by Janis Thomas
“Ah y’ kay?” Are you okay?
My son, with his gnarled hands and twisted limbs and inconsiderate bowels, is asking me if I’m okay. I do not deserve this boy. I sit beside him, reach over the bed rail, and place my hand on his.
“I’m okay, Josh.” The acrid scent of his sweat mixes unpleasantly with the baby powder we apply to his many cracks, creases, and folds. He perspires more than most people because his every movement is an exertion of colossal proportion.
“Don’t worry about me,” I tell him. I’m worried enough for both of us. At least I don’t have to hide my cheek, although in the dim light of his room, he wouldn’t be able to see it. But I think he would sense it.
“Aye af’ t’ pe.” I have to pee.
I nod and reach for the urine bottle on the nightstand. I gently uncover him and help him with this process. When he finishes, I cap the bottle and carry it into the bathroom, then dump the contents into the toilet and flush it down. The bathroom has three doors, one leading to Josh’s room, one to the hall, and the third to Katie’s room. I rinse the bottle and set it on the counter, then wash my hands.
I open the door to Katie’s room, just a crack, and peer in. She sleeps soundly atop her covers, fully dressed. I didn’t see her at all yesterday, so I’m not sure whether she fell asleep in her clothes or woke up early, got dressed, and then fell back asleep with the expectation of a pebble thrown at her window to awaken her. I’m aware that she sneaks in and out of the house via the roof and trellis. I care not so much because she is out at all hours with that boy but because the roof tiles are worn and cracked and in need of replacement and the trellis is rickety, the wood rotted in places. I’ve told her many times that one day the wood will splinter and she will likely break her head open on the concrete below. She doesn’t listen to me anymore.
“Maah?”
I quickly close the door and return to my son.
“I’m here.” I stroke his damp forehead. “What do you need, honey?”
“I wah t’ ge’ uh.” I want to get up.
“Josh, it’s early. Only six o’clock. You don’t have to get up yet.”
“I wah t’. I wah loo’ s’thi uh.” I want to. I want to look something up. On the computer.
I refrain from releasing a sigh. I don’t want him to see or sense my distress. My urgent need to check my closet for the clothing that should be lining the waste bin downstairs will have to be suppressed. Josh’s world is small, made larger only through the images I capture and his time on the internet. If he wants to surf the web to accumulate information, I must comply.
I spend the next twenty minutes on his morning ablutions: sponge bath, toileting, fresh clothing, teeth brushing.
I live my life according to my to-do list and rarely think beyond my circumstances, but every so often I envy the vast majority of moms who have children who are able to do all of these things by themselves. They take their lives for granted, these mothers. They yell at their children to get out of bed, to get in the shower, to change into something without stains, to get to the breakfast table, to hurry hurry hurry up. Their lives are a luxury because their children are capable.
Mostly, I don’t begrudge these mothers their normal lives. But this morning, I do. Because this morning, my sanity is a tenuous thing. This morning, my need to verify or invalidate my delirium outweighs my need to care for my son.
But I do it. Of course, I do it.
Colin pokes his head in just as I am heaving Josh into his chair. “You guys are up early.”
I muster up a smile as Josh says, “Mo’ee, Daah.”
“I’ll start the coffee,” Colin offers. Coffee meaning his espresso. He makes enough for both of us, but I don’t drink it. He doesn’t seem to notice.
“Do you have time to set Josh up on the computer?” I ask, keeping my voice light.
“Sure. As soon as I get the coffee going.” He steps into the room and ruffles Josh’s hair. “I need to do some research, pal.” For his new book. The one he’s been working on for a while. “Think you can help me with it?”
“I wah loo’ s’thi uh.”
“Okay. We’ll look up your thing first, then my thing. Sound good?”
“Sows goo’.” Sounds good.
Josh clamps his hand over the joystick of his chair and follows Colin out of the room. I stand there for a moment, listening as Josh’s chair wheels onto the lift. The motor hums softly as the lift descends. When I hear the thwack of the lift coming to a halt on the bottom floor, I leave Josh’s room and go to the master bedroom.
Shaking hands, again. I reach for the closet door, slide it to the left. Pull the chain attached to the bare bulb on the ceiling of the closet. My wardrobe glares at me. I sift through the hangers and my hand brushes against silk. Cream silk. My blouse. More sifting, more disbelief as my fingers slide down the length of my navy skirt.
This cannot be happening.
Richard yanking up my skirt, tearing off my underwear. My whole body goes tense with the recollection.
I scramble to the dresser and pull the top drawer open. I need not rummage through the contents of the drawer. My favorite panties, sky blue with lace and flowers on the front panel, sit atop the rest, whole, uneffaced.
I stagger backward, away from the dresser, away from the wreckage of my consciousness. The bed meets the backs of my legs and I sit heavily upon it. I put my fist to my mouth, jam my index finger between my teeth, and bite down, hard.
I have gone insane.
NINE
Insanity does not preclude us from performing our duties and meeting our obligations, especially when those around us are oblivious to our delusions.
I walk into the kitchen fifteen minutes later to find Katie seated at the table. So rare is her appearance at breakfast these days that, for a moment, I think she is a figment of my imagination. She stares morosely at her cell phone, probably waiting for a text from him explaining why he didn’t come for her this morning. I wonder, too, but not enough.
In appearance, my daughter favors her father, Owen, my ex-husband, whose seed was the only thing he ever gave me that was free. Her hair is red, true red, and her skin is fair with freckles. If you look at her long enough, you see the beauty she will become. If you merely glance at her, you will look away. Her boyfriend, the driveway thief, looks only at her body, with its ripe curves, ample breasts, and inviting hips. I have watched him watching her. He never meets her eyes. She is just insecure enough not to mind.
I hear Colin’s and Josh’s voices from the family room. The normalcy of the morning disturbs me, but I can only float on its tide. I can’t fight it. If I do, I will expose my madness.
“Good morning,” I say to my daughter as I cross to the counter. Perhaps, just this once, I will partake of Colin’s prized espresso. Perhaps a potent shot of caffeine will help.
“Hi, Mom.”
She speaks to me. My daughter is actually addressing me rather than ignoring my presence, which is her usual strategy of late.
“This is a pleasant surprise,” I say, moving to the counter. “I haven’t seen much of you lately.”
“Yeah, well . . .” She leaves the rest unsaid. Had her boyfriend tapped on her window, she wouldn’t be here. She would be with him, doing whatever it is they do. Me, Josh, Colin—her family—we are her consolation prize, and a dubious one at that. Again, I wonder why he didn’t come but quickly push the question away. I’m glad he didn’t. I don’t care what the reason is.
I turn and look closely at her, something she hasn’t allowed for ages due to her constant need to flee my scrutiny. Her cheeks are pale, her eyes sunken. Her hair, always lustrous and full, hangs limply around her face. I want to go to her but fear she will shrink away from my ministrations.
“Are you feeling all right, Katie?” I ask. “Are you coming down with a cold?”
“Just tired,” she replies.
“Can I make you some eggs?” A paltry offering, but one I can manage.
She shakes her head. “Not hungry.”
“Okay.” I attempt a smile. It doesn’t take. I walk to the espresso maker, pour myself a small cup.
My maternal radar hums. Kate has something on her mind, something she wants to share with me. If this were any other morning, I would be anxious to talk with her, be the listener she needs me to be, the mother she wants me to be. But this morning, my own angst outweighs my daughter’s. I don’t know how I can possibly connect with her when I am struggling to hold myself together, when I am desperately clinging to the last shreds of my sanity, when I am trying to discern if I have entered into early-onset dementia.
What are the signs? Wouldn’t there be smaller indications of a diseased mind, doled out over time, increasing in severity until there can be no mistake that illness has struck? This is not the case. I have not once had cause to question my sanity. Often I have wondered what purpose I serve in the universe, but the soundness of my mind has never been an issue. Until now.
I take a sip of Colin’s bitter brew, then peer at my daughter over the rim of the cup.
This morning, she scarcely resembles the girl she once was. Kate was such a lovely child, bright in demeanor and intelligence. Happy, precocious. She spoke at nine months and walked effortlessly before she was a year old. She wrote poetry at five and songs at eight and a novella at thirteen about a werewolf who was besotted with a shape-shifting she-lion. Katie lit up a room with her presence. All through school her teachers praised her effusively. Her grades, until six months ago, were stellar. From the time she was ten, she wanted to be a pediatric veterinarian, had plans to study at the University of Pennsylvania. Until six months ago. When she started hanging out with him.
Katie took the SATs last month. She should have aced the test, but her score was less than spectacular. Study time was replaced by pizzas and B movies and fondling her boyfriend. UPenn is now a fairy tale someone once told her.
“My dad wants to see me.”
I set the demitasse down, then smooth my skirt. The one I wear today is dark peach, and I have complimented it with a pale-pink blouse. The navy skirt and cream blouse and my favorite underwear lie in a heap in the wastebasket in the master bathroom. Whether or not my encounter with Richard was real, I can never put any of those items on my body again.
“I know he does,” I tell her. My ex-husband has been hounding me with phone calls for the past week. His messages range from sickly sweet to irritably frantic to unabashedly hostile. I suspect Owen is bipolar, but he has never been diagnosed and he only self-medicates with copious amounts of alcohol.
“I don’t have to see him, Mom? Right?” Her tone is plaintive.
“Yes, you do.”
“But I don’t want to see him. Not like this.”
“Like what?”
She sets her lips in a grim line. I know what this expression means. No further explanation will be offered.
“Well, you could wash your hair and put some makeup on . . .” As soon as the words leave my lips, I realize I’ve said the wrong thing.
“Oh, just forget it.”
“Kate, your father wants to see you, and there’s nothing I can do about it.” I leave out the fact that I did try to do something about it. I don’t need to burden my daughter with the truth, that Colin and I spent an ungodly amount of money—money we didn’t have—petitioning the court to disallow Owen the right to see her. We hired the best lawyer we could afford. He was worth less than we paid. The judge presiding over the case was moved by Owen’s boyish good looks and engaging oratory, and the false repentance he wore on the sleeve of his Hugo Boss suit, which I’m certain his girlfriend paid for. A daughter needs her father, Owen had said, and the judge, likely thinking of his own daughter, his eyes crinkling at the edges, concurred.
“But you said I didn’t have to!” Katie cries. “You said it was all settled and that I didn’t have to see him if I didn’t want to, that it was up to me.”
“I never told you that, Katie. I don’t know where you got that from.”
And yet, her words swirl around in my head. You said I didn’t have to. You said it was all settled. Something about those words is familiar but also elusive. I don’t allow my thoughts to linger.
I pick up the espresso and take another sip. “Why don’t we try to make the best of the situation?” Such a stupid phrase, and one I can’t adhere to in my own life, so why should I expect my daughter to do so?
“This sucks,” Kate says. This sucks is the cornerstone of Kate’s communication skills. Everything sucks. Most of the time, I don’t disagree.
“No bad dreams last night?” Colin walks through the kitchen, his own demitasse in hand.
I swallow a breath at the memory of Richard’s erection breaking me apart.
“Uh-oh.” Colin sets his cup down and looks at me. “Did you have another?”
I shake my head quickly. “No. No dreams. I slept like the dead.” But I’m trapped in a nightmare now.
“Good.” He refills his cup and carries it to the table. Once seated, he withdraws his pipe and clamps down on it with his teeth. The sharp sound of enamel against plastic stabs at my ears. I hate that damn pipe, and I hate the ritual to which my husband is married.
“Josh?” I ask.
“Reading an article on the possibility of actualizing time travel.”
Kate rolls her eyes. “God. What a geek.”
I want to slap her. Colin reacts more appropriately, as always. “Your brother is neither a geek nor a god, Katie,” he says.
She shrugs. Her cell phone chirps, and her eyes light up. She grabs the phone and reads the message, then bolts from her seat. “I’m out of here.”
“Kate, you should eat something,” I tell her, but she is gone. I hear the echo of her footsteps as she races up the stairs to prepare for his arrival.
I assemble the ingredients of Josh’s protein shake while Colin riffles through his morning paper. Every so often, we hear a hoot or a squawk from the living room—lively, positive vocalizations, signals that Josh is okay and enjoying himself. He has a device on his wheelchair that connects to the laptop via Bluetooth with which he can scroll up and down on whatever web page he peruses. For the moment, he is perfectly content.
I am not. I cannot banish Richard’s serpent sneer from my mind, cannot erase his grasping, thrusting fingertips, his Altoid/whiskey breath.
Make Josh’s smoothie, I tell myself. One moment, one step, one chore at a time.
How can I face that man today?
You must, so you will.
“I talked to Lena last night,” Colin says as I dump an assortment of berries into the blender. “About staying overnight.”
Lena? I think absently. No, he means Raina. Maybe he has dementia. Not funny.
He continues without correcting himself. “You know, for a weekend. I thought we could get away. You and me. Together.” My muscles tense. “Just the two of us. We haven’t been away together for a long time, Em.”
Six years. It’s been six years since we escaped to the country, found a bed-and-breakfast in Connecticut, and spent the better part of the days making love and drinking wine and visiting antiques dealers where we bought nothing because the trip already cost too much. The sojourn ended abruptly when we received a call from Josh’s caretaker, who was at the emergency room with him. He’d choked on a piece of fruit, cut small just as instructed, she’d said, but clearly not cut small enough.
Colin and I have not gone away together since.
“I think we need it, Em.” He waits for a response.
“That would be . . .” Horrible, awful, miserable . . . “Lovely. Let’s do it.” We won’t. Not if I can help it. I push the button on the blender and lose myself in the cacophony of the blades.
Raina arrives on schedule and immediately goes to Josh.
“Dobro jutro moj slatki,” she whispers in his ear. Good morning, my sweet.
Raina is from Serbia. She is blonde and sturdy. She loves hydrangeas and kal
e chips and tennis. She forces Josh to watch any and all televised pro tennis tournaments, but he doesn’t mind. Perhaps he imagines another version of himself, one who sprints along the court, swinging a racquet, diving for volleys and smashing overheads, just like the players he sees on the screen. I imagine that for him as well.
When she arrives, I take my leave, sprinting for the garage before Colin can pin me down to a date on the calendar for our weekend respite.
“Don’t want to be late and inspire Richard’s ire,” I call out.
“Richard?” I hear the confusion in Colin’s voice. He says something else, but I can’t make out the exact words because I am already opening the garage door, already behind the wheel, already pulling out onto the street. Fleeing my home.
In my usual fashion, I stop and depress the button on the remote and wait to make sure the garage door closes all the way. But as I sit, watching the descent of the lumbering door, my attention is wrenched to my front yard and the anomaly that lies within its perimeter.
The tree, that wretched tree with the hazardous erupting roots, the one that has caused me such bodily harm over the last seven years . . . The tree is gone.
The car idles in park. My mouth falls open, and I am powerless to close it.
Where the fuck is the tree?
Kate alights from the front door and ambles down the walkway to the curb. She stares at me questioningly.
I roll down the passenger window and she approaches. She furtively glances to her left, then to her right, making sure her boyfriend isn’t around to catch her conversing with her mother, God forbid.
“What?” Her tone is defensive. She thinks I am going to reprimand her for her short skirt or her heavy-handed eyeliner or any number of things that I couldn’t care less about at this moment.
“Where is the tree?” My voice is a whisper, and she leans against the passenger door, elbows resting on the window jamb.
“What?”
I breathe. “The tree. Where the f—Where the hell is the tree?”
Adolescent ambivalence morphs into genuine curiosity. “What tree, Mom?”