Love In Darkness

by E. M. Tippetts

  Beep.

  “Alex, Dave Ruskin here. I don’t know if you heard, but Dmitri was in a car accident a few months ago. He’s paraplegic now, and still struggling with all the changes in his life. To be honest, I’m worried about the kid. Is there any chance you could take him for an afternoon or two, get his mind off himself and his own problems? It’d mean the world to us.” He rattles off his phone number.

  Beep.

  I take the phone from my ear and look at it. How many messages are there on here?

  “Alex Katsumoto? This is Siraj, at the library? I would like to talk to you sometime, if you could spare a moment. You can call me, or you can stop by the library any time it’s open. Thank you very much.”

  Siraj? This guy’s been the town librarian forever. As long as I can remember, at least. He’s always been nice to everyone and was one of the few people who didn’t yell whenever he talked to me when I was a kid.

  The messages are finally finished and I put the receiver back in its cradle. There’s no way I can be a respite care provider, knowing that one day I’m going to receive messages from angels beamed into my brain to go on a secret mission that involves me taking off my clothes and running out into traffic, or worse.

  I don’t want to explain that to people, though, so my other option is to just come up with a good excuse why I’m too busy. Before I left on my mission, I planned to come home, enroll in a junior college that would accept my GED, and become a caregiver like Hiroko. It’s the only plan I ever had for myself, and it was Madison’s idea. Before that, I just thought I’d probably loiter on street corners for the rest of my life or… something. Foresight really isn’t my strong suit, and I miss Madison right now. She’s the one I’d discuss things like this with. Now I need to come up with a new plan all on my own. But first I need to follow my morning checklist.

  The doorbell rings as I’m stepping out of the shower. By the time I’m dressed and downstairs, Hiroko has ushered my Aunt Ellie into the front room. With a smile at me, the caregiver retreats and leaves us alone. My aunt looks me over, not unkindly, but I feel lacking all the same. My casual clothes are years old, left over from when I was a teenager, so I’m in ratty jeans and a faded blue t-shirt, no socks or shoes.

  For her part, she’s as elegant as ever, her silver hair perfectly coiffed and her green eyes penetrating and inquisitive. I sense, as she sweeps her gaze over our living room, that she memorizes every significant detail – though I’m not sure what the significant details are. She wears a suit and flat, hard soled shoes that tap softly against the tiles of the entryway.

  “Don’t tell me what to do!” Mom yells in the back of the house, but it’s in Japanese.

  “She okay?” Aunt Ellie asks.

  I nod and we sit across the coffee table from each other, her hands clasping her briefcase on her narrow lap. Her expression is all tolerance and resignation. She’s in town a couple of times a week to manage affairs at the Wilkstone Foundation, but people around here think she’s the receptionist and secretary and don’t even suspect that she’s chairman of the board, Roger Wilkstone’s sister, and one of the first women to graduate from Harvard Law School. This is exactly how she likes it, so she’s never even hinted otherwise.

  “How are you?” Her gaze fixes on me in a way that lets me know, this is not a casual question.

  “Well…”

  Her sigh, though exasperated, isn’t rude. She’s got a right to be exasperated. I’m her grandnephew, not someone she thought she’d be looking after until I became an adult. Now that I’m on my way to mental illness, I’m sure she wonders if this task will ever end.

  “What do you need to know?” I ask.

  “Are you medicated now?”

  “Yeah.”

  “What’s the prognosis?”

  “Well… I dunno. Given how my mom is, I’m guessing it’ll be bad.”

  She nods again. “I confess I haven’t had any time to read up on your medical records or anything like that.”

  “Sure.”

  “I’m not a child,” shouts Mom. “I can use this if I want to. Don’t-”

  “Alex!” calls Hiroko, sounding more than a little panicked.

  “Coming,” I call back. “Just a sec,” I tell my aunt as I get up and head back towards the den.

  Mom is in the hallway, brandishing a pair of scissors. Every time Hiroko reaches for them, Mom yanks them away and I wince, afraid she’ll put her own eye out. She’s definitely deteriorated since I saw her last. This sort of thing was not a problem before. It bothers me that I still haven’t had the chance to hug her. Little moments of connection like that are what make this whole situation bearable sometimes, but I always need to be careful about touching my mother. If she’s not ready or in the mood for it, she’ll scream.

  “Mom,” I say. “Give me the scissors.”

  “I can use them if I want.”

  “Yes, but I need them for something. Please.” I hold out my hand.

  My mother turns to look at me, brown eyes milky with age, skin wrinkled like a paper sack that’s been wadded up, then smoothed. Her mouth twitches with stubbornness and for a minute I expect her to lay into me, but she doesn’t. She holds out the scissors and lets me take them, the blades gripped in my fist, the metal cool against my skin.

  “Thank you,” I say.

  “I need to make something.” She strides off down the hall.

  “Okay,” I call after her.

  Hiroko shoots me a grateful look as she follows my mother.

  I return to the living room and my aunt takes one look at the scissors and her eyes go wide with shock. “No,” I say, “she was just being a little careless. She didn’t threaten anyone with them or anything.”

  “You have scissors lying around?”

  Even when my mother’s at her most psychotic, she’s not a violent person. That’s a common misperception people have about mental illness. When her delusions frighten her, she’s a run and hide kind of person, not a vigilante who tries to take them out with weaponry. “It’s all good.”

  Aunt Ellie lifts her gaze from the scissors to my face. “Part of why I came to visit this morning is because I’d like to redo your power of attorney.”

  “Okay.”

  “I talked to your second cousin, Dylan. You remember Dylan?”

  Barely. He’s about ten years older than me, I think, and Aunt Ellie’s grandson. Dylan’s mother, Ramona, died from cancer about five years ago, so that would make Dylan and his sister, Lisa, my next closest relatives.

  I set the scissors down on the coffee table and nod. “Sure. But I’m not sure I want to make Dylan my… whatever you call it.” A power of attorney only kicks in when you lose the ability to make your own decisions.

  “Attorney-in-fact. Dylan’s got a son with cerebral palsy, so he knows the system a little. He’s the best option I’ve got for you, unless there’s anyone here in town who can take the responsibility. A friend, perhaps?”

  They’d have to be a real good friend, and all of my friends from high school are gone. Ryan moved down the coast and lives with his pregnant girlfriend. Given he spent most of high school doped up on weed, he’s not a good choice anyway. Jesse’s in jail for grand larceny, and Broden and Mitch both disappeared. I mean, they aren’t missing persons or anything, but they’re not in town and I don’t know where they went. They both had single mothers who are also gone. If they weren’t close enough friends to leave me a forwarding address, then they’re not the kind of people I can count on in a crisis.

  “I’m really sorry. I didn’t have the greatest social set in high school,” I say.

  “What about any of your former clients?”

  There’s an idea, but it makes my skin crawl. While I have done a lot for many families here in town, this is asking for too much.

  “Or your church?”

  There’s another idea. “What about the state?” I ask. “That’s what happens if I don’t have anyone, right?”

 
; “No, Alex. We’re not going to do that.”

  “Dylan barely knows me. He shouldn’t have to deal with this. It’s like the opposite of winning the lottery.”

  “This is life, all right? You’d do the same in his position.”

  “That’s different.”

  She looks me over. “How so?”

  “I’ve got experience with all this.”

  “Because you did do the same in his position. No one asked you if you wanted to be born to a schizophrenic. That’s life. We don’t abandon other people when times get rough.”

  “I don’t want to dump this on Dylan.”

  “Well, pick someone, and soon please.”

  “Right.”

  “Okay, and the other thing I came to talk to you about is the Foundation. Dylan and/or Lisa would be happy to take over as director, of course, but the Trust Agreement stipulates that the position be offered to you first. I’m too old for this anymore, so it’s past time that I retire.”

  Well, that’s ridiculous, me heading up the multi-million dollar foundation that essentially owns and runs the town of Pelican Bluffs. If my grandfather were still alive, he’d have amended the documents to cut me out, I’m sure of it. Dylan’s a corporate executive of some kind and Lisa’s a lawyer.

  “Alex…” says Aunt Ellie.

  “Sorry, I’m just feeling a little overwhelmed here.”

  “Well, sure. I can understand that. I’d like to get you three together for a meeting sometime. They’ll come up here and we can meet in the Foundation’s conference room?”

  I nod. “Okay.”

  She looks at me, her gaze uncertain, as if she has something else to say but she’s not sure whether or not she should.

  I wait, my hands clasped together.

  “You seem all right,” she says. “I mean, what do I know? I wouldn’t guess you were a schizophrenic just by looking at you.”

  I scratch my forehead. “It’s hard to plan for what to do with the rest of my life, now.”

  She nods. “Well, there’s no big rush there. You’re fine, financially, and if you need to fill your time for the next little while, there’s plenty of maintenance to do on this house.”

  “Okay.” I’ve been cleaning gutters and repainting rooms since my teens. Even though we can afford to hire people, that seems wasteful.

  “All right, so back to Foundation business. Kirsten Beale has applied for forbearance of rent. You know how I feel about this kind of thing. Those houses are cheap enough. People who can’t pay anything…” She waves her hand in disgust, as only someone who’s never sweated about making ends meet can. Or maybe that’s not fair. My grandfather believed that if people who filled the jobs as waitstaff and cashiers around town lived inside the city limits, they could do things like run for the Municipal Council and have a say. Kirsten, whose parents own the Pelican Bluffs Inn, is another example of whom he meant those houses to be for. She’s down on her luck, but not run out of town. And yes, she is also the sister of the unbalanced and obnoxious Kailie Beale.

  “Kirsten was a teen mother,” I say. “If I had to guess, I’d say her boyfriend left her.”

  “Which is what her letter says. But she’s the one who chose to get knocked up three times before the age of twenty-four, and now she can’t afford childcare. I don’t see how free housing would help her dig her way out of the situation.

  Kirsten never struck me as someone with a whole lot of self-confidence and her boyfriend, one of the high school janitors, was a real scumbag. I’m glad to hear he’s gone and hope he never comes back. Her father’s an arrogant control freak, probably still bitter from the time that Madison broke up his voting bloc on the Municipal Council. He’s not the sort of person to suffer in silence or with any measure of grace, and I can’t help but think it’s a positive thing that Kirsten’s reached out to the Foundation. We can give her a chance to not be reliant on him.

  “I’ll find out more about the situation,” I promise.

  “All right. Well, I’ve got a meeting to get to this afternoon in Crescent City. We’ll talk about the directorship of the Foundation when you’re ready. And I got you a new cellphone as a welcome home present.” She takes the phone out of her briefcase and sets it on the table, then gets to her feet and holds out her arms for a hug.

  I’m not a very tactile person, but I hug her back and inhale the scent of the dry cleaner chemicals on her jacket until she lets me go and turns to leave.

  Once she’s gone, I take a quick inventory of the rest of the day. I should go talk to Kirsten, and of all those phone messages I got, I feel particularly indebted to Siraj, the librarian. No one was kinder to me as a kid, and I can’t imagine what he needs.

  As I go to put my shoes on, though, Hiroko comes out of the back hallway, wringing her hands.

  “Everything okay?” I ask.

  “She’s upset about something. I don’t understand what. She wants to make something?” Hiroko shrugs. “I’m just worried that she’ll hurt herself with a knife. She wants to cut things.”

  “Right, okay… well, you can put those in the safe in the office, I guess?” The safe is where we now keep my mom’s medications, so that she only takes one dose at a time. It’s a precaution I had to add about five years ago.

  “I’ll do that. Knives from the kitchen. Scissors are on the coffee table, what else?”

  “That’s all I can think of.” Never, in my life, have I had to do anything like this, and I really don’t want anyone to ever have to do it for me. Best if they just lock me up in a facility that keeps me fed and clothed and forget about me when the time comes. I say a hasty goodbye and head out.

  The walk unclutters my mind, as if the fresh air sweeps all the random noises and irritations away. The library’s on Main Street and is an older building, all brick with peeling blue paint on the window frames and doors. Inside I can see Siraj sitting behind the crescent shaped circulation desk, which I happen to know is wood that can be dented quite impressively with a pair of scissors. I proved this while trying to intimidate Madison, back before we were dating. Wow, did she settle when she hooked up with me or what?

  There’s no sign of her anywhere, not that there would be, but this is where she worked in high school. I can’t come near this place without remembering all the times I’d pick her up after work and have her lean up for a kiss, a mischievous smile on her lips.

  Siraj looks up as I shoulder my way in through the door and his expression brightens at once. “Alex!”

  “Hi.” The rest of the room is modest. About a dozen rows of shelves are to my left and the back wall has floor to ceiling windows that haven’t been washed in a while. A haze of dust blocks out what would be a view of the redwood forest, but the sunlight comes in at least and provides most of the illumination, though there are the usual fluorescent tubes in the ceiling.

  Giggles catch my attention and I pause on my way over to Siraj to look at one of the several round tables that fill the middle of the room. Two women, alike as peas in a pod, sit with their heads together and point at me. They both have round faces and flat noses that suggest Down Syndrome, and dark skin and hair that suggest they’re from south Asia; my guess is that they’re related to Siraj. I can’t understand what they say, because they aren’t speaking English, so I can’t hear if there’s the telltale indistinctness in pronunciation, the slight lisp that people like to mock.

  “Mahati, Lalitha, don’t point,” Siraj admonishes.

  “It’s fine,” I say.

  “I’m glad you’re back in town.” The librarian gets up. “I take it you got my call?”

  “Yeah. Look, um, if you need respite care. I don’t do that anymore.”

  “He’s cute,” says one of the twins. I didn’t catch which was which.

  “None of that,” chides Siraj. He turns back to me. “Right. That’s fine. I don’t know what I need. It’s rather embarrassing.” He lowers his voice so that the twins don’t overhear, and they resume talking to each other
. “I have no idea how to take care of them. None. I left India while they were still little. I can read articles but I just… I don’t even know if I can leave them alone, is that illegal? Not that I would but, do they need to have a caregiver at all times? If I send them out to the store… My brother won’t even return my calls. They are a very low priority for him. Please don’t laugh at me.”

  Laughter is the last thing on my mind. This guy’s been kind and decent to me my whole life, and this situation seems pretty straightforward. “How long have they been here?”

  “Ten hours. They got in just before midnight.”

  I turn to the two twins, who have their heads together and whisper like they’re plotting some mischief. “Um, hey.” I’ve already forgotten their names. “When you applied for your passports, did you sign the documents, or did your brother?”

  They both look up, curious. “We sign all of our own documents,” says one of them.

  I turn back to Siraj. “I don’t know about Indian law, but in the US, that means they don’t have or need a guardian. They’re competent adults, so you can treat them as such, more or less. I mean, they obviously will have limitations, but Down Syndrome is really diverse, so you just ask them about the specifics.”

  Siraj blinks in surprise. “They’re competent adults?”

  “Yeah. Probably.”

  “So… they could live on their own?”

  “Um, no. Probably not. They’re still disabled.”

  “So they might still need a caregiver?”

  “They flew out here on their own? No one supervising?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did they have connecting flights?”

  “Ah… yes. Yes they did.”

  “But did you have the airline escort them to the connections?”

  He looks sheepish, his eyes wide. “Should I have?”

  “They made it here. I’m thinking they’re pretty competent.”

  “Right. I’m just not good at this practical stuff. If it’s not written in an article or a book, I’m lost. I’ve been researching what kind of care is available in the area, which isn’t much. I’d actually started researching your old employer and what they used to provide. Their website is still cached. I even looked up their licensing requirements. I have filled my head with useless facts about a former company, that is how lost I was about what to do.”