We Are Not Ourselves

by Matthew Thomas

  It was feast or famine with him; either he didn’t say a word or else he said more than she wanted to hear.

  She understood that she wasn’t going to win, that she couldn’t beat Ed’s illness, and yet she wasn’t about to sit there and let someone tell her she was going to lose. She decided right then that she was never coming back. That made it easier to speak, and she spent the next half hour holding forth on all sorts of things she had no idea she was thinking about. In the end she felt relieved for having had a chance to get them out. It was almost a shame to have to cut this experiment short, because she was beginning to see value in it, though only in small doses, and for someone very different from herself.

  • • •

  She could see the day coming when Ed would have to stop working, and she wanted to be smart. She went to the Alzheimer’s Association to find out what kind of resources might be available. The social worker told her to wait until she was impoverished and they’d be able to help her get assistance.

  “Impoverished?”

  “Medicaid only kicks in once you’ve spent down to the threshold. You can keep your salary, up to a certain dollar amount. Not your husband’s. That goes straight to Medicaid. You’ll have to liquidate investments. You can put your money into home improvements, even update your wardrobe. Buy medicines in advance, staples for the house. Set aside burial expense money for both of you. Necessary things. Not jewelry. Definitely not jewelry. Except for your wedding ring and your engagement ring, and his wedding ring. You can keep those. If you spend the money down quickly, the government can come in and ask where it went, and you might not get Medicaid. You can keep the house no matter what. And the car. The upside is, when you’re nearly broke, there will be assistance available.”

  “You’re telling me that short of—going broke, as you put it—there’s nothing I can do to defray the cost of a nurse—or a home, if it comes to that?”

  “At this point, no.”

  “Everything in my savings account goes?”

  “Yes.”

  “All the stocks?”

  “Indeed.”

  “The retirement accounts?”

  “Them too.”

  “Let me tell you something,” she said gruffly, feeling pride rise in her like a fever. “I worked hard my entire life.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  The costs would be enormous; their savings would dwindle quickly. The cost of at-home nursing care (she refused to consider a nursing home until she absolutely had to) would be the equivalent of taking out a second mortgage, which would be expensive enough on two incomes, but when Ed’s pension kicked in at about 40 percent of his salary, it would be virtually impossible for her to pay it without dipping into their retirement money, which would shrink quickly.

  “I should have done the cabinets in cherry,” she said.

  “Come again?”

  “I was too prudent. I should have had the bricks ripped up and marble tiles put down. I should have bought three mink coats instead of one on sale. I should have gone to Europe every year. I should have spent my money like a drunken sailor in my twenties and thirties when everyone around me was doing it. This all would have been a lot easier to swallow if I were poor.”

  • • •

  She went to see Bruce Epstein, a tax lawyer and the husband of her friend Sunny from work.

  She sat across from Bruce in his Upper West Side office. Law books lined the shelves, as well as classic works of literature. “The best thing you can do is divorce him,” he said, offering her a bowl of chocolates. “Strictly financially speaking, of course. Separate your finances. Put everything in your name. Take all the money.”

  Eileen fiddled with a loose string on the hem of her suit jacket.

  “I know you don’t want to hear it,” Bruce continued, “but that’s the best thing you can do. If you divorce him, he gets Medicaid right away. It might be better to be unsentimental about it. You don’t have to actually divorce him in your heart. You can take care of him. Just get a different place.”

  “What would I tell my son?”

  “Your son doesn’t have to know until later.”

  “What do I tell Ed?”

  “Tell him you’re trying to be smart. Tell him you’re doing this for all of you. Nothing will fundamentally change, except that you’ll get assistance from the state.”

  “I’m supposed to divorce my husband because he has Alzheimer’s?”

  “I know it sounds bad,” he said, “but you wanted to know. From a financial perspective, divorce is the best thing. I’d be remiss if I didn’t apprise you of your options.”

  “How exactly would this happen? How would I divorce him and get all the money?”

  “You’ve got a minor child, so that helps. Make up something about infidelity. There are a lot of ways to get this done. You’ll get the house, so that’s taken care of.”

  “I don’t think I could do it.”

  “I’m not surprised,” he said warmly. “But I think you should give it serious consideration. My concern here—so that you avoid regret later—is that you make a deliberate decision and not let your emotions get the best of you. Or if you’re going to make an emotional decision, do that in a rational way. Decide that you want to weigh the emotions as greater in value than the financial particulars. If you were able to overcome some of the mental obstacles to proceeding in the way I’ve advised you, it would be the most sensible alternative. But then pure rationality isn’t always the compass we’re guided by. I can tell you this much: I would want Sunny to do this if she were in your situation. It would help both you and your husband. And remember: in the eyes of God you are married forever.”

  What he was advocating was the exertion of radical control over one’s own life, even if it meant flouting cherished ideals. She had long prized the notion that she would have made a good lawyer if given the opportunity, but she realized now, as she listened to Bruce’s dispassionate appeal to the facts, that she lacked the ability to see things in the unstintingly logical way he did. She didn’t think she could divorce Ed just to preserve their stake. She’d rather spend the money down. She was going to have to work forever anyway.

  50

  Connell was in his girlfriend Regina’s basement. He wanted to lay her down on the soft carpet and get on top of her, but the best he could do was squeeze close to her on the couch, which sat flush against the paneled wall. He picked at one of the grooves between panels, preparing to make his move and drape an arm over her. He’d done it twice already that day, but it still made him nervous. The first time, after they’d made out for a while, the door at the top of the stairs opened and her mother shouted down, “Everything okay?” They sat at opposite ends of the couch after that, until he worked his way back over to her, inch by inch. Just when he got there, her mother—as if she had a special sense—called him upstairs to reach a serving platter from the top of the cabinet. Regina had said her mother only let them stay down there alone because she’d heard boys from his school were nice boys.

  Regina’s family was Lebanese. Her father was so intimidating that Connell could barely speak to him. Connell didn’t like to be alone with Regina when her father was home; it wasn’t worth the anxiety.

  He couldn’t remember the name of the movie they were watching. He couldn’t concentrate on anything but the way her hair brushed against him when she flipped it, or the way she pushed against him slightly with every intake of breath. She had kissed him dutifully for a few minutes, and now she was insisting on watching this movie, with an annoyed air that suggested she was trying to seem disciplined and mature and beyond petty lust, but really he could tell that she was just as nervous as he was.

  He put his arm around her and let his hand settle on the knobby ball of her shoulder. He let it move a little lower, so that it rested on her collarbone. She was wearing a polo shirt, munching from a bowl of popcorn in her lap. He moved his hand to the triangle of skin her collar exposed and let it rest there. It was g
ood that he had long arms, because the position was awkward. After a few seconds she shifted closer to him, leaning into his flannel shirt, but he knew it was only to move his hand away.

  He had never put his hand up her shirt. He’d felt her over her shirt, but she’d always stopped him after a few seconds. One time he’d put his hand on her thigh and she’d picked it up and moved it away.

  He’d told her about his father once because he hadn’t had anything else to say. As soon as he saw the sympathetic look that came over her, he knew he would have that topic to return to when he needed it. It might be useful for more than filling silences.

  She was watching the movie so intently that he wouldn’t have been surprised if she had to give her mother a report on it afterward. All he could think of was how much like spring she smelled and whether she could tell he had an erection.

  “Hey,” he said.

  “Hey yourself.” She glanced at him and then looked back at the movie.

  “I’m feeling sad.”

  “What’s up?”

  “I don’t know,” he said. “Nothing.”

  She turned to him fully now. “What is it?”

  “Nothing,” he said. “Let’s watch the movie.”

  “You tell me right now.” She had a deadly earnest look on her face, and he couldn’t tell if she was joking or not. He felt bad when he realized she was serious. Her father’s bar, and his ghostly presence at it, looked on in silent disapproval.

  He put his finger to his lips in a shushing gesture, which inflamed her.

  “Either you tell me or I’m not kissing you anymore tonight,” she said.

  “Don’t make fun of me,” he said. “I just don’t know how to talk about it.”

  She put the popcorn bowl on the coffee table and sat on her legs, drawing her feet up under her. “Now you really have to tell me. What? What?”

  “I was just thinking of my father. It makes me sad to think of him.”

  Her features arranged themselves into a look of concern.

  “Tell me,” she said. Her hand was on his knee.

  “Just that he’s not going to be here. He’s going away. He’s going to forget me.”

  She started shaking her head. She looked like she was about forty years old. “He won’t forget you,” she said in a way that was both dismissive and reassuring. It was like she could see what was actually going to happen.

  “He will. Everyone’s going to go away eventually.”

  “Not me. I’ll be here.”

  “You’ll go away too.”

  “I will not,” she said.

  She went to hug him. He kissed her neck and moved up to her lips. The movie kept playing in the background, but now she wasn’t watching it either. She was kissing him long and with a different level of feeling. His erection now pressed painfully against his pants. He was running his hands all over her body. He put his hand under the bottom of her shirt and moved it up quickly when she didn’t shove it away. He ran his hand over her bra and slipped his hand under it. He felt his breath coming short. He moved his other hand up under her shirt, so he had one of her breasts in each of his hands. It felt like he had made it to the other side of some great divide. He started kissing her neck and ears, and eventually he had lifted her shirt up and was kissing her breasts. He would not try to do more than this. There would be other opportunities. He would keep something in reserve. His father had helped him. It was a powerful thing that he would have to use sparingly, what was happening with his father; he didn’t want to get addicted to it. But there was nothing wrong with letting some good come from it.

  The room seemed to get darker. He sucked at her nipple like he was trying to draw something out of it, which he knew was all wrong. She winced a few times at the pressure of his teeth.

  The door upstairs came open, and she rushed to pull her shirt down, which was just as well, because his kisses on her breasts had turned into something he was practicing doing, and he had begun to feel guilty about losing his innocence. There was no going back for it now.

  51

  Virginia was in the phone book, as she’d said she’d be so many years before. Or rather her husband was: Callow, Leland. Eileen had been meaning to reach out to Virginia since the day she’d closed on the house. She’d gone for the phone several times, but the idea of fumbling through the initial conversation gave her an anxious pit in her stomach and she always hung up before dialing. She didn’t want to degrade herself any more than she’d have to. She decided to show up instead.

  She chose a Saturday. If they weren’t home, she’d leave a note and try again the next day. She put on a nice blouse and skirt and did her hair. Virginia’s address was in the town proper, up the hill, on one of those winding streets with houses set far back from the street on enormous lots.

  When she was a block away, Eileen felt so jittery that she had to pull over and calm herself down. This was the encounter she’d been anticipating for years, though she hadn’t realized as much until she was on its threshold. The visit Virginia had made to the dressing room planted a seed in her mind that had broken through the surface and survived long winters. She wanted Virginia to see the tree in its full flowering. Would Virginia recognize it for what it was? She hoped it would seem to Virginia like the most natural thing in the world for Eileen to be standing there, a neighbor of sorts, even if she lived across town, dropping in unannounced, an old friend, a surprise visitor.

  There were so many trees on the front lawns. They seemed older than the nation itself. It was early October; the leaves had started to turn, and the sight of the street in the lightly misty air made her stop and pull over for a minute before she could continue.

  She pulled up in front of Virginia’s house. There was a car in the driveway. She put her own car in park and turned off the engine, and the old vehicle settled heavily. She regretted not stopping at Topps for a box of cookies, or at Tryforos for some flowers, but on the other hand it would have been strange to come bearing a gift after thirty years. She imagined handing over the rattling box of cookies and Virginia receiving it with a skeptical look, as though it were a store of keepsakes from an intentionally forgotten past.

  She stood in the street, gazing at the house. It was almost perfectly beautiful. There was nothing about it she would change, nothing she could imagine anyone—even those tasteless people who ruined old houses by updating them—would ever dream of changing. The landscaping alone looked expensive enough to break a bank account. The house wore its affluence easily, though. There was a quiet about it, broken only by the low hum of a distant weed whacker. She imagined an old man roving the grounds in a pair of gloves, dragging a heavy garbage bag and filling it with weeds.

  She couldn’t convince herself to approach the front door. The thought of sitting over tea with Virginia had gotten her through some lonely afternoons after everything had been unpacked. She had been waiting for the moment when her house looked polished enough to show it off, when everything had settled down long enough to allow her to operate from a position of strength, but that moment hadn’t come. She had kept alive the idea of a steadfast friend capable of great enthusiasm on her behalf, even after years of silence. She knew that seeing Virginia again might rob her of a consolation that had been more important than she wanted to admit.

  She started up the stone path that transected the lawn. She had only taken a few steps in when a dog came running up, barking and freezing her in place. It looked harmless enough, a little Jack Russell terrier, but it barked so insistently and with such a strange, alert intelligence that she began to hear a message beyond a simple warning to stay away. The dog marked a half-moon around her, then left off its clamoring and stood with nose up and eyes narrowed, assessing her in a manner that unnerved her. She tried to hide her fear—not of the dog but of what the dog was thinking, what it saw and understood—because she thought it absurd to feel apprehension before such a diminutive creature. No one emerged from the house to call the dog off. The compact thi
ng had an almost impossible solidity to it; its thick coat seemed to stand at permanent attention.

  When the figure of a woman appeared from behind a hedgerow at the side of the house, Eileen felt her heart stop in a fear that made her forget about the dog. She thought to turn and walk away, but after she didn’t immediately take the first retreating step, she knew she couldn’t do so without seeming to scurry guiltily. The woman—it had to be Virginia—walked briskly to retrieve the animal, which hustled with a chastened dutifulness to meet her halfway and circle back by her side. Watching the woman approach from the middle distance, Eileen had trouble recognizing her as the gamine girl she’d last seen trying on bridesmaids’ dresses. She was nicely attired, in a pair of brown slacks and a mustard-colored blouse whose sheen glinted in the sunlight.

  “Can I help you?” Virginia asked from a few feet away. Her hair had gone an ashen shade of gray that somehow looked sun-bleached and healthy. She wore it pulled back in a neat, attractive bun. She’d grown thinner with age, so that she appeared almost military in her bearing. She looked inquisitively at Eileen, and Eileen thought for a moment that Virginia had recognized her, until she realized Virginia was probably simply wondering what this woman was doing on the perimeter of her lawn.

  “I hope so,” Eileen said. “I seem to have gotten a little lost. The road took a few turns, and I got off it somehow. I have to get back to the highway.”

  “Where are you looking to get?”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “Where are you looking to go?”

  “I was visiting a friend, you see. I just need to get home.”

  “Where’s home?”

  “The city,” she said, afraid Virginia would hear the nervous lump in her throat. “Queens. I believe I need the Bronx River Parkway to the Hutchinson Parkway.”

  “Queens? What part?”

  Her heart pounded. “Douglaston,” she said, the dryness in her mouth choking off the end of the word.