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.
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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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