Niema sets her wine glass on the bedside table next to a burning candle in a glossy brass holder. She removes her clothing slowly and quietly, her eyes intent on Sebastian. Curled on his side, he could sleep through thunderstorms; she counted on that. Naked, she creeps under the covers, inches from his bareback. They had slept naked through their long marriage. Then it ended. Darcy, his third wife, stole him. Niema twitches her brain off, rejecting the pain that he probably sleeps nude with Darcy too.
Though Niema has a lover, a slightly boring, younger man, sexually perky, cleans her gutters and mows her lawn — Sebastian will always be the love of her life.
Inching closer, she presses her breasts lightly against his torso, the breasts that had suckled their daughters. A gasp escapes her lips. She bite her tongue. No one must ever know about this. She’s imagined doing this ever since Darcy asked her to stay with Sebastian for a week while she went to a conference across the country.
Four months ago Darcy claimed Sebastian had dementia. Niema had considered that Hogwash. Now she accepts it. Shifting closer, she caresses his shoulder and rides her hand down his muscled back, his skin still smooth. Plush. Touching him floats her into panoramic memories; the times their bodies blazed the sheets while their little girls slept. She wants to climb into his lap and never leave.
Thirty years ago, after partying the night before, Niema and Sebastian had hiked early one summer morning to a waterfall. She stumbled. He frowned, “You’re hung-over, again?” His sharpness slapped her clavicle, so harsh she almost tripped backwards.
“Maybe I wouldn’t have gotten so drunk if you hadn’t pawed that woman all night.” Her hands had trembled.
He had kissed her fingers. “You’re my only one, baby. I’ll never leave you.”
She didn’t believe him until he nudged her shoulder playfully. “Let’s get naked.” They stripped and plunged into the waterfall; the crashing cascade drowned their sounds of euphoria.
Gingerly, she scoops her right hand around his chest and tiptoes her fingers through his pelt of hair. Sebastian groans. She stops, unwilling to take advantage of the situation; he is no longer hers. She was supposed to look after him; this was not a tantric sex retreat. Paranoid Darcy would discover them, she sits up and considers leaving. Seconds later she remembers Darcy is far across the country at her anthropology convention New Mexico. Muscles relaxed, she lies down and nuzzles his neck.
It took a decade for Niema to accept Darcy as Sebastian’s third wife. Before Darcy stole him, Sebastian’s affairs had blistered their marriage. The calls and hang-ups, the occasional brazen hussies who asked for her husband, as if Niema would serve him to them like a roast in hell. The misery endured when she picked up their landline, and heard Sebastian murmur endearments. He had promised to never cheat again. Knowing he would, she loved him too much to leave, even though every affair blazed through her like talons ripping her skin.
Now that her desire to hurl a cast iron pan through Darcy’s bedroom window had subsided, somewhat, a new beginning opened. Recently, as Darcy and Niema talked more, it became clear that Sebastian’s mind was slipping from a flowing cognitive river to a muddy lake.
The first few months after Niema learned of his Alzheimer diagnosis, she’d spun between denial and acquiesce. Blamed it on Darcy for allowing him to eat junk food. So what if the chips were organic. It was crappy food. He’d have his full mind if he’d stayed with her.
Last month he showed up at her door, the home they’d shared over twenty years, and raised their lovely daughters in. His shirt was inside out, faded, eyes crinkled with confusion, his mouth slack. A sprig of drool leaked from the corner of his lips. He stammered, “Am I home?”
Fighting reality, trembling with joy, she ran to him, arms wide open. He stepped back and froze for a long time, then whimpered, “Where’s Darcy?”
Staring at him, Niema glimpsed the ghost of his former self, the man who’d loved Dostoevsky, jazz, and psychedelic art. She realized his homecoming was Alzheimer’s, not the ecstatic reunion she’d yearned for so badly she could barely breathe through jagged bouts of sobbing and drinking, hellish hours that nearly destroyed her.
Sebastian hunched his shoulders; arms dangled by his sides. His body caved, eyes flitting, scared, as if looking for his mommy. Niema touched his shoulder, “Hungry? Want some granola?”
A tiny light glimmered in his eyes, “Yeah.”
She walked him to the kitchen table and patted his old chair for him to sit. The phone rang, “Hi. This is Darcy. Have you seen Sebastian? He’s been gone four hours.”
Niema wanted to lie so badly her heart ripped like a fish wiggling on a sharp hook.
Fifteen minutes later, as Sebastian bent over, gobbled granola with sprays of almond milk on his Thelonious Monk t-shirt, Darcy burst through the open door. She ran to him and hugged his shoulders. Eyes chained to the bowl, he ignored her and slurped his granola.
“Thank God,” Darcy said, and turned to Niema, her eyes wet with smudged black outliner. That was the moment Niema closed the door into full acceptance. She stared at her ex-husband as he shifted into someone with the bare remnants of his former self, sinking as the waterfall pushed him deeper.
Slowly, then quickly, Sebastian slipped away, his face more lost each time Niema saw him. He recognized fewer people. His words slowed down until they were gone.
Darcy began asking Niema for help watching him. A morning here, an afternoon there. Neima was grateful to be asked. Even though she had a lover, Sebastian was always inside her. She was prettier than Darcy, but not an intellectual like Darcy. Was it Niema’s drinking? Something unnamable?
Time rolled by; Sebastian needed more help in the bathroom. Darcy confided that at night he wandered through the house, trying and failing to unlock the doors, yelling and cursing, hurling dishes. Though an attendant helped a few days a week, Darcy needed a get-away to sleep. Plus she was reading a paper at the anthropology conference in Taos. She called Niema, “Could you please spend a week caring for Sebastian here? I know it’s a lot to ask.”
Niema’s mind dove into deluxe fantasies, most of them ridiculous, until she came up with the dream of being naked, right now, with him. They’d wake in the morning; he’d remember nothing and she’d remember everything.
Mara Thygeson published fiction in Pacifica, MacGuffin Press, Choeofplerin Press, Steam Ticket Journal and Esoterica Magazine. Mara is a painter and has had several solo gallery exhibits of her watercolors.
