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February 14, 2009

there ain't no cure

The last thing I remember before all the lights (literal and figurative) go out is Herself saying ... saying ...

I wake up at 3:30. Izzy is under the covers curled against my stomach and she's like a heater with fur. I nudge her so she moves away.

I wake up at 5:30 and I say out loud, to nobody, "Oh, that's what time it is." My shoulder hurts.

I open my eyes and stare into the faces of Izzy and Bob, who are staring at me. Bob sits on my chest, staring. He mews at me; it's past time for breakfast. The sun is well up. It's 7:30.

I have been dreaming about Moo: that he doesn't play lacrosse, he plays football; that in fact it is not really football, it is another game, one in which all the players are given a short wooden bat and they whack each other with them until somebody wins. The mascot for Matt's team is a buffalo, and its hooves are also hands. The mascot for the other team is a centaur. Both teams mass at opposite ends of a huge playing field that for some reason makes me think of Gettysburg and Pickett's charge. Herself appears; she has gotten a game program so we can keep track of who is down, and who wins.

The cats jump down to the floor, jump back up on the bed, jump back down, wander around the bedroom and watch me, waiting, while I yawn and think about how the right side of my head feels like I got hit with one of the bats in that game I dreamed up. It's what I get for drinking nothing but coffee and wine yesterday, I guess.

I get tangled up in my robe as I go downstairs to feed everybody; it's quiet. Twilight, waiting in the kitchen, sees Izzy and runs off.

There is a letter on the kitchen table. I sit while I drink my coffee and read it. It's a love letter. It says, "I love you and everything about you." It is from Herself, and it comes to me with a pang that makes my stomach jump: I haven't bought any Valentines this year. Not one. And here is this letter for me, the undeserving. The cynical. The one for whom the phrase "true love" translates to "yeah, right."

Now I remember what she said before I fell asleep. We'd been having a teasing, sleepy, after-Keno, late night conversation. I said, "You know you'll be so sad when I'm dead; you'll tell your kids, 'My mom was the best.'" And Herself replied, "Yeah, and she never hugged me unless I asked her to."

Posted by JudyLa at 06:00 AM | Comments (0)