Love In Darkness

by E. M. Tippetts

  “Madison…”

  “Or were we not really together these past two years? Was I just a friend to you?”

  I brace myself against the wall. I don’t have the answer to that; I’d rather hoped she did. The idea that she was as much in the dark as I was is a foreign thought. “I wasn’t thinking… just friendly thoughts about you…”

  At that, some of the hurt leeches out of her posture and she straightens. “Well, that was mutual.”

  “But…”

  “You have to talk to me sometime, okay? We need to figure this out.”

  I relent, because I see no alternative. “Fine. But not now.”

  “Okay.” She frowns, but accepts this. “You need anything, you let me know.” She slips past me and heads for the front door.

  I remember my manners enough to follow her so that I can let her out. She squeezes my shoulder before she leaves and I want, more than anything, to grab her around the waist and pull her in for a long, deep kiss. Which is selfish, I remind myself.

  I shut the door again and fight the urge to punch its smooth wood.

  A moment later comes a knock, and I reopen the front door, expecting Madison, but find Officer Li in his uniform, his mirror shades perched on top of his head. “Hey,” he says. “Listen, can you show me… man, I don’t even know the terms. I remember when you had difficult patients or charges or whatever you call them, you’d sometimes have to immobilize them. Can you teach me how you did that? I mean, if your mom was about to walk out into traffic or something, what do I do? Is there a gentle way to immobilize her? Or would that freak her out?”

  “They don’t teach you how to do finger locks and stuff as a cop?” I say. A finger lock is a joint locking technique to immobilize a person. With a simple twist of the person’s arm and a hold, they aren’t able to move, and a little pressure can cause them a lot of pain.

  “Yeah, I know how to do a finger lock, but in cop training we also learn how to beat on someone until they’re subdued, which isn’t, I think, the way I should handle situations like this.”

  I shrug. “Um… I learned a bunch of holds ages ago, but honestly, once Hiroko taught me a little aikido, that’s what I’ve been using. I had the really tough cases, though, so I had to kind of just do whatever I could. Head locks. Four point pins on the ground.” Yeah, I’m rusty. I hadn’t realized how much I relied on muscle memory to do my job, because I was always wrestling people.

  “So there’s not, like, a special training course?”

  “It was a seminar. My employer enrolled me.”

  “Okay,” says Officer Li. “So, your mom’s got schizophrenia?”

  I nod.

  “Did you know autism used to be called childhood schizophrenia?”

  “No, I didn’t.”

  “Random fact I found. Been doing a lot of research and I’ve got an appointment lined up for Mikey with that doctor you gave me the details for.”

  The wind off the ocean picks up and blasts into the house while I nod. What is this? An actual conversation? With Officer Li? “That’s great.” I suppose that’s the right thing to say.

  “My wife and I had a good talk. Things’ll… we’ll work this out, I think.”

  “I’m glad to hear it.”

  “So, anyway, thank you.” He gives a mock salute and heads up the stairs to the driveway.

  I shut the door, wondering how much personal trauma it takes a person like Officer Li to completely change their personality. I barely know the guy who just left.

  Back in my mom’s room, I take a seat in the rocking chair in one corner. She used to rock me to sleep in this chair when I was a baby. Her room is small with a window that looks out over the back yard, with its stair-stepped landscaping down to the edge of the bluffs. The flower beds are all barren. Hiring someone to plant plants and maintain them seems frivolous, considering we’ve got no real source of income other than interest on investments.

  The rest of her room is Spartan; no pictures on the walls, no furniture other than a writing desk that has no adornment. An empty trash can is tucked underneath it. My mother’s bedspread is a gray and white quilt that she’s had for as long as I can remember, and my mother, curled up asleep, looks even smaller and more frail than ever. Her hair’s thinned a lot in the last two years and is now mere wisps dyed black.

  People who see her around town think of her as “that crazy lady” and cross the street to avoid her, and I know it’s cruel but I do understand it. Over the years schizophrenia has robbed me of the woman who used to banish the monsters under my bed. Back then she’d slept in the master bedroom and been the master of my world, preserving order and stability. She gave me that bedroom when I was in high school and she’s been here ever since.

  Inside, I know she’s still the mother I knew, but no one sees it anymore because her condition has wasted her brain to the point that her neuropathways are irretrievably damaged. A doctor showed me her brain scan when I was in junior high, pointing out the large pockets of fluid and the degraded tissue. He then showed me a healthy brain, and the difference was immediately obvious.

  “Whoever learns how to reverse the process will win the Nobel,” he’d said. “It’s well beyond our technology.”

  It’s as if her personality has worn away along with her gray matter. With each passing year she becomes more of a stranger to me. At least she’s at peace right now.

  I, on the other hand, am agitated. My doctors in Japan had been very happy with my recovery from my psychotic break, and they commended me on how lucid I was. But I know the voices are there, and at times like this, it’s hard to resist the urge to reach out to them and find out what’s really going on. I have to remind myself that they don’t tell me what’s really going on. They’re a product of my own broken psyche.

  When I return to the kitchen area, Hiroko stands, propped against the counter, waiting for me. “Do we need to sleep in shifts? I don’t want her to wander off like that again. It just about gave me a heart attack.”

  “Switch on the burglar alarm and just remember it’s on if anyone rings the doorbell.”

  “This has happened before?”

  “Not for a while, but yeah.”

  “This is how you’ve been living all your life?”

  “Pretty much.”

  She shuts her eyes and shakes her head. I hope this doesn’t mean she’s overwhelmed and about to quit. She’s the best caregiver we’ve ever had. “I’m going to sleep in the den tonight, all right?” she says. “I’m a light sleeper, so I’ll hear if she gets up. Unless she goes out the window ever?”

  “Hasn’t ever done that yet, and the burglar alarm will catch that.” My window’s the only one you can open with the alarm on, but no one other than me and Madison know that. I kind of disarmed it.

  “I’ve left a message for her doctor,” Hiroko continues. “I’ll see if I can get her in tomorrow.”

  “Good. Thanks.”

  “Now, have you had lunch?”

  “I can make lunch,” I say. “You relax.”

  That night, I dream that Madison climbs into my bedroom. One minute I hear the squeak of the window hinge, and the next I feel her slide into bed next to me. In a flash I have my arms around her and we kiss. She’s light and insubstantial in my arms, as if a ghost or on another plane of existence, but I hold her wraithlike form against me, my hands sliding under her cobweb clothes to feel the faintest hint of skin beneath. The more I try to touch her, the less substantial she becomes until her form melts away like mist.

  And I wake up, alone and with my heart racing. I can’t sleep, so I get up and go downstairs to the gym and use the weight machine until my muscles burn with pain. It doesn’t dispel my frustration, but it displaces it.

  The next day, when Mom, Hiroko, and I get back from the doctor’s office, I offer to go into town to fill Mom’s prescription, and Hiroko is happy to let me. I change into sweats and jog there and back.

  When I return home, I’m distracted and do
n’t even look where I’m going as I descend the stairs to my front door. A figure darting aside startles me, and a glance reveals it’s Kirsten Beale.

  “Sorry,” she says. She’s wearing a strappy sundress, sandals, and has her sunglasses perched on top of her head.

  “No, I’m sorry. You waiting for me?” I don’t know why she would be. For that matter, I can’t think of any reason she’d have for being here at all.

  “I overheard you and Kailie talking,” she says. “So I kind of found out about you… having… um…”

  “Schizophrenia?”

  “That what it’s called?”

  Well, okay. It’s strange to have Kirsten know, but she doesn’t seem like the kind of person who’ll blab, and I suspect the whole town will find out eventually. One public psychotic episode from me and everyone will connect the dots.

  “And I also happen to know that my dad wants to hire you to look after a guest’s disabled child, and that he’d pay you fifty dollars an hour to do it. I’m guessing you can’t.”

  At that I shrug. “It’s a little more complicated than that. The company I used to work for-”

  “Shut down. I know, but in the state of California you can still be a state subsidized respite care provider if you meet certain conditions.”

  News to me. “I take it you looked that up.”

  “Siraj did. When I went to the library to ask about work, he had all this material on support provisions for the disabled and he had an idea for me right off. Would you help me learn how to do your job? Just show me the ropes?”

  “Um… yeah. I mean…” I rub my forehead. “Okay, first off, the fifty bucks an hour thing isn’t normal.”

  “Right.”

  “And second of all, I know nothing about the legal requirements or anything.”

  “Yes. Siraj and I will figure all that out. Here’s what I suggest, you call one of your old clients, someone with a condition that you think is a good example of the kind of work you have to do, and you ask if I can look after their family member for a day under your supervision. They trust you. Nobody really knows me as a caregiver.”

  “Yeah, okay, I can do that.” I unlock the front door and let her precede me inside, then key the alarm off and on again and transfer a sticky note from the alarm keypad to the front door. “Reminder that it’s on,” I explain to Kirsten.

  She does not bat an eye. My guess, her having that many kids at her age has given her nerves of steel.

  “Okay, I’m going to call Sister Liang.”

  “Sister?” says Kirsten.

  “Oh, well, Mrs. Liang. Sorry, I know her from church and that’s what we call each other. Charlotte has… well, let me call them and then I can explain.” Charlotte has Prader-Willi Syndrome and a mild developmental delay. In other words, she’s younger than her ten years of age and always feels like she’s starving, and by that I don’t mean really hungry, I mean starving. Walking down the street with her, you have to stop her from grabbing food out of trash cans and stuffing it into her mouth. She’s a good test case because it’s not an easy disability to work with. Charlotte will tire a person out, but at the same time she’s not big enough to be dangerous or even frightening.

  Kirsten follows me across the living room and up the steps into the kitchen, where I pick up the phone and dial the Liangs’ number. She even takes a seat on a barstool and waits patiently.

  “Alex?” answers Sister Liang.

  “Yeah, hi.”

  “I was waiting for your call. We desperately need someone for tomorrow.”

  “Right. Sorry. Listen, Kirsten Beale is interested in being a respite care provider, so would you let her watch Charlotte under my supervision?”

  “Why can’t you do it?”

  “I don’t do respite care anymore. I’m going to pursue another career.”

  “Can’t you do respite care on the side?”

  I craft the smoothest dodge I can. “My mother’s getting worse and I won’t have a lot of spare time.”

  “You’ve got a full time caregiver who handled everything while you were gone for two years.”

  “I’m really sorry that I can’t do more. I am.”

  Sister Liang heaves a deep sigh. “I don’t trust anyone else, all right? I’ve tried and tried to train replacements, and let me tell you, no matter how well they do with you watching, the moment you turn your back, they slip Charlotte extra snacks and soda. She’s gained twenty pounds, and you know how short she is.”

  “I’ll do everything I can-”

  “You can make some time in your schedule is what you can do. Name your price. We’ll hire Kirsten to help watch your mother. I’m serious.” Sister Liang’s voice oozes desperation.

  “I wish it were that simple.” I take a deep breath, hesitate, and then take the plunge. “I’m… my mom’s condition is hereditary sometimes.”

  “But you don’t have it.”

  “Well…”

  There’s a long stretch of silence and Kirsten winces. Clearly she did not want the conversation to go this way. I wave off her discomfort, though. The Liangs are good people and good friends.

  “You’re mentally ill?”

  “It looks that way. But I’d like to help you guys out.”

  Silence. It stretches on long enough that I wonder if we got disconnected. Then I hear her say to someone else, “Yes, this is Alex. He inherited it, uh-huh.” Her voice becomes louder when she puts the phone back to her ear. “So you’re psychotic, is what you’re saying?”

  “I can be. Sometimes.”

  “That… well, that won’t work then.”

  “I will train Kirsten,” I offer again. “I’ll give her articles to read. We can go over Charlotte’s needs in detail. I promise, whatever I can do, I will.”

  “I don’t know what to say.”

  “That’s fine.”

  “I’m… I’ll have to call you back.” She hangs up.

  I blink, take the phone from my ear, and look at it.

  Kirsten looks askance at me.

  “Um, okay.” I give her an apologetic shrug.

  “Did she freak out?”

  “I guess so.”

  Arming the burglar alarm didn’t bother Kirsten, but this does. She folds her arms, agitated. “Wow. I didn’t mean to put you in this position.”

  “No, it’s fine. It just isn’t the reaction I was expecting.”

  “It makes me mad, actually. How could she do that?”

  “Mental illness has a bad rap,” I say. “You know how that goes.”

  “I guess so.”

  “Um, okay, I’ll call the Rosenblums or the Ruskins. I guess the Rosenblums.” Their daughter’s blind and sustained a severe head injury at birth. The problem is, she’d be seventeen now and thus a little harder to control. That’s the thing about my clients. I always got the most difficult cases. I dial the Rosenblum’s number.

  “Alex?” comes Mrs. Rosenblum’s voice. I forget her first name, or if I ever even knew it. “Yes, hello.”

  “Hi.” Her tone is off.

  “I was returning your call from the other day.”

  “Mmm-hmm. I’m here with Wendy Liang, actually.”

  “Oh, okay.”

  “So, there’s been a change in circumstances. I’ll let you know if we need help, but right now we’re fine.”

  “Oh, and Rachel’s okay?”

  “She’s fine. Thanks for calling back.” She hangs up without saying goodbye.

  Without looking at Kirsten, I start to dial the Ruskins.

  But Kirsten takes the phone from me. “Did they freak out, too?”

  “She’s right there with Wendy Liang. I guess she heard the first phone call.”

  “Listen, thank you for trying to help me-”

  “I’ve got one more family to call.”

  She shakes her head. “I don’t want you to have to deal with that kind of garbage on my account.”

  “I won’t tell them anything about me. I promise, okay?” />
  Reluctantly, she surrenders the phone and I call the Ruskins.

  “Hey, Alex,” Mr. Ruskin answers. “Sorry, we’re all here at Wendy Liang’s house. We’re talking about hiring a full time caregiver and apportioning their time between our three kids.”

  “Right.”

  “So, I’m really sorry to hear about your condition. Thanks for letting us know you can’t help out.”

  “Kirsten Beale is interested,” I say, but my voice is weak.

  “You take care, all right?”

  And he hangs up. I hold the dead phone to my ear a moment longer, then hang it up. “Well,” I say. “Guess who was at the Liang’s house, too?”

  “You’re kidding. Okay, you know what? That really makes me mad. I’ll see you later. Thanks for calling around.”

  “Sorry it didn’t work out.”

  She mutters something I don’t catch, and lets me walk her to the front door, where I pause to disarm the alarm, and then arm it again once she’s gone.

  The ring of the doorbell a couple of hours later turns out to be Officer Li. He leans with his hand braced against the wall, his mirror shades on, his uniform crisp and pressed as usual. “Listen… there’s some gossip going around town.”

  “Spread by Wendy Liang?” I say.

  “Is it true?”

  “How’d you hear about it?”

  “Well, Wendy Liang and Dave Ruskin were arguing about it in Jacksons. I didn’t hear much of the argument, but she kind of yelled that you were mentally ill.”

  I nod. Greeeat.

  “Is this true?”

  I don’t owe him an answer, and only days ago I’d have shut the door in his face in a situation like this, but a lot has changed recently. “Practice your aim with a taser. You might need to use it on me.”

  “Oh, man.” He takes off his sunglasses and rubs the bridge of his nose. “You need anything? Seriously? Rides to the doctor, help filling prescriptions, anything?”

  “No. Not right now, but thanks.”

  “You seem fine.”

  “I am fine. It starts slow sometimes.”

  “So what’s it like? I mean, what’s happened?”

  “I started hearing voices about a year ago, and for now, I know they’re not real and I can ignore them.”