by David Brooks
“I can’t sleep.”
“Then just rest.”
Ten minutes pass.
Zzzzz. The sound of the chair lift coming downstairs.
She comes into his den. “Come up to bed.”
“Not yet. It’s too early.”
She sits next to him, holding his arm with both hands and leaning on his shoulder. “What are you watching on the TV?”
“This is not TV. I’m reading things. Here, I’ll get you ABC España.”
He clicks on ABC and a headline comes up about Zapatero. He scrolls down to an article about Princess Letizia, which she reads. Then to some photos about the Duquesa de Alba, whom she despises.
“Let’s go up to bed,” she says. “I’m very tired.”
“Not yet. It’s early. I want to watch the news. Here. It’s time to take the nitro patch off your shoulder.”
“I already took it off.”
“When?”
“Before supper.”
“It’s not supposed to come off till eight o’clock. It’s supposed to be on for twelve hours. From eight in the morning till eight at night. It controls your irregular heartbeat.”
“It was itchy,” she says.
She clings to him throughout the night. Her fingers and feet are always cold. It is the effect of metoprolol, a medication she takes for heart failure that draws the blood from her extremities. He is always warm, sometimes sweaty. They have to arrange the bedclothes to suit each of them, and he has to leave his feet sticking out because of the heavy blankets and duvet.
She wakes him at four thirty in the morning.
“Are we in Spain?”
“No. Canada,” he says.
“Is this Madrid?”
“No, Calgary. Go to sleep.”
“Why are we in Calgary?”
“Because we live here.”
“Why?”
“Because I came here for a job.”
“Are we going to stay here?”
“Yes. Go to sleep.”
“Why don’t we live in Spain?”
“We have pensions here. We have medical insurance here. Because taxes are lower here. Because our children live here. Because we have a house here. Now go to sleep.”
“Is this our house?”
“Yes. We own it. We had it built for us thirteen years ago.”
“I don’t remember. Are we married?”
“Yes. We married over fifty years ago. Now go to sleep.”
“I don’t remember. Where did we marry?”
“In Victoria.”
“Why in Victoria? Why not in Madrid?”
“Because in those days we couldn’t afford to travel to Madrid from Vancouver to marry in your parish church, so we went to Victoria to marry in my parish church. Do you remember?”
“Sort of.”
Pause.
“Do we have children?”
“Yes. Six children.”
“Six! That’s a lot. What are their names?”
He lists their names and the cities in which they live, their wives and husbands and children. It is almost a nightly ritual, a middle-of-the-night ritual. “Now go to sleep.”
She pulls close to him in the bed and holds him tight.
He makes her a cup of coffee in the morning, passes her the morning newspaper, gives her an iron pill, and puts the nitro patch onto her shoulder.
“Can you give me the telephone number of my father? I can’t find my telephone book.”
He has hidden all telephone directories and phone lists because she has phoned so many people, numbers, and directories all over the world in the past year or so, asking for the telephone number of her father. It became too expensive and her sisters in Spain grew exasperated at receiving phone calls in the middle of the night.
“No. I can’t. Your father died forty-five years ago.”
“Then give me the number of the store. I’ll phone the store.”
“There is no store. Your father sold the store before he died.”
“He died?”
“Yes. In 1964. Do you remember? You went to visit him in Madrid a few months before he died. He had this growth on his neck, remember?” He draws a line down the side of his neck. “It was cancer. He died a few months later.”
“Yes, I remember. My poor father! Who looks after the store?”
“Your father sold the store before he died.”
“Who has the store now?”
“I don’t know.”
“I have to go there. I have to open the store.”
“No. There is no store. We live in Canada. There is no store in Madrid.”
She goes to the front door, opens it and looks out, then comes to the kitchen, where he is preparing the evening meal. This is another ritual. She goes to open the front door several times a day to check whether her father or husband is coming.
“Is my father coming for dinner?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Because your father died in 1964.”
“I know that. I meant my father-in-law.”
“Your father-in-law was my father. He died in 1985.”
“No. No. I meant my other father.”
“A person can have only one father. Your father was Emilio. My father was John. They both died a long time ago.” He has made this statement so many times over the past few years that the entire dialogue has become automatic and predictable.
“I know that. I mean the man who looks after this house.”
“I am the man who looks after this house. I am your husband.”
“My husband? You wish! I never married you!”
“Yes you did. We married more than fifty years ago.”
“I never married anyone.”
He goes to the mantel and takes down a silver-framed photo from their wedding. “Here. This is a photo of our wedding. Here we are. Just married. Do you remember?”
“That’s not you. That’s my husband. Give it to me! Don’t touch it!” She snatches it from him.
He points to the photo. “That’s you . . . with me . . . in the church . . . in 1958.”
“That’s not you, fool! That’s my husband.”
“Well, I must admit that I’ve changed over the past fifty years. But that’s me.”
“That’s my husband. Wait till he comes home. He’ll throw you out.”
He is making her a cup of Nescafé as she settles into the sofa early in the morning to watch TV.
“Where is your husband?” she asks.
“I don’t have a husband,” he says. This is fairly routine in the morning. “Men don’t have husbands. Men have wives. You are my wife.”
“Don’t be stupid! Where is your husband? Did he go to open the store?”
“There is no store.”
“Don’t be stupid, I said. Did my father go to open the store?”
“There is no store. Your father sold the store before he died. Many years ago.”
“My father died?”
“More than forty-five years ago.”
“He died?” she says. “Why didn’t anyone tell me?” She begins to weep.
“You told me. It was a long time ago.”
“I don’t remember.”
He hugs her. “I’m sorry. It was a long time ago.”
“I don’t remember. I don’t know what’s wrong. I don’t remember things.” A tear runs down her cheek. She clings to him.
“I know. Don’t worry.”
“I’m losing my memory.”
“Don’t worry.” He gives her a kiss.
He wakes in the middle of the night. A few years ago he put in a night-light so that she could get up to go to the toilet without having to stumble or run into things. The bed moves and he can feel her sitting up. He can see the shadows cast on the wall by the night-light. She comes around to his side of the bed. She runs her hand gently around his head and face.
“Who are you?” she asks.
“Your husband.”
“No. Your husband.”
“You’re not my husband. I don’t have a husband. What are you doing in my bed?”
“This is my bed. Our bed,” he says. “Come back to bed. Come back to sleep.”
She turns on the main lights, picks up her walking cane, and starts to beat him.
“Get out! Get out of here!”
“Stop that! Stop it!” He wrenches the cane from her hands. “Now just settle down and come back to bed.”
She leaves the room.
Zzzzz. He hears the chair lift going downstairs.
She’ll settle down in a while and come back to bed in an hour or so, he thinks. She usually does. He drifts off to a fitful sleep.
“Excuse me, sir.”
He wakes up. There is a police officer standing over his bed. Then he sits up, startled.
“What is it? What happened?”
“We had a call about an intruder.”
“What?” He rubs his eyes. “An intruder? My wife called?”
“Yes, sir. She says you are an intruder.”
“Aaaagh!” He gets out of bed and puts on his slippers. “I’m sorry. My wife is sick. She has Alzheimer’s and dementia. She gets over it in a few hours. I have medication for her but it is impossible to give it to her when she is like this. Maybe I can get you to give it to her. She won’t take it from me when she’s in this state.”
“Sorry, sir, we can’t do that. I’m going to have to ask you for identification.”
“Okay, okay, okay. Let’s go downstairs. It’s in my office.”
They pass the living room where his wife is sitting and talking with the second police officer.
“Are you all right?” he asks her as they look up.
“Yes,” she says. “I phoned them to come.” She had phoned the operator, who had put her through to 911.
“Come with me,” he says to the first officer, leading him to his den. “Please come inside. I want to close the door.”
The officer hesitates.
“I have to close the door. I can’t let her see where I conceal the papers.”
Reluctantly, the officer enters and allows the door to be closed.
“Now, what papers would you like to see? I have to keep them under lock and key or she will take them, hide them, destroy them. I keep everything locked up. My wallet, my money, my glasses, my watch, my driver’s license, passports, marriage certificate, birth certificates, the whole works. What would you like to see?”
“Passports would be fine.”
He takes the key from its secret place, opens the filing cabinet, and produces the passports.
The officer takes the passports to the living room.
“Is this you?” he asks.
She looks closely. “Yes.”
“Is this your husband?”
She looks closely again, hesitates, and eventually answers, “Yes.”
“Good,” her husband says. “Now can we finally get to bed and let these people go back to their work?”
“I’m sorry,” she says, tears forming in her eyes.
He leans over to kiss her and she clings to him.
He returns from his daily five-kilometer walk, sweating slightly, and takes off his shoes.
She comes into the hallway. “Did she leave?”
“Did who leave?” he asks.
“That woman. That fat, ugly woman.”
“There was no one in the house today other than you and I.”
“There was a woman. She was here this morning.”
“No woman. No one. No one has been here. Just you and I.”
“She came in while you were out for your walk. She said she was the cleaning woman. She said you hired her. You asked her to come. She had the key.”
“No. No cleaning woman. No one was in the house.”
“I told her to leave. She went upstairs. My pearls are missing. I can’t find them anywhere. She went into the kitchen and made a sandwich and a cup of tea. I told her to get out. I told her I would call the police.”
“I think it was a dream.”
“No. She was here. She was impertinent. Where are my pearls? I think she took one of my handbags.”
“I’ll look for your pearls and your handbag,” he says. He has been through this little scenario before in a number of variations.
“She took them! That bitch!”
“Don’t worry. I’ll find them. I’ll get them back.”
“You can’t go out like that and leave me alone.”
“I was gone less than an hour and you were lying down when I went out.”
“You can’t leave me alone.”
A search turns up the missing handbag. The pearls are inside, wrapped in Kleenex.
“Are we in Madrid?”
It is four thirteen in the morning, according to his bedside clock.
“No. This is Calgary. In Canada.”
“Why are my paintings on the wall? This is Madrid. I bought these paintings in Madrid.”
“This is Calgary. Those are prints you and I bought at the Prado. We had them framed and brought them to Canada.”
“I bought this furniture in Madrid.”
“No. We bought it at Thomasville when we came to Calgary in 1996.”
“I bought this chandelier on the Gran Via. It was a good price.”
In fact, he had bought it at an antique auction in Winnipeg in 1968.
“Okay. Go to sleep now.”
“This is my mirror. These are my paintings. This is my chandelier. This is my chair. This is my lamp. I bought them in Madrid.”
“Okay. Let’s go to sleep.” It is all nonsense, of course. She often inventories the furniture, the china, the silver, and other household items, claiming that they are hers and stating that she bought them in Madrid. Most of it they bought in Canada, but he wants to go to sleep.
“I need to go to my sister’s house in the morning. You can drive me, can’t you?”
“No. I can’t. Sorry. Tere lives in Madrid. We live in Calgary.”
“I’ll take a taxi. You have to give me the money. I don’t have any money.”
“You can’t take a taxi to Madrid. It’s thousands of miles away and across the ocean.”
“Where are we now?”
“In Calgary. In Canada.”
“Why are we here?”
“We live here.”
“Why?”
“Because I came here for a job.”
“Are we going to stay here?”
“Yes.”
“For how long?”
“For the rest.”
“Why don’t we go to Madrid?”
“We have a house here. We don’t have a house in Madrid. We would have to sell our house here and all our furniture and buy a house and furniture in Madrid. It would cost us a fortune.”
“We could live with my parents. They have a big house on Claudio Coello in the Barrio de Salamanca.”
“Your parents died many years ago. They left the house on Claudio Coello in 1959, soon after we were married. Go back to sleep.”
She remains sitting up for a long time staring into the shadows at the wall hangings and the chandelier.
It is five o’clock in the evening. She is watching TV in the family room.
“Here are your pills for your heart and your blood. And here is a glass of water.”
“I’ve already taken them,” she says.
“No. Not these ones. You have to take them at five o’clock.”
“Who says so? You are not my doctor.”
“All your doctors say that you have to take them.”
“I’ve taken enough pills today. I’m not going to take any more.”
“Sorry. You have to.”
She takes them reluctantly.
Later she goes to open the front door and looks out for a few minutes, leaning on her cane, then comes to the kitchen, where he is preparing the evening meal.
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Because your father died many years ago.”
“What? My father was here this morning. What are you talking about? You fool!”
“Sorry. Your father died.”
“He died? My father died?” She breaks into tears. “Why didn’t anyone tell me? I loved him. He was such a wonderful man. So clever. So educated. He had a doctorate. He taught at the university.”
He feels humbled and honored. He knows she is talking of him. Her father had never gone to university. He holds her gently.
“Where is my mother?”
“Your mother died a long time ago.”
“You mean both my parents are dead?”
“Yes. I’m sorry.”
“Then who are you?”
“I’m your husband.”
“My husband? I never had a husband! I was never married. Who are you? What are you doing in my house?”
“Like it or not, I’ve been your husband and you’ve been my wife for more than fifty years.”
“You fool! I’ve never been married. Never.”
“Come to bed,” she calls from upstairs.
“No. It’s too early for me. It’s only twenty past seven. Go to sleep. I’ll catch up with you later.”
Zzzzz. She comes down on the chair lift.
“Come up to bed. I don’t like to be alone.”
“It’s too early. Then you’ll wake me up at four thirty in the morning and ask all kinds of questions.”
“Come up. I’ve made the bed. You can sleep with me in the big bed.”
“I sleep with you in that bed every night. We’ve slept together in the same bed for more than fifty years.”
“Really? In the same bed? That’s not possible.”
“Yes it is. We’ve been married for more than fifty years, and other than a few business trips and visits to your family, we’ve slept together every night.”
“Are you my husband?” She sits beside him.
“I certainly am. Are you my wife?” He asks playfully.
“I don’t know. Are we married?” She folds her hands around his arm and smiles.
“Yes, we are. For a long time.”
“Do we have children?”
“Yes. Six.”
“I don’t remember. Tell me.” She puts her head on his shoulder and closes her eyes.
He rhymes off the names, cities of residence, spouses, and grandchildren’s names.