Through Shattered Glass

by David B. Silva

  That night proved to be the last time we made love together.

  Shortly after that, Melanie began to change. Perhaps that's what she had been trying to tell me, that she knew she was going to start changing and there was nothing I or anyone else could do about it.

  The changes came gradually, over a period of three or four weeks. She grew increasingly fatigued during the day, awake and active during the night, after the outside temperature had cooled down. I guess I'll never know if she was bothered by daylight, but she seemed more comfortable secluded inside the apartment with the curtains closed, the lights off. Often, I would come home after work, only to find her standing in the shadows, a ghost-like form frightened of being seen.

  Then one night, after nearly two days without anything to eat, she began vomiting up a brown, watery liquid. I sat next to her on the bed, holding a stainless steel kitchen bowl under her chin because she no longer had the strength to make it to the bathroom.

  “I've got to call the doctor,” I told her.

  Out of the corner of her eyes, she peered up at me. Her face was sallow and sunken, much the same as it had looked after her chemotherapy. She shook her head.

  “You're not eating ... nothing seems to be staying down ... Jesus, Melanie, you'll dehydrate if this keeps up.”

  “No doctor.”

  “At least take some Compozine.”

  Her stomach lurched again, a dry heave this time.

  I wiped her face with a damp washcloth. “You've got a couple bottles left over from the chemo.”

  “No.”

  “This is getting crazy, Melanie.” I wrapped her hands around the now-warm sides of the bowl, and got up from the bed, wanting to distance myself from what was taking place. “I can't sit and watch you killing yourself like this.”

  “I don't want anything else in my body,” she said. Then she coughed—or it might have been another heave, I'm not sure—and the convulsion bent her almost in two, loosening a soft weeping sound from the back of her throat.

  I sat down again, and rubbed the back of her neck. “I feel so helpless.”

  “I know.”

  Her skin had lost a great deal of its elasticity. As I rubbed her neck, I realized layers of skin were beginning to crumble and flake. Underneath, I touched something hard and scaled.

  A chill rattled through her. “I itch all over,” she said, showing me her hands. The fingers were swollen, and the backs of her hands were peeling much the same as the back of her neck. “They put all that crap inside me, Jimmy.”

  “What?”

  “I never should have let them do that.” Another chill shook her. I took the bowl out of her hands, placed it on the night stand, where it wouldn't be staring back at us. She leaned back in the bed, her eyes already closed.

  “See if you can get some sleep, okay?”

  “Okay.”

  Over the course of the next few days, she seemed to improve slightly. The nausea ended, and she began taking soup once a day. For a brief time, I actually held out the hope that the worst might be over. But there was an irritating voice at the back of my mind that said she wasn't really improving at all, she was simply adapting to her cancer.

  The days continued to be unusually hot. I had grown accustomed to watching Melanie pace the apartment once the sun had gone down. She rarely slept with me now. I quit asking why, and I quit begging her to let me take her to a doctor. As cold as it might sound, it had become easier to filter out the bitter grounds of what was happening to us and toss them out as if they didn't matter.

  The night she died, I woke in a sweat around three-thirty in the morning. I was alone, and for a while, I stared at the grayish-yellow cast of a streetlight across the bedroom ceiling, wishing I could fall back to sleep. Then, from the living room, I heard something that sounded a bit like the rustle of dry autumn leaves.

  “Melanie?”

  I found her lying on the couch, under a blanket, her eyes closed. The room was dark—except for a sliver of light sneaking in from the bedroom—so I stopped and switched on the lamp.

  “Oh dear God.”

  Her face was a thin scab of flesh pulled taut across the skeletal structure. Flaps of dry, dead skin were peeling from her forehead and her right cheek. Underneath, I could see a thin, crusty layer with a pattern of scales.

  “I'm dying,” she whispered hoarsely.

  “Jesus, Melanie.” I knelt beside her, feeling more helpless than ever. My hands were trembling, but I managed to brush the hair back from her dry forehead. “You're burning up.”

  She grinned from faraway, and I wondered if she was even aware of me. “Dox ... or... u ... bicin,” she said deliriously.

  It didn't make any sense, and I didn't have the time to worry about it. “You're too hot, babe. We've got to cool you down.” I worked my arms underneath her—one at her shoulders, one at her knees—as gently as I could.

  “Bleo ... my ... cin.”

  I had to kick the bathroom door open with one foot, and use my elbow to flip on the light switch. She wasn't heavy—in fact, she was frighteningly light—but it was awkward guiding her through the door and lowering her into the tub. I was haunted by the thought that one of her bones might snap.

  “How's that?” I grabbed a towel off the nearby rack, placed it under her head for a pillow. “Is that comfortable?”

  She settled back in the tub, her movements slow, her eyes wide and never leaving me.

  I ran the tap until the water was cool enough to bring down her fever without making her uncomfortable, then turned on the shower. Melanie smiled. “Oh God, babe, I'm sorry. I should have listened when you told me the cancer was back. I should have trusted you.”

  “It isn't cancer,” she whispered. Her eyes had darkened a bit. “It's the chem ... i ... cals.”

  I brushed the wet hair back from her face. “Shhh ...”

  “The chem ... icals from the chemo.” She reached out and touched my face with the back of her hand. There was still some softness to her touch; the shell-like underpinning was still partially buried. Then she smiled, a pure childlike grin that stretched tautly across the front of her skull. “I love you, Jimmy.”

  I held her hand against my face, afraid to let go.

  “Dox .. or ... u ... bi ... cin,” she said softly. “Doesn't that ... sound awful?”

  She closed her eyes.

  “Melanie?”

  Cool droplets of water were sliding off her body and lazily snaking their way down the porcelain tub to the drain. It seemed as if the world had slowed down some. Everything became crystal clear. I stared dully at the way her collar bone and ribs had stretched the skin across her chest. There were places where the scales underneath were showing through now. The water around the drain gradually turned dark from something horrible that was leaking out of her. Her hand slipped out of mine and fell against the side of the tub.

  Everything crystal clear.

  It's only been a few months now. Melanie never opened her eyes again. I was grateful for that. I wasn't sure I could stand to look at what was behind them. The heat wave hasn't broken. Though it doesn't feel as unbearable as it once did. I keep the windows open at night, welcoming in whatever breeze happens to blow in off the ocean.

  The nights seem longer without her. I don't sleep much. When I close my eyes, I see her again, the way she was at the end. And I can hear her struggling with those damnable syllables, trying to recite the names of the chemicals the doctors had used to flush out her cancer. It's an ugly sound. I don't much like listening to it.

  The Song of Sister Rain

  1.

  “Do you smell that, Parker?”

  “Yes.”

  “What does it smell like?”

  “It smells like ... like autumn, like fallen oak leaves and fresh-turned earth, like thunderstorms and short days.”

  “Yes, exactly!”

  2.

  It was there, at the side of the road, just outside the main gate, when Parker came to work
that night. He caught only a glimpse of it. Diana was in the other lane, on her way out of the parking lot, and she honked at him. Parker waved, then turned to his rearview mirror and saw the brown clump of fur grow smaller and smaller until it had finally disappeared altogether.

  It had looked a little like a dead dog, he thought. Or maybe a coyote, though he couldn't be sure if it had been an animal at all. It might have been an old rug someone had thrown out, the way people sometimes did on this stretch of road when they didn't like the idea of having to haul their junk to the dump on the other side of town. Or it might have been a winter coat. It was getting to be that time of year and it wouldn't be the first time he had spotted misplaced clothing by the side of the road.

  Parker thought it might have been any of these things or none of them, then his thoughts went wandering from the weather to ... the clump of fur to ... his mother, whom he thought might be able to use a new coat for Christmas, to ... how well she was adjusting at the nursing home.

  Coming to the decision that she could no longer function on her own had been the hardest thing he had ever done. After six weeks, it still carried a sting when he thought about it. Alzheimer's, though, was an ugly beast, and there had been no denying that his mother was no longer the same woman who had raised him.

  He pulled into a space near the front entrance of Metallic Wonders and turned off the engine. For a moment, he sat there, watching in his rearview mirror as the last two cars filed out of the company parking lot, reminding himself that tomorrow was Saturday and he wanted to drop by to visit his mother some time in the afternoon.

  His black plastic lunch box had taken a tumble off the seat on the trip over. It lay on its side, up against the heater vent. Parker leaned across the seat, picked up the box, and wondered whether or not the Thermos had survived. So many things in life were fragile, he thought as he climbed out of the car.

  Metallic Wonders was a strange place to work, made even stranger by the fact that he worked nights as the only security guard. It was a cushy job. Once around the complex every hour on the hour. Check the locks. Make sure everything was quiet and secure.

  What made it strange were the sculptures. The Wonders, as the place had come to be known, was an artists' cooperative. They produced mostly commissioned works, the large sculptures you might find outside City Hall or at the entrance to the County Fairgrounds or in a local shopping mall. Others—some commissioned, some not—fell into the hands of private collectors. And still others, well, Parker had no idea where they were likely to end up. These were not your ordinary, run-of-the-mill works. They were, each in its own unique way, horrific. That was the only word he could find to describe them.

  Parker locked the door behind him, punched in at the time clock, and made his way to the small office at the back of the building. He dropped his lunch box in the chair next to the door and prepared for his first round of the evening. A couple of months ago some guy from L.A. had come in looking for something he could use as an attraction outside his adult book store. Apparently, he had hid somewhere in the back warehouse where the wire rods and the bronze and the Corten steel were kept. Parker found him in Building Two, buck naked, riding a wire-metal piece called The Whore of Babylon.

  You just never knew.

  3.

  Parker slept uneasily the next morning. He had gone to bed reminding himself that he needed to visit his mother that afternoon at the nursing home. But the visit had preyed on his mind and he had drifted in and out of sleep all morning before he finally came fully awake, exhausted, at a few minutes after one.

  It was late afternoon by the time he arrived at the Happy Valley Nursing Home. His mother was in her room, sitting in a chair, staring out the window. Her hands were folded in her lap, and when he entered, she looked up at him and smiled.

  “Hi, Mom. It's Parker.”

  He never knew when she might or might not recognize him. On occasion she was actually able to call him by name, though such occasions had become less and less the norm the past six months. Even when she was able to recognize him, it was a rare moment when she could share what was going on inside her. The mother Parker had grown up with was locked away now, a prisoner inside her own head.

  The dementia—a term he had picked up from the doctors, mostly from hearing it time and time again—had begun so subtlety Parker had at first missed the clues. Of course, they had not been the kinds of lapses that drew attention. She would forget where she had parked the car, or the dentist appointment she had made two weeks ago. Or she would misplace her glasses and spend an hour searching for them before she remembered they were in her purse. Little things like that. The kinds of lapses that Parker, himself, had been guilty of from time to time.

  But he had begun to worry about her after she had missed visiting his father's grave on their wedding anniversary. Parker's father had passed away eight years ago after a myocardial infarction ---another medical term Parker had picked up from over exposure. It was the man's third myocardial infarction in seven years. He died while fishing on the Sacramento River. Parker's mother had never missed visiting the grave site. Rain or shine, illness or bridge club, she was there every birthday, every wedding and death anniversary, a woman paying her respects to the man she had loved nearly all her life. And then that last anniversary...

  “What happened?” Parker had asked her.

  “I don't know,” she said.

  “You've never done that before.”

  “I just forgot, that's all.”

  “You forgot?”

  “I'm sixty-seven years old. I'm allowed to forget once in awhile.”

  That was certainly true, and Parker hadn't pressed her anymore about it. But then two weeks later he called to invite her out to dinner and she had sounded confused about who he was and what he wanted.

  “Mom?”

  “You shouldn't be calling here.”

  “Mom, this is Parker. Are you all right?”

  “Shhh. They might hear you.”

  “Who might hear me?”

  “The feeders.”

  “Who?”

  “The feeders.”

  Try as he might, Parker couldn't seem to get anything else out of her, and the call worried him so much that he went over to make sure she was all right. He found her in the living room, watching television. She looked up and smiled and told him what a pleasant surprise it was to see him. She offered no recollection of the phone call. And she pinched her face at him as if he were crazy when he brought up the feeders.

  After that, Parker had started to pay more attention. When they were together, he kept a closer eye on her, and tried not to overlook the little lapses that had seemed so meaningless before. Nothing was meaningless anymore, he had decided. Nothing.

  He made the decision to place her in the nursing home after he had gone over to check on her after work one morning and had found her in the garage, dressed in her pajamas. She was sitting in her car, an old Nash Rambler she hadn't driven in ten years.

  “What are you doing, Mom?”

  “I'm supposed to be somewhere,” she said, a troubled expression on her face.

  “You have an appointment this morning?”

  “An appointment, yes.”

  “What kind of an appointment, Mom?”

  “That’s what he said.”

  “Mom?”

  “He said I have an appointment with the feeders.”

  Parker helped her out of the Rambler and back into the house. She had been sitting out in the garage for a good long time. Her hands were freezing, her lips blue, her breathing shallow. He got her into bed with an extra blanket, and went to make some tea in the kitchen, where he found she had left two of the gas burners on high. The flames were bright yellow, dancing and weaving, having a grand old time. How long they had been burning, he had no way of knowing. Maybe only for the time she had been in the garage. Maybe for days. It didn't matter. The only thing that mattered was that a line had been crossed. She had gone from being harml
essly forgetful to potentially self-endangering.

  Hence the nursing home.

  “How have you been, Mom?” Parker gave her a kiss on the cheek.

  She smiled blandly. “Parker …”

  “Yes.”

  “Parker ... my boy.” She gave his hand a loving pat. “It's so nice to have you here.”

  It was as lucid as she had been in two months. Parker pulled up a chair and they talked about the Christmas they had spent in Tahoe when he was only eleven; and the time his father had gotten a promotion at the Wal-Mart where he worked and brought home half the store in celebration; and how nice the place on Waterford had been when Parker was growing up; and a hundred other things. She remembered it all, even little things like the birdhouse at Waterford that had blown over during the snow storm in the winter of '76. Parker had forgotten that until she mentioned it.

  He took her out for a walk along the river later that afternoon and treated her to dinner at El Papagayo before returning her home again. By then, the inevitable lapses had begun to show themselves again. She sat in her favorite chair and stared out the window, until she finally looked up at him, her expression confused.

  “You need anything?” Parker asked.

  “They usually come at night,” she said.

  “Who's that, Mom?”

  “The feeders.”

  “The feeders? You keep bringing them up. Who are the feeders, Mom?”

  “They visit, you know. Usually at night, but ... not always. Not always. Sometimes, they come as your father. Sometimes as you. And sometimes ... sometimes maybe as a chair or the television or a coat or a pair of shoes or ... or ...” Her voice drifted away, taking the thought with it.

  Parker sat with her awhile longer, neither of them talking, and by the time he finally got up to leave, she was completely lost again. He kissed her on the forehead. “I'll be back next week. I love you, Mom.”

  She smiled vacantly.

  4.

  “Can you feel it, Parker?”