Dominoes in Time

by Matthew Warner

  “Yeah, and I found a lot of medicines here—a lot of medicines—and I was wondering if you’ve given her any prescriptions I should know about, or if there’s records I should have.”

  “Ah. You’re aware of course that to divulge her psychotherapy records would be a breach of doctor-patient confidentiality…”

  Joe started to say he was her son and should goddamn well get her records, but Reitan wouldn’t give him a word edgewise. They talked for another minute—or rather, Reitan talked—before Joe started making thank you for calling noises.

  Then the doctor surprised him by giving some information after all. “But to answer your other question, no, there aren’t any prescriptions you should be aware of. You see, she stopped therapy last year as the Alzheimer’s became more manifest. I was unable to convince her husband to bring her in. Of course, with encroaching senile dementia it’s probably not as important anyway…”

  Joe bit his lip so hard that it hurt. Callous pencilneck. Just because his mother was old and senile didn’t mean she was any less of a person. Maybe your attitude is why Mom stopped seeing you.

  It occurred to him that this was why he disliked therapists so much. He’d been around them his whole life, in one form or another, either through his own occasional brushes with them in grade school or during that first, failed long-term relationship with a girlfriend who’d insisted on marriage counseling although they weren’t married, or through his parents by proxy—and he’d never felt they worked because they were all arrogant phonies. Reitan seemed to confirm this suspicion. And to think he’d actually considered asking this jerk for help with his recent problems.

  “… Of course I pleaded with Mr. Merrill to bring her in, as her post-traumatic stress disorder shouldn’t go for so long without—”

  “Wait a minute. PTSD? Like what war veterans get?”

  Reitan coughed a nervous laugh. “Ah, well, that was just an unofficial diagnosis as I was formulating my conclusions at the time she ceased therapy, but—”

  “I thought she was seeing you for panic attacks.”

  “She was, but—”

  “Mom’s never had anything happen to her to cause PTSD.” Joe was enjoying interrupting him. “She was a housewife for fifty years. The most traumatic thing she ever did was raise me.”

  “Ah, well, I beg to differ. But that’s really going beyond what I’m permitted to tell you.”

  Joe huffed, wanting to strangle the man. “Fine. Thanks for your call, doctor. Goodbye.”

  He started to lower the receiver, but Reitan shouted, “Mr. Merrill, wait!”

  “What.”

  “I must ask you something.”

  “Uh hmm?”

  “You said you’re moving Ruthie into a retirement home, correct?”

  It was the first time he’d used her first name. Joe softened. “Yes. Assisted living.”

  “Mr. Merrill—Joe—listen, if there’s nothing else I can offer you, please hear me out on this. Your mother should be in a nursing home, not assisted living. Yes yes, I realize she probably doesn’t need diaper-changing yet or someone to feed her, but that will change. Alzheimer’s is a degenerative disease, and she’ll increasingly rely on others not just for her mind, but for her body.”

  Joe swallowed. Reitan had paused, giving him a moment to talk, but he was at a loss for words.

  “I know it’s hard. Taking responsibility for an elderly parent is one of the hardest things we face as we grow older. I only want you to make the right choice for your mother. She’s a good person and deserves the best care.”

  Joe quietly thanked him for the advice. They ended the call.

  Feeling sick again, he lay down on the bed.

  ✽ ✽ ✽

  The decision to offload his parents’ Buick LeSabre wasn’t anywhere near as high on the spectrum of difficult issues as the fate of his mother, but it gave him a pang anyway.

  As he drove the car to the gas station at the Burke Town Plaza shopping center, Joe enjoyed the new-car smell that his father had somehow managed to preserve for four years. Dad had said the trick was an old family secret, like the special ingredient of a spaghetti sauce. He’d died before passing it on. Joe swallowed a surge of grief as he remembered how Dad used to grimace in concentration as he applied car wax. Maybe that’s why selling the Buick to a used-car dealer (probably CarMax in Chantilly) made his heart ache: he would miss the smell.

  He parked at a pump and got out. Gas fumes filled his nose.

  Dr. Reitan… Reitan was a jackass. C’mon, post-traumatic stress syndrome? Joe supposed if he’d stayed on the phone long enough that Reitan would have accused Dad of beating her, or Joe’s grandparents of molesting her as a child. Just come into my office and let me uncover your repressed memories, why don’t ya, while I charge a king’s wage.

  Joe snorted as he swiped his credit card and began to pump. The pencilneck was talking out of his asshole, like all psychiatrists. Reitan was wrong about the need for a nursing home, too.

  Yet that wasn’t really true, was it? Don’t kid yourself, Joey boy. You’re too old for it. He was a parent now—a parent to his mother—and it was time he faced facts. Soon, Mom would be as likely to talk to a tossed salad as eat it. Why hadn’t he seen that? Did he really think that an assisted living facility, with its apartments and closed doors, would be good enough for her? Wasn’t the day coming when his mother the child would be his mother the baby, dependent on people to bathe her and change her Depends diaper?

  Reitan wasn’t entirely wrong about the PTSD thing, either. Oh, Joe didn’t know what Mom had said or done that led to Reitan’s “unofficial” diagnosis, but he knew how Mom was now. He was no psychiatrist, but…

  I remember my bones—they shattered, Joey.

  His mother was traumatized by the things she remembered or imagined. Sort of like him.

  Thought you were dead.… He stabbed you.

  He hugged his thin jacket around himself and glared at the scrolling numbers of the gas pump, which ascended at a rate of over three dollars per gallon. He wondered what would give out first: his patience, his sanity, his wallet, or his sense of smell good Christ did it stink out here. He checked his shoes and found he’d stepped in a puddle of gasoline that extended beneath the car. He hated it when that happened. Some idiot overflows his tank, and it winds up tracked onto other people’s pedals and carpets. So much for Dad’s carefully preserved new car smell. The thought made him angry.

  It also angered him that yet another misfortune had befallen him. Sure, it didn’t compare to the plane-crash or neck-breaking hallucinations, but it sure as hell wasn’t what he needed this morning. The way his luck was going, a lightning bolt would strike and blow everything up.

  “I’m a lightning rod for danger,” he muttered, and giggled a little. Then it bothered him how maniacal, how—dare he think it?—crazy he sounded.

  The pump clunked and shut off as the tank reached capacity. Joe tore out the gas handle. There, you see? I’m not even gentle, and I still don’t spray it everywhere.

  The gas smell doubled, trebled in intensity. Tears gushed from his eyes. The fumes blew across his head like the noxious breath of a dragon. Startled, Joe dropped the handle and slapped his hands over his face. What the—

  —and the air roared with growing heat.

  He realized he was on fire.

  A whistling sound, like from a cereal box toy, started low and whooped upwards in pitch. Joe opened his mouth to scream. The whistle ascended out of hearing range.

  The world flashed.

  He felt an instant of searing heat and pressure, then nothing more.

  ✽ ✽ ✽

  The pump clunked off.

  Joe inhaled sharply and let go of the handle. He backed up in a hurry and fell on his ass, landing on bone-dry pavement. No gas fume smell.

  Adrenaline kicked his heart into a steady thud. I’m crazy, I’m losing it… !

  A door squeaked open behind him. A man’s voice said, “Hey, y
ou okay?”

  Joe looked to see an attendant crushing a lit cigarette against the wall of the booth. The man jogged over and reached for him. A moment later, a green minivan filled with screaming children parked at the next pump. If that pump had exploded while they were there…

  Joe allowed the attendant to pull him up—but since he must have outweighed the diminutive Indian guy by a hundred pounds, he actually did all the work. But it was enough just to touch another human being, to know that he wasn’t dead and that this was real.

  And that he was insane. Had to be.

  “I pump for you, yes?” The attendant reached for the nozzle, which was still inserted into the Buick.

  “No, I… I have to go!”

  Had to get out of here before something else happened.

  He scrambled into the car and started the engine. The attendant just had time to withdraw the hose before Joe sped away.

  ✽ ✽ ✽

  The scotch burned his throat as he swallowed. He poured himself another two fingers, neat, and tossed them down.

  He heard Sharon enter the den and sit in the easy chair by the fireplace, but he didn’t turn. Instead, he grimaced at his father’s old roll-top desk, feeling the scotch sear him. He remembered being a boy, watching Dad stand here and do the same thing. He prepared to pour himself a third glass.

  “What happened?” Sharon said.

  He froze, then set the bottle back down. “Nothing.”

  “Don’t tell me ‘nothing.’ You’re drinking like a man about to face a firing squad.”

  No, not a firing squad, he thought. Burned at the stake is a better analogy. Or hanged. I like hanged because they break your neck, just like when I—

  “Joe?”

  “I’m fine.”

  “You’re not fine.”

  He faced her, anger flaring. The booze wanted him to throw his glass at her, but he saw concern in her face and caught himself.

  “Did you see something again?” she said.

  His lips trembled. “The gas station. It blew up while I was standing there. Must’ve blown up the car, too.”

  Sharon’s brow furrowed. She looked out the window at the Buick, which was parked in the driveway.

  “No no, it’s fine now,” Joe said. “I mean, it was the same as before. I’m standing there, and boom. Then a moment later, it’s like it never happened.”

  Sharon flattened a hand on her chest.

  “I know,” Joe said. “You think I’m crazy.”

  “I never said that.”

  “No, you said I’m schizo.”

  “Joe, I said I was sorry—”

  “Look, never mind that. The point is I’m crazy, and I’m imagining this, right?”

  “Are you?”

  “Well, what do you think?”

  Sharon raised her hands and let them drop. “It doesn’t matter what I think. What matters is what it’s doing to you. Joe, honey, I’ve never seen you like this.”

  She stood up, hesitated, then hugged him. She buried her face in his neck, and Joe was surprised to feel her tears on his skin.

  “What can I do?” she whispered.

  ✽ ✽ ✽

  A while later, Sharon wiped her eyes and answered her own question: “Okay, the first thing we’ll do is put away that bottle.”

  Joe shrugged and stepped back. He watched as Sharon pulled down the desk’s roll-top cover, slamming it into place. A keychain with two keys sat on top, and she tried both keys to find the one that locked it.

  She slapped them back onto the desk. “Don’t even think of going back in there.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Now we’ll have lunch. Your mom asked for chicken noodle soup, and that’s what I have ready.”

  “And then what?”

  “Then you’ll call that doctor, whatshisname. Reitan.”

  Joe groaned.

  Sharon started out of the room, stopped, and placed her hands on her hips. She arched her eyebrows.

  “Yes, ma’am, I meant.”

  “That’s better,” she said.

  ✽ ✽ ✽

  Joe’s mother hunched over her bowl and stirred the chicken noodles with the wrong end of her spoon. “What’s this?”

  Sharon paused in mid-bite. “It’s soup. The kind you asked for.”

  “It’s worms. Like in the grave.”

  “Mom,” Joe began. A wildfire of pain spread slowly to the crown of his head. This was not a good day for more of her—

  “Seen enough death. Don’t want to eat it, too.” She pushed the bowl away so hard that it sloshed onto the table.

  Sharon shrugged a little, then turned to Joe. “So. What do you think is happening to you?”

  He slurped his soup. “Don’t know.”

  But as he considered the question further and as the scotch worked its magic, words started popping out of his mouth. Maybe he’d experienced precognition, he said. That was the likeliest explanation. But then that would imply he was seeing misfortunes before they happened so he could prevent them, and that wasn’t borne out by experience: he hadn’t foreseen a plane crash that had actually occurred although it had come close to happening. He hadn’t foreseen a gas explosion—in fact, the pavement later was dry, and the attendant had snuffed out his cigarette well short of the pumps. All told, maybe the most important thing, now that he was calm and considering it rationally, was that deep down he felt sure there was something else at work here other than mental illness. In fact—

  “I’m sorry I asked,” Sharon interrupted. Her face had gone stony. She’d stopped eating.

  “What? What did I say?”

  “I’m not sure. You’re slurring your words.” She shoved her bowl away to tap against Mom’s.

  “Worms,” Mom muttered.

  “You’re not going to call him, are you,” Sharon said. It wasn’t a question.

  “Who, Dr. Reitan? Maybe in a few days, before we leave.”

  “Dammit, Joe! You’re so bullheaded. Can’t you see you’re scaring me?”

  Stunned, Joe opened his mouth to reassure her—but then he considered the prospect of spending the next six months or longer talking to Reitan or whatever other pompous pencilneck he referred him to. And for what? So that they’d render a diagnosis—confirming his worst suspicions—regardless of the truth? Shrinks were famous for doing that to his family. All it would accomplish would be to break him down.

  The realization hit him like the weight of the entire junior varsity wrestling team during a game of “pile-on”: his only real hope at sanity was to deny that he was insane.

  He took a deep breath and let it out. “I’m not calling anyone.”

  His mother stared at him, bug-eyed. Joe wondered how much of that was surprise or a reflection of the new emptiness in her head.

  Sharon’s reaction, however, was unmistakable. “You dumb, arrogant bastard.”

  Reaching for her jacket, purse, and car keys, she stood up and left the room.

  Joe followed her, starting to get angry. “Sharon?”

  Behind him, Mom giggled in a way that made his hair crawl. “You’re the only one who can see it, Joey.…”

  ✽ ✽ ✽

  He caught up to her out by the curb, where she was climbing into their rental car. A cold wind had come up, and he folded his arms to stay warm.

  “I’m going to buy more tape and boxes,” Sharon said, biting off the words. She sat in the driver’s seat with the door open, her hair swirling around her face. “Now go back inside—it’s cold out here. Call the doctor.”

  “Look, hon, I’m sorry, but there has to be another way. If I give in now and start thinking I’m crazy, I’ll never be able to handle this—” he gestured at the house and the woman inside, “and then Mom won’t have anyone to depend on.”

  Sharon regarded him coolly. “I wish you could hear yourself.”

  “I do hear myself.”

  “No, you don’t. You’re breaking down under the stress.”

  “I
am not.”

  “Joe, I’m worried about you.”

  “Well, I’m not crazy. I’ve decided.”

  “You’ve decided? Fine. Then if you’re not crazy, you’ve been lying to me. You’re running away from your responsibilities by telling me stories.” She grimaced and started the car, holding the key too long and making the ignition squeal. But when she tried to close her door, Joe pulled it back open. “Dammit, Joe!”

  “Sharon—”

  “You know what really hurts?”

  “I am not running—”

  “The worst part is that I believed you for a moment, back there in the den.”

  “Sharon—”

  Another gust of wind took most of his body heat with it. When Joe wrapped his arms around himself, Sharon closed her door.

  The car rolled away.

  “Hey!”

  He restrained himself from reaching out for the vehicle, reasoning that really would be crazy.

  ✽ ✽ ✽

  Only one thing to do, he supposed. Go inside, get back to work, and keep his head down. Sharon would return. And when she did, she’d have to go along with him.

  Which meant that he’d better be right about this.

  Because if he wasn’t, then he was the world’s biggest prick and its worst husband.

  But, wasn’t it true (he thought as he washed the lunch dishes) that when people had so much at stake, when their sanity hung by a thread—or even when their way of perceiving things was challenged—that they saw what they wanted to see? Could Sharon be right about him telling lies?

  For instance, take that living room over there, the one where his parents had accumulated a lifetime’s worth of photo albums, trophies, and vacation souvenirs. See anything strange, Joey?

  He leaned back from the kitchen sink for a moment, his hands dripping soapy water, and looked. His mother crossed his line of vision on the way to the TV room.

  Yep, that’s right. While you’ve been spectacularly unproductive this morning, Sharon has boxed up all that shit for you. Never mind that it’ll wind up stacked in your garage now that Mom is going to a full-blown nursing home. The point is you must’ve walked past that room ten times today—before the gas run—and not once noticed or appreciated your wife’s efforts.