Night Life

Casey Nelson

 

Sleep never came easy. Comfort and darkness were arch-enemies, and Alice lay in the middle as the two converged, turning her bedroom into a battlefield. That was the way every night went.

“Bedtime,” Janine yelled from her spot on the sofa where she spent the last hours of the day watching re-runs of Golden Girls or Mama’s Family. It didn’t matter which; Alice thought all of Janine’s entertainment choices were boring. Alice turned the volume up on the stereo and returned her attention to the pages of Mary Poppins.

In the bathroom Dad went through his nightly routine. Alice heard the hinges on the medicine cabinet cry and the mirror rattle as her father readied his shaving supplies. He used a tarnished Gillette safety razor. Its design and engineering was a thing of the past, with its twist-open-butterfly insert mechanism that held a thin double-edged blade.

“Ready for bed yet?” Dad’s voice came through the door accompanied by the smell of old leather. When he peeked his head into the room, his cheeks were pink and fresh, but a speck of red dotted his chin. Alice thought it looked like a bull’s eye. She was still wearing her play clothes. “All right, well don’t make Janine come back here. You know she’s trying, and you don’t need to be giving her a hard time.”

“Dad?”

“What is it?”

“I don’t get why she has to stay here.”

“Alice, we’ve gone over this. Janine and I are married. We’re a family now.”

“But-”

“You know she loves you right?” Dad’s head tilted to the side and dipped towards his shoulder. “Right? Well she does, just give her a chance. Treat her like you would your mother.”

“But I don’t love her,” Alice blurted out before she could be cut off.

“That’s enough,” Dad ordered with a deep voice. “She cares about you and she’s trying. You can do the same. Now get ready for bed and I’ll see you in the morning.” This was the routine farewell. With the moon glowing from above, Alice hugged her father before he left for work.

“Dad?” She called, as her father edged out of the room. “I love you.”

“Love you too.”

That was their goodbye. Alice would wait until breakfast to see her father again. It felt like waiting for Christmas. She picked up where she left off, halfway through her library-borrowed-responsibility. But her attention drifted into the living room as she listened to the conversation between her father and Janine. He said Alice was ready for bed, but it wouldn’t hurt to check up on her. Then Alice heard Dad say the same words he had just spoken to her. Was it the same love? Alice wondered. The rattle of the screen door and jingle of keys sounded through the house. Alice’s bedroom turned into a vacuum. Her chest and lungs wrung her free of breath. In grand finale fashion, the dead bolt slammed into the door frame and her father was gone. The dead bolt was supposed to provide a measure of security, yet Alice was undecided. How would that little piece of metal stop anyone from breaking down the door? If they wanted in, they would find a way. She knew this. She also knew that being on the inside, where it was supposed to be safe, gave her no relief.

Alice put her book aside and crept down the hallway. She needed to get out of her room, and thought that, just maybe, Janine’s company would calm her nerves. Light from the television splashed down the corridor spotlighting Alice’s figure. Keeping tight to the wall, she could see Janine’s feet parked on top of the ottoman, but her face was hidden by the corner of the hall entry. Janine adjusted her legs and found new comfort on the couch.

“You better be in bed when I get back there,” she commanded. Channels flipped by and settled on Three’s Company, a show with a theme song Alice had grown to hate. “Radio off, books away, and pajamas on” were the last demands Alice heard as she strolled back to her bedroom staring at the carpet with sorrow painted in her eyes. She followed the instructions. Her jeans were loose in the legs from the day’s activities and no longer comfortable anyway.

“I see the light still on,” Janine barged through the door, her cheeks pushed high and the pupils of her eyes concentrated. Her nose performed this little circular bob, that Alice always assumed was just her way of clearing any mucous from her nose. As often as she did it, she must have a lot of junk up there Alice thought. “Just wanted to say goodnight and make sure you were tucked in. Supposed to get chilly tonight.” Janine said.

“Thanks.”

“Alice?” She asked, undecided whether or not she had a question. “I know your mother...well, what I mean is, I know how close you to were at the end and how special she was.”

Alice knew that Janine didn’t have any children of her own. It seemed odd, and Alice didn’t know if Janine was afraid of motherhood or if she just didn’t like kids. Maybe she couldn’t have them Alice wondered.

“If you ever need anything,” Janine continued. “Anything at all, you let me know.”

“Ok.” Alice thought about Janine’s offer and figured it was worth something. “Janine?”

“Yeah?”

“Do you like Glen Miller?”

“Who?”

“Just some musician. Never mind.”

Janine pulled the blankets up high and tucked them under Alice’s torso, bent over, and kissed her on the forehead. Alice wasn’t used to this late night ritual. Mom was the one she saw last before falling asleep. It was Mom who tucked her in, and it was Mom who kissed her goodnight. Now, the routine was weird to her. But there was something familiar between the two women that saw Alice to sleep. Alice could smell Jasmine and Lily of the Valley. It was Janine’s perfume. Diorissimo. Mom wore the same scent. Alice smiled trying to hide the desire for her mother.

“Goodnight Alice. I love you...” The lady, that had only been part of the family for three months, pushed in the fob on the bedside lamp and made her way out of the room.

“Goodnight.”

Darkness swallowed the room painting the walls black and leaving Alice to drown in nothing but shadow. She couldn’t see her hand if shoved right in front of her face. This was the point of no return. Mom had been here. Except her lights turned off for good, and she was forced to live without help from her eyes.

Alice couldn’t understand the dark. Life disappeared when the lights turned off and your vision was stolen from you. Sure, she could feel the air in her nose, as she breathed, along with the rise and fall of her chest. But she couldn’t see any of that. And just like Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy, which she had never seen and thus never believed, Alice knew the dark had a tricky way of controlling the world. Nothing lived in the dark. Why couldn’t life stop when the light switch fell?

It was a question she asked herself every night. She tried counting sheep, warm milk, and every other trick. There was only one answer. Alice shuffled from the warm indention of her body in the mattress, rose up, reached out blindly, and turned the light on. She was alive again.

Alice wondered how her father worked the night shift. Not just the weird schedule that had him lying down for bed at lunch time, but how he managed in the dark puzzled her. She couldn’t hold herself together within the borders of her own room. How was it that Dad could operate in such a large space as the open night sky? She was almost convinced that her father was a hero. He worked in security. Alice didn’t know what he protected, but she knew it wasn’t her. He left every night to stand watch over someone, or something, more important than his own daughter.

With the light on, night time took on a new shade and Alice could see the comforts of her bedroom. Among the many things that provided her with security, the most dominant item, physically, was her bookshelf. Tall and wide, it reminded Alice of a solider at attention, her own personal guard standing watch. Where the bookshelf provided the muscle, her turntable and stash of jazz records supplied Alice with a mental spa retreat. Mom and Dad once danced the “Lindy Hop” in the living room with the same sound system pumping out healthy rhythms. Mom wore the “flapper” dress she bought from the Goodwill for a dollar-fifty. When Dad spun Mom into a torrent, the silk fringe on her royal blue dress swayed in chaos and glittered in the sun’s rays. Alice watched and waited her turn to be twisted dizzy and reeled back into her father’s barrel chest. Alice saved the record player, and the sounds of long ago, from a dust soaked cardboard box in the garage. Her father said nothing when he saw and heard the records playing in her room.

Alice kept what everyone knew as “The Disneyland Picture” on her nightstand. It was the only remains of the first and last family vacation. A stranger had taken the photo. Mom was seated in her motorized scooter. She stared to the left of the camera lens, all smiles, as if she was interested in a far off attraction. Repeated directions from the stranger failed to capture her focus. The stranger didn’t know any better. Besides, the sunglasses Mom wore hid her well. Dad only wanted his daughter to have one last memory, a good one, so he posed for the camera.

Alice held the photograph, comparing the effects of time. She had grown a couple inches, she thought, and the style of her hair was more in tune with that of the boys from school. Often, in the summertime, Mom and daughter sat on the weathered concrete steps of the three-bedroom bungalow’s front porch. Alice squeezed between Mom’s legs, and with the sun showering the two of them Mom braided Alice’s hair into pigtails. At the ends Mom tied pink silk bows to hold the interlaced weave of honey brown hair in place. The bows disappeared after the picture was taken. Dad’s hair made some transformations of its own, failing the test of time, it was now peppered with gray. Mom was no longer in the picture. Alice wished she could feel the wind blow through her hair again.

Alice’s eyelids were failing her. It felt like fifty-pound weights were attached to them. Each time they closed Alice’s head toppled forward and seconds went by before she responded. With a futile jolt she snapped her body into an upright position bringing her back to attention. It was a continuous game that Alice wanted no part of. Where the heck is the sun? she thought. Alice wanted to see that big ball of glowing heat more than anything right now. If she could make it to 3:30am, starving her body of sleep, she knew she’d see sunrise. Her second wind was waiting. If Alice could strain forward, and stretch out her arms they would be within fingertips reach. It was rare they ever made contact. It only happened when Alice was allowed a friend to sleep over; she needed a conversation partner to share in the lunacy that late hours brought on kids. But now, alone, it was about having a goal and that measuring device of time was all she had to help her defense against sleep.

Alice climbed out of bed. She needed to move around, get her blood flowing, and some fresh air might help. She moved to the window, and opened it to see the empty, silent streets. Orange street lamps poured onto the asphalt, their light swallowed by the black road. Across the street, the Judsons’ garage was left open. The chrome bumper of Mr. Judson’s Cadillac refused to let its shine die even after the sun had gone down. In the sky Alice could see the stars blink back in forth, to one another, the way her father winked his eye when they had a secret between the two of them.

A dog barked in the distance, and another responded with an even louder call. The night seemed to have its own strange language that Alice couldn’t understand. She listened, but couldn’t make sense of the elm tree’s leaves crackling and its branches shaking in the cold night breeze. It was a conversation she wasn’t meant to be part of. Alice closed the window and fell back in bed. Tears escaped from closed eyes as Alice danced with sleep.

An hour before reaching her goal, Alice gave into the night. She slept while her bookcase kept lookout, record player sat ready to sing, and “The Disneyland Picture” waited to see her smile in the morning. All her fears came to a boil in those moments of sleep. It was her usual nightmare.

 

It always begain with her mother’s feverish scream echoing through the house. A scream that came from deep in the gut and made Alice think of murder. She sprinted to the kitchen where she found her mother crumpled on the floor, her knees grating against the linoleum, and the blades of her back staring at the ceiling. Mom’s dirty blonde hair, still frizzy in the early morning, curtained her face. She was muttering with all the sense of a frightened child. Scrambled eggs continued to cook on the stove top. Alice screamed for help, but her father had not yet returned from work.

All Alice thought to do was grab hold of her mother and squeeze. Alice held tight feeling the cries ripple through her skin. Alice didn’t know anything about death, but that’s all she saw in her mind. Her mother was dying and she was going to hold on until the end.

Then Mom climbed to her feet and wiped the drool off her chin. She asked why Alice was on the floor and asked if she wanted pancakes or waffles for breakfast. Alice whispered “waffles” and wondered what kind of game Mom was playing with her. It wasn’t a game, and when Alice told her father what happened, he didn’t believe a word she said. When he asked Mom about the incident, she hadn’t a clue what Alice was talking about.

It wasn’t until the outbursts and behavior changes became more frequent that Dad believed her. He was forced to believe, and he took it upon himself to take Mom to the hospital. It was a decision, Alice thought, he regretted. The doctor ordered a series of tests to diagnose the problem. Alice could see her mother with a funny nylon cap stretched over her head with a bunch of wires connected to it. She looked like Medusa. The test, the doctor explained, would allow them to monitor Mom’s brain activity and look for any dysfunction. Next was an MRI. Mom laid inside a tube that took three-dimensional pictures of her brain. Last, a sample of Mom’s cerebral spinal fluid was taken using a ruler sized needle.

Three weeks passed before the results returned. It was a costly three weeks. In such a short time Mom lost all memory of her daughter and started calling her Sheryl. “Where’s Sheryl?” she’d ask her husband, now just another face she didn’t recognize. “We’re supposed to play dress up today and dance in the parlor.”

They were in a doctor’s office now. Dad bear hugged Mom with both arms, wrapping her like a flannel blanket. Alice gripped her mother’s hand making the veins bulge through pale skin. A slender framed man stood opposite them wearing a white knee length coat, and holding a clipboard on the inside of his crossed arms. The doctor looked like he was holding top secret information. Alice watched the man’s silent mouth move. She couldn’t understand a word he said. Only two words ever became audible: fatal and incurable; they rolled off the man’s tongue in a static and heartless rhythm. It was a voice comfortable dealing a bad hand to those that didn’t deserve one.

Mom moved into the spare bedroom. The hallucinations became too much for Dad to handle. Mom swore someone was trying to kill her; they dangled meat hooks from the ceiling trying to catch her like a fish. She ordered Dad up into the attic to flush them out. Alice noticed a change in Dad’s behavior. She could see it in the way his eyes responded to Mom’s constant needs with hesitation. Alice didn’t think her father had given up, instead, he gave in. He still loved his wife, but he helped her brush her teeth in the morning, get dressed, and bathe before bed with all the sentiment of a to-do list.

Mom’s disease stripped away the strength and balance that it took to walk. She spent most of her time in bed. Alice could see her there now: a stainless steel walker with two fuzzy green tennis balls attached at the bottom stood close by. Several times Alice found Mom on the floor like a spilled bag of groceries.

Alice tried talking to her mother about Disneyland. She showed her the map and pointed out all the rides and attractions. In mid sentence, Alice felt Mom’s hand clench on her wrist knocking the map to the floor. “Turn the lights back on,” Mom yelled. “Don’t you fool around with me, Sheryl. I hate the dark, you know that. Now turn’em back on.” Alice looked around the room. The curtains were wide open and the sun blazed through the windows. She turned to Mom’s face, looking into her eyes. They were dark, empty, and the smiling reflection Alice once saw was no longer there. Mom’s face darted around the room as she demanded for the lights with an anger that bordered on hate. It was the tears that forced Alice to leave the room. The tears that dripped over her chin and puddled on the bed’s linen, Alice knew, went unnoticed by her mother. Alice consoled herself in the bathroom.

Disneyland lived up to its calling as the “happiest place on earth.” But happiness didn’t go beyond the exit gates. Days after their vacation, Alice found Mom dead in the spare bedroom.

 

Alice’s nightmare paused on this moment.

Her body wailed and kicked at the mattress. The headboard slammed against the wall sending a parade of racket down the hall to wake Janine. Without thinking, Janine leapt from bed and ran towards Alice’s room. Alice would never know of Janine’s reaction, but when her eyes flashed open she could hear Janine’s calming whisper. Alice was wrapped in this woman’s arms she barely knew, rocking back and forth, with her head pressed tight against Janine’s chest. Alice heard a steady thumping noise overcome her cries. She could feel the pulse of Janine’s heart wipe the tears from her face. This is what Alice wanted. It’s what she needed. It wasn’t the same mother, but Alice knew she was in the right hands.

Alice woke up the next morning, in the same position, to see Janine staring back at her with tired, heavy eyes, and a smile.