November 19, 2009
Nora the playwright escorted me to a photography show featuring a journalist who’d been covering the outbreak in Coldtown when he wound up on the wrong side of the barricades. He was bitten by one of the infected but survived and became a vampire.No one is sure how he smuggles his film out of the city, but according to the curator of the show, he has an old friend who develops it. The photos are stunning and horrifying, a close observation of what’s happening inside, from the perspective of the monster.
After, I gave Nora notes on her new play. She was surprised by my insight, and I worry it gave away the level of my involvement in Nigel’s work. It’s been tempting over the years, of course, to admit that I wrote a particular line or two that critics praise, but I dismissed those feelings as vanity. This time when I bit my tongue, though, it was because I couldn’t bear to see Nora’s disappointment. With Nigel. With me. With the past. With every compromise I hope no one ever asks of her.
June 23, 2014
One disastrous afternoon a week ago, I moved the wrong way, fell, smashed up a few ribs, and hurt my back.
I managed to call the ambulance, but what followed was a haze of pain medication and surgery. Diane and David both came, with a lot of paperwork to sign. And I, fool that I was, signed it.
After I was discharged, I was given a cane, and then my children brought me back to my apartment to pack. I walked stooped over, as though I had become an ancient crone overnight. Oh, the ridiculousness of knowing that you’re old, but somehow not thinking youlookold until you find yourself hunched over a cane.
Not to mention the ridiculousness of your children tricking their way into authority over you and then behaving as though that wasn’t what they did.
“You need to accept the facts,” Diane said. “Don’t make this harder on me or yourself. You heard the people at the hospital.Someone has to take care of you. You’re not supposed to be on your own yet. And I can’t stay in the city.”
“Take care of me? That sounds ominous,” I told her, already thinking back to the paperwork in the hospital. “I am sure I can manage. I can order groceries. Have my pills delivered.”
“You’re being unreasonable,” Diane told me, her voice stern, as though she were the parent now.
“I warned you about falling,” David told me, although he had done no such thing.
“I don’t see how living anywhere else would have made a difference to my sense of balance,” I said tartly.
“I’m sorry, Mom.” David put his hand on my shoulder. “You’re right. We’re just upset because of how worried we got when we heard you fell.”
“You might be able to come back here in a few weeks,” Diane said, but I could hear the lie in her voice.
I leaned heavily on my new cane.
I haven’t been entirely truthful in this journal about what it was like to live with Nigel. Not that I didn’t love him. Of course I did! And it wasn’t as though he meant to be cruel, although sometimes he was. It was just hard for Nigel not to see what he needed as more important than the needs of anyone else. And it was hard for Nigel to see a thing he wanted as anything but rightfully belonging to him. Mostly, that was fine. But sometimes it wasn’t. Sometimes it went too far, usually when the thing he wanted wasn’t going to be given up easily by the person who had it. Going too far had cost him professional relationships in the past. It had cost him personal ones too.
That was the way of moving through the world he’d modeled for our children. And there they were, taking that lesson to heart.
July 14, 2014
My daughter’s house is in a place called Belchertown, which, as names go, is just embarrassing. It’s a perfectly lovely town, though, and Diane has an acre of green grass surrounding her home and a view of a tree-covered valley out the back, near a rusted firepit.
Inside, white shiplap covers most of the walls. Beneath the detritus left by my three grandchildren, a large beige sectional rests on top of a greige rug. Nothing with much color, really, as though Diane sought not to draw the eye to anything at all.
She and Keith, her husband, installed me in a ground-floor bedroom with my own television. I managed to pack a few of my favorite dresses, along with art supplies, some costume jewelry, and books. They brought my laptop and phone but “forgot” both chargers. They’ve promised to get me new ones, but so far those have not materialized. What they did give me a lot of was pain medicine, which helped. And wine, which, combined with the pain medicine, knocked me sideways.
When I wasn’t sleeping, I got to spend more time with my grandchildren. I supervised them sewing fresh garlands of garlic, which we hung along the windows. My eldest granddaughter, Mary, was very serious, while her two little sisters, Susan and Willow, obviously believed they were playing a game. They complained about the stink of the garlic and begged to go outside, even though dusk was coming on.
“Nana, are the vampires going to come here?” Mary asked me later that night. At thirteen, she was full of the kind of restless energy that created poltergeists.
“No,” I said, gesturing toward our creations. “We’ve got garlic on the windows.”
Someone probably gave her that answer before. She looked unsatisfied. “Maybe I want to be a vampire.”
I raised my eyebrows. “Oh?”
She shrugged, looking defensive. Waiting for me to scold her. “I’d get to do what I wanted. Forever.”
That made me smile wistfully. I imagined myself as the ambitious young woman that I was in my twenties and thirties. Writing into the night, espresso shots and—admittedly, look, I don’t recommend it—a few bumps of cocaine for company. Working in a restaurant as a server by day, so we had something to live on. Running from work to one of Nigel’s performances with barely enough time to wipe the sweat from the hollow of my throat. Barely enough time to put on a fresh coat of lipstick and slick back my hair.
Back then, plastic cup of wine in my hand, laughing backstage, I wantedeverything.
