Chevy Stevens - Always Watching

I shook off my memory, though the emotions still lingered, fear and confusion sitting hard in my belly.

“She’s probably okay, right?” Heather said.

“It sounds like you feel some responsibility for Emily, but she’s an adult and can make her own decisions. Just like you made a choice to leave, now you can choose to follow your treatment plan and take care of yourself.”

She nodded. “I know. I am getting better. I can feel it already.”

After I was finished with Heather, I met a new patient, a woman in her early seventies named Francine who was brought in after she’d been found wandering the neighborhood in her nightgown. She’d been diagnosed with dementia and didn’t have any family. Dementia patients were always hard to treat as there wasn’t much we could do for them, and they had to stay at the hospital until there was room in a nursing home. They were confused and upset by their memory losses and frequently tried to escape. Francine had spent the day walking around, testing the doors, begging us to let her go. She refused to be comforted, and we had to just leave her alone, until she calmed down on her own. When we met, I’d asked if she knew why she was in the hospital, and she’d laughed gaily and said she’d been on an adventure, then her face had turned grief-stricken and scared. She said, “Why am I here? When can I go home?”

I gently said, “Miss Hendrickson, you’re in the hospital because you’re having troubles remembering things, and we don’t want you to get hurt.”

She was looking around the interview room, a confused expression on her face. “I’m in the hospital?” Her eyes suddenly lucid and clear, she turned to me, and with a sad voice said, “I’m never leaving here, am I?”

“You’re just staying here a little bit longer while we run some tests.”

She grabbed my hand across the desk, her face lit up with a smile and her eyes sparkling. “I had such a life! I was an artist and traveled the world to paint. I had friends in every country. I could tell you stories, so many stories.” Her eyes filled with tears, leaking into the deep grooves on her face, her white hair long and snarled around her face. Her voice quavered, filled with doubt and turned little girlish. “I don’t have anyone. No family, no one. I don’t know where everyone went. What happened to all my paintings? Where’s my pretty house? I just want to go home.” She started to cry harder. “I can’t remember anything.”

Back in my mid-twenties, when I was still living in Victoria and starting my second year of university, my therapist suggested that I talk to my mom and my brother about my experience at the commune, to see if they could open the window to my memories. But if anything, they slammed the door shut on them.

My mother never liked speaking about the commune after we left, especially if my father was around, but I caught her alone in the field one fall morning as she spread hay into piles for the horses. The sun was out, warming dew from the night before and making the ground steam. Mom was dressed in one of Dad’s bulky work coats, her dark hair stuffed under an old cowboy hat. Even in that masculine garb, she was pretty.

I grabbed a flake and started to help her. After a moment, I said, “Mom, I need to talk to you about the commune.”

She kept working. “I don’t like talking about the past.”

“I know, but this is important. I’ve been in therapy, for my claustrophobia, and my therapist thinks something happened to me at the commune.”

My mother stopped and looked at me. “Like what?”

She was shorter than me, but she pulled herself up tall, her shoulders squared, work gloves on her hips. I felt a small thrill at her protective stance.

“Something traumatic that could have made me scared of the dark and small spaces. Like maybe I got stuck under something.”

“You’ve never liked the dark.” She took her hands away from her hips.

My thrill disappeared as I picked up the new tone in her voice. The one that said: Is this what you came here to bother me about?

“It’s not just nervousness, it’s more than that. I have panic attacks, and when I think back to the commune, I get uncomfortable sometimes.”

“About what?” She looked confused, her brows pulling together.

“I think I was scared of Aaron. I didn’t like being around him.”

“Why on earth would you have been scared of him? He was so nice to you. When he took a few of us on that picnic up at the lake because we’d been working hard, you even got to sit in the front of the truck with him.”

I tried to think about a time we might have gone on a picnic, but nothing came to mind. I shook my head.

“I don’t remember any of that.” But I did remember the fog my mom had been in back then. “Are you sure it was me?”

“Of course it was you. You liked Aaron. After Coyote died, Aaron spent hours down at the river teaching you how to swim.”

I thought back. “I can’t remember that either.”

My mom looked like she couldn’t understand why I was being so dense. “We couldn’t get you back in the river until he started helping you.”

“I didn’t like him. He made me nervous.”

She sounded surprised now. “He’s the reason you know how to swim.”

I was embarrassed that I had no recollection of any swimming lessons, and that I’d voiced my uncomfortable feelings about Aaron—feelings she obviously didn’t share.

“Do you remember a girl named Willow?”

She paused for a minute, thinking, and then nodded. “What about her?”

“She was just really nice to me. The commune, some of the people there, for a kid it was scary. But I liked her.”

She said, “Aaron could get carried away with all that New Age spiritual stuff, but they were all just harmless hippies.”

It was the first time my mom had ever given an opinion on the commune’s beliefs, and her tone made me wonder if she hadn’t been on board with them as much as I’d thought. I said, “Maybe, but I just wanted to go home.”

She looked upset for a moment and almost defensive, as she said, “You had it a lot better there than at home.”

Feeling defensive myself, I said, “Then why did we leave?”

Her whole body flinched, like I’d hit her, and it took her a moment to speak. “That little boy…” Her eyes were sad. “He was so sweet, just a baby still.” I was surprised by her emotional reaction after all this time, the sorrow in her face, and thought she might cry. But then she took off her glove and rubbed her hand across her nose, tossed her head with an angry jerk. “Social services were involved, the cops. It wasn’t good for you kids to be there anymore. Your dad said he was going to be home more, and I wanted to give our marriage another try.”

Though Dad forgave her for running away, and he quit working on the boats, their marriage had never improved. If anything, it was worse. I couldn’t count how many times we had to buy plates because they’d thrown them at each other. Eventually, Dad had started spending all his time hunting, or at the pub, until Robbie came to collect him. Mom spent all her time with the horses.

Mom put her glove back on and took another flake out of the wheelbarrow, dumped it on the ground. “The commune left after that—moved down to Victoria.” She held my gaze. “Don’t go looking for trouble, Nadine. You’ll only cause yourself pain.” She touched my cheek gently, the glove rough on my skin. “I might make a lot of mistakes, but that one I know for sure.” She grabbed the handles on the wheelbarrow and headed back to the barn.

It was only a few weeks later that she died in the car accident.