Mad

“Do you plan to wear that thing all summer?”

Dylan was walking past the foyer where his brother was sitting, slouched in a large captain’s chair that he had pulled up close to the window. His polished shoes propped up on the sill, he seemed lost in the patterns created by the rain on the window panes and seemed not to hear the question so Dylan stepped closer and waved the book in his hand through the younger boy’s view. Edwyn seamlessly turned his cool gaze upward and raised an eyebrow in silent question.

“What are you doing in here?” Dylan asked.

“What does it look like I’m doing?” Edwyn tossed back. He gave a half-hearted sweeping gesture towards the glass. “I’m watching it rain.”

Dylan looked at the window’s watercolour effect on the house’s front garden. He scrutinized the view, looking for whatever it was his brother found so compelling. Unable to see anything remarkable for himself he sighed and shook his head. “You’re really a queer one.”

“And you’re a bore.”

The insults were swallowed and forgotten by the empty air in the house. Edwyn looked back to the window. He enjoyed rainy days and the cool, dreamlike feeling they enveloped him in, more restful than any length of sleep. It was no space for deep thoughts or revelations, just lazy, unfinished ideas and relaxation. Or so it would have been if his brother would end his hovering and continue on his way. Instead he was playing the statue. The quiet sound of his breathing infected the staccato of the rain on the panes and grated on Edywn’s patience.

“What?” Edwyn finally spat, sitting up in his chair. Dylan was staring intently out the window. “What the hell are you looking at?”

Dylan didn’t answer, but instead made cautiously for the door. With an exasperated breath, Edwyn pushed from the chair to follow. The smell of wet air gushed into the doorway when welcomed. It spit and sprayed in on them and Edwyn immediately removed his new hat and stepped back to safely put it on the hall table.

“Is that Father?” Dylan asked when Edwyn rejoined him. Both boys shielded their eyes with their hands and squinted through the veil at the figure standing oddly alone on the corner across the street, completely unprotected from the elements and seemingly unconcerned. The details of his face were far too blurred to read through the rain that pecked at Edwyn’s glasses. Yet they both continued to stare at him, looking for some tell-tale sign of the man they recognized. Several rain-soaked minutes passed. It was a passing carriage that moved the play forward. The sound of the wheels and the clack of the steeds against the road seemed to wake the man from his drenched stupor. He seemed to shudder violently back to life, the wave starting at his feet and ending in a strangled squawk and a dramatic tossing aside of his briefcase. He seemed to lock eyes on the doorway where the boys stood and suddenly dashed towards it with wild possession.

“That is him,” Dylan observed as he closed in. A bit dazed by the fit and the wild look of fear that came into clear view on their father’s face, both boys simply stepped aside for him. He ran past them with no acknowledgement and disappeared up the stairs, his frantic breathing seeming to echo in his wake along with his wet footprints. The boys let their eyes circle their father’s trail, a questioning glance towards the other, at the briefcase still sitting in the rain across the way. Dylan handed off his book to Edwyn.

“I’ll go get his case. You should probably check on him. It looks like a bad one.”

Edwyn traded the book for his hat on the table and headed after his father up the stairs. In his panic Mr. Norman had left the third floor hall window open, the curtain flowing in abandon to the sounds of the weather. Edwyn climbed out onto the staircase and pulled the window down low behind him. He climbed the stairs quick in step and apprehensively in mind, hugging the side of the house. The attic window had been left open with the same wild disregard. He had little desire to go after his father at that moment and but for the rain threatening the material of his hat, he might have considered his options for several minutes. Throwing a momentary accusatory glare at the dark clouds he’d earlier been enjoying, he ducked inside.

Mr. Norman had never explicitly injured anyone during one of his fits, but the possibility had always held a certain plausibility with Edwyn and he proceeded with caution, listening closely for any telling sounds. All he could hear was the quick, hollow rapping of the rain on the roof. With not even a hint sunlight and not a single lamp lit, the attic was gripped in a gloom of dust and shadow. Edwyn squinted and tried to force his eyes to adjust.

“Father?”

“Close the window!”

The furious tone to his father’s voice caused him to freeze up. Mr. Norman, still dripping from rain water and with a wild and unfocused look in his eye crossed the room in three long, purposeful strides. Instinct drew Edwyn to cover his face, afraid his father might do something irrational and harm him. Instead, he was pushed aside and the window was slammed shut, a stack of books crumbling to the force of the action. Mr. Norman stared on after it as if something terrible might try to break through the panes still. His breathing was quick and uneven, his eyes wide behind their fogged frames. Edwyn dare not move and disturb him. Dylan was right; it was a bad one, perhaps the worst he’d ever shown and Edwyn was alone to witness it. He could not help but flinch when those leery eyes turned suddenly on him.

“Boy... it’s just you?”

Edwyn looked around his solitary self in confusion, unsure of how to respond.

“Is it just you!? Nothing followed you?”

“What... what would...? No... no one followed me... sir.”

Mr. Norman threw up his hands and crossed over to his desk and snatched up his pipe. It took him nearly a minute to load the leaf into it, his hands shaking so terribly. It took him nearly half as long to light the match and set the pipe. The amber glow against his face was eerie, but the first deep breath on it seemed to calm him down considerably. The smell of fresh smoke filled the space quickly, a bit different from the smell Edwyn was used to. Edwyn’s eyes just tracked his movements and waited until he collapsed into his chair, a damp bag of bones, all muscles given up. Edwyn watched him cautiously for a moment longer while his eyesight adjusted, observing the visible lessening tension with each puff. When Mr. Norman seemed sufficiently calmed, enough to settle his pipe hand on the arm rest, Edwyn set aside some books on a trunk across from the chair and took a seat.

“Are you feel more... normal again sir?” he asked.

Mr. Norman looked around the room, his eyes searching for something that he did not bother to explain. They came back to Edwyn and gave him the same scrutiny. Satisfied with whatever it was he did not see, he replaced his pipe between his teeth and gave a weary nod in answer to the question. The damp weight of his clothes seemed to occur to him for the first time and he squirmed free of his jacket and dropped at his feet. Kicking off his shoes, he muttered past the pipe, “I must have seemed a proper madman just then, no doubt.”

Edwyn shrugged and softly lied. “It wasn’t as bad as I thought it might be. For a moment I thought you might strike me but-”

“Heaven forbid! I don’t think I have it in me to harm anyone on my worst day, least of all my own son...” He seemed to be only partially certain of his own words.

“What was it that set you off today?” Edwyn asked, drawing up his feet and regarding his father over close knees. It was usually something seemingly innocent and innocuous that Edward Norman could see the greatest evils in - a clock, a teapot, a portrait on the wall. Each little fit had a strange little story to accompany it and Edwyn waited with no great anticipation for the latest tale of anxiety and hallucination.

Mr. Norman ran his kerchief across his forehead and thought. “I left work early. I had felt ill at ease all day and Mr. Dodge offered to see to my afternoon lecture so that I might go home. Nice new chap at the uni... no doubt someone else has told him of my pathetic condition and he saw fit to take pity on me... As for what it was that undid me... ”

Voice trailing off, his eyes seemed to go off into the distance after it. Against the ember’s glow in the pipe Edwyn could see his father’s eyes shift in terror at even the memory. His thin hands gripped at the arms of the chair and he took in several labourious, deep breaths, exhaling in small puffs of grey. It was a strange moment of quiet theater to watch, waiting for the plot to unravel. Edwyn found himself leaning forward, drawn in by the tension despite himself when the words would finally find his father again.

“I know I tend to see... things. I come off as crazy and I probably am. But it’s always been little things... little oddities, things out of place with how they should be. I’ve been writing them down, like strange dreams...” He gestured to his desk at a pile of notebooks and papers and Edwyn wondered if they were not all catalogings of the inventions of his father’s nervous mind. If so, the problem was worse than the whole family knew. He must have been far better at hiding it than anyone gave him credit for. “But today... today it wasn’t so small.”

Shuddering violently, he dropped his head into his hands. Pipe still in place, ash drifted like dirty, lazily lit snow onto his trouser leg. Mr. Norman made no move to brush it away and Edwyn cringed internally at the damage to the material.

Edwyn had been too young to remember on the eve when Mr. Norman first attempted to call the family into his delusions, but he knew the story. It had been a trivial enough item, a newspaper. Sitting down to breakfast, he had apparently reached for the paper and been arrested by something on the front page. Dylan had been old enough to recall Mr. Norman’s insistence of its abnormality, shaking it furiously in his wife’s face and muttering something about type and coloured pictures. After disposing of the paper and calming him down, they’d all carried on with a slightly awkward breakfast, Lillian having convinced her husband that he was just stressed and that it was lingering stardust in his eyes playing tricks. It didn’t take too long for this theory to be disproven. It happened with no pattern frequency, but he would be found eventually, having a staring contest with his shoes or accusing the lamp of being out of sorts.

“Not so small this time, you say?”

“No. No, not small at all,” Mr. Norman grumbled from behind his hands.

Edwyn thought a moment. “That old carriage?”

“I suppose that’s what you and your brother saw.” His face was ashen, his glasses sunk low on his nose when he leaned back and removed his pipe. For a moment he looked like a tired sage, his face was beleaguered and the lines in his face were deep, lonely stories. Edwyn felt a sweeping wind of pity blow through him. It was like a momentary revelation, looking at the man across from him, seeing him for the truly isolated creature that he was. Edwyn felt disconnected from much of the world around him, but he chose his vantage point on the outside much of the time. His father hadn’t asked for nor created the far-removed ledge he existed on. If Edwyn had been more prone to empathy and compassion, he might have taken a moment to really reach out to his father, but he chose not to analyze or cling to unfamiliar pang. As if he could sense the feelings playing out behind his son’s eyes, Mr. Norman smiled sadly.

“I’m afraid,” he admitted quietly. His voice quavered as he said aloud for the first time the thoughts that ate away at him in the late hours. “I’m afraid so much of the time. I’m sure everyone can see it. When it was just the little things... I could try to ignore it. But it just keeps getting worse. I’ve started to see people as strange visions of themselves, shadows I hardly recognize. You might be one of those people tomorrow, or your brother, or mother. I fear waking up one day to a reflection that isn’t the one I remember. Can you even imagine? The world I’m supposed to know is just breaking apart piece by piece... and it terrifies me.”

“I... honestly don’t know what to say about it all sir.”

“No, of course not... You can’t see it, so I really must be going mad, yes?” Mr. Norman cast a glance over towards his tobacco bag on his desk and shook his head. “I really feel like I could use a drink.”

Edwyn lifted his head. “You don’t drink...”

Mr. Norman choked on a weak laugh. “I’ve been thinking of taking it up for about the past ten years. At least then I could blame these strange spells on some vile poison wreaking havoc on my conscious.” He took off his glasses and began to clean them, but stopped, regarded them through his hazy natural vision. “I suppose I could just stop wearing them,” he mumbled to himself. “That could solve the problem just as well. Get myself a cane and just resign myself to the life of a blind man.”

This is truly ridiculous, Edwyn thought to himself. And thanks to Dylan for abandoning me up here. Not a knock or any other sound that relief was on its way could been heard from below. The rain continued to beat a muffled, staccato overhead. His father continued to mutter and bemoan, but the words were beginning to fade in and out. Edwyn felt trapped, surrounded by his father’s gloom. The momentary lapse of heart was over. He dropped his knees and stood up, beginning to wander the book stacks while his father continued to chatter with growing incoherence. His eyes flickered back and forth between the older man and the stack of notebooks piled upon the desk. Their contents were beginning to beckon his curiosity.

“And your mother... suppose she decided to leave me... No doubt she wants to. I’m sure the thought has crossed her mind many a time.”

“Mmm.” Edwyn ran his finger over a dusty book spine

“But perhaps that would be best. She is such a radiant woman... and I’m nothing but a continually larger problem to deal with. I’m a pathetic madman. It’s a wonder she hasn’t had me committed...”

Edwyn had thought the same thing before and it sounded eminently practical at that moment. Probably because then you’d be neighboring with Aunt Lizzie and she’d have to be in the same building as her sister to visit you. It’s just easier to keep you here in the attic and continue to entertain the fantasy that she has always been the only Barden daughter. However, if the problem was larger than they knew, if it continued to get worse and his outbursts became louder and more public, she might eventually give in. But while Mr. Norman kept what he could to himself and spent most of his time locked away in his attic, it wasn’t any real trouble. Friends and neighbors found him a bit odd and offered her friendly pity for putting up with his ‘eccentric’ ways. The truth was simply that, that it hadn’t become something unmanageable and socially damning, yet.

“I’ve wondered about committing myself... if it would be more a help or a bother to her,” Mr. Norman continued to chatter. Edwyn glanced back at him, cloaking his look of exasperation with a book, edging closer to the desk. The care was hardly necessary. It seemed to him that his father was barely aware of him. The chatter was more static than address. With half-hearted stealth, Edwyn snatched one of the notebooks from the top of a pile and slid it inside his coat. It stuck out from his narrow frame, but he did not let it bother him. He was terribly curious to see what the renderings of the mad might look like.

A rap at the window set Mr. Norman’s body rigid in his chair. Edwyn thought he heard the pipe crack under the tense grip of his father’s jaw. He sighed and readjusted his grip on the stolen thoughts beneath his jacket, carefully walking over to the window and peering behind the thick curtain. Dylan’s blank blue eyes blinked back at him. About time, Edwyn thought.

“It’s just Dylan sir,” he said as he let his brother into the attic.

The knock seemed to have set all of Mr. Norman’s pieces into disarray for the afternoon. His voice had abruptly left him. He took to his feet like a foal walking for the first time to confirm this assessment. In the brief exposure of cloudy daylight he was both a haggard old man and a small boy. The lines of age were deep in shadow and his frame was as sunken as ever. His face was that of a frightened child resigned to face whatever might be hiding beneath his bed at night but certainly not under any confidence. Seeing his first son did little to settle his appearance, but he did exhale with deep relief and release the deathly grip on his poor pipe. Dylan lifted his successfully retrieved briefcase with a bland half-smile. With no strength of lung to waste on words, Mr. Norman replaced his pipe and gave a weak nod before falling back into his chair, disappearing from either boys’ sight but for that familiar trail of smoke. Edwyn slid his feet closer to the open window, setting up for escape.

“Your turn,” he whispered towards Dylan, sliding through the gloomy cage’s only exit before having to entertain any kind of protest. The rain had tempered down to a drizzle, less interesting to Edwyn and more a reflection of the wretched creature slumped over in the attic that had somehow been dealt by fate to him as a father. And his dreadfully uninteresting brother...

By the time he had reached his own room his head was abuzz with a not unfamiliar mix of complaints and little hatreds for his family. His hat full of quips and annoyances, he removed it along with his jacket and hung them beside his bureau where they belonged. Fixing his hair in the mirror calmed him down and he sat down on his bed and picked up the notebook he had pinched. It smelled like a cigar box and the paper had lost all its crispness from being over-handled by nervous hands. There was a coffee stain warping the bottom right corner of the whole volume. The careless way in which it had been handled and the resulting appearance of the simple item might have otherwise offended Edywn’s sensibilities, but this impulse was traded away by his interest in its content.

Edwyn spent the next hour skimming through the hastily scratched notes, smears of ink and ash, and strange sketches. The notes were rarely legible and hardly easier to follow than the words that came straight from the author’s mouth. The sketches were really the only thing that truly and consistently interested him through the pages. Where the man could hardly form a sentence verbally or apparently in script, the drawings seemed painstakingly laboured. Some pieces had been damaged in part, but where detail was still clear, it was vividly attended. From a man who’s scholarly field had long been history, there was an artist’s hand evident in the work, unlike any Mr. Norman had ever been credited with. And they were curious pictures, things that seemed vaguely familiar and yet far from anything Edwyn had ever actually seen. They were strangely engrossing and as he flipped through them, they seemed to take up a life of their own, thoughts of the author seemed to fading away almost entirely. The book was shaping up in his mind to be a delicious secret that demanded to be shown to someone else. And Edwyn knew exactly who he wanted to share it with first.