to get a rise out of her. She doesn’t get the giggle and looks at me quizzically. I know she remembers all those years when I’d lock myself in my studio, turn the music up loud, and paint with a brush in one hand and a beer can in the other. Lots of times, I’d work myself into a drunken rage, and destroy the work I just finished, or couldn’t finish. I’d scribble over my marks with black or red paint. I ruined plenty of canvases that way. You could call those paintings my Drunk Series. Seriously. Clara asks me what the deal is with day passes. She's trying to change the subject from drinking. “I thought I’d have to go to the hospital to see you.” “You probably wouldn’t have found me there. I’m moving into a halfway house tonight. What did you just ask me, again? Oh, about the passes. The day passes are not a privilege you have to earn. It’s more like a courtesy, so that staff doesn’t worry if you’re not where you’re supposed to be. But there’s nothing holding me at the hospital at this stage of my recovery. Yesterday one guy just walked away from our group. We were all on the little bricked-in patio to get some air, and he just left. Nobody went after him. It’s allowed—you can just leave whenever you want as long as you come back for your monthly shot of anti-psychotic.” ”What I’d like to know is what will happen to the patient who walked away.” “He’ll probably just go home and pick up wherever he left off.” “Hmm. Or a more likely scenario—he leaves without learning the skills to protect himself against another episode, and breaks down again. See many familiar faces coming and going?” So she’s going to get all shrink-y on me, is she? She used to trust my decisions. “Oh, I don’t know. Not every face interests me. I remember this one guy who always called me Pretty Lady in group. He came back so crazy looking that I almost didn’t recognize him.” Clara looks at me like she’s waiting for me to add two plus two. I throw this out instead: “People think you’re less crazy when you’re pretty, ever notice that?” I watch lines of worry scrawl across her face. She nods, but changes the subject again, this time to Marie. She wants to know all her details—who, what, when, where, why. “Marie’s boring. All she ever wants to do is talk about her mother,” I say. “What about her mother?” “Marie says she was trying to kick her out of the house, and tricked the cops into arresting her. Kinda like Eddie did.” “Hmm. What’s Marie’s diagnosis?” “She’s paranoid schizophrenic. She’s officially stable now and after a little more time at the halfway house she’ll move into a subsidized apartment. We went to see a few of those today, to get her on a waiting list. The places are all interchangeable little boxes, and the landlady who showed us the one Marie picked was probably weirder than Marie. Maybe that’s why she liked her. Anyways, Marie has a car and I wanted her to take me to see Mom after we were done with the housing stuff. I wanted her to drive us to the bank and to Papa Joe’s. Mom didn’t seem to like Marie, though. Maybe Marie is too crazy for her. She kept leaning into Mom saying weird things while we tried to eat lunch.” “The people scared me,” Mom pipes up. “I really must discuss it with the men.” I have a show coming up and plenty of work to do, so I go to the house a few afternoons a week. I’m not there to visit the family. I’m there to work. Today I can hear music seeping under the door even before I unlock it. Inside, Clara and Mom are sitting on the yellow leather couch in the family room, listening. In a space with an electric organ, piano, drums, a violin, guitar, and clarinet, the notes rising up are from a cheap CD player. For years, I was the one listening to music with Mom. Clara has taken that over already. Well, she’s a trained musician so maybe she tells Mom interesting things about the pieces that I couldn’t, though the phrase trained musician makes me think of circus animals. I wave to the girls and run upstairs to my studio before they can make me talk. A few minutes later Eddie comes in. I hear the rumble of his voice, interrupting everybody. He doesn’t know how to listen to music. Too bad. It would be good for his blood pressure, but it’s just background noise to him. Even when we were kids, he ignored the music coming from different rooms in the house. Deaf to it all, he would keep on doing his homework in front of the television. It’s probably how he developed his concentration. I wish I had more of that these days. Mine used to be as good as his. So was my memory. His presence makes me feel all prickly. I don’t trust him, but he probably doesn’t trust me, either. I shouldn’t have cut up his clothes. He probably won’t ever forgive me for that. I wrote him an apology, but he never responded. How rude. I don’t have to talk to him today. It’s like I’m invisible when I’m in my studio. They can’t see me but I can hear them from a certain corner of the room. People call a spot like that a whispering gallery, I think. No matter how quietly my family talks, the sound floats up through the vents into my room. That spot is the whole reason I always know what goes on in this house before anyone else does. I know everyone’s secrets. None of them know mine. “Have you spoken to Mandy about her plans?” Clara is asking Eddie, all serious and focused. She’s keeping her voice soft but it reaches me, not loud, but clear. “No. I get updates from the caseworker, Greg. And you usually know her status before I do.” “Do you know that she just graduated from the hospital to a halfway house?” “No! Isn’t it too soon?” “I sure think so. What happened to the projected two years of treatment?” “Maybe they meant two years including the halfway house.” “That must be it. Have you noticed that they’ve stopped saying she’ll get back most of the function she lost during the beginning of the big relapse? Now they say she’ll never be the same.” “Greg says she still has no insight into her own situation.” They stop speaking for a minute. Then Clara says, “How many checks did the cops do, with no follow-through? They could have got her into treatment faster and saved some brain function.” “At least now she’s securely in the system and can’t refuse her meds. But I can’t help thinking it’s basically a lost cause.” My head is hot. My brain is burning. My own family thinks I’m lost. I move away from the corner and my siblings’ droning voices. I stand in front of my easel to watch the nostalgic sepia tones of my underpainting move. The color of an old photograph trying to remind me of worn-out loyalties shows me the image of two figures crawling up from the depths of the canvas. On the right, I layer in the figure of my brother, in pain. Lots of black background, the figure dressed in black, face drained of color. I paint my own image on the left, slightly suspended above him with a light of white, yellow, and pink surrounding my face, also whitened to reflect his pallor. The colors reach out to him. They make me think of the sympathy I once felt for him, but my witchy black clothes and a background of angry orange make it impossible for us to connect. I wait for the abstract elements to meld into the figurative, but they don’t. They won’t. It’s no use. I slash black paint diagonally across my brother’s image. I cross him out. Then I call a cab and leave without saying goodbye to anybody. The door to the halfway house where I have signed up to live cracks open, inviting me in, but this is not my home. It is old and crumbling, and it stinks of mold. The grey rooms can’t hide their ghosts, the suicides and patients who died from poison pills and electric shocks. Some of their spirits talk to me, others brush my hair the way they did when I was a child. They praised me back then whenever I drew their likenesses on paper. Now they are silent. The space here is opaque and dense. To someone with no real vision, it might seem organized, all of a piece, tightly woven. But to someone who can see, the threads are loose, the pattern in disarray. It is disorganized as the thinking that redefines everything—threats soughing through the wind, trees perpetually falling, one sibling’s double-cross. I climb the steps to my room. My roommate is there. She keeps staring at me, bony knees pulled up against her chest, rocking and rocking in the chair in the corner. She won’t talk. She only stares, never blinking, forever rocking. I stand behind her and tip her chair all the way backward and then all the way forward. She slides out of the seat like a pudding onto the floor. She doesn’t protest, so when she climbs back into the chair, I do it again. On the walls, the greys have begun to shimmer. They are telling me that something good will happen very soon. They are on my side and they will help me move back home. “There’s nobody to let me in, again.” I’m calling Clara from the steps of the group house on an ordinary Tuesday, dusk falling all around me. “The inmates aren’t back from the festival they went to. It was way too loud and gave me anxiety, so I walked back. Can you give me another hundred dollars? I only have thirty-six in my account. Steven told me to keep getting as much money and stuff out of you as I can.” “Oh he did, did he. You don’t have to trick me into doing what I’ve always done for you, you know. I wasn’t planning on ignoring your needs just because the government is supposed to take care of you. So. Is your caseworker getting your bills paid on time?” “She’s doing everything ok I guess, but I’m going to petition to get control of my own income. I’m stable now. Riding the bus anyplace is killing my leg, so I need to take more cabs for a while. That’s why I need money. But if you don’t want to give me money for cabs, I still need some for more clothes. The counselors here are making me get four pairs of pants and seven shirts, and seven pairs of underwear and three pairs of socks for the summer. They want me to go to Goodwill with them to get everything.” I have clothes at home, my real home. The one Clara is living in with my mother. In my brain, my father nods his see-through head in agreement. He’s my oracle, the doctors say. I ask him questions and he nods yes or no. Sometimes he reaches out his hand to me the same way he did on the shower floor while he had his first heart attack. I was only a kid. Anyone that young would have run away. People shouldn’t expect so much from children. Clara is saying something I don’t feel like listening to, so I cut in. “Maybe if I buy something it will shut the counselors up. But they keep making other demands on me, too. I have to do chores even during an anxiety attack, but I need to close the door and curtains when the attacks come. I lie on my bed and watch the red numbers on my clock pass the time. You know all this, and now the team does too, but they don’t care. They order me to scrub floors in the middle of my attacks, if it’s my turn for housekeeping. They are the guards and we are the prisoners.” “Can’t you get your doctor to excuse you?” “My doctor wrote a note saying that I can’t do physical work when I’m having an attack. The counselors ignored it, and they keep on ignoring it. I’m too exhausted to fight back so I give in. And then last night one of the crazies kept jumping on my bed. I told her to quit it, but she jumped on top of me. She’s way fatter than I am and she made weird sounds. I pushed her away and made a run for it. This is the third time I’ve had to go get the nurse. She had to hold the girl down with the help of two orderlies to give her a shot.” “What are you telling me? You’re not safe there?” “I don’t feel safe.” “They have to be able to guarantee your physical safety, at least! You have rights. Do you want me to find out about filing an official complaint?” “Sure, if you want to. The physical danger is just one side of it, though. Like today, one power-hungry counselor tried to humiliate me at lunch. I happened to scratch my nose but continued to eat. ‘Go wash your hands!’ she yelled. ‘I washed them already.’ ‘You just scratched your nose. I saw you. So get up, go into the bathroom, and wash your hands again.’ I felt all the eyes in the room burning holes in my back as I left.” Next time, I won’t come back. I don’t have to live there. I already have a home, even though someone else is living there instead of me; and right now she is crying. |
AuthorCheryl Snell is an award-winning poet and novelist, author of the new family saga Bombay Trilogy, a retelling of her previous novels Shiva's Arms, Rescuing Ranu, and Kalpavriksha. Archives
October 2020
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