Fiction--Dreams in the Clouds--First Installment

The old man sat at the kitchen table in his single wide in Lakeview, Florida holding the spoon over the milk left over from his breakfast cereal thinking about the dream he had just had. Though in reality it had been due to the dog jumping on and off the bed throughout the long morning, the man had dreamed of children bouncing on him.

“I had a dream last night,” he told his daughter.

Turning from the dishes in the sink she said, “Did you?” In the year she had been helping her mother with her father, who had been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s a few years earlier, he had never mentioned dreaming. He often woke up confused, asking if his brother, or mother, or first wife had been there. But, he had never before mentioned a dream.

“I did. I dreamed a bunch of kids was jumping on me. I don’t know if they had a father or not, but it seemed like they didn't, and I was playing with them as if they were mine.”

“Well, that sounds like a happy dream, Ira.”

“I guess it was.” He sat looking out the window at the neighbor’s truck through the blinds. “Does that truck ever leave the driveway?”

Her mother looked up at him and frowned. The daughter placed her hand on her shoulder and said, “Sure it does, almost every day.”

“What? Is it Sunday?” The man’s expression was blank and his daughter stood still pondering his reverted innocence and apparent sweetness.

“No, Da, it isn't.”

He wasn't always so, innocent or sweet. Not in the least. Once, he was the worst of men. There was the time that Lilith feared him more than anything else. Feared him almost as much as she resented her mother for having allowed him to hurt her all those years ago. Now, though, with the disease taking its toll and the drugs keeping his rage in check, he was a broken man, a frail remnant of what he once was, an old, frail man with the mind of a boy.

Lilith did what she did for her mother’s sake, not for his. She told herself that every day. However, as she fed him and clothed him and cleaned him, as she sat with him long hours listening to the same old stories over and over again, answering the same redundant questions every ten minutes all she felt was compassion. She knew he couldn't hurt her any more. She knew he was harmless.

Still, during those moments of confusion when he’d say the most horribly inappropriate things, utter the most disgusting suggestions, reach out to feel her, she struggled to repress the repulsion and looked on her mother for help, for protection, for awareness if nothing else only to see that same old expression of someone trying desperately to pretend that she hadn't heard or seen anything. Still, after all these years.

At 55, Lilith knew it wasn't intentional betrayal on her mother’s part. She knew that. She knew her mother had suffered her share of abuse from him, among others. That didn't necessarily make those moments any easier to endure.

She had come for a visit a year earlier. Just a visit. A week in the sunshine to see how her mother was getting on. They hadn't been close ever, and rarely spoke. But, things change somehow with age and Lilith deemed it time, felt it right, so she had traveled the 3,000 miles and in so doing had opened a portal long since sealed. There was no returning to what was; there was only proceeding toward what would be.

She knew there would be an end to her days as caretaker. She could see him declining rapidly, both physically and mentally. It was just a matter of time.

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