For the most part, things have very much returned to normal around here, inasmuch as living in a global pandemic can be normalized.

Last night, we were snuggling up the kids. Conversation turned to past vacations, with some wistfulness for all the things we haven’t done in this Year of Our Covid, and of course mad plans for what to do with ourselves once we got our vaccines. Doorknob licking tours! Eating finger food from street vendors! Olympic Indoor Sneezing!

During our reminiscing, we ended up talking about a neutral memory involving Victim and Aggressor. And truly, only talking about them as side characters in a larger story about someone else.

At the time, I thought, Oh isn’t this a nice stage to get to, where we can talk about them again without the electric shock factor of what Aggressor did, and what happened to Victim?

In other respects, I’m currently inhabiting the Stage of Grief where, on more than one occasion, I’ve forgotten Victim was dead. It feels very much an echo of how I’ve also been wondering what to do for the holidays before the other shoe drops and I’m like…. Oh right.

Anyway, after everyone went to bed, I had a very fitful night of dreams—I always seem to have the ones where I am both a) doing something awful and gross and pointless while b) trying not to get caught.

Around 5:30 or maybe even 6 in the morning, the phone rang.

I woke, thinking about the phone call that came when my father died. That one occurred around 4 in the morning. So this wasn’t that. But it did seem like bad news. I mean, who else would be calling instead of leaving a text to peruse at our leisure?**

My husband picked up the phone. Then dropped it with a clatter.

Talk about drama!

“What is it?” I asked.

“I don’t know. I dropped the phone. It hung up.” Not drama. Butterfingers. He read the caller ID, which merely stated the caller was from our county.

“Butt dial,” I surmised, still half-asleep but somehow also swimming in bad juju. I’d been dreaming of gutting and eating as many alley rats as I could before someone caught me. Why, Brain? WHY?

My husband crawled back into bed and we huddled, waiting to find out if it was intentional (someone would call back) or unintentional (we would just wait forever).

Eventually I fell back into a doze. I woke some time later in the darkness*, to go pee (Holla, middleage).

Being Victorian-era repressed by nurture, I never use the toilet in front of my husband.

But also being extremely lazy by nature, I rarely bother to fully close the door when I enter my own personal Chamber of Secrets.

Perhaps what I’m saying is I am an agent of chaos.

I mean, there are all kinds of well thought out, yet morally conflicting reasons for my actions: Closing the door is loud and might wake him up. I’m a 45 year old woman, he saw me push several babies out of my twat, it’s just pee. If I start closing the door now, I’d probably forget I’d closed it and run face first into it in the dark and nobody needs that kind of early a.m. drama.

Anyway, as has happened a few delightfully Hugh Grant-esque times in our married lives, my husband also had to pee in the middle of the night, and walked into the bathroom while I was in there.

“I’m in here!” I scolded.

“What?” He sounded frightened. Which, usually, he understands directly and nopes out without a word.

“I’m in here!” I said again. His confusion, coupled with the fact that he sounded… strange, and layered with my memories of my father’s deterioration leading to his death, sent a cold chill through me.

As a small aside, we had that talk too. I had to take back my request that if I got dementia, my husband would smother me with a pillow. I cannot recall if I fully disclosed that on the blog before, but it’s true.

Watching my dad go, and my mother’s helplessness to let go of him, and her fear they would be financially ruined by putting him in a nursing home, made me several times request of my husband that should I get dementia, he please smother me with a pillow, especially if I was too far gone to complete suicide myself.

Anyway, sorry if that’s surprise horrifying! It seemed quite rational at the time. I had even told my sister about it, so if the police charged him with anything, she could brilliantly come forward and back his story I had asked for it.

However, having now witnessed the fallout of one person killing another, I had to backtrack and relieve my husband of any obligation, that it would probably be quite horrible for our children and for him, I could now see. When before it seemed ruthlessly practical.

After this overwrought declaration, my husband had agreed to not kill me after all, in a muted way that suggested he had never really pinky sworn to do jack shit on my behalf with a pillow, and had all along only been mollycoddling me with notions I had any sort of dictatorial authority in the matter. Which pissed me off. Which is a messed up place to be, when you’re pissed your spouse won’t kill you. But given the whole circumstances of front row seats to violent death, I was willing to let it go.

Anyway, back to the bathroom and my baffled sounding husband.

I think I had to even tell him a third time I was mid-pee, and to kindly not sit down on me in the dark, or pee in my lap, or any kind of horrifying but ridiculous waterworks that might occur should he not comprehend I was occupying the porcelain throne.

He ultimately went back to the bedroom, and moments later, I slunk in after him, back into our bad juju bed, thinking how it was one of those weird nights where it’s almost like a fever dream.

“What happened in there?” I asked him.

For a moment, he would not say.

“I thought you were behind me.”

“What?” I asked, still worried about dementia of all things. “No, I was peeing.”

“It was the strangest thing. It was your voice, but it came from back in the bedroom, behind me.”

He didn’t say anything more, and I didn’t say anything more.

But now I’m wondering if I should go buy some sage. It seems a shame, after most of California burned a few months ago, to light anything more on fire. But also, I would like whatever this is that happens when Victim is brought up to go away.

*Husband thinks the peeing incident came before the phone call, which I distinctly do not remember, but kind of adds up with it being dark instead of lighter.

** Later I considered my history with phones going wonky as a sign of distress. I guess because I like to creep myself out rather than chalk things up to nonsense and move on with my life.