Land of Last Chances

by Joan Cohen

  “Here’s my problem, Jeanne. I agreed to work that evening so I could free up one of our caregivers for the holiday. Hey, you could come to Dawning Day. I’m serious. We always need volunteers, especially at this time of year. We wouldn’t be in the Alzheimer’s wing at all, if that upsets you, and you could bring Bricklin.”

  Jeanne looked out her large living room windows. She’d loved how much sunlight filled these rooms when she’d decided to buy this condo, but at moments like this, with a sky the color of an old aluminum pot, gloom invaded. Dawning Day Assisted Living was an unappealing holiday destination, but solitude on Thanksgiving, this particular Thanksgiving . . . She’d see her neighbors’ windows lit up and the cars of their guests parked everywhere, even outside her front door. “Okay, I’ll do it. Thank you—I think.”

  Maggie laughed. “I think you think too much. We’ll have fun. You’ll see.”

  Under the Dawning Day portico, Jeanne snapped her umbrella open and closed, spraying water from its surface onto the grass. Bricklin’s leash was looped over her wrist, and he strained against it to avoid the shower. The previous day had been gorgeous, which Jeanne supposed was a blessing for all those traveling on the busiest travel day of the year. The fastest speed her windshield wipers could whip back and forth had been barely adequate to the downpour as she’d driven toward Dawning Day. Such dreary weather would have made for a depressing afternoon to be trapped at home alone.

  Even Bricklin had been reluctant to go out, but his tail began wagging as soon as they entered the lobby, and the receptionist’s eyes lit up. When she saw Bricklin was an amputee, she scowled. “Poor baby. That’s just wrong.” Bricklin bobbed his way around her desk and began nuzzling her lap as though it were his job to reassure her. As she petted his wet fur gingerly, she complimented Jeanne on her courage taking to the road in such wretched weather. “Aren’t you the woman who was here the day of Maggie’s accident? Should I call her for you?”

  By the time Maggie appeared, Bricklin was surrounded by admirers, and Jeanne began feeling like a local celebrity. The residents wanted to know why he had only three legs and for how long he’d been an amputee. Could he still run? Was he happy? Jeanne had wondered what she’d talk about with the elderly denizens of Dawning Day, but Bricklin was leading the way.

  “I don’t know why I invited you,” Maggie said. “Bricklin’s fine on his own and far more entertaining.”

  “I can be entertaining,” Jeanne protested. Maggie’s eyebrow rose. “Okay, I used to be. It’s been a while.”

  Maggie shepherded everyone into the lounge, where a flutist was getting ready to perform. Beside her sat a paunchy man with sparse white hair, tuning a violin and adjusting a handkerchief between his double chin and his instrument. “She’s famous,” Maggie whispered. “That’s her father.”

  The flutist introduced herself and her father: “Although, of course, he needs no introduction to you. What you may not know, however, is that he is accomplished on several stringed instruments and used to be the conductor of the Buffalo Symphony.” He bowed slightly in his chair and smiled at his daughter. “Ready, Dad?”

  They began the promised Fauré Pavane, and, as they played, Jeanne noted the effect on the gathered residents. Faint smiles, dreamy looks, and expressions of outright pleasure appeared on every face. They actually look younger, she thought. Bricklin, who lay on the floor beside her, radiated canine contentedness.

  Father and daughter performing together—how lucky they’d been to share their love of music over the years. Imagine the bond. It would have sustained them even through the rocky years of adolescence. The Pavane enveloped Jeanne in its poignant strains. She missed her father, a man who hadn’t lived long enough for her to love. How sad that her child would grow up with the same hole in his or her life.

  Several minutes into the piece, the violinist faltered, and after a couple of restarts the flutist stopped playing. “Dad, that was wonderful, but I think we’ve played enough. Let’s not wear out our welcome.” Jeanne winced at the painful scene, the father’s embarrassment at failing to perform what he’d known by heart, his humiliation at his daughter’s caring but patronizing tone. Only the swelling applause diminished his look of consternation. A staffer yelled out, “Bravo!” and others followed.

  When did they make the switch, Jeanne wondered, to daughter parenting father? Did something happen—a fall, an illness—or did his faculties diminish bit by bit? The daughter probably wondered if it were her imagination that her dad was slipping. The father lied to himself about his lapses, then covered them up until he lost track of how frequent they were.

  She turned to Maggie. “Is he courageous or just too foolish to know he can no longer perform?”

  “We want them to do everything they can, even if they can’t do it as well as in the past. It helps that the other residents are supportive.”

  Jeanne thought about Jake and his PTSD. “Maybe it’s less than helpful to remember the past.”

  “Part of aging is learning to live with all kinds of loss. Resilience and a sense of humor help them survive.”

  How lucky Fay Bridgeton had been. At the same age as some of these Dawning Day residents, she’d been able to prepare a Thanksgiving feast in her own home. As methodical and accomplished in the kitchen as she’d been as an accountant, she charted the meal ahead of time: ingredients, cooking time, pots, serving pieces. Each dish was ready to come to the table at the correct moment, and it didn’t matter if she were cooking for friends or just Jeanne. The preparation and precision were the same, culinary debits and credits in balance.

  Although Fay had shown no signs of cognitive decline, Jeanne wanted to believe she would have been supportive. Who’d be there for Jeanne? Her child? Would her child resent her for knowing she’d fall ill and sticking him or her with the problem?

  “Since I won’t be able to sit down, would you mind if I put you at a table with three residents?” Maggie was standing, and Jeanne could see the parade of wheelchairs and metal walkers with their incongruous tennis ball feet that had started toward the dining room. Maggie lowered her voice. “The fourth person at the table died yesterday, and I hate to have that empty seat staring at the other three on Thanksgiving. We often switch seating around, what with people moving to the Alzheimer’s wing and new residents arriving, but this death was so sudden, we haven’t had time to regroup. You’d be a stabilizing influence.”

  Jeanne did mind, but she couldn’t say no. She hoped she wouldn’t have to carry the conversation and regarded with trepidation her three tablemates as Maggie introduced her. Two were women. Marta, to Jeanne’s left, looked sixtyish and was in a wheelchair. Rose, sitting cattycorner, was surely ninety. Her expression was lively in spite of her watery blue eyes, half-eclipsed by sagging lids. The bald gentleman to Jeanne’s right rose stiffly. “Max Keystone,” he identified himself before Maggie had the chance, and he insisted on pulling out Jeanne’s chair.

  “Be careful,” said Rose. “He’s a terrible flirt.”

  “That’s okay. It’s a little late in the game,” Jeanne responded wryly, resting her hand on her belly.

  Maggie laughed. “Looks like you’ll fit in here. Please excuse me. I don’t get my turkey till later, so don’t eat it all!”

  Marta asked Jeanne how she knew Maggie. As reluctant as Jeanne was to discuss Weight Watchers, no subject was a more natural icebreaker for women, even of disparate ages. Max conformed to Rose’s description of him, complimenting them on their hourglass shapes. “Well,” he looked at Jeanne. “Maybe not yours. May I be so bold as to inquire when you’re expecting?”

  They clucked over Jeanne and extolled the joys of parenthood and the even greater rewards of grandparenthood. Jeanne saw Marta looking at her ringless left hand. “The father’s missing in action?” she asked.

  “Marta, shush,” Rose chided. “That’s how they do it now. Girls are very independent.” Marta pushed away the fruit cup appetizer that had been placed in front of each of them.
“I wasn’t judging her. Better to be rid of him now than to believe you can depend on him. My husband waited till my MS was bad enough to cramp his style before he took off.” Marta looked away, and Rose squeezed her shoulder.

  They must have heard this story before, probably many times. Marta was still a striking woman, with green eyes and a complexion fair enough for her auburn hair color to have once been natural. Jeanne could taste her bitterness. A degenerative illness had reduced her options, and a disloyal partner had robbed her of the rest. Dawning Day might be in Jeanne’s future too. Would she be at a table like this until her memory lapses, cognitive changes, and odd behavior caused another Rose, Marta, and Max to shun her? Who would decide when it was time to join the residents who lived beyond the secure door?

  “What type of work do you do, Jeanne?” Max asked.

  Jeanne became animated describing her work at Salientific but stopped when she noticed Rose’s vague expression. “I hope I’m not boring you.”

  “Not at all,” Max insisted. “Never realized marketing folks could be so quantitative.” He seemed enthralled with the concept that risk management was integral to marketing strategy. “Thought all of you were creative types—ads, brochures, and the like.”

  He’d been an actuary, he told her proudly, and had outlived the predictions on all his charts. “You ladies have a distinct advantage, you know, when it comes to longevity.” Max informed them he had a master’s in probability and statistics, a credential that impressed Jeanne and took them further down the road of statistical analysis in business decisions.

  Jeanne almost forgot Marta and Rose until she noticed they were focused on the lobby. Bricklin had moved from his spot and sat in the archway to the dining room, staring at the plate of turkey just deposited on Jeanne’s placemat. “Is he going to join us?” Rose asked.

  “He’s too well trained to beg, but he’s not above gazing longingly at my food.” Jeanne put half a dozen small pieces of turkey on her bread-and-butter plate and carried it out to the lobby, where she deposited it beside the water bowl the receptionist had provided.

  After the instant it took Bricklin to inhale Jeanne’s treat, she hugged him and planted a noisy kiss on top of his head. “Got to obey the public health laws, boy. You stay out here.” Though ignorant of health regulations, Bricklin knew “stay” and, with a mournful glance at Jeanne, lay down beside the desk.

  When Jeanne returned to the table, Rose was nodding. “I can see from how much you love that dog you’re sure to be a good mother.”

  Jeanne was about to reply that her boyfriend had made the same observation but stopped herself when she realized she could refer to Vince as nothing more than the baby’s probable father. “Most people wouldn’t describe me as the mothering type, and my love didn’t do Bricklin any good when he got sick. I couldn’t protect him from cancer.”

  “Unfortunately, love doesn’t protect anyone. If it did, all our children would be safe.” She looked down and rubbed her fingers back and forth on the edge of the table. “Nothing to be done about that but not to have them, and then where would the world be?”

  Maybe the world would be better off, Jeanne thought. She could protect her child by not having him.

  Marta tossed her hair. “Forget protection—most you can hope for in this world is a little support—if you’re lucky.”

  Max seemed lost in thought, chewing his green bean casserole with his mouth open. Jeanne looked away.

  “Listen to me, young lady.” He touched her arm. “Guarantees you get in heaven. I know data. I used to swear by risk analysis, but after you fill in the numbers and draw your conclusions, how do you use the information? No—such—thing—as—objectivity.” He jabbed his forefinger to emphasize each word. “You give more weight to some numbers than others and make them support whatever conclusions you want. Hell, most of us just come to the conclusions first and find the numbers we like to support them after. Just watch the politicians—masters at it.” He sat back, triumphant.

  Rose rolled her eyes. “Max,” Marta chided, “leave her alone and finish your turkey. You’re the one who should have been the politician—always making speeches.”

  “More important,” Rose said, “Max is holding up the pumpkin pie.”

  No such thing as objectivity. Jeanne smiled politely at the old man, finding his conclusion as unpalatable as the dry stuffing in her mouth. She pushed her plate back, and a smiling server whisked away their dishes.

  If the pumpkin pie was homemade, the home was some catering company’s institutional kitchen. No one seemed to mind but Max, who took one bite and laid down his fork. “No comparison to my wife’s. She used fresh pumpkin.” Decaf coffee and tea arrived, prompting Max to circulate his teabag once, scoop it onto a teaspoon, and wrap the string around it to squeeze out the remaining moisture. “Ever hear the expression ‘reading the tea leaves’?”

  Marta sighed audibly, but Max was undeterred. “Same with ‘seeing the handwriting on the wall’ or ‘sniffing out the truth.’ Just because you have the data doesn’t mean you’ll let yourself see it, much less draw the right conclusion. People use their gut to take them the rest of the way. Human nature.”

  Why did people say to trust your gut, heart, or any other body part, when it made a lot more sense to trust your brain? No benefit in arguing the point. Jeanne waved her white napkin at Max. “I surrender.”

  “Now, Max, you stop it,” Rose scolded. “Don’t mind him, dear. He does that to all of us.”

  Jeanne looked around for Maggie, who was nowhere in sight, but she could see Bricklin, still curled up by the receptionist’s desk, and felt a sudden urge to lie down beside him and bury her face in his lush coat. It wasn’t that Max had disturbed her so much as that everything happening in her life seemed to have unmoored her from her perennially stable footings. Bricklin was her refuge and, yes, the focus of her maternal feelings. She might as well admit Vince and Rose were right about that.

  When the meal was finished, Rose urged Jeanne to accept an extra slice of pie to take home. Jeanne accepted the soggy, napkin-wrapped dessert so graciously proffered, because Rose subscribed to the “eating for two” theory of pregnancy and insisted. Gently placing the pie in the top of her open bag, Jeanne joined the exodus from the dining room.

  Bricklin had anointed himself a one-man receiving line and was enjoying the procession of stroking hands, his tail thumping with enthusiasm. When Jeanne reached him, the line stalled, as two women tried simultaneously to tell her about their childhood pets. Not until Jeanne felt a tug on her arm did she realize Bricklin had his muzzle in her purse like a horse at a feed bag. At her “leave it,” he withdrew his head, although the shredded napkin hanging from his mouth was all that remained of the pie.

  Maggie, who had just emerged from the Alzheimer’s wing, came up behind Jeanne, laughing. “Uh-oh, Bricklin, I have a feeling your Mom is about to take you home.”

  Marta wheeled her chair alongside. “I thought you said he didn’t beg.”

  “Technically, he didn’t,” Jeanne said. “He helped himself—and just when I was beginning to think he should be a regular here.”

  “He should—and so should you. Look around. Everyone’s enjoying the show.” Maggie hugged her and retrieved Jeanne’s coat from the closet. “You both made quite an impression.”

  “I got a lecture from Max on the dubious value of risk analysis. Didn’t realize I’d be taking pointers from a former actuary.”

  Maggie’s voice dropped to a whisper. “He’s a brilliant man, Jeanne, but he was never an actuary. He taught philosophy at Wellesley. When he makes stuff up, he’s confabulating, although some people refer to it as ‘honest lying’ or ‘false memories.’ It’s an Alzheimer’s symptom. Eventually, we’ll have to move him to the other wing.”

  Jeanne was stunned. “So convincing. . . .” They hugged once more before she stepped out into a fierce northwest wind. The temperature must have dropped fifteen degrees since she’d arrived. No lon
ger wet with rain, the shiny asphalt was slippery beneath her feet. She walked gingerly to her car, holding tight to Bricklin’s leash and mulling over Max’s words.

  No such thing as objectivity. She’d studied perception in college—Plato? Berkeley? Kant? Who could remember that stuff? Shivering, she pulled her coat more tightly about her. Everything subject to interpretation. Crazy, confabulating old coot.

  CHAPTER 10

  Dreading her neuropsychological test made no sense, but Jeanne couldn’t control her racing heart as she entered the Fenway Medical Center. Her intestines shifted in a way that foretold gas. Not on the elevator, please. Her innards shifted again as she joined the others turning to face the closing elevator doors.

  Oh God, it’s a kick. While her eyes were fixed on the changing floor numbers, she felt another internal bump and looked around, half expecting other faces to register these alerts from within. Her fellow passengers were oblivious as she placed her hand on her stomach, which seemed necessary to acknowledge her baby’s communication.

  Her first impulse was to call Vince, but that was not an option. After her evaluation, she would try to reach Maggie. Restless baby, please don’t kick me during this test. She took three deep breaths in an effort to calm herself.

  In high school and college, she’d approached most tests of her cognitive abilities with confidence. To be over the hill in her forties scared her. That anxiety blocks memory was one of Jeanne’s newly acquired bits of information. It wouldn’t do to flunk her test for no other reason than nerves, and what about pregnancy brain? Was that real?

  The waiting room was spare, but Jeanne had barely perched herself on an unforgiving vinyl loveseat before the neuropsychologist came out to get her. The conference room where she was to spend the next few hours had upholstered swivel chairs around a blond wood table, and between the comfortable seating and the doctor’s warm smile, she felt blood begin to circulate again in her clammy hands.