Sweet Ache

by K. Bromberg

  Muted televisions play as we pass by rooms with open doors but for the most part there is a peaceful calm over the unit when we approach the nurse’s station. The nurse, Beth, raises her head as Hunter and I approach.

  “Thanks for coming,” she says, repeating the same thing she says on my at least twice-weekly urgent visits here.

  “What’s going on?” Hunter asks.

  “How is she?” I ask at the same time.

  “Dr. Manning had thought the sundowning had peaked,” she says, referring to the syndrome with dementia patients where they become more agitated, revert to a previous time period in their life, and in most cases it occurs from sundown to sunup. I know this is her polite way of saying my mom’s Alzheimer’s has progressed to a more advanced stage. “Tonight, though, she’s been extremely distressed—more so than normal. We’ve been able to placate her by making sure she has all of her handbags with her.”

  I nod my head at Beth, grateful they’ve accepted my mom’s need to have her purses with her—for some reason they help to calm her when she becomes agitated. The doctor doesn’t understand why but has heard of it in a few other cases, and instructed the staff to let her have the purses if needed to calm her down and bring her back to the present.

  “Okay, thanks,” I tell her as Hunter moves ahead of us and toward our mom’s room.

  “It’s almost as if something is really getting to her today,” she says as I start to walk past the desk.

  Hunter continues in, and I stop and hang my head for a moment before meeting her eyes. “I’m not sure but we’re approaching the anniversary of my dad’s suicide,” I tell her, voice quiet, memories colliding in my mind. The day our lives changed forever.

  The catalyst.

  One moment in time when a person’s inherent makeup can determine whether they are going to overcome or succumb to an obstacle … fight or flight … sink or swim. Too bad what most individuals don’t realize is even if you swim, that doesn’t mean everyone else around you will too. Regardless of how strong you are for them all…. You become the life preserver while everyone else holds on, fingers gripping, hands slipping, hope waning, until they drag you down with them.

  Thanks, Dad.

  The thought flickers through my mind and I struggle against the hostility toward him that slips through every now and again. It wasn’t Mom’s fault but I swear to God his suicide was the beginning of her undoing. They say Alzheimer’s doesn’t have a trigger, but she shut down after Dad died. Life was too much for her to cope with any longer. I swear she didn’t want to remember so her mind turned against her.

  I force myself to shake off the thoughts as I approach her room slowly, a lump of anxiety in my throat since I’m unsure which person she’s going to be when I enter. The room decor offers more muted colors, as a soft glow emanates from the lamps on the walls, mementos of the family she rarely remembers scattered throughout it.

  The sound of her humming has cautious optimism rising within me as she comes into view, embracing Hunter, her hand petting over his hair like she used to when we were kids. I strain to hear the song, but already know what it is: “Over the Rainbow.”

  My beautiful mother with the pitch-perfect voice. She had so much musical potential but she preferred singing lullabies to her boys over being out late and performing in the jazz clubs that begged for her and my father to take their stage. She feared the moments she’d miss if her sons woke up and needed her. All her life my mother was so full of laughter, love, and compassion. But a single gunshot silenced all of that within her—it killed her too in a sense.

  Her brain is allowing her a moment’s reprieve before it swallows her back into dementia’s bitter clutches. I stand still and watch the woman she used to be, afraid to breathe too loudly and upset her and trigger her to turn into the woman I don’t know.

  “There now, Hunter. What did your brother do to you this time?” she asks him gently as a mother does a young child. Every time I come here I hope that she remembers me for the child she loved, not the one she blamed for not stopping her husband from killing himself.

  Those glimpses of that mom who used to kiss my scrapes and tuck me in are so few and far between these days, her mind so warped that even when she does remember us, she remembers that Hunter was her baby, and I am the son who didn’t stop him.

  I know she doesn’t mean the things she says to me, know it deep in my core, and yet it does nothing to lessen the hurt or damage the hope that for one fleeting moment she’ll look at me and tell me it’s not my fault. That she’ll hold me in her arms, tell me she knows I couldn’t have stopped it.

  That she’ll tell me something I’ve gone what feels like a lifetime without hearing, that she loves me. So once again I fight off the discord that overtakes me every time I visit her.

  I shift my feet and she hears. She looks over and the familiar sneer appears on her face, the words like a reflex at the sight of me. “What are you doing here? I told you I don’t want you here anymore.” She hugs tighter to Hunter as she speaks to me, ice lacing her voice. It’s amazing to me that even though we are twins she can still tell us apart even in her altered mental state.

  The stupid fucking hope I get every time I cross into this damn room sinks to the pit of my stomach.

  “Hi, Mom.” It’s all I can say really. “How are you today?”

  “How am I today?” she shrieks, releasing Hunter to face me. “How am I? I’d be a lot better if you didn’t let my husband kill himself, is what I’d be.” Her voice rises as she stands from the bed. I glance at Hunter and it’s the first time in a long time that I see compassion in his eyes for what he knows is coming next. The pain he can’t stop for me. “You stood there like a pathetic little boy and didn’t scream for help, did you?” Her words begin to slur as she steps into my personal space, and I know that means her mind is starting to pluck her memories away one by one.

  I set my jaw, teeth clenched as I prepare myself for the verbal assault to come because as much as I’d love to scream and yell back, tell her she’s full of shit and what in the hell can a little boy do to prevent a man with a gun—the words I’ve repeated in my head for years, the ones I’ve used to try to silence my own conscience—I keep quiet. It’s not going to fix anything and by the time the words are out, she won’t even remember what happened anyway.

  And besides, she’s still my mom.

  “You stood there,” she says, shoving me in the chest, “and let him take the easy way out. Ruined me.”

  I so desperately want to tell her it was in no way the easy way out. That obviously he was sick, and he needed help that he never got. But how do you explain to one sick person about another sick person and have it make sense? Especially when it doesn’t even make sense to you all these years later.

  Hell yes I’m pissed at my dad. Angry he robbed me of all the things in life I deserved to do and see with him. Angry that he left me with a bucket load of promises I don’t want to keep most days and yet I do so that somehow, in some fucked-up way, he’ll be proud of me. I still love him just like I still love her despite how much she hates me.

  I brace myself for the slap that comes but welcome it to shock me from the slide show in my mind of all the skeletons in our familial closet. It stings like a bitch despite her weakening physical state but I accept the pain.

  “Mom, stop!” Hunter speaks up for me, knowing this isn’t my fault even though I’m sure over the years he’s blamed me too at some point. He uses the rage inside him over being cheated out of a father and he uses the drugs to numb himself as fuel to get back at me subconsciously.

  “Don’t you protect him!” She whirls on Hunter, the pitch of her voice shrill. “He ruined our lives. Your brother didn’t try to stop it and ruined our lives.” She’s screaming now, loud enough that I hear the nurses call over the intercoms for a Code Gray in her room.

  I fist my hands, the only reaction I can give when all I want to do is punch through the drywall beside me. She turns back to
me, hands shoving, hysterics escalating, so that I can’t make out everything she’s saying but I do hear her say the comment that causes the burn of anger to comingle with the tears I refuse to shed. “You’re weak just like your father was.”

  I grab on to her wrists as she continues to thump my chest even though they aren’t causing any real damage. The orderlies come in and help Hunter and me try to calm her down some, her head thrashing and arms flailing. I know they’re going to call the nurse in to medicate her if she doesn’t settle down so I do the only thing I can think of, the one thing that sometimes helps.

  I begin to sing.

  An old song that Aya, our nanny, used to sing to me when I had trouble sleeping after my dad died. When the sound and smell and image of that day would haunt my dreams so that I wanted to stay awake all night so I wouldn’t have to relive it. In my childhood naïveté I believed I could forget it. Fuck was I wrong.

  I sing the foreign words that I held on to like a lifeline, some of their symbols inked on my skin still, and hope that it calms my mom so that she can forget: her cruel words, her pain, her mangled memories, her hatred of a tragic event a little boy had no control over.

  I’m on the second verse when her resistance begins to abate. Her head sags down, her curses grow quieter, and then as we set her down on her bed, she begins crying. It’s so soft at first it takes me a moment to hear it but I kneel down in front of her, her hands still gripped in mine so that I can look up to her.

  Her gaze meets mine and I see the confusion flicker in her eyes followed closely by panic. Her head whips back and forth looking at Hunter and me in a frantic haze as the fear takes hold. “Who are you? Why are you here?” She yanks her hands from mine and reaches for one of her purses on her bed and clutches it to her chest, fingers trembling, breathing rapid. “Joshua?” She yells, the name crippling every part of me. “Joshua?” Her voice escalates in pitch and in terror as she calls for my father.

  “Mom! Mom!” I try to get her attention, break through her fear but feel as helpless now as I did standing with my dad.

  “Mom?” She says as she looks back. “You’re not my son. My boys are young. Get away from me!” She yelps when I reach for her and scrambles as far away from me onto her bed as she can manage and curls into a ball, cowering.

  “Mrs. Wilson,” the orderly says, and hearing someone call her the last name she insisted we abandon after his death is a jolt to my system. But she whips her head up and stares at him, eyes wide and expectant. “Joshua had to work late. He’ll be back later tonight.” I watch her absorb his words, and she gives little nods of her head as her breathing slows down. “He said to leave the—”

  “Bathroom light on,” she finishes with a slight smile on her face that makes my heart ache so desperately I have to force the burn that’s back in my throat away. “Joshy doesn’t work at night though.”

  “He has a dinner thing tonight.”

  “Oh yes. With the Brooks firm. I forgot. Okay then.” She smiles at the orderly again and she seems so young, even the tone of her voice has softened and taken on a youthful quality. “Can you please see these strange men out? Josh would not be happy they’re here. You know he’s been known to throw a few punches in my honor.”

  I’m a grown man—successful, famous, tatted up—and those last words, seeing my mom’s love for my dad before it turned bitter and resentful, have just reduced me to a child fighting back the sobs that are warring inside me.

  My chest constricts with the pain, with the weakness I feel because I can’t bring him back…. I can’t get us back. My eyes meet Hunter’s and as we start to leave the room, I think of everything I can’t fix lately. But at the same time I know I’m looking at the one person I still can help.

  As we leave I glance back at Mom through the open doorway and a part of me just needs her to be my mom again so badly. The one I remember from before. And I’m so desperate for the feeling of belonging, for the love, that there are days I consider dressing like Hunter and coming here to see her. Maybe then she’ll hold me in her arms and tell me she loves me. Maybe then she’ll not look at me and think of her weak son who did nothing to stop her husband’s suicide.

  It’s a ludicrous thought. Even I know that, but it does nothing to abate that need I have deep down to hear her tell me she loves me one last time before her mind slips away for good. I swear to God it’s better to miss someone quietly than to let them know and get no response, because that lack of response? That’s the one that kills you.

  The nurse comes in to give her her medication, and her appearance saves me from wanting to go back in and tell her good night. I wanted to wrap my arms around her small frame and feel her arms around me like she was hugging Hunter. I feel like a pussy, still needing that connection with her but I don’t care. It doesn’t matter how old you are, how tough you are, what shit life’s thrown at you, every fucking person still wants their mom at some point.

  It’s like losing her over and over each time I see her even though she’s right there in front of me.

  Chapter 10

  QUINLAN

  The lecture hall is noisy as I sit down in the last row as part of my perfectly timed entrance. I don’t want to see Hawkin, don’t want to deal with his bullshit—or the unexpected pang I feel at wanting him to look up and notice I’m there.

  Get over it, Westin.

  Somehow I’ve become a sappy female, and I’m usually so far from sappy it’s ridiculous. I wanted casual. Well, you can’t get any more casual than a guy who rejects you. Besides, if a guy’s not interested, I know how to brush it off and move on. Plenty of fish in the sea—one pectoral fin is the same as the next, just hopefully a little bigger.

  I had thought Rick’s irrefutable demonstration of how men are like bras—that they hook up behind your back—had hardened me some and made me not care…. So why are things with Hawkin affecting me so much?

  That’s the question I need an answer to but even after moping around like a lost puppy the past few days, I still don’t get it, don’t get him. We flirted, he made the first move when I was trying to show him the PA system, and so how am I left to feel like I’m the one inferring there was something more there than there really was?

  He initiated the kiss on the porch. He led me from the kitchen to go upstairs. And then he said see-ya like nothing happened.

  Maybe I’m just stressed about the couple of snags I’ve had with my thesis. The writer’s block that’s made a permanent place on my creative doorstep needs to leave sooner rather than later. It has to be the stress contributing to my vulnerable emotional state.

  Not Hawkin per se, just the combination of everything all at once.

  So when his voice fills the room, I hate that I immediately sit up taller hoping that he looks up and acknowledges me like some road-battered groupie who follows him from city to city wanting any scrap they can get from him.

  Pathetic. Yep, that’s what he’s reduced me to and it’s not very attractive.

  I keep my head angled down, pissed off at myself for how stupid I’m being. I don’t want to feed the insanity if he does actually look my way. I busy myself with double-checking notes for a different class, purposefully ignoring him. If I could stick my earbuds in and get away with it I would.

  Anything to tune him out because all I want to do is let him in.

  An hour later I sigh in relief as a few students in the class clap when the lecture finishes. I did it. See, Quin, not a problem, you can be in the same vicinity as him and not fall to his charms. My confidence boost rings false seeing as how in a lecture hall filled with hundreds that feat is a little easier to accomplish, but I’ll take what I can get.

  When I rise from my seat I make the fatal error of looking down to the front of the room. And of course he’s talking to some coed but his eyes find mine, causing that punch of carnal lust to hit me hard. I reason that I’m just horny and need to get good and laid. The kind of laid that leaves your knees rubbery and your body feeling
like it’s floating on a cloud while you wait to come down from its euphoric high.

  The kind that allows you to lose your thoughts for a while.

  We stare at each for a beat. Long enough for the jolt of chemistry between us to reach across the distance and attack my senses. That panicked feeling hits me chased by unfettered lust. I force myself to turn abruptly and walk the few steps up to the door and out of the auditorium, feeling like I’ve gained a bit of my good sense in walking away from him on my own accord, this time.

  And yes I’m walking away but I do so knowing I’m most likely walking away from that rubbery-knee postorgasmic glow as well. Something tells me that Hawkin screws like his voice sounds, seductive, a little rough, a lot thorough, and with a lot of tongue.

  A girl can’t go wrong when there’s a lot of tongue involved.

  I groan to myself as I walk across campus to the department offices, the idea of a night with him making me want and need. The image of Hawke and his ice-cream cone returns to me. I chastise myself, tell myself that there are plenty of men out there who are skilled in bed and that I’m just too damn picky. The only conclusion I draw is that the only way to get over the repeated image in my head of sex with Hawkin is to have sex with someone else. Preferably mind-blowing sex with someone else. So I vow that I will accept the next offer made to me for a date—or a fuck—to get over the player that is Hawkin Play.

  I welcome the cool air as I enter the department and toss my bag on one of the desks set aside for grad students to catch up on paperwork or miscellaneous tasks for their professors.

  I text Layla and tell her to study this afternoon so that we can meet up later for some drinks and some flirting with strangers. I feel a bit more centered when she replies with a hell yeah! because it’s a step toward burying any remnant of Hawkin from my mind, by either alcohol or great sex.

  I know I’ll find the first, at least.