A Nest of Nightmares

She sounded defensive and apologetic. I tried to look reassuring. ‘You don’t have to. If it makes you uncomfort­able, don’t talk about it.’

‘No, that’s it, I do want to talk about it. But I don’t want to bore you. I don’t want to burden you with my old stories.’

‘I don’t mind at all,’ I said. ‘I’m happy to listen, if it helps you to talk.’

‘I think it might help. Well . . .’ She cleared her throat and took a sip of coffee, looking at me self-consciously over the cup. ‘One of my earliest memories is when I was about four. My mother was forty-nine and menopausal. She was crazy that year, more than usual. Any little thing could set her off, and when she got angry, she got violent. I can’t remember what it was I did, but it was probably something as minor as interrupting her while she was thinking – I got swatted for that more than once. At any rate, she started screaming. We were in the kitchen. She grabbed the carving knife and came for me, yelling that she’d cut off my hands so I couldn’t make any more trouble.’

‘Jane!’

She shrugged, smiling wryly. ‘I’m sure I remember the knife as bigger than it really was. And maybe she wouldn’t have hurt me at all. But what did I know? I was a little kid. And when somebody comes at you with a knife, the instinct is to get the hell away. She chased me all through the house. I finally hid in a cabinet and listened to her looking for me. One of my sisters got my father, and he managed to calm her down. But nobody knew where I was, and I was afraid to come out. I crouched there in the dark, beneath the bathroom sink, for hours, until I decided it was safe to come out. I hadn’t heard her screaming for a long time, but I was afraid that she might be tricking me and that I’d open the door to find her on the other side, the knife in her hand and a horrible smile on her face.’

‘Was she insane?’ I asked quietly.

‘No.’ The denial came too quickly. Jane paused and shrugged. ‘I don’t know. Define the term. Generally, she could cope. Was she really over the edge, or just trying to scare me into being good? It’s hard to decide even now. She was very unhappy at that time in her life, and she’s always been a very self-dramatizing person. We all have our own ways of dealing with life. What’s insane?’

‘I don’t know,’ I said, although I thought I did. ‘Was she violent toward you most of the time? Did you go in fear of your life?’

‘Sometimes. It was hard to know where you stood with her. That’s the worst thing for a kid. I couldn’t count on her, I didn’t know how to get the right responses. Sometimes she would be very loving, sometimes what I did would make her laugh. At other times the same thing would have her screaming at me. But more often she turned her anger against herself. She must have tried to kill herself – or at least she pretended to – half a dozen times. I remember her lying on the floor in the living room with an empty bottle of pills and a half-full bottle of vodka. She told us she was going to die, and she forbade us to call for help. We were supposed to sit there and watch her die, so that she could die looking at the faces she loved most. We didn’t dare move. Finally she seemed to have passed out, and Sue, my oldest sister, tried to call Dad. But the second her hand touched the telephone, my mother sat up and started screaming at her for being a disobedient bastard.’

‘Lord,’ I said, when Jane paused to sip coffee. I tried to imagine it, but could not quite achieve the child’s point of view. ‘How did you survive?’

‘Well, I blotted it out, mostly. I had my imaginary life.’ She smiled.

‘How do you mean?’

‘When you were a kid, weren’t there some things which seemed just as real to you as real life, although you knew they were different? The things you didn’t tell grown-ups about, although they were every bit as real and important – if not more so – as life at school and at home?’

‘You mean like pretend games?’ I asked. ‘I used to pretend – ’ And suddenly I remembered. ‘Of course! That’s who you remind me of.’ I laughed, feeling silly. ‘Jane. I had an imaginary friend named Jane.’

Jane’s smile was somewhat wistful. ‘What was she like?’

‘Oh, she was everything I wanted to be and wasn’t. Practical and neat instead of dreamy and disorganized. Her hair was dark and curly instead of straight and mousy. She read a lot, like me, and knew all kinds of wonderful games. She had my favourite name, of course.’ I shrugged and then laughed. ‘She was like a real person. She didn’t have any magical powers – except, of course, that she disappeared from time to time. She was actually rather like you, I guess. Isn’t that funny, that my imaginary friend should remind me of you?’