It's the curtains for me!

Mars gets up late, and offers grandma breakfast while I’m sitting there with her. He spends maybe 20 seconds in the kitchen and then runs off while Grandma is trying to tell him to stay and talk for a minute. He refuses and says he has to go out, and stumbles quickly away. Grandma kept yelling at him to stay and talk, but he didn’t listen.

By 11, his car is by the bar. I arrange an afternoon appointment with a lawyer to talk about legal possibilities.

Anna is over when Mars shows, about 1. Anna starts signaling that she needs to leave. She doesn’t want to stay when the drunk is around. They used to be friends, and they got along well. He used to bring her flowers, and candy, thanking her for keeping an eye on the house, and grandma. She says he’s changed for the worse. All the old family friends say that. Mars has a hamburger for grandma. He eats half the Kraut that Anna brought for grandma’s lunch, and scurries back to his room.
He gets some coffee for grandma, but when she asks for sugar he growls shoots back that she can eat it or not, he doesn’t care, and goes to his room. I’ve not seen him spend more than five minutes at a time out of that room, except when I try to get him to talk. And then, he mostly asks what I’m doing here until he ends up getting nasty.

In the afternoon I go out for my appointment, and when I get back Mars is in his room. I make dinner for grandma, and then I head out to get some WiFi. I get back around 8pm, and Mars is gone. I’ve got a ripping terrible headache, and take a sunset swim in the ocean. The water is perfect, and when I get back, I call up my brother and tell him what’s been going on. Afterwards, I start catching up on my reading the news and working on my writing.

Mars gets home about eleven, and comes right over to me. We chat a little, and he starts off really nicely, asking if I’m staying for the duration- aka, forever- and basically says that I should stay. But within a few minutes, he’s back to telling me to leave, that I’m annoying him. He keeps asking what I’m doing here, and I tell him. Every time that happens, he gets crankier. I’m cleaning up, I’m feeding grandma, I’m keeping her company. Each time, a notch in meanness. He starts obsessing over my belly, calling me obese. I guess it’s sometime he feels he can lord over me about. I should lose some weight. I tell him I made a choice- when I went back to school, I started exercising less, and put on weight. There was a consequence of my choice. He dwells on this, as if a foreign concept. He finally gets up, walks across the room to the end table and pulls out a handle of whiskey that he had hid there.

“Well”, he said, “I choose to go drink my whiskey!”

An hour later, he comes out and makes a sandwich in the kitchen. He is now noticeably drunk in a way he wasn’t before. He’s slurring his speech. He seems looser.

He comes over and sits on the couch again, and goes into the same old questions about what I’m doing here. There’s an edge to his voice. I get to the point where

I’m talking about cleaning, and mention how yesterday he was angry that I destroyed the couch, but now it’s back together and clean.

He looks up across the living room. “NOW YOU’VE GONE TOO FAR!” he yells. “WHAT DID YOU DO TO THE CURTAIN?”

I blink, taken aback, and answer, “Mars, I was cleaning over there. I opened the curtain. It’s open.”

He growls back, yelling about how I’ve destroyed it.

I pause, involuntarily cover my face with my hand, and I point. “It’s right there.”

He pauses, looks at it, and yells at me to put it back.

“No”. I inwardly remind myself that I’m in charge, and if he wants something done,
he needs to ask. Calm. Stay calm.

He stumbles over and pulls it tight, thankfully not falling over in the process. He retreats to his room, yelling at me to get lost.

But at this point, I’m not very calm. It’s the rush of conflict, and I’m not falling
back asleep anytime soon.

Twenty minutes later, grandma gets up to go to the bathroom. On the way out, she pauses and looks over, and then comes over.

She starts by muttering in Latvian, but English starts slipping in. “You need sleep. You big boy, eight full hours, no staying up playing games on computer…”

“Grandma, I’m up because Ilmars was yelling at me.” I repeat the point again, and it clicks and she starts nodding sagely. This is something she does extremely well. I explain simply what happened. She starts comforting me. She does her best to give me a hug over her walker.

“You know, you can not get mad. He is drunk, he is not in right mind. Best to ignore.” She continues giving me advice. The tone in her voice is full of sympathy, a little sadness. Her words are matter of fact: she makes it sound like we’re the grownups dealing with a nasty child. Don’t get upset, he doesn’t know better. “He is drunk, he is nasty. Does bad things to brain. He does not mean, not worth being upset.”

It works. I do feel better. She continues, telling me to go back to sleep and stop playing on the computer.

I came here to take care of grandma. I never expected her to help take care of me.