In Nightmares We're Alone

by Greg Sisco

  All day with Mom it’s talk of people watching her and the house being ready to take her when she’s left alone. Then when Ellen looks after her, a woman she barely knows, Mom’s the picture of perfect mental health. Is it me and Arthur, driving my own mother mad? Is it the familiarity? Maybe following the comfortable tedium of a life spent in the same house with the same people, the mind does its best to hold tight to that tedium. Maybe familiarity makes it a simpler task for the brain. Maybe the delusions are as much the result of the familiarity of the house and her daughter and her son-in-law as they are of the loss of her husband. And maybe, just maybe, ejecting her from the house and putting her someplace unfamiliar is exactly what she needs.

  And still, still I can’t entertain the thought. I know I won’t do it.

  But I have to wonder: am I insisting on keeping up that comfortable tedium for her sake, or for mine?

  * * * * *

  “How was your night, Mom?” I ask when we’re both showered and lying on that firm mattress I feel like she’s had since I was a little girl. “Did you enjoy having Ellen over?”

  “Oh, it was fine, dear,” says Mom. “I hope you and Arthur had a nice time together.”

  There it is again. When you’re burdened constantly by the presence of a loved one whose health is slipping; when you can’t discuss your feelings without censoring them for her benefit, save for the occasional quiet whisper when she’s napping; when you have to take turns sitting with Mom so one of you can lock the bedroom door and cry or go walk to the woods and scream; when you truly love the woman who is tearing apart your life; when you take all the anger and stress that’s building and turn it on yourself or your spouse because it’s more humane than aiming it at your dying mother; when you only have three hours out of the week to be alone with your spouse and let your guard down and really talk; then tell me, how are you supposed to have a nice time?

  Is that cynical? Is it a terrible, petty thought? Is it an absurd question answered as easily as it’s asked with a shrug and a cute little string of words like “Don’t worry; be happy” or “Make every second count?” Glass half empty, glass half full? All that crap?

  Maybe. Maybe I’m showing my true colors by even asking, outing myself as a cold and sad old woman.

  Maybe, maybe, maybe.

  Seems like I don’t know anything for sure anymore.

  Confucius said, “Real knowledge is to know the extent of one’s ignorance.”

  That’s a quote I learned in college, but it’s taken years of applying the knowledge I thought I’d gained from my expensive education to appreciate the extent of my ignorance. In college, they sure as hell don’t teach you how ignorant you’ll be of everything that matters the day you get your degree.

  Oscar Wilde said, “Education is an admirable thing, but it is well to remember from time to time that nothing that is worth knowing can be taught.”

  College taught me the quote. Life taught me that any time you have a thought, you can rest easy knowing somebody smarter and more successful than you already articulated it better than you ever will.

  Or as Ralph Waldo Emerson put it, “All my best thoughts were stolen by the ancients.”

  Before my parents started dying, these were the thoughts that kept me up at night.

  “It was good to have some time alone together,” I tell Mom.

  “I’m sorry I keep you so cooped up all the time,” she says. “I hope you don’t hate me for it. It’s not fair, but I just can’t go with them yet. You understand that, don’t you?”

  I sigh and nod. Already she’s back to this esoteric talk. Perfectly sound all day with Ellen and as soon as we’re alone together, this. “How are you feeling, Mom? I mean, really?”

  “Oh, I feel fine. I know you think I’m just a crazy old woman, and I’m sorry. I hope when they come for you someday, in a really long time, I hope they won’t be so vengeful.”

  I shudder. I don’t want to talk about them anymore. I don’t want to lie next to the woman who brought me up and listen to her talk cryptically about vengeful things that want to take her away as soon as she’s left alone. I don’t want her to believe it. I don’t want it to happen for her.

  I turn on my side, facing away from her, and I fight back the tears. And that vile thought I wish would go away comes back.

  I just hope it’s not much longer.

  Friday, September 24th

  Another day here. Another week there.

  I grade Social Studies tests while Mom and Arthur watch soap operas in the living room.

  I drink tea with Mom and reminisce while Arthur goes off to see his psychic, a silly superstition he’s had as long as I’ve known him. I gave up giving him guff about it a long time back.

  I go to school and deal with students, teach them their multiplication tables and how to spell “light.”

  A phone call home to Arthur during first recess here. A few words with Mom during lunch there.

  Arthur goes out and drinks with an old poker buddy while Mom tells me about them and I try not to cry.

  A glass of wine here. A shot of vodka there.

  A late afternoon nap. A sleep haunted by dreamlessness.

  One day I come into the classroom in the morning and there’s a quote written across the board in big block letters:

  “Any idiot can face a crisis—it’s day to day living that wears you out.”

  Anton Chekhov. Apart from solidarity, it offers nothing. But when you get down to it, there’s never much to be offered in life beyond solidarity.

  What Chekhov is doing on the chalkboard in a second grade classroom I have no idea. Apparently someone’s using my room after hours for something with a much more complex curriculum. Feels like the appropriate spirit for the current state of my life though.

  I erase the text as the students come in.

  At recess Arthur calls me sounding exhausted and I ask, “Is everything okay?”

  “She’s been bad today,” he says. “Really somber. She’s talking about going with them, saying she doesn’t know why she keeps holding out. I think… I don’t know.”

  I trace a hand over my desk and dig for strength. I wish I wasn’t here, sitting in a classroom while the real world runs its course without me. I wish I was at home with Mom more often for her time of need. I wish things were more peaceful for her, even if she was dying. I wish I wasn’t so angry all the time. I just wish. All the time, I just wish.

  “Do you want me to talk to her?” I ask.

  “She’s asleep. I don’t know, Edna, this is just… It’s getting really hard for me. Every day.”

  “I know that. You think it isn’t hard for me? She’s my mother.”

  “I know. I know it is, but you’re not here with her all the time like this. It wears on you.”

  “That is…” I look around to double-check no students are in the room. “That’s bullshit, Arthur. You don’t get to be the one suffering right now. She’s dying and I’m losing a mother. Don’t tell me how it wears on you. You don’t know.”

  “I know. I know, it’s just… I need to get away. I’m sorry; I just… do. Do you think maybe… maybe Ellen could come by or something? Just give me a few hours to not… to not have to…”

  “No. Absolutely not. If she’s on her way out, she doesn’t need Ellen there. She needs you. She needs me.”

  “Then why don’t—” he starts off almost shouting and I can hear him breathe to calm himself. “Then why don’t you come home?”

  I know he’s not being unfair. He and Mom never got on well. She resented that I married him, thought I could do better. He’s been a saint to look after her as well as he has. Not to mention his MS. His health’s been declining for years. He walks with a cane, slurs his words. He deserves looking after himself. He shouldn’t be forced into a position as a caretaker. It’s not right.

  I always planned on having enough money saved up by the time we were this age and his condition had gotten this bad that I’d retire early a
nd he’d collect on disability. I could take care of him all day and he could rest, spend his time reading. I could finally write that novel for extra income. But I’d always imagined myself teaching in some upscale university for a paycheck four times higher than what I make in a public school. And after Dad’s tailspin and now Mom’s, everything’s fallen apart so badly I have to pinch pennies for groceries this week. I’m ten years from retirement and I’ve got no confidence social security will even be there for me anymore by the time it hits. And so I keep wishing. Wishing and wishing.

  John Lennon said “Life is what happens when you are busy making other plans.”

  That one I didn’t learn in college. I learned that one when I was a young woman with a sense of adventure. And I learned the sentiment behind it, as always, much later.

  “Okay,” I tell Arthur. “Just hang on a little while. I’ll tell them I need a sub and she’ll take over at lunch. I’ll be home in two or three hours.”

  * * * * *

  Arthur leaves a few minutes after I get home. He’s upset and pretty adamant about getting out of the house for a while. I don’t know what Mom said or did that got to him, but I let him go. Mom’s awake now and I don’t want to get into a heated argument in front of her of which she’s the subject. So Arthur leaves and I sit down with her in the living room.

  “What’s happening, Mom? Arthur’s been concerned about you today.”

  “Oh, he’s just being concerned about you. I’ll be fine. I’m an old woman. I had a good run.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “You two need to look after each other. You can’t be cooped up over here all your lives. If they’re going to come get me, they can just go ahead and do it.”

  “Mom… The doctors say you’re in good health. You’re scared all the time, I know, and I’m sure you’re lonely, but you’re up and walking around all day, and you’re… You’re okay, Mom. All this talk about people coming to take you away, it’s… I just don’t know why you feel that way. I don’t think it’s your time to go.”

  “I dreamed about your father last night. I dreamed I was lying awake in bed and I reached over and he was next to me. And I told him how much I missed him and he said the same thing back to me. I was realizing how alone we both felt, and then… it just seemed sort of loving. If they want to take me away and they want to take me to him, maybe I should go.”

  My eyes well up and I turn away and sniffle.

  “Don’t cry,” she says. “He and I have a lot to offer each other. We belong together. You don’t need me anymore. You’re a grown woman. You’re all I’ve got in this world anymore, but I’m more of a hindrance to you than anything else.”

  “That’s not true.”

  “Bologna. You and Arthur belong together and Tom and I belong together, and if I need to be away from you for a little while for that to happen, it’ll be okay. We’ll all be in the same place in fifty years anyway. Is it so selfish of me to want to go with him?”

  I’m not going to talk theology with her. I’m not going to tell her that now is all we’ve got and whether it’s a few days or a few years from now, as soon as her heart stops beating it will be the last time I ever look at my mother or speak to her or hold her or be held by her. I won’t lay my nihilism on her and make things worse. Instead I just embrace her and cry in her shoulder.

  “No, Mom,” I say. “It’s not selfish at all. I just wish it wasn’t how you felt.”

  “Edna,” she says, rubbing my back. “You’re a strong woman. We’ve always done everything we could for one another. Now this is what we both have to do. We’ll be strong. Even after they come take me, I’ll always be watching you, smiling, proud of you. It’ll all be okay in the end.”

  We hold each other for a while and lie together on the couch. The tough old bird Mom always was, now it’s a different kind of strength I’m seeing, a subtle strength you could confuse with weakness. In fact I’m not entirely sure it isn’t a weakness I’m confusing with strength.

  Elie Wiesel wrote, “Because of indifference, one dies before one actually dies.”

  That’s why Arthur had to run out like that. It’s what was eating him. Mom talked to him like she’s talking to me now, and he knew she died last night or early this morning, just as I know she’s dead in my arms as I’m holding her.

  And so we come to another thing they don’t teach in college: how to resurrect the dead.

  * * * * *

  Arthur hugs me when he gets home, tighter than I think he’s hugged me in years. He kisses my cheek and tells me he’s so sorry he left earlier. He says he got scared and he knows he breaks easily and isn’t always pleasant to be around but he’s going to try to be better. He asks Mom how she’s feeling and says he’s happy we can be here together right now, no matter what the future brings.

  I don’t wonder as hard where he’s been as I used to when we were younger. I don’t know where he gets his bursts of strength and love when he’s like this, but love of any kind is so precious right now I don’t care where it came from.

  The truth is my cynical thought is he’s either done something awful or broken off something awful he’s been doing. A mistress, an addiction. Maybe he puts away money I don’t know about and bets it on the races. Maybe he got lucky on a bet or he almost smoked a cigarette and threw it down after the first drag. Maybe he believed all the pain in this house was punishment for some sin of his and he broke off a relationship just now with some younger woman he’s been seeing and he’s proud of himself for finding the strength.

  I don’t know where that comes from, that bitterness in me, that thought that love has to come from a place of selfishness, of pride. But I feel no judgment. If any of these things are true, they don’t bother me. If he doesn’t say what happened I won’t ask. If it’s something upsetting and he doesn’t need my help, I’d rather not know. This is our marriage. It’s a partnership more than any petty kind of mutual possession or puppy love. Life is hard, and whatever he has to do to get through his is forgivable by me.

  “If you expect nothing from anybody,” wrote Sylvia Plath, “you’re never disappointed.”

  When Arthur is not with me, it is his life he is living. There are times I need him, and some of those times he is here. I have learned to accept things as they come, and it is pleasant when he has his arms around me at the right time.

  Ms. Plath may have been onto something. But we all know the ending to her story, so she might just as easily not have been.

  * * * * *

  A few hours after we’ve gone to bed, I wake up to hear Mom next to me, talking in her sleep. She says Dad’s name, something about missing him too. I force a smile because I’m tired of crying.

  “I’ll be there soon,” says Mom, a little louder, a little less dreamlike.

  I have to think about whether I want to wake her. If I do, I decide, I’m only doing it for me. If she’s with Dad in her sleep, she’s happy, and that’s something she should have. I try to nestle my head back into my pillow and get back to sleep when I feel her rouse behind me.

  “Edna,” she says softly. She puts an arm around me.

  “I’m here, Mom.” I say. “You were talking in your sleep.”

  “I was talking to your father,” she says.

  “I know.”

  She holds me and puts her face in my hair.

  “Do you remember the first time you brought Arthur over for Christmas dinner?” she asks.

  “Of course. Is that what you were talking about?”

  “No. I was just remembering how inquisitive Tom was and how the whole thing felt like a job interview.”

  I laugh. “It was pretty awkward.”

  “He was so worried about a college girl hanging around with a boy who’d dropped out. He always had such high hopes for you. He was really proud though. Do you know that?”

  “I know, Mom.”

  “I just always felt like that dinner got the three of us off on the wrong foot. I wished we had
it to do over.”

  “It’s okay. It’s past now.”

  “Did I ever tell you, at the end of the night, when you went out on the patio with him to say goodnight, what I said to your father?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “He was trying to watch from the window, to make sure the two of you weren’t getting up to too much mischief out there. And he told me that you kissed him. And I said, ‘I know. She’s gonna marry him one day too.’”

  I laugh softly. “You told him that? That first night?”

  “I sure did. I knew you would. When I was about the same age I brought Tom home to meet my parents and they weren’t thrilled with my choice of boyfriend either, but I knew I was in love with him and so did he and we didn’t mind anything my parents said. And when I looked at you and Arthur I knew, that’s my daughter. And Tom and me, we’d better get used to it, because that boy’s not going anywhere.”

  “Well, you were right, Mom.”

  “I know I was. And you’ll be together the rest of your lives, just like your father and I were.”

  “I hope so.”

  There is a long silence and her voice turns somber. “I sure miss him.”

  I stroke her shoulder. “We all do, Mom.”

  “Oh, stop that,” she says, pulling my hand away. “Arthur doesn’t. And you don’t miss him like I do. That’s okay though. He was mine and mine alone.”

  I know she’s in pain, but it hurts to be told I don’t miss my father.

  “Darling,” says Mom. “Would you give me a few minutes alone? I’d just like to sit here in the dark and think about him.”

  “You… You want me to leave you?”

  “Just for a few minutes. I’ll be fine.”

  I sit up in bed groggily. She’s either getting better or worse now. By her tone of voice I’d say worse, but I have to wonder if the request for independence is a positive development. I get out of bed and walk through the doorway. I turn back.