Photograph: George Marks/Getty
Sterling was never the kindest husband, but he was faithful to me those fifty years. At least I always believed he was. In all the time we were together, I never worried about him and other women until about a year ago.
We were at the hospital visiting our friend Mason, who’d had a heart attack. I walked out of Mason’s room and saw Sterling and my twin sister Ethel sitting there in the little waiting room with their heads together and their knees touching. When they saw me, they moved right quick, sat straight forward in their chairs, but I’d already seen what I needed to see.
So of course I couldn’t tell Ethel how afraid I’d become of Sterling. Since he was always sweet to me in front of other people, I’m sure she had no idea how bad things had become. I had thought it through, thought of all the people that I know and my doctor was the only one I could come up with to talk to. I’d once told one of my sons that Sterling had threatened to hit me, but nothing came of it, which made me realize the futility of looking to help from our children. Because they’re Sterling’s children, too.
“He’s always been mean,” I told my doctor, “but not like this.”
She didn’t offer me any answers, but then again I hadn’t thought she would. It just helped somehow that she knew. But she did say the sudden bursts of fury might be the onset of dementia. She did give me a phone number and said I should call it.
I dialed the number for Adult Protective Services and made an appointment with a woman there named Nancy. She said she’d come by and pick me up on a day Sterling planned to go hunting. (I’d begun to notice that though he hunted more and more, he brought home game less and less).
I always thought I’d be ashamed to ask for help and I was. But Nancy said I hadn’t done anything about which to feel badly, that it was my husband who wasn’t acting right and I realized how true. I didn’t blame him. He’s known me since I was a girl and it must’ve frightened him to see me made so needy by my fibromyalgia, unable to do what all I used to around the house. Perhaps my failing body made him afraid that his mind was failing, too. How strange to have become that for my husband–a reminder that someday he would surely die.
Nancy, my caseworker, came on a Thursday, just like she said she would. (Imagine, me with a caseworker! I could hardly think how horrified the garden club members would be). Ethel would’ve taken one look at Nancy and called her fat, but I thought she looked unflappable and exuberant. She seemed to breath out hope, though I knew she must grapple with impossible situations on a daily basis.
More at the jump…
I picked Dan’s Hamburgers for our lunch together because I wouldn’t see anyone I knew there. It felt so good to be out with Nancy, not like being at a garden club meeting. I didn’t have fifty years of knowing exactly what it was and wasn’t okay to discuss holding me back. And I’d been practicing at telling the truth, first with my doctor, then a bit more with Nancy over the phone, so it was starting to feel less unfamiliar, less terrifying.
I told Nancy I felt sure it was only a matter of time before he hit me. “When I was younger and stronger,” I said, “the thought wouldn’t have scared me so…” I told her I couldn’t bear to leave my home, the morning light coming through my kitchen window, my great-grandfather’s Oriental rug, my grandmother’s couch, my favorite rocking chair, the photographs of my mother and father and grandparents. The only photos I would actually want to leave behind were the ones of Ethel and me. When you’re a twin, you’re never photographed alone, but always with your reflection beside you.
We look less and less alike as we age; Ethel’s body is firmer, her hair a vain brown while I let mine go gray years ago. But our faces are still the same and our hands. It amazes me that two people who look so alike could be such opposites, it always has. “She’s got the demon in her and you’ve got the angel,” our grandmother used to whisper to me and even as a tiny girl I would tell her to stop. I was fiercely loyal to Ethel, that’s one way we’re opposite, I can see now.
I didn’t tell Nancy all that, but I did tell her that even if I did decide to leave, there would be nowhere for me to go. I have no family I could ask to take me in. My children love me after all, but Lawrence has his crazy wife to deal with. Buford’s raising three little ones and Curtis has four and I wouldn’t further burden either one of them.
Nancy said if I wanted, she’d have me put on a waiting list for deeply subsidized senior housing. That way, if things got worse, I’d have options. I had a million arguments for why I couldn’t be on any such list. I could just imagine how Sterling would react if he opened the letter stating my apartment was ready for me to move into. But Nancy said she would handle all of it so they wouldn’t send mail or call at my house. I couldn’t even imagine what Sterling would do if I actually left. He’d realize he’d underestimated me, that’s for sure.
I knew for a fact he’d be devastated, despite the way he’d been treating me lately. Though he took me for granted and worse, he’d hardly be able to get by without me, especially in time, especially with how forgetful he’s become. I tried to convince myself not to care, but I’m not that callous. I could never up and leave Sterling alone.
Besides, I told Nancy, there was no way I could stay in Woodville and not be with Sterling. If you’ve been married in one place for fifty years, people expect you to stay that way. But that just got Nancy going, about visions and dreams, so that for a few minutes I almost believed that even at my age, it’s not too late to have a different sort of life.
To be continued…
