Free The Ghosts of Now by Joan Lowery Nixon

stroke his hand again. “All this time I thought of you as only somebody living in the same house, and I never thought about what you needed or thought of or wanted. Does that make any sense?”
    “It does to me.”
    The voice comes from right behind me, and I jump straight out of the chair. “Mom! You scared me!”
    There are tears in her eyes, and she says, “Angie, I didn’t mean to listen in. But you were so wrapped up in what you were saying to Jeremy that I couldn’t interrupt you.”
    “It’s okay.” I pull the chair toward her. “Come on. Sit down.”
    “No, that’s your chair.”
    “Mom, sit down. I’ll get another chair.”
    I walk into the empty room across the hall, wishing that this place didn’t smell so strongly of pine-scented cleanser. Pines should be woods and glens and damp places with rotted bark and curling ferns—not hospital floors. It’s a terrible way to cheat. I pick up a chair and carry it back, placing it on the other side of Jeremy’s bed.
    Neither of us says anything for a while. The room is quiet enough for me to hear the tiny rhythmic drips of the I.V. feeding Jeremy’s arm. Mom’s perfumefloats over to me, adding a comforting softness to the room.
    I want Mom to understand what I’m doing, so I tell her. “I believe that Jeremy can hear us. I think if we talk to him we can reach through and pull him back.”
    “Do you?” She’s hopeful as she glances back at Jeremy. “What should we say to him, Angie? Should we tell him how much we love him?”
    She looks as lost as I feel, so I reach across the bed and put a hand on her shoulder. “Why don’t you tell him about the tennis matches on national TV?”
    She blinks at me. “I don’t even know who’s playing.”
    “Well,” I say, “I know a couple of them, but I have no idea about the scores.”
    Mom starts getting fidgety. She squirms in her chair and brushes invisible crumbs off the blanket and throws little side glances at Jeremy as though she’s not sure she’s ever seen him before. When she looks at her watch the second time I say, “It’s too early for a drink.”
    I guess it came out harder than I’d meant it to, because she looks hurt and says, “I wasn’t thinking of having a drink, Angie. You act as though I’m an alcoholic.”
    I mumble, “I’m sorry. It’s just that you do seem to drink a lot.”
    There’s a long pause, and she says, “Sometimes it helps.”
    “You said that before, Mom. I don’t know what it helps.”
    She looks at me with eyes so much the dark blue color of my own; yet I feel she’s talking not to me butto herself. “Each place we go, I start over,” she says. “I join clubs and smile at strangers. I belong to study groups and study things I haven’t the vaguest interest in. Or is it ‘in which I haven’t the vaguest’? Oh, well. I go to dinner parties and luncheons given by people who’ve asked me just because my husband’s job is more important than their husbands’ jobs.”
    “Listen, Mom, I didn’t mean to—”
    “You complain about missing friends each time we’ve been transferred. Don’t you think it’s the same with me? I learned a long time ago to put up barriers, to never allow myself to cry over a friend I might never see again.”
    I feel so weird hearing all this from my mother. I don’t know what to answer. I don’t know if she even expects an answer. Awkwardly I pat the hand she has resting on the bed and stumble to my feet. “I’d better get back to the house. I never did get my French assignment finished.”
    She just gives me a vacant smile as though she’s traveled somewhere I’m not allowed and says, “I’ll stay with Jeremy a while, Angie. Your father will probably be here soon too.”
    “Want me to start something for dinner?”
    “We can go somewhere later. I don’t know. There must be a restaurant nearby.”
    We stare at each other, and she adds, “Well, there’s always the club.”
    I stoop to kiss the top of her