Anne Siddons - Fault Lines

I knew that I would be terribly angry with him again later, but right then I was merely endlessly tired. I could not imagine where I was going to find the breath and strength to make him see.

But I knew that I must, so I inhaled deeply and said, as calmly as I could, “You aren’t here most of the time. You don’t see. You can’t possibly know. I’ve coped as long and well as I could; so has Glynn. She’s a very long way from being a spoiled, helpless brat, Pom. You should have seen her today, she was so funny and normal, and so proud of her new clothes—”

He leaned forward, as if to better understand me.

“Why shouldn’t she be normal, Merritt? She’s sixteen years old. She’s had everything on earth that could be given to her; she’s had the best life we could make for her. She never learned to abuse sick old people from us—”

I knew then that I would not remind him of the anorexia, nor tell him of its recurrence. In this mood it would surely become another weapon for him.

“She has never in her life abused Mommee, if you insist on calling it that. But she has a limit, and this business with Mommee has stretched her far thinner than you can possibly know. Even I didn’t realize—”

“Both of you should have to work in the clinic all day,” he said in exasperation. “It would make what you think you have to do look like a garden party. Why weren’t you watching Mommee? Where the hell did she get the fireplace lighter? Why wasn’t someone with her? Merritt, we made a deal a long time ago. It was your idea, as I recall. You were all for it. You’d look after the kids and the house so I could do this work. You said yourself that it was the most important thing you could imagine. You said you loved taking care of the kids and seeing that things ran smoothly for all of us. And you did it so well and you still had plenty of time to yourself, even when the boys were at their most troubled, even when Glynn was a baby and a toddler. You did almost anything you wanted to; you never had to stop your freelance work. What changed? Why can’t you look after the people who need you, all of a sudden?”

“The people who need me don’t need only me now,” I said, trying not to shout or weep at the words. They seemed so unfair that I could not imagine how he could even think them, much less say them. But I knew that he meant them. His face was wrinkled with the need, the desire, to understand.

“Your daughter needs you, too,” I said. “She’s played second fiddle to the halt and the lame at that clinic for a long time now. And then here comes Mommee. Every time Glynn expresses need of you you give her a lecture about people with real trouble, about doing real work. Pom, the reason we made the deal in the first place was so that your children, and later our child, would never have to live the way the people in the clinic live. That was the most important thing in the world to you then; that they have better lives than that. So that’s the way I raised them, and now you criticize Glynn precisely because she’s not like a them. She’s not spoiled and trivial; she’s as good and responsible a child as I know. But she needs you, too. And she doesn’t often get much of you. As for Mommee, she needs more than me or you now. If you were with her all day you’d see that she’s gone beyond anybody’s care but professional people’s. With the best will in the world, I can’t keep her safe now, or us safe from her. I cannot be with her every second out of the day, nor can Ina. Where was I? I fell asleep outside on the chaise while she was occupied up in her room and Glynn was out. With the intercom beside me. I couldn’t give her a pill because you said not to, and I had just had a long emergency session with Glynn. I was exhausted. I’m sorry. Where did she get the fireplace starter? I do not know. I’ve taken all the matches in the house away, and I thought I’d locked up all the fireplace starters. Glynn’s right, Mommee does know what they are. She’s started several small paper fires with them. Yesterday she cut up one of the drapes in her room with garden shears because I’d hidden all the other scissors, and that was with Ina in the house with her. The deal isn’t valid anymore, Pom, because things have just changed too much. Can’t you see that?”

“I’m trying. But it all boils down to the fact that Mommee is not responsible for what has happened to her, and I will not have her punished for helplessness.”

“So instead you’ll punish Glynn for it. And me.”

“I’ve never punished you.”

“Somehow what I need seems to have gotten left out of the equation,” I said.

“Well, then, what is it that you need, Merritt?” he said with the exaggerated calm that you would use with a child in mid-tantrum.

“I need…some air and light and some attention,” I said, surprising myself. “I need for you to think about what I need before I tell you. I need you to be with me, just me , every now and then. I need full-time, professional, live-in help with Mommee, a nurse or an attendant of some kind. Either that or she is going to have to go to a nursing home.”

“She’s not going to a nursing home. She’s not going to be left in the care of total strangers. We’ve discussed that. It’s not an option.”

“Pom, your mother is out of her mind. She is not who she used to be. She does not know what she is doing, maybe, but what she is doing is destructive in the extreme. You wouldn’t allow this sort of…drudgery…to fall on anybody in your clinic. Why are we so much less important to you?”

“People don’t treat their family members that way.”

“I didn’t think they made servants and captives of them, either.”

He got up and took a sandwich from the platter and went out of the kitchen. At the door he looked back.

“I’m going to catch up on some paperwork,” he said. “And I want you to try to calm down. We’ll talk again in the morning. Glynn can sit in on it, too. I’m willing to listen to what both of you have to say, but you’re going to have to say, but you’re going to have to respect my point of view, too. Meanwhile, we’re just spinning our wheels. I’ll probably be up late. You turn in. It’s been a hard day. Mommee will sleep through. We’ll get somebody in to clean up Monday.”

I did not reply, and then I called after him, “I’m going to tell Glynn she can come out of her room now. She hasn’t had any supper.”

“Yeah, all right,” he called back. “But I don’t want her going out anywhere. She’s still grounded until we talk this thing out.”

“Where would she go?” I said into the empty air of the kitchen. He did not, of course, hear me.

I went to the downstairs guest room door and knocked softly.

“Come out, the storm’s over,” I said. “I’ve got a sandwich and some milk for you. We’ll all talk this out in the morning. The fire just got your dad upset—”

“Thanks, Mama, but I really don’t want anything,” she called back. I could hear the TV going. “I’d like to watch TV for a while and then go to sleep. I’ll be fine in the morning.”

“Don’t just stay in there and brood. Come watch TV with me. Daddy’s going to be working till late. And Mommee’s out for the count.”

“I’m not brooding. I really am tired. And Dune is on again, and you know you hate that. I’ll see you in the morning.”

“Night, then. Sleep tight.”

“Night, Mama.”

I fell asleep before Pom came to bed. When I woke, it was morning and he was sitting on the foot of the bed in shorts and a faded T-shirt, toweling his hair. I knew he had been out running along the river. He was drinking coffee and held out a cup to me.