In a World gone Mad: 2 July 2020...1

Thursday 2 July 2020

I’m tired—but I am sleeping. The total madness of a few weeks ago has gone. Between getting up to Arthur—which is never going to change until his status does—I’m getting about six hours a night, which is beyond wonderful. It is because Max doesn’t come to bed until after dawn so I get the room to myself. It’s not normal—but it is bliss.

It’s all going to change next week because he is going back to work. I thought I was being a very sensible, not to mention ridiculously self-sacrificing woman when I suggested he come to bed with me for the rest of the week and re-set his body clock.

Last night he lasted half an hour before going downstairs for a cigarette and not coming back until six this morning. I don’t know what he’s doing down there. But I do care. He’s spending some of the time watching football because there are a lot of games on the telly again. I know this because there’s one in Recently Watched and I keep putting the same one on for Arthur. He has True Grit on repeat as well—and every watching is new and wonderful experience for him.

I don’t know what Max does the rest of the time. I go through phases of it being intolerable and the insomnia from lying awake all night waiting for him to come to bed and wondering if he’s talking to other women online drives me mad. He probably isn’t. It’s me and my paranoia. We have an unspoken rule that I don’t disturb him while he’s in the living room at night. And if I ever had to bother him because of his dad, I’d knock first to give him time to shut down whatever he’s doing. I know about the internet porn, but the rest is a mystery and is probably just the monsters in my mind. I’ve taught myself to leave him to his business and sleep.

It has made me a nicer person.

There was one night in the middle of it all where I scared Andy. We were having a Magic night and that and our music nights are accompanied by alcohol. For six weeks while I wasn’t sleeping, I didn’t drink at all. I don’t enjoy drinking in the house and only like a vodka if I’m out socialising. I had a constant headache and felt sickly most of the time. The strongest thing I had that night was lemonade.  It came to the end of the night and I’d played like a bag of spanners and had lost every game. Andy went for it and attacked me all in. I was weak—from a gaming perspective— and had no choice but to defend with all of my creatures.

My brain was addled, I was so sleep deprived that I’d forgotten how to do the tally.  You have two numbers; an attack number and a defence. My defence comes off his attack and the same or higher kills the other or both of us. And my attack comes off his defence with the same result. You would put your weakest character on his strongest and sacrifice it to die—so only losing a weak character. Leaving your strong characters to try and take out some of his weaker ones.  My brain couldn’t do it. I stared at the cards and all I saw was swimming numbers. I’d made stupid moves all night, but this was total wipe out—my brain literally refused to work. Andy said that he thought I was having some kind of stroke. And it turned out that I had two spells in my hand; one prevented all combat damage that turn and one that killed three of his characters. I didn’t even see them.

Max and I are fine. At night when we’re on the sofa bingeing on House, he still turns to me at random with his killer smile and tells me that he loves me.

Belle must never watch House, it would open a whole new repertoire for her. She’d have every obscure affliction and disease known to man. Watching that and learning about all these diseases that I’ve never heard of and seeing what a finely tuned machine the human body is, it makes me wonder how any of us survive to middle age. Belle would be in heaven.

I have made a tiny adjustment to our morning routine that has made a world of difference to my mood. This highlights how set in stone I am. Things get done in order and whether it works or not, it has to be the same order every day.

He comes down with his dressing gown open, no teeth because every morning he tells me he can’t find them, and I tell him they’re in the red cup on the bathroom windowsill. I don’t tell him that they grin hideously at me every morning or that while his paraphernalia is spread over the bathroom, I have to bring what I need from the bedroom every morning so that it can’t be contaminated. While showering and brushing my teeth, I have to hold both of my toothbrushes in my hand so that no part of them touches any part of the bathroom where he may have phlegmed, or peed, or both. I can’t keep a towel in the bathroom and have to cart them in with me and going for a shower is like moving to a new house.

He has his spindly legs on display, and they remind me of a grizzled old goblin. His old-man body disgusts me and I can’t stand for him to touch me. Because he only has one eye and it skews his vision, we’ve found that the best way to give him his tablets is to put them in the palm of your hand and let him pick them out by touch. The risperidone is stupidly small and is marketed for elderly people with dementia—it’s stupid.  The first tablet is okay, but by the second he’s had his fingers in his mouth and when he picks the second one out of my hand I can feel the saliva transferring to my palm. It’s like acid and I imagine it burning my flesh.

We survive, the breakfast table is only feet from the sink, but I still check my palm for flesh erosion after washing it.

We used to kiss and cuddle on every meeting. Even though I have a childhood history of experience with old men, It never bothered me much because I had such fondness for him. It grossed me out if he made my lips wet, but I’d be okay with a discrete wipe with the back of my hand. Now I can’t stand to be near him or have any part of him touch any part of me.

So, I make him a cup of tea. He made one for himself last week. It was bright yellow, and we couldn’t work out what he’d put in it. He’d used fresh orange juice instead of milk. Combined breakfast courses for the busy man—it could catch on.

I put his tea in front of him and make his Shredded Wheat, with warm milk whatever the weather. If we run out and we have to give him corn flakes there is war. I put his cereal in front of him and open a Fortisip and put it beside him, but far enough away that he can’t knock it over. That amendment came about six weeks ago after repeated sticky spillage.

Every morning I say on rote.

‘Hang on Arthur, just before you start eating I’ll give you your tablets, love.’

I turn away and take his pills out of their boxes and hand them to him. Every damned morning, he’s forgotten what I’ve asked in the time it takes to pop his tablets and he has his mouth stuffed with  shredded wheat and it’s hanging out of both sides of his mouth and dribbling from his chin.

This morning, after weeks of this, the penny dropped with a clatter on the floor and Arthur dived under the table to retrieve it—no he didn’t. But I did have a moment of enlightenment that any normal person would have worked out on day two.

I gave him his pills while his milk was heating in the microwave. One small step for Sarah—one giant leap for sanity.

We fought over the mail. I got to the door just as it was being scrunched up and stuffed in his manky old dressing gown pocket full of snotty tissues and God knows what else. We literally had a hand each on the envelopes and were playing tug-o-war with them.

‘It’s for me.’

‘It is not…,’ sentence finished in my head, …you crazy old bastard.

He’d beaten me to the front door again. As long as we hear him and can get the mail from him, it doesn’t matter. He thinks this is his house so therefore it should be him collecting the mail and answering the door. We keep every door locked and hide every key. Having him pick up the mail every morning is a teeny tiny thing, with diplomacy, and only a half hour conversation, we can get it off him—but it drives me insane.

‘It’s got my name on it.’

‘No, it hasn’t, look,’

 I take the envelopes and show him.

‘Max Barnet—not Arthur M.A.X.

He let’s go. Ha ha, fooled you, I have possession of the mail, victory is mine, and you’re not getting them back. One of the letters was Max’s payslip. He works for a hotel that used to be exclusively for the blind, they are phasing the blind element out, but the envelope is still stamped with.

Items for Blind People.

How awful is that? Every piece of mail sent to anybody visiting the hotel, or employees  whether they are blind or not, is stamped with a label.

‘Look, it says there it’s for blind people and I’m blind.’

‘No, you’re not.’

Yes, I am, I’ve only got one eye.’

‘Yes Arthur, we know you’ve only got one eye, you tell us a hundred times a day. And anyway, if you were blind how could you read the envelope.’

‘What envelope? Where’s my wallet?’

‘C’mon darlin, let’s get your breakfast and then there’s a western starting.’

‘I like westerns.’

‘I know you do.’

‘Have you seen my wallet?’

I try to take Teagan out before he gets up, this morning it didn’t work.  And we had a massive argument because I wouldn’t take him with me.