The Complete Collection. William Wharton
so discouraging, and by nature I’m not the endurance type.
At three, I take him in to try for a nap. He falls asleep with me holding on to his foot again. I’m worrying what we’ll do for the coming night.
That evening I get Dad to eat a reasonable amount but he’s not drinking much. I’m worried about dehydration. It’s hard getting fluids in him, and he definitely has diarrhea. I tried giving him hot chocolate but I almost burned him, a combination of his shaking and my lack of skill pouring liquids down another person’s throat.
I lean him back in his rocker before the TV. I run back and forth, clearing dishes and washing, watching him.
He’s having the same damned problem with the rug. He’s lowered himself onto the floor and is crawling on all fours picking at the pattern and the flickering TV shadows.
I settle in Mother’s chair and watch. He crawls on his knees to investigate a vase of fake flowers on the coffee table. He’s very careful, touching lightly, studying, trying to understand. I keep up a running commentary, explaining the things he’s looking at, but he doesn’t react.
Then he kneels with his knees on the floor, his head and shoulders on the couch. He stays that way for almost ten minutes till I think he might be asleep. I sneak over to look in his eyes; they’re wide, unblinkingly open. God, I’m glad Mom isn’t here to see this! I wish I weren’t!
I sit at the dining-room table where I can keep an eye on him and try writing a letter to Vron. I tell her Dad’s been operated on, so I have to stay longer. I tell her I’m taking care of Dad, now he’s out of the hospital. Then I can’t stop myself, I spill all the beans. I’m practically crying, writing that letter and knowing all the time it isn’t fair.
After the letter, I call Joan. I don’t want to upset her, so I just say things are going OK. I tell her Dad hasn’t changed much but we’re getting along. She tells me how Mom’s been playing hearts with Maryellen; no big scene with Mario, yet.
I’m dreading the night. Something happened to me the night before. I’m not afraid of the dark. I really have this advantage, I like the dark. I like being alone in it; there’s something about darkness that comforts me. Billy’s afraid of the dark and so’s Jacky. Marty’s petrified.
For a long time at the mill we had our john in the cellar. Marty wouldn’t go down unless somebody went with her. She’d seen a Dracula film when she was about fourteen and it got to her. After that, Marty even kept a crucifix over the head of her bed. She has no religious convictions but she had a crucifix. I’m sure if I could’ve gotten her a gun with a silver bullet, she’d’ve slept with it under her pillow.
That crucifix made a great impression on Mom the one time they came to visit us in Paris. She’s always been worried about the lack of religiousness in our family. We’ve never had The Sacred Heart or pieces of palm hanging over religious pictures, all the paraphernalia of a primitive Catholic family. But Marty had a crucifix over her bed, so we weren’t completely lost.
Now I’m seeing things out of the corners of my eyes, just beyond vision. I keep turning my head fast. I’m jumpy all right.
I undress Dad and sit him on the toilet hoping for the best, but nothing comes. I put on his pajamas and lead him back to the bedroom. He doesn’t know what’s going on, he’s gone.
I put him in bed. What can I do to avoid last night’s catastrophe? I decide I’ll sit on a chair beside him and read. The only book I find in the house is a book on different ways to psych yourself up when you’re about to crack. It’s Mom’s all-time standby. It’s filled with mundane solutions but it’s not bad, written in an easy-to-understand style, not too far off the mark; sort of front-line therapy.
This is the first night Dad starts reaching out as if there are butterflies going across in front of him. He’s reaching up with his fingers, very gently, very delicately, trying to catch something out of the air in front of him. There’s nothing I can see, but he’s tracking with his eyes and closing his fingers carefully, like a child picking motes from the sunlight.
I put down the book and lay my head close to his on the pillow. He continues his graceful plucking. I try to see what he’s seeing. Whatever he’s reaching for, he isn’t catching it. He reaches with the frustrated movement one makes when unsuccessfully pulling a piece of thread through the other side of a needle. Whatever they are, he can’t get hold of them. But he isn’t complaining; only gibbering away with his chattering teeth and lips; saying nothing, expressing extreme concentration.
I slip my hand over his as he reaches, strokes, grabs.
‘What is it, Dad? What are you seeing?’
He doesn’t look at me. His eyes are focused two or three feet in front of him.
When someone is with you and seeing something you’re not seeing, you begin to feel invisible yourself.
First, I turn on the overhead light; maybe this will help; maybe the dim light is causing some kind of hallucination. He pauses briefly and stares at the light, then one of his ‘things’ catches his eye and he reaches for it, his hand carefully inching up.
I turn out the overhead. He slows for a few seconds, then starts again.
I turn off the bedside lamp to see what will happen. In the near dark we watch each other. There’s enough light so I can see he isn’t reaching anymore. Whatever it is he’s trying to catch doesn’t fly in the dark. I listen to his trembling, babbling – ‘bebebebedebdedebgegbebe –’
God, it’s scary! I run my hand over his forehead, over his shoulder and down his arm on the outside of the blankets. He’s as tense as if he’s on the mark ready to run a hundred-yard dash. You could do an anatomy lesson on his tensed-up body. You don’t expect those kinds of muscles in a feeble old man. Also, I haven’t had much experience feeling a man’s arms or shoulders. Except for drawing or painting the figure, I have practically no experience with what a man’s body is like except my own. It certainly feels different from a woman’s.
I stroke him like that for maybe fifteen minutes and the chattering dies down. In the dark I can’t see if he’s asleep. I lean close; his breathing is shallow but I’m not sure.
I reach back and turn on the bed light. He’s staring at me when the light comes on. Somehow, in the dark, he knew just where my eyes were all the time! He’s boring into my eyes with those unblinking, pinpoint eyes. He’s looking at me the same way he’d look at anything else, including his butterflies. He’s not looking with any recognition, only with a vague curiosity. He looks as if he has a desire to understand or know, but no expectation of doing so. He looks at me the way I might stare at the Milky Way on a starry night, not being able to put together what I see with what I know.
I smile; it doesn’t mean anything to him. He watches and seems satisfied so long as I don’t move too fast. After what seems forever, his eyes blink a few times. Then they start flickering, then closing slowly, like the sun going over a hill. He looks dead when they’re halfway down and the pupils turn up under the lids. I listen for breathing and he begins to breathe long, staggering breaths. I settle back in the chair and read but can’t hold concentration. I vary between anxiety and falling asleep; there doesn’t seem to be any comfortable place for my mind between those two.
Then I think, What if I fall asleep? I don’t want to find him on the floor again. What am I going to do? I can’t leave him and I can’t sit up all night. I decide I’ll get in bed with him. It might help if he feels somebody close. He’s slept all his life with someone; it must be a terrible change sleeping alone.
I slide him against the wall so he’s blocked in, put on my sleep suit, spread out on my back and listen to his breathing. It isn’t long before I’m asleep.
I wake scared. What wakes me is the smell of him. He’s on his hands and knees straddling me in the bed. I’m flat on my back and he’s on top of me with his head directly over mine. He’s looking straight into my face in the dark, his nose practically touching my nose.
I