ALL OF US AT THE SAME TIME
©Jo Dereske 2014Chapter 24
The Revolt
With Louise so weak and teetering on the outer edge of her life, we returned to the little house to prepare a brothy chicken soup for dinner, debating whether to call relatives for what might be a final visit with Louise, when Kipling suddenly said, surprise lifting his voice, “Take a look at this.”
I looked out the window. Louise, fully dressed, sat on her patio in her metal chair, her bare feet up on the rock tree ring. She’d been living in her nightgown and robe for days and the fact that she could summon the energy to dress herself had seemed impossible that morning. We were astounded and thrilled and rushed outside to greet her.
"Who's paying my bills?" Aunt Louise demanded as soon as I stepped onto the patio.
"Ray is," I told her, my smile still wide at this beautiful vision of her up and dressed and apparently recovering. It was miraculous. We were overjoyed. "You gave him power of attorney so he could pay all your bills for you," I explained as I had so many times. I felt jubilant, teary-eyed.
"Well, I'm well now. Nobody needs to have control over my money except me."
"You're still the boss," I assured her. "Ray only does what you tell him to."
"I want control over my own money."
We talked it through again, how she had given Ray power of attorney years ago, how Ray had sprung her from the hospital, how her lawyer helped him make decisions for her. My smile slipped. Then we went through it again, and ten minutes later, I described the steps again.
Snakes twisted in the pit of my stomach. "I have to go home for a minute, Aunt Louise," I told her. "I'll be back in a little while."
I stood in the little house watching her hold her hands over her mouth, one over the other. Kipling sat with her. I saw his lips move; she ignored him. I waited another ten minutes, hoping she’d forget. But when I returned to the patio she demanded, "How much do I pay you for cooking for me?"
"You don't pay us, Aunt Louise."
"I want to pay you. You can't do this for nothing. I want to pay you. How does two-hundred dollars a month sound?"
"I cook the food from your cupboards. You don't have to pay us anything."
"How much do I pay you?" she asked Kipling. "Who has control over my money?" and the circle was repeated.
"She's pretty vigorous," Kipling told me. "I think this is what she's using to pull herself out of the heart crisis."
Maybe, I thought, but my own heart was pounding toward crisis.
She stayed awake all night – we heard her muttering over the intercom, shuffling through her house in the dark – and already outside in the morning before dawn, sitting on the patio under the swaying yard lamp in her favorite metal chair, worrying about paying us and the state of her money. "Call Ray," she told me. "I want to talk to him."
It was barely six o’clock in the morning. "How about later in the morning, Aunt Louise," I asked, “when it’s light.”
She began to cry. "Call him now."
I did and Ray arrived in minutes.
"Why are you here?" she asked the second he stepped out of his car. "Who called you?"
"You said you wanted to see me," he told her.
For two hours the three of us sat on the patio. It was a bad dream. My hands shook. "I want to pay you," she repeated. "Is a hundred-and-fifty dollars a month enough?"
Since we'd gone through this over and over and she wouldn't listen when I repeated that we didn't want anything, I agreed for the sake of peace, "That's fine."
She turned to Ray and said, "Give her one-hundred dollars. Now how much money do I have left?"
"Are you satisfied? I'm satisfied if you're satisfied." "How much should I pay you?" "Is ten dollars a week enough?" "Who has control of my money?"
She wept and struggled, numbers slipping away even as she said them. We tried everything Susan had suggested: going along, agreeing, remaining calm, trying to distract her.
Ray patiently repeated and agreed with whatever she said, explaining as if for the first time every question she asked. Toward the end of the two-hour conversation I detected that she was beginning to turn on Ray. "Who told you that you could spend my money?" "Do you give Jo Anne money without my consent?" "How much of my money are you giving her?" "Give her five thousand dollars."
She stood up and said, "I'm going to have a cup of coffee. You go home now and let me think."
Ray and I trudged off to the little house like two dismissed naughty children, stumped. It was still early morning and in the fields an autumn misted hovered silver over the grass.
Kipling delivered their lunch and drooped back to the little house a half hour later, totally exhausted. "She threw me out," he said. "It's the loss of control of her life manifesting itself in the money."
“Obviously,” I snapped. “But what do we do about it?”
He shrugged. We felt helpless to defuse it.
With Louise so distressed, Mike reflected her mood. He removed his disposable underwear, refused a bath and the house smelled of urine and feces. When Kipling tried to help him change clothes, he escaped into the bathroom and slammed the door in Kipling’s face and emerged even wetter.
For over a week, the money issue was all Louise wrestled with. She hardly slept and one of the other of us was awake all night, listening to the intercom or watching her sit outside in the dark, a ghostly figure by yardlight, dabbing her eyes, her shoulders rocking. We were incapable of bringing her a shred of comfort. She wanted to give us money but she wanted us to refuse it. So when we refused she insisted we take money and if we acquiesced, she was devastated that she had to give away any amount of her money so we refused and it began all over again. Her anguish was at the whim of whichever emotion was uppermost in her mind. We struggled to offer her peace but she was drawn to sorrow.
I fantasized Dorothy’s ruby slippers so I could simply wish myself away.
She argued with Ray. She argued with Kipling, and Uncle Mike intervened, waving toward our house, "Don't give them any money. You don't go over there." Then he turned to Kipling and said, "She doesn't have to give them any money."
"That's what I keep telling her," Kipling replied.
Uncle Mike nodded vigorously. "I know it. That's right."
In the midst of Louise's worry and confusion, Donna brought over the monthly land payment. She and Jim and the remainder of their eleven children lived a mile behind Louise's and were buying seventy acres from Louise and Mike on a land contract. She was a warm, practical woman, "a hard worker," I'd heard people say, a high compliment.
I couldn't help but spill the discouragement I felt over Louise and Mike to Donna. She listened without saying much, but ten minutes after she drove away, she returned with a package of T-Bone steaks from their freezer.
1932 Martha and Tony came over and stayed all night. Tony discovered at 6 PM that his car was stolen – spoiled the whole evening. The men went out looking for it but no luck, so we played cards until 4 AM on Sunday. Oh what an awful sin. Played tennis later in the day.
It was laundry day so I cautiously entered the house to change sheets. Louise sat in the living room surrounded by wadded tissues. "How much is Ray paying you out of my money?" she asked.
"Nothing," I told her.
"Well, he should."
Her complaints and confusion heated up until she pointed a finger in the general direction of Ray’s house ten miles away. "Ray sticks his nose too much into my business."
Something snapped inside me and the next thing I know I'm leaning my 5'10" body over this frail eighty-two-year-old woman, shaking my finger in her face. "Don't you ever say anything bad about Ray," I told her. "Not ever. If it weren't for Ray you'd be in a nursing home right now. He's the one who got you out of the hospital. He's the one who's made it possible for you to be here in your own home. Don't you dare ever say anything bad about him."
When I finished my tirade, drained to incoherency, she sat tight-lipped and silent, staring straight ahead. I fled the house, filled with shame, crying in frustration and embarrassment. I’d lost control; I was a bully who shouted at old people. I was supposed to be the level-headed caregiver, a solution - not an agitator.
I turned to the solace of my trail, soaking up the beauty of the seasons relentlessly passing, in spite of the turmoil we were living through.
Autumn colors were at their peak. Gold and red and phosphorescent yellow. Walnuts like gigantic flames. Red maple, bronzed oak, golden poplar. Light along my trail shivered and shimmered golden as if the air was misted with morning sun.
When the breezes blew, the leaves fell like gigantic colored snowflakes. Coming out of the burnished trees onto the prairie, the barn and outbuilding were framed in breathtaking luminescence. I couldn’t walk slow enough to absorb it all.
I didn’t return to Louise’s until dinnertime, leaving Kipling to face the afternoon alone. Now I carried dinner into the house, resolutely smiled and thought, Be calm, remain serene, unflappable. You’re here for them, not you.
I uncovered my basket and set a plate of meat loaf and potato salad on the placemat in front of Louise, setting aside Mike’s plate. He was in bed, covers drawn to his neck, refusing to get up, avoiding, I was sure, the storm of emotions that had shaken the house the past days. Or maybe, I considered, he’d heard me berating Louise and was avoiding me.
Louise narrowed her eyes, ignoring her food, unusual for her. "Did I cause a ruckus here last night?" she asked.
I was still raw from our words earlier in the day and suspected that’s what she meant, that she was muddling her sense of time.
"No," I told her, and hoping she’d forgotten, added, "Maybe it was a dream."
"Did I say anything to hurt anybody's feelings?"
"No."
She gave me one of her looks. "I thought I said something bad about Ray and you said, "Don't you dare ever say anything like that about Ray again." She did a credible imitation of my angry voice.
"Really?" I answered noncommittally.
"I'd never want to hurt Ray's feelings," she said coolly, as if I’d unjustly accused her. "If it weren't for Ray I'd probably be in a nursing home. He got me out of the hospital."
After a few bites of meat loaf, she asked, her voice dripping with suspicion, "Does Ray pay you any of my money?"
"Aunt Louise," I said firmly. "I don't want to talk about it."
She puffed out her chest and lifted her nose in the air, mimicking me, "I don't want to talk about it."
"And I vant to be alone," I countered just as snootily in a Garbo accent and she giggled, abandoning the subject of money for a while.
The only option we felt we had was to be consistent. Forget agreeing with whatever she said. Forget reason and distraction. In this situation, none of those worked.
"No," we told her, "we'll definitely not take any money." No matter what she said, or how she tried to bait us, we refused to respond. No money no way. After days of anger and crying and confusion, she finally began to let it go, but it never completely left her mind.
And although we felt bruised and disoriented, her blood pressure had returned to near normal, and she resumed waking in the morning, sitting on the patio, and eating with her usual gusto.
1932 We’ve been married three years. I love Billy more than I ever did. He gave me a ruby necklace and a bracelet to match.
Stepping outside, I halted on the top step off the porch, startled by whispers of shuffling and shifting coming from the ravine. I crept to the bank as a breeze rose and no, there wasn’t any living thing in the ravine, but hundreds, thousands of autumn leaves falling from the trees, brushing against other trees and leaves as they fell, dried like paper, raining down, spinning and twirling and drifting. Surprisingly loud, yet stealthy, as if a small herd of forest beings secretly migrated through the golden-floored woods. The leaves would probably all be down in another few days. Such temporary and fleeting beauty.
1932 I’m doing nothing, just sitting and thinking. Nothing unusual happened. Only one minute flies after another and that’s the way life goes.
Next Tuesday, Chapter 25: Seasons