The Matched Pair
By
Edward Ahern
“Janet, you need to come over. The television’s not working.”
My sigh was silent. My mother, always frail in health, had descended into Alzheimer’s, and called often. She needed frequent attention, but refused to even consider a nursing home. But I still worked, and becoming a permanent care giver was impossible.
Hiring live in help was hideously expensive, but mom had enough in retirement accounts and social security to pay for maybe five years. She was seventy-eight. I could chip in and extend that half decade by another two or three years. At that point, with both of us broke, I’d have to place mom in a home at state expense. My only hope was by that time mom would be far enough gone that she wouldn’t recognize her surroundings.
My on-line searching inundated me with offers and conflicting advice by hard sell corporations. Support groups weren’t much better, but there was one string that interested me, run by a woman named Talia.
I looked up the address and discovered it was a residence, according to the picture a tiny tumble-down cape, only a few miles away. I wonder. I called.
Talia answered on the second ring. “I work with only one client at a time, Mrs. Keeler and am regretfully very selective. I would need to meet with your mother and see if we’re compatible, suitable you might say.”
This was such a departure from the gushy ‘we can do it all for you’ pitches I’d been hearing that I was suspicious. “Have you worked with other clients that I can contact as reference?”
Her voice had a residual accent that was difficult to place, not Russian exactly, Eastern European maybe. “Certainly, Mrs. Keeler. May I call you Janet?”
I didn’t recall giving her my first name, but must have. “Of course.”
Talia gave me three names, all out of state. I called them. They gave glowing references. ‘She was a mystic miracle for my father,’ one man said. I called Talia back.
“Your references speak highly of you. Before we discuss meeting mom, could you confirm your rate?”
She was at the low end of the price range, so we scheduled to meet at mom’s house. Talia was smaller than I’d imagined, petit even. Her clothes were old fashioned and storm cloud gray, her black hair almost waist length.
My mother, in addition to being feisty, suffered from the depression common among Alzheimer’s patients, and eyed Talia with suspicion. But Talia pulled her chair closer to mom’s, saying nothing, just gently rubbing her thumb on the back of mom’s hand. Mom’s expression shifted into bemusement, then a relaxed smile. Talia looked over at me.
“We’re very compatible, I think. Aren’t we Sylvia?”
There was no way Talia could already know that, but mom nodded vigorously. “I like her.”
By the time we’d left my mother’s house Talia and I had agreed on a start date three days from then. Talia would move in and provide light housekeeping and care services. I didn’t realize the strain I’d been under until I realized that it would be alleviated., and I thanked her profusely.
That first three months were a learning curve for me. I had to disabuse myself that mom needed me visiting daily to make sure she was happy. She always was, and I eventually cut my visits down to three times a week, and spent them with her reminiscing rather than fussing.
The Alzheimer’s marched on of course, but mom developed a glow, an aura. We’ve never been religious, but her befuddlement was matched by a pacific contentment that I almost called spiritual, but realized it could also be like a somnolent cat lying in the sun.
Then, in the fourth month, I called Talia to tell her that I would have to miss a Tuesday evening visit because of a business trip. “That’s okay, Janet,” she said, “I’m sure we’ll find something to amuse ourselves with. See you in a few days.”
I was on my way to the airport that Tuesday afternoon when I received a text advising that my flight was cancelled. I cursed aloud to an otherwise empty car and continued on to the airport to try for alternate flights. After an hour of unacceptable alternatives, begging and bluster I cancelled my attendance at the conference.
My mood was foul during the drive back, but I realized that I could drop in at my mother’s house on the way home. I didn’t bother to call Talia and when I got to the house, let myself in. I cruised through the ground floor but no one was there. Then I went upstairs to the bedrooms. Again, empty, beds neatly made up for the night. I checked my cell phone-no messages. The fear that had been dormant resurged. Did Talia go with my mother to the hospital? But she would have called to tell me. Was there an accident? But mom almost never left the house.
I double timed back downstairs, rushing from room to room. As I sailed through the kitchen, I noticed that the cellar door was ajar, and the basement light was on. I pulled the door further open and hustled down the stairs, afraid of what I might find.
The dim-watted basement lightbulb was augmented by several candles. There, sitting in a folding chair, wrapped in some kind of shimmery black robe, was my mother. Drool eddied from a corner of her mouth, but her expression was beatific. Talia stood in a circle chalked on the concrete floor, facing away from me, swaying and muttering something I didn’t understand.
“What the hell is going on!"
Talia spun around, her expression angry. “You’ve broken the spell! The evening is wasted.”
“What are you doing to my mother?”
She muttered something foreign, moving her fingers intricately, and I was frozen in place, unable to speak. “Listen to me you benighted cow.” She paused then, perhaps realizing that anger wouldn’t be productive. “Your mother and I have a special arrangement, a relationship that you can’t begin to comprehend.”
I willed myself to move, to speak, but was locked down. The unexpressed outrage curdled within me. Talia went over to my mother and stroked her cheek. “Sylvia, come back. Tell Janet about us.”
Mom slowly shook her head from side to side, glanced up and noticed me. “Sweetie, Talia is giving me the most wonderful entertainments. I…” She searched for words that stayed hidden, then haltingly said, “I take her to amazing places, see things that are impossible, feel things. It’s wonderful.”
My eyes were fixed in place but I tried to glare.
Talia stepped over to me and took my left hand. “Janet, you can’t believe just yet. What if we were to be in total darkness?” The basement light and candles went black. I almost fell but the spell held me upright. “And then reemerged as if never extinguished?” And light and candles relumined.
“What if you were to refeel the best orgasm you ever experienced?” Waves of enveloping pleasure overtook me as I panted, shudders straining against my immobility.
“What if you were to remember your birth?”
Blind, slippery pressure, not breathing-breathing. Cold for the first time.
“Listen to me carefully, Janet. Because portions of her brain were destroyed, your mother has uncovered a latent ability, a facility to move from one realm to another, and take me with her. She can’t do this without me, nor I without her. This is a rare and wonderful gift she will have until her death.
“Sylvia has become my facilitator, my familiar, if you will. In earlier times this was accomplished with dumb animals, but the results were spotty and imperfect. She and I have bonded as tightly as you and she. Were I to leave, she quickly would become surly and vegetative.”
Talia sighed. “The magic I’d hoped to perform tonight will be delayed. I will instead perform a spell on you that forces your complete silence about Sylvia’s and my relationship. This will be painful for you until you hopefully realize that your mother is much happier with me than without.”
She opened a dark gray shoulder bag that I realized she always had with her. Taking out several vials, she went to the basement workbench, mixed powders with a mortar and pestle, put the mixture in tap water from the laundry sink, stirred and brought it over to me. She said three minutes of syllabic gibberish and told me to open my mouth and swallow.
I tried to clench my teeth, but my mouth opened on its own and I swallowed. The taste was like a bleeding mouth sore. A filmy layer entered my mind and took up residence, a prophylaxis against any revealment. Talia’s fingers nimbly moved again. “You can sit,” she said.
I tottered over to another folding chair and plopped down. My mother smiled at me bemusedly.
Talia looked down on me. “It’s incredibly hard to find a person impaired and gifted like your mother. She’ll live another three or four years, and during that time we’ll voyage to places and do things beyond her comprehension but not her enjoyment. I won’t allow you to deprive her or me of that. You hate and fear me now, and that’s fine. Perhaps as you continue to talk to me and your mother those feelings will change.”
Talia moved her fingers in an intricate pattern and my body was released. I pulled out my phone and tried to call the police but my fingers locked up. “You bitch!” I yelled.
Talia smiled. “Arguably, but you’ll find that you can talk about this only with me and your mom. You can go home now if you wish, or spend some time with Sylvia.”
I quickstepped over to mom. “Mom, please tell her to get out, she’s corrupted you.”
But mom merely smiled abstractedly, saying, “Oh dear, I can’t do that. It’s the most alive I’ve been in years.”
After twenty minutes of futile effort, I went home. Once there I tried again to call the police and couldn’t. I then drove to the local police station, but found that I couldn’t begin to talk to the officer on duty about mom’s problem. I was mousetrapped.
I called Talia at 7:00 that next morning.
“Hello, Janet. Your mother is fine. She’s sleeping.”
“How can you inflict your black magic on her?”
“Firstly, it’s not black, it's white. Secondly your mother is my transport and witness, she isn’t involved in the magic. Thirdly, keep talking with her. She’ll tell you all about it.”
Mom lived another four and a half years. She was, toward the end, without communication or comprehension, but Talia tirelessly cared for her. She’d stopped charging me immediately after I discovered them. “Just a necessary fiction,” she said, “I don’t need money.”
My mother’s eyes never left Talia as she tended to her, and if Talia was close would cup her face or arm lovingly. Over time, I realized mom was happier than I could have ever made her.
Once my mother’s passing had been observed, Talia and I had a last meeting at mom’s house. We were drinking an herbal tea she had prepared.
“Janet, there’s no longer a need to protect your mother, so I’m lifting the spell.” She moved those quick and delicate fingers once again, and I felt an easing, a surcease of pressure.
“How do you know I won’t rat you out?”
She smiled. “I’m harder to find than you think. And absent any proof at all, you’d just be considered loony. Please don’t think too harshly of me. Our symbiosis was strong and I grew to love your mother.”
“And she you, I think. I have a strong urge to thank you for what you gave my mother, and at the same time anger for your manipulation of her. She seemed happy, and for that I forgive you.”
I blurted out a thought I’d kept hidden from myself. “If I also suffer from this disease, could you work with me?”
She sighed. “I wondered about that, but you unfortunately don’t have your mother’s gift. I’m so sorry.”
Twenty minutes later Talia left, the last time I saw or heard from her. A year and a half later I got a text asking if I could give a reference for Talia. I texted back.
‘I know nothing about her personal life, but I do know that she salvaged my mother from a long unpleasant process of dying, and I’ll always be grateful. I can highly recommend her, but you need to be prepared for the unorthodox.’
Ed Ahern resumed writing after forty odd years in foreign intelligence and international sales. He’s had about 500 stories and poems published so far, and ten books. Ed works the other side of writing at Bewildering Stories where he manages a posse of seven review editors, and as lead editor at Scribes Micro.
By
Edward Ahern
“Janet, you need to come over. The television’s not working.”
My sigh was silent. My mother, always frail in health, had descended into Alzheimer’s, and called often. She needed frequent attention, but refused to even consider a nursing home. But I still worked, and becoming a permanent care giver was impossible.
Hiring live in help was hideously expensive, but mom had enough in retirement accounts and social security to pay for maybe five years. She was seventy-eight. I could chip in and extend that half decade by another two or three years. At that point, with both of us broke, I’d have to place mom in a home at state expense. My only hope was by that time mom would be far enough gone that she wouldn’t recognize her surroundings.
My on-line searching inundated me with offers and conflicting advice by hard sell corporations. Support groups weren’t much better, but there was one string that interested me, run by a woman named Talia.
I looked up the address and discovered it was a residence, according to the picture a tiny tumble-down cape, only a few miles away. I wonder. I called.
Talia answered on the second ring. “I work with only one client at a time, Mrs. Keeler and am regretfully very selective. I would need to meet with your mother and see if we’re compatible, suitable you might say.”
This was such a departure from the gushy ‘we can do it all for you’ pitches I’d been hearing that I was suspicious. “Have you worked with other clients that I can contact as reference?”
Her voice had a residual accent that was difficult to place, not Russian exactly, Eastern European maybe. “Certainly, Mrs. Keeler. May I call you Janet?”
I didn’t recall giving her my first name, but must have. “Of course.”
Talia gave me three names, all out of state. I called them. They gave glowing references. ‘She was a mystic miracle for my father,’ one man said. I called Talia back.
“Your references speak highly of you. Before we discuss meeting mom, could you confirm your rate?”
She was at the low end of the price range, so we scheduled to meet at mom’s house. Talia was smaller than I’d imagined, petit even. Her clothes were old fashioned and storm cloud gray, her black hair almost waist length.
My mother, in addition to being feisty, suffered from the depression common among Alzheimer’s patients, and eyed Talia with suspicion. But Talia pulled her chair closer to mom’s, saying nothing, just gently rubbing her thumb on the back of mom’s hand. Mom’s expression shifted into bemusement, then a relaxed smile. Talia looked over at me.
“We’re very compatible, I think. Aren’t we Sylvia?”
There was no way Talia could already know that, but mom nodded vigorously. “I like her.”
By the time we’d left my mother’s house Talia and I had agreed on a start date three days from then. Talia would move in and provide light housekeeping and care services. I didn’t realize the strain I’d been under until I realized that it would be alleviated., and I thanked her profusely.
That first three months were a learning curve for me. I had to disabuse myself that mom needed me visiting daily to make sure she was happy. She always was, and I eventually cut my visits down to three times a week, and spent them with her reminiscing rather than fussing.
The Alzheimer’s marched on of course, but mom developed a glow, an aura. We’ve never been religious, but her befuddlement was matched by a pacific contentment that I almost called spiritual, but realized it could also be like a somnolent cat lying in the sun.
Then, in the fourth month, I called Talia to tell her that I would have to miss a Tuesday evening visit because of a business trip. “That’s okay, Janet,” she said, “I’m sure we’ll find something to amuse ourselves with. See you in a few days.”
I was on my way to the airport that Tuesday afternoon when I received a text advising that my flight was cancelled. I cursed aloud to an otherwise empty car and continued on to the airport to try for alternate flights. After an hour of unacceptable alternatives, begging and bluster I cancelled my attendance at the conference.
My mood was foul during the drive back, but I realized that I could drop in at my mother’s house on the way home. I didn’t bother to call Talia and when I got to the house, let myself in. I cruised through the ground floor but no one was there. Then I went upstairs to the bedrooms. Again, empty, beds neatly made up for the night. I checked my cell phone-no messages. The fear that had been dormant resurged. Did Talia go with my mother to the hospital? But she would have called to tell me. Was there an accident? But mom almost never left the house.
I double timed back downstairs, rushing from room to room. As I sailed through the kitchen, I noticed that the cellar door was ajar, and the basement light was on. I pulled the door further open and hustled down the stairs, afraid of what I might find.
The dim-watted basement lightbulb was augmented by several candles. There, sitting in a folding chair, wrapped in some kind of shimmery black robe, was my mother. Drool eddied from a corner of her mouth, but her expression was beatific. Talia stood in a circle chalked on the concrete floor, facing away from me, swaying and muttering something I didn’t understand.
“What the hell is going on!"
Talia spun around, her expression angry. “You’ve broken the spell! The evening is wasted.”
“What are you doing to my mother?”
She muttered something foreign, moving her fingers intricately, and I was frozen in place, unable to speak. “Listen to me you benighted cow.” She paused then, perhaps realizing that anger wouldn’t be productive. “Your mother and I have a special arrangement, a relationship that you can’t begin to comprehend.”
I willed myself to move, to speak, but was locked down. The unexpressed outrage curdled within me. Talia went over to my mother and stroked her cheek. “Sylvia, come back. Tell Janet about us.”
Mom slowly shook her head from side to side, glanced up and noticed me. “Sweetie, Talia is giving me the most wonderful entertainments. I…” She searched for words that stayed hidden, then haltingly said, “I take her to amazing places, see things that are impossible, feel things. It’s wonderful.”
My eyes were fixed in place but I tried to glare.
Talia stepped over to me and took my left hand. “Janet, you can’t believe just yet. What if we were to be in total darkness?” The basement light and candles went black. I almost fell but the spell held me upright. “And then reemerged as if never extinguished?” And light and candles relumined.
“What if you were to refeel the best orgasm you ever experienced?” Waves of enveloping pleasure overtook me as I panted, shudders straining against my immobility.
“What if you were to remember your birth?”
Blind, slippery pressure, not breathing-breathing. Cold for the first time.
“Listen to me carefully, Janet. Because portions of her brain were destroyed, your mother has uncovered a latent ability, a facility to move from one realm to another, and take me with her. She can’t do this without me, nor I without her. This is a rare and wonderful gift she will have until her death.
“Sylvia has become my facilitator, my familiar, if you will. In earlier times this was accomplished with dumb animals, but the results were spotty and imperfect. She and I have bonded as tightly as you and she. Were I to leave, she quickly would become surly and vegetative.”
Talia sighed. “The magic I’d hoped to perform tonight will be delayed. I will instead perform a spell on you that forces your complete silence about Sylvia’s and my relationship. This will be painful for you until you hopefully realize that your mother is much happier with me than without.”
She opened a dark gray shoulder bag that I realized she always had with her. Taking out several vials, she went to the basement workbench, mixed powders with a mortar and pestle, put the mixture in tap water from the laundry sink, stirred and brought it over to me. She said three minutes of syllabic gibberish and told me to open my mouth and swallow.
I tried to clench my teeth, but my mouth opened on its own and I swallowed. The taste was like a bleeding mouth sore. A filmy layer entered my mind and took up residence, a prophylaxis against any revealment. Talia’s fingers nimbly moved again. “You can sit,” she said.
I tottered over to another folding chair and plopped down. My mother smiled at me bemusedly.
Talia looked down on me. “It’s incredibly hard to find a person impaired and gifted like your mother. She’ll live another three or four years, and during that time we’ll voyage to places and do things beyond her comprehension but not her enjoyment. I won’t allow you to deprive her or me of that. You hate and fear me now, and that’s fine. Perhaps as you continue to talk to me and your mother those feelings will change.”
Talia moved her fingers in an intricate pattern and my body was released. I pulled out my phone and tried to call the police but my fingers locked up. “You bitch!” I yelled.
Talia smiled. “Arguably, but you’ll find that you can talk about this only with me and your mom. You can go home now if you wish, or spend some time with Sylvia.”
I quickstepped over to mom. “Mom, please tell her to get out, she’s corrupted you.”
But mom merely smiled abstractedly, saying, “Oh dear, I can’t do that. It’s the most alive I’ve been in years.”
After twenty minutes of futile effort, I went home. Once there I tried again to call the police and couldn’t. I then drove to the local police station, but found that I couldn’t begin to talk to the officer on duty about mom’s problem. I was mousetrapped.
I called Talia at 7:00 that next morning.
“Hello, Janet. Your mother is fine. She’s sleeping.”
“How can you inflict your black magic on her?”
“Firstly, it’s not black, it's white. Secondly your mother is my transport and witness, she isn’t involved in the magic. Thirdly, keep talking with her. She’ll tell you all about it.”
Mom lived another four and a half years. She was, toward the end, without communication or comprehension, but Talia tirelessly cared for her. She’d stopped charging me immediately after I discovered them. “Just a necessary fiction,” she said, “I don’t need money.”
My mother’s eyes never left Talia as she tended to her, and if Talia was close would cup her face or arm lovingly. Over time, I realized mom was happier than I could have ever made her.
Once my mother’s passing had been observed, Talia and I had a last meeting at mom’s house. We were drinking an herbal tea she had prepared.
“Janet, there’s no longer a need to protect your mother, so I’m lifting the spell.” She moved those quick and delicate fingers once again, and I felt an easing, a surcease of pressure.
“How do you know I won’t rat you out?”
She smiled. “I’m harder to find than you think. And absent any proof at all, you’d just be considered loony. Please don’t think too harshly of me. Our symbiosis was strong and I grew to love your mother.”
“And she you, I think. I have a strong urge to thank you for what you gave my mother, and at the same time anger for your manipulation of her. She seemed happy, and for that I forgive you.”
I blurted out a thought I’d kept hidden from myself. “If I also suffer from this disease, could you work with me?”
She sighed. “I wondered about that, but you unfortunately don’t have your mother’s gift. I’m so sorry.”
Twenty minutes later Talia left, the last time I saw or heard from her. A year and a half later I got a text asking if I could give a reference for Talia. I texted back.
‘I know nothing about her personal life, but I do know that she salvaged my mother from a long unpleasant process of dying, and I’ll always be grateful. I can highly recommend her, but you need to be prepared for the unorthodox.’
Ed Ahern resumed writing after forty odd years in foreign intelligence and international sales. He’s had about 500 stories and poems published so far, and ten books. Ed works the other side of writing at Bewildering Stories where he manages a posse of seven review editors, and as lead editor at Scribes Micro.