Fiction originally published in The Broadkill Review: Volume 3, No. 6, November 2009
As I’m wheeling my husband into the living room, he says, “I’m not an idiot. I know you’re screwing Marty Jansen behind my back. You ungrateful, two-timing…”
I’ve never once been unfaithful and haven’t had sex in three years. This is not something you brag about, but it’s true. Marty Jansen has been dead for at least twelve years and Gary’s been accusing me of this for the last forty-five. You see, my husband came home early from his bowling league one night in 1973, because he’d forgotten his shoes, or something like that, to find Marty’s Chevrolet in our driveway. Of course, he assumed the worse and went absolutely nuts. First, he went to beating on the poor man’s car and then on Marty.
If we had not lived right around the corner from the hospital, Marty would have been dead thirty-five years ago instead of only twelve.
“I’ve never cheated on you,” I say, locking his wheelchair into place.
“Bullshit Rebecca,” he says, shaking his head. “You’ve just been waiting to get back at me for Tina. Kept giving me and the pastor that same load of hogwash about forgiving me, but you never did. You may not care about lying to me but you should care about lying to God. Don’t you care about where you’re going?”
I don’t even bother to respond, take the final sip of my wine glass, and turn on the television. Denying it anymore is pointless. I know he’ll forget in a few more minutes if I stop arguing.
Is that wrong?
During the last doctor’s visit, my husband said all this, yelled all this, for the entire waiting room to hear. The nurse tried to comfort me by reminding me that people with his condition tend to get angry for no reason. They say things they don’t mean. I pretended to believe her, pretended to act like this was some new development in his personality.
She could have comforted me better by explaining to me how he’ll lose his ability to speak in the later stages.
For a while I pretended to act like I was in a happy marriage for Roger, our son, but now he’s gone. He couldn’t take his father anymore. I don’t blame him. Roger told me he didn’t want his children to be raised around a monster like him. Who could argue with that?
Why did I stay then? I can’t quite remember.
I put in Gary’s favorite movie, The Godfather: Part II. He’s always been a fan of mafia movies. Not really my thing but it’s what my husband likes. I open up another bottle of merlot and sit down on the couch next to his chair.
About six weeks ago, Gary was having a particularly bad morning. I woke up at seven to the smell of burning toast. The kitchen was a disaster zone. There was raw bacon in a frying pan and the coffee grounds had been put in the pot instead of the filter. Found Gary tying one of his ties in the bathroom.
He said, “Have you seen my keys?”
He hadn’t been able to drive for at least a year.
“What do you need them for?”
“So I can go to my job and make more money for you to spend on dresses or whatever you piss all my paychecks on. Quit playing around Rebecca. I’m going to be late.”
“Gary, you’ve been retired for a year and a half. Don’t you remember the retirement party we had for you? At the party hall downtown?”
He stared at me for a couple seconds in disbelief. Then you could see the whole thing coming back together in his mind. He looked down at his wheelchair like it was the first time he’d seen it and got that same old look in his eyes. So I shut the door, listened to the storm from the hallway and came back in when the crashing stopped. He’d broken the mirror—I’m still not sure how he even reached it from his chair—and ripped the entire faucet off.
My husband was never any good at dealing with his anger.
Anyways, I told the doctor about it and she said it might be time to seriously consider the option of retirement homes. I know those places can accommodate a man in his condition better, but to send him away like that seems plain old wrong to me. It’s not like he’s some dog to be sent to the pound when he’s gotten too hard to take care of.
He’s my husband.
I was never any good at making decisions. I’ve always let Gary take care of things like this.
Doctor Ramirez said to, at the very least, take precautions at the house. She gave me a list of things little things I could do to make it safer. Lock away all knives. Take the knobs off the stove and hide them, that sort of thing. Then, she had me go to the waiting room while she examined Gary.
I had already read the copy of Better Homes and Gardens they had, and all the other magazines either had a baseball player or a man triumphantly holding up a fish on the cover. There I was in the waiting room. Waiting. Right then, an absolutely adorable little boy with his mother sat down across from me.
He was a ball of energy. She tried to keep him seated but her efforts were useless. The little boy ran around the coffee table about twenty times before his foot got caught up on a turn and fell. He slammed his head right into the wall and looked at the wall. I braced myself to hear him scream. He didn’t though.
Instead, he got up and kept running. Besides the little gash on his widow’s peak, you wouldn’t have been able to tell anything was wrong with him. He just smiled and kept running. The mom didn’t even look surprised.
“What a little trooper you have. My son used to cry for hours if he skinned his knee.”
She smiled with some reluctance. Then she said, “It’s a part of his condition.”
“What’s a part of his condition?”
“He can’t feel pain.”
“At all?”
It was obvious that she wasn’t excited to explain it. She probably had had to tell this story many times before to other prying strangers.
“He has Congenital Analgia. His nerves don’t recognize pain.”
“Can’t feel pain, huh? How lucky?”
The mother gave me the nastiest look and went back to filling out the insurance paperwork. I pretended to read about this season’s latest and greatest gardening shears.
The doctor warned me that certain things, usually random things, will trigger different memories. She said sometimes the memories will be so vivid that he’ll probably think they are real, like it’s actually whatever year he’s remembering.
Gary’s trigger is The Godfather: Part II of all things.
“Sam, you know Sam at the hardware store, told me this movie was a good one. When’s this one due back? Don’t want to pay those late fees again. You know how Main Street Movies charges four dollars for every day one’s late.”
I take another sip of merlot. We must have watched this movie hundreds of times. Main Street Movies went out of business in '95. That hardware store was sold a while ago and now it’s a pharmacy. He tells me about the late fees and this Sam’s suggestion each Wednesday night.
Before pressing play on the remote, I give Gary the new prescription Doctor Ramirez said he should start taking for this stage. She said these pills would help slow down his memory loss. She said the same thing during the last stage about the last prescription. So he’s taking pills to prevent memory loss, and I’m drinking to induce it.
Neither seems to be strong enough.
If only we could switch places. That might be nice.
Maybe I shouldn’t think things like that though. I looked up Congenital Analgia. It’s a real disease and the people who have it really don’t feel any pain. It’s not as good as it sounds though.
The medical article went on to explain how patients who have it don’t have long life expectancies. Since they can’t feel pain they don’t learn to respond properly to physical harm, danger, and things like that. They usually end up injuring themselves severely without even noticing it. A lot bite the ends of their tongues clear off while eating.
My second bottle of wine is almost finished about an hour into the movie when he reaches his hand out towards mine and holds it. He can still be a charmer.
I think about all the pain that little boy simply will never be able to comprehend. I don’t mean to complain, but there has been more pain in this life than I can fully comprehend. That little boy probably won’t live much longer, and sure it’ll be hell for his mom and family, but he’ll blissfully pass.
He’ll keep running with that smile on his face.
Is it possible to feel pity and envy for someone simultaneously?
“What do you think Michael’s going to do with Fredo? I’d kill that son of a bitch if I was him.”
I say, “I don’t know dear.”
He nods and gets lost in the movie. So I take another sip and try to get lost in it too. Sometimes I can forget and pretend I’m in a happy marriage.
Thankfully, sometimes it works.