“Don’t take you anger out on mom. She’s been through enough.”
Logan sneered. “Yet we keep on rolling him into that lightshow. We keep trying to bring it all back.” Logan shook his head as through the window he watched his father shout the cadence to another football play. “And what about us, Vicki? Haven’t we been through enough? Have you forgiven father for demanding that you quit school and come back home because father couldn’t handle the thought of his girl shaming him at some sorority party? Dad would know. He had his chance to behave like an ass with his fraternity brothers. Have you forgiven him for the names he called you when he screamed into the phone and demanded you withdraw from classes before you even had the chance to finish your first semester? Have you forgiven mother for never defending you?”
Elaine was humming loudly. She was certain that Thomas would soon return to her. She only wished her husband would hurry. She regretted that she had waited so long before starting Thomas’ light treatment. Her initial hesitance to believe in the light allowed her husband’s mind to slip still deeper into the mist, and so she would have to remain patient until Thomas’ memories returned. But Elaine wished she could do something to help Thomas hurry back to her. Logan would never say such things in the presence of his father. Thomas would demand that his children show their mother the respect she deserved.
Elaine’s heart broke. She trembled. She hummed, as she always did when the world treated her so unfairly.
And that hum burned Logan’s ire. “No. You don’t get to hum and just escape everything,” Logan pointed at his mother. “Don’t you dare. Vicki could’ve been so much more. She could’ve been a doctor instead of a nurse. She could’ve dreamed about opening a clinic instead of a candle shop.”
Vicki sighed. “There’s nothing wrong with being a nurse, Logan.”
“But you could’ve been more. You could’ve been great, if only you’d been born to parents capable of showing you a sliver of support.”
Elaine struggled to speak through the drone of her humming. “You don’t understand, Logan. We weren’t wealthy. Money doesn’t grow on trees.”
“No it doesn’t.” Logan growled. “But how much have you spent on this lightshow? How much have you wasted on all this sparkle?”
“That’s enough,” Vicki pleaded.
Logan pressed. “Let her hear what I have to say. Father never showed her any mercy on account of her humming, so maybe she needs to prepare for his return. Tell me, mother, how much have you spent? How much of father’s pension has gone into the light? I doubt insurance covers the cost for any of it. Have you taken out a new mortgage on the family home? Are you eating boxed noodles to save all the nickels and dimes this memory medicine craves? Will there be anything left for us? Will there be anything at all to offer to make amends for cutting us off at the knees just when we started to stand?”
Elaine closed her eyes and tried to make the cheap, plastic chair supporting her sway like a rocker. Logan was a cruel son. What did Logan know of travail? Elaine recalled her childhood – all the nights she shuffled through the dark to reach the spider-infested outhouse; all the winter mornings she awoke to find frost gathered at the foot of her bed; the hot, summer afternoons slaughtering chickens. Elaine remembered her drunken father scowling at his fate, and at his family burden. Logan and Vicki were spoiled. They didn’t realize the comfort of their childhood. What more did they expect?
Elaine willed herself to speak through her humming. “You don’t know what it was like in my day, Logan. Girls weren’t expected to go to college back then.”
Logan threw up his hands. “And there it is! Mother’s favorite excuse – the past! Lord forbid any of her children ever aspire to lift above the past. Of course mother will throw it all away to chase ghosts. Of course she’ll sacrifice all she has left to keep living in lost years. She’s always lived in the past. How dare I ask her to live anywhere else?”
“That’s enough. Your fight isn’t with mother.”
“But yours is, Vicki, and you don’t fight it at all.” Logan sneered.
The lights stopped blinking in that small viewing window. Another round of Thomas Voss’ light therapy reached its conclusion. Elaine couldn’t stand from the chair. She couldn’t bear to look up and see the hate in her son’s eyes. She didn’t deserve it, and much more might kill her. How could her children ruin the joy she had every right to experience as her husband returned to her?
The doctor knocked softly on the waiting chamber’s door before entering, and he carried a soft smile that soothed much of Elaine’s hum. Elaine had faith in doctors. Doctors were better people than her kind. She shouldn’t let her children ruin her spirits. The doctor would assure her, remind her she had no reason to be afraid.
Elaine frowned at Logan and Vicki. “I think the two of you should leave.”
Logan smirked. “I want to hear what the doctor has to say.”
“You don’t deserve to hear it,” responded Elaine.
“Oh, that’s rich.”
The doctor looked embarrassed. “I’m sorry, but my schedule is very demanding. I really don’t have the time for this squabble.”
Vicki pulled at her brother. “It’s fine. We’re just leaving.”
Elaine felt the gloom dissipate the moment they left. Did her children have no empathy? Could they not understand how hard it was to watch her husband’s mind drift further and further away? Could they not feel what she had suffered? Fortunately, the doctor visited her, and Elaine’s humming vanished as she listened to that trained professional repeat the light’s promises. Thomas was returning in all that twinkle. He would soon protect her from any more hurt.
* * * * *
Chapter 5 – Darker Sparkle
The silver, gold and pearl lights swirled once more around Thomas Voss. Yet those lights must’ve turned dimmer and darker during that man’s session, for they pulled memories hidden within an unpleasant pool.
“It hurts! I promise I won’t cry!”
Thomas sobbed as his father scrubbed and squeezed at his hurt nose. Royal smashed the bloody handkerchief into his son’s face. Stars flashed behind Thomas’ eyelids. Thomas struggled, but his father only pressed harder into his nose each time he sobbed.
“Don’t you dare cry, Tommy! Do you hear me, boy? Don’t you ever give the bastards the satisfaction of hearing you cry!”
The boys who ambushed Thomas had all been older. They had pinned Thomas to the ground. They’d taken turns punching at Thomas’ face, stopping finally when they say how their onslaught pulled blood from Thomas’ nose and swelled his eyes. And those boys stole the baseball cards of Thomas’ favorite players, the ones he always kept in his pockets so that his father couldn’t toss them into the fire as wastes of money and time.
The older Thomas grunted within the light chamber. He threw punches at the faces of his young assailants painted so clearly in his memory. He winked, and he was again in the bathroom of his childhood home, his father still rubbing that red handkerchief into his face while he dripped red onto the white, porcelain sink.
“I won’t have my son running home and crying every time he lets others hurt him. I won’t tolerate it. I swear, Tommy, I’ll teach you the meaning of a beating if you ever again come home crying like some weakling.”
“I promise.” Thomas’ words echoed in the chamber. “”I’ll never cry again.”
The lights kept blinking. Thomas shuffled about his confines, struggling to fill his aging lungs with breath. His heart raced, but the lights winked faster and faster, illuminating his mind’s fog. Thomas wailed against the images the lights carried to him, but the chamber showed him little mercy during that session.
“Son, you show me a good loser, and I’ll show you a loser.” The whiskey was strong on Royal’s breath as he glared at his son Thomas. “Twenty-four to six. Do you have any idea how I felt in those stands when I watched you throw that second interception? Coach Snyder was right about you. You’ve got a golden arm, son,
but you’ve got a nickel brain. And your soft. My own boy, and he’s soft.”
“I’m sorry, but we fell behind. I pressed to get us back into the game. I pressed too hard to push the ball downfield.”
Royal scoffed. “Excuses are like assholes, son. Everyone’s got one, and they all stink.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Boy, I don’t tolerate losers. I only tolerate winners.”
“I know. I won’t lose again.”
The bright lights flashed so quickly. Thomas’ ears echoed as tacklers buried their helmets into his spine. He remembered the fever he suffered after Royal paid the county horse doctor to remove the boil that Thomas suffered where his should pads rubbed against his skin. He heard his collarbone snap during the first week of collegiate football practice, and he remembered the pain of that injury as he helped himself from the field as the coaches screamed and warned they would send him home if he couldn’t find the character required to throw a football through the hurt. He remembered when he couldn’t hold a breath for the cracked rib in his side, and he remembered student trainers pulling to straighten the fingers he broke at the bottom of a tackle pile. He remembered the blow that had shattered his front teeth, and he remembered the drive home after the dentist, at Royal’s suggestion, pulled all the rest of his teeth so that Thomas wouldn’t need to worry about injuring a new set of dentures.
“My teeth are too big for my smile,” Thomas sighed amid the lights. “My teeth are too big for my mouth.”
The lights shifted. Thomas remembered the school drills teaching his class to jump for cover the moment the hydrogen bomb flashed. He remembered when Allen Johnson returned home from the war in a box. In the light chamber, Thomas broke the promise he made to his father and cried.
“Dad, it’s not going to just go away.”
Royal shrugged. “The doctors aren’t going to make it any better, son.”
“We don’t know that. There might still be enough time to treat it. It might not have spread too far from you colon.”
“My heart’s too old for the treatment, Tommy.”
“You’re scared.”
The wrinkles on Royal’s face twisted with hurt pride upon hearing Thomas’ remark. The lights confused time. The light crumpled all the years together, and Thomas couldn’t distinguish the present from the past as he sobbed in the center of the light chamber.
“I’m scared, son.”
“You never allowed me to be scared.”
Royal sighed. “I suppose I did not.”
Thomas’s mind whirled. The light returned health to delicate tissue. The sparkles coxed neurons to fire, so that even the memories Thomas might still wish to forget replayed in vivid color and thunderous sound. Thomas stood in the center of that hospital room again, staring at his father’s chest, terrified that each rise of breath might be his father’ last. Royal died during the night, his heart unable to survive the surgery his son urged. Thomas continued to weep.
Would the light force him to relive all those following years of guilt over and over? How many regrets would return to torment Thomas Voss? The lights were cruel as they carried Thomas through so many places and so many times.
Thomas shouted, and then he collapsed upon the chamber floor, where he curled his body together and buried his eyes so that he might momentarily escape what the lights refused to let him forget.
* * * * *
Chapter 6 – Dutiful Daughter
“We monitored some irregularities in your father’s heartbeat during his last session. There was stresses that give us reason to pause.”
Vicki felt ambushed. Elaine hadn’t been honest that morning when she pleaded with Vicki to take more time away from work to hurry to the black, semi-trailer that housed father’s treatment chamber. Vicki didn’t feel prepared for what her mother asked.
“A pacemaker? I don’t understand. I thought the treatment couldn’t hurt him. I thought it was only light.”
The doctor leaned across the table. “The light sometimes conjures unpleasant memories. Your father experienced a session that stressed his heart.”
“So the memories hurt him?”
Elaine gripped her daughter’s hand. “It’s just part of getting your father back. We just have to make sure your father can handle the excitement of returning to us.”
“The pacemaker would be a sound precaution,” added the doctor, “and we have no reason to suspect that your father wouldn’t quickly recover from its implant.”
Vicki swallowed as she glanced at the tri-fold brochure her mother shoved into her hand the moment she arrived at the treatment center’s trailer. The brochure simplified heart surgery so well. None of the graphics or charts even suggested there would be any blood. She felt Elaine staring at her, heard her mother again start to hum. She understood her brother’s absence. Logan would certainly not give his mother the opinion she desired, and so Elaine pleaded with Vicki, the most pliable of her children, the daughter who always retreated from conflict.
“What happens if we don’t agree to give him a pacemaker?”
The doctor looked coldly at Vicki. “Then we would have to cease your father’s treatment. Our operation cannot afford the risk. We need to be assured that your father’s heart can sustain the impact of any illuminated memory. We are confident that a pacemaker will insure that your father survives any unforeseen jolt to his system.”
“And how much will a pacemaker cost?”
Elaine struggled to contain her humming long enough to answer. “What does it matter? We’ll find a way to cover the cost. We must. Turning back isn’t an option. Not after your father has made so much progress. Not after I’ve invested so much so that he can remember. We can’t afford to go backwards, or to lose what your father’s gained.”
Vicki peeked again at the brochure. The surgery looked safe enough. But Vicki knew there was always one more procedure around the corner, forever some device, or medicine, that might hold the inevitable off for one day longer. Vicki couldn’t fault her mother for falling into the snare. Her father didn’t look so old. Any stranger happening to glance at Thomas Voss would have little reason to think the man was ill. Thomas Voss’ legs still looked young, his shoulders remained wide. His face was little wrinkled, and his chin remained strong.
Vicki sighed. How could her mother resist any plan or pitch the doctors offered in that semi-trailer?
“You didn’t ask me here for my permission, mom. You don’t need it. So tell me how much you need.”
Elaine hummed through her smile. “Oh, I only need a kind of a loan, so that we can move forward. I only want you to promise me that you’ll help your father come back to us. Whatever it costs, the bill will seem so unimportant after your father returns.”
“I’m not sure how much I have to give.”
The doctor nodded. “Your father is scheduled to return to the light chamber in another week. Some time will be lost while he recovers after receiving the pacemaker, but I’m confident we’ll very quickly regain whatever progress might be lost during the interim. I’m sure the two of you will find a way. Yours is a very loving family.”
* * * * *
Vicki didn’t own her brother’s skepticism. She believed that the lights would return Thomas Voss to his family. She believed that twinkle and shimmer could dissipate the fog that choked her father’s memory. Yet she remained troubled, for she worried about what version of her father would return from that disease that numbed his mind.
“You don’t look well, Vicki. When did you get a pair of bags beneath your eyes? Where did your gray hairs come from? I’m worried you’re not getting enough rest.”
Vicki tightened her grip upon the steering wheel. “I’m sleeping as well as I can, but it’s going to take a little time for me to adjust to taking on a second shift during the night.”
“I worry you’re working too hard. It’s not healthy to go without enough sleep.”
“I have to take that second shift to help with father’
s care, mother.”
For a moment, Vicki considered slamming the transmission into park and yanking the keys out of the ignition before flinging open the door to her battered vehicle and stomping away from it all, leaving her mother stranded at the intersection. Vicki easily imagined her mother humming alone in the car, wondering what she might’ve said to chase away her daughter, while the traffic blared its protesting horns. Vicki imagined her mother humming in that car as the towing service dragged the vehicle to some forlorn parking lot, imagined her mother humming away until finally perishing among the forgotten heaps of some automobile salvage yard. For a moment, Vicki considered abandoning her mother, but then she sighed, and only gripped the steering wheel more tightly.
Vicki thought she acquired a deeper understanding of her mother during the last several years witnessing her father’s mind slip deeper into the fog. Elaine empathized so poorly with others. Vicki didn’t feel her mother was more selfish than others. Vicki didn’t feel her mother possessed any kind of a mean streak. It was as if her mother lacked the courage to attempt placing herself in another’s shoes, as if she regarded such an effort to be overbearing and rude. Vicki’s second shift afforded further light treatment after the pacemaker emptied Elaine’s coffers. That second shift stocked the refrigerator a little deeper since Elaine moved into Vicki’s home, so that the family house could be put upon the auction block to purchase still more doses of light medicine. Vicki worked herself into exhaustion to give her father’s memories a chance to return, and yet her mother reproached her for gathering bags beneath her eyes.