Matthew Thomas - We Are Not Ourselves

If you’d told her at her wedding that one day, years on, she’d be picking her husband up at the police station on a balmy evening in late May, she would have laughed and said, “You don’t know Ed,” but she’d gotten a page, and then she was nestling into a spot between a pair of squad cars in the quiet lot at dusk. She shut the engine off and sat considering the possibility that fate had finally caught up to her.

She headed toward the sign-in desk and saw Ed sitting in the waiting area with an officer, his shirt untucked, his hair a mess. He wore no anguish on his face, only an aspect of resignation. In his rigid posture he looked surprisingly regal, like a statue of an ancient Egyptian king.

She introduced herself. The officer’s name was Sergeant Garger.

“I’m so sorry about this,” she said.

Seeing her, Ed emitted a low moan that suggested he’d been caught with a prostitute or committed some other unspeakable indiscretion.

“Officer Cerullo will sit with your husband,” Sergeant Garger said. “I’d like you to come to my desk to sign some papers.”

She wanted to get out of there as quickly as possible. She didn’t want them to conclude that the situation was completely out of hand, because there was no telling what they might do then. She could endure any embarrassment, as long as they didn’t take him away.

“Your husband was wandering back and forth in traffic in front of the church,” Officer Garger said quietly. “He was stopping cars, waving his arms. Cars were backed up all the way to the train station. When we approached him, he was wild.”

“I’m sorry.”

“If the responding officer hadn’t seen the bracelet on his wrist, we would have booked him for disturbing the peace and resisting arrest. We ascertained that he was trying to find his way home.” He took out a breath mint, asked her if she wanted one. “It’s Alzheimer’s? Is that correct?”

“Yes,” she said.

“He seems young to me.”

“Fifty-four.”

“I understand this is not the first incident,” the officer said. She nodded silently. “He comes into town?”

“He doesn’t,” she said. “This is an exception.”

“What nobody wants is for this to turn into a legal situation. If your husband is deemed a threat to himself or others, or if the home situation creates an impediment to his safety—”

“I’m a nurse. I know the law.”

“Do you let him out alone?”

“We usually have a nurse, but I had to let her go. I haven’t found a replacement yet. I got him that bracelet in case something happened. I have to go to work; I can’t stay with him.”

“Have you considered a nursing home?”

“Not as long as I can help it.”

“Are there any family members who can help?”

“No,” she said.

“Nobody?”

She thought of Connell at school. She had hoped he’d grow up when he went off to college, but he couldn’t even remember to call home on his father’s birthday without a reminder.

“Well, there is my son. But he’s away at school. He’s in a play this summer. I can’t ask him to come home.”

“You know what I think, Mrs. Leary? If you don’t mind my saying?”

“What?”

“You sure can.”

• • •

In bed that night, she thought about the way Officer Garger had looked at her. She’d gotten that look lately from men — repairmen, deliverymen — who came to the house and saw what kind of shape Ed was in. She had a few more wrinkles now, and a hint of crow’s feet, and the other day she thought she’d seen the makings of a jowl. Still, she knew she remained beautiful and that a distressed situation like the one she was in with Ed might bring out the chivalry in even unenlightened men. Lately she had told them the story as soon as she opened the door. She considered it her duty to explain that Ed was incapacitated. He had come to pride himself on his hard-won home improvement skills and would have hated for the professional craftsmen he respected to write him off as another eunuch of a househusband.

They looked at her with pity, some with more than pity. They didn’t like to look at Ed or raise their voices around him. It made conversations more conspiratorial than they might otherwise have been.

She couldn’t avoid admitting to herself that she’d given Officer Garger a look of her own. She knew it hadn’t communicated much but a vague dissatisfaction, but guilt still crept through her. When Ed’s hand explored her shoulder, she rolled over and went to sleep.

It was the day of their first practice as a cast. He and Jenna had arranged to meet beforehand at the Medici. He walked past the place and circled the block, then steeled himself enough to go in. He found her in a booth in the back.

“Sorry I’m late,” he said.

At the first read-through, Jenna had been a revelation as Puck, sexy and feral. Connell had read his own lines in a workmanlike fashion that was accidentally appropriate for the role of Francis Flute, the bellows mender given Thisbe to portray in the mechanicals’ play-within-the-play. He liked to think he would have made a good Oberon to her Puck, but the director knew better. Oberon went to an upperclassman whose magnetism attracted the available attention of much of the cast, Jenna included. When the director announced that Thisbe would be wearing a pink prom dress, the loudest laugh in the room came from Oberon.

“It’s okay.” She leaned down to reach into her backpack, her long red hair shifting forward to block his view of her. “Here, let me give you this. We should get going.”

“Hang on a second,” he said, beginning to panic. “Let me sit down.” He creaked in the joints as he bent into the seat. When he squared up across from her, he felt the nervous energy he had been carrying around in his chest settle with a queasy finality into his gut. She was not going to reconsider. If it had been a moment of betrayal that had driven her away, some passionate carelessness in the predawn hours, perhaps he could have pulled her back to him. She had a peculiar tolerance, even a fondness, for the self-absorption of dynamic young men. There had been no regrettable evening though; likely he had been too ready to offer his devotion. The little sedimentary deposits of his need had piled at her feet until they blocked her view of him.

“I think we have time for coffee,” he said, “and to talk a bit.”

“Let’s have some, then.” She signaled to the waiter, frowning in that lovely way she did when she was taking care of tasks. It was something in the way she gave in without a fight: their relationship had already receded into the past for her. “What do you want to talk about?”

“I just want to talk.” He couldn’t say the undiluted truth, which was that he needed her not to leave him. They sat in silence. He dug his knife into the candle wax poured in one of the many grooves furrowed into the table by generations of undergraduates. He couldn’t look at her.

“How’s your father? Are you going home?”

He drummed his fingers on the table. “I don’t have to, if it would make a difference for me to stay.”

“You should go,” she said. “You need to be there.”

“I miss you so much,” he said, finally cracking. “I don’t know what I’m going to do without you.”

“You’re running from something. You need to look at that.”

“I’m sorry,” he said.

Her lips pulled into a little knot. “For what?”

“For not planning anything for your birthday,” he said. “For any mistakes I made.”

She laughed. “The only thing you did wrong was ask me to marry you. The only thing I did wrong was not say no right away.” She looked at her watch and pulled out a sealed envelope. “Can I give this to you now?”