The night before we were to leave, Ash and I sat with David by that same fireplace and talked about Ellen. Robbie was there, but as quiet as he was, he didn’t say much. We forgot about him except when he put another log on the fire, poured the hot water for more tea, or offered honey and lemon. He always made sure his father was comfortable, and toward the end of our conversation, he stirred something into David’s tea that made my brother grimace, but he sipped without comment.
“The boy thinks he can keep me living longer than I should,” David grumbled with an affectionate look toward Robbie’s direction.
Ash grinned. He and Robbie had a lot in common.
“Drink your tea,” came the gentle rebuke from the kitchen.
“Tell me about Ellen while I drink this stuff,” David said. “I should make the boy drink it. Tastes terrible.”
“Didn’t Bill call? I’d just assumed—” I broke off when he shook his head. “Bill didn’t have much information, but Ellen’s body was found several miles from where they think she started walking.”
“In a crevasse?”
“Yes, we were fortunate they could find her. People vanish in those mountains.”
“The cancer had come back, you said?”
“She went there to consult with a spiritual healer. I can’t decide if she was desperate or courageous, but I think she knew that the cancer would kill her this time.”
“Did she really think Bill would leave her because she was taking too long to die?”
Ash’s face went solemn.
“Ellen wasn’t one to endure. She wouldn’t let me help,” I said and turned to confront David’s judgment. He was like Dad. He would tell me I should have tried harder.
“Can understand that.” His gaze was on the fire. “It wears you down, cancer does. Any illness does.” He wasn’t thinking of me at all, but of the disease that held his body hostage.
“I think she didn’t know what to do, and no alternative pleased her. If she lived, she was convinced Bill would leave her and she’d be alone. If the church ladies were right, she got cancer because she was evil. And the graduate student side of her, the side based in logic and reason, said God’s wrath was humanity’s wishful thinking. Any way she looked at it, Ellen felt doomed. That’s why she ran.”
“Ellen didn’t want anything to hurt any longer,” Robbie said before he turned to his father. “Uncle Dart’s sick, Dad.”
David’s eyes closed briefly as he were in pain, then went intent upon me.
“I’m fine. Just a little overworked with what I have to do for Salzburg.”
“He’s an empath, Dart.” David’s warning told me not to dismiss Robbie’s insight.
I used to worry about Robbie. People like him either learned to control their ability or the gift drove them mad. When I felt the gentle touch inside my head, I turned to him. Robbie returned my gaze and the heat inside my brain subsided.
Trying to heal you.
How’s it going?
And before he could answer, I shuttered the mental link between us because, like Ellen, I thought it better that I not know and still have hope than to be certain. Ash felt my withdrawal and reached for my hand. His warm fingers enclosed my trembling ones. I couldn’t bear to know if the contagion was too established. Doctors called this reaction denial, and I guessed that’s what I had. But I’d been raised to face what I feared. I couldn’t keep up the pattern of facing it, then ignoring it, of acknowledging it, of discounting the stupid apathy, the complex pattern seeking, the withdrawal.
“Robbie is tuned into earth and human energies neither one of us nor most of humanity can access,” David said to Ash. “Around Hawthorne, he’s got a reputation for finding water.”
“That’s a good talent to have.”
I met Robbie’s gaze. His troubled eyes seemed lost, and he didn’t understand why I had pushed him away. I didn’t know how to explain.
“The healing is still a latent power, but we first noticed it several years ago when a calf came down sick. Robbie spent the night with the animal and in the morning, while Robbie here was sound asleep in front of this fireplace, that calf managed to pretty much destroy the place, he had so much energy.”
Why won’t you let me help, Uncle Dart?
“Dart has moments when she loses herself in patterns,” Ash said, his hand still clasping mine. “She’s had two or three episodes of that, of forgetting if she’s eaten, and now, I’ve noticed, of apathy. She used to outwork every colleague, but now, the work is picking up and she’s holding her own, not excelling.
“She’s keynoting a prestigious summit in Salzburg. The semester is almost over, and I’ve done what I can for her next semester, given her a course release, a graduate student, but the workload will intensify as the summit draws near. She wants to hold on.”
“You forgot Brown Bear,” I said.
Ash frowned. I patted his hand and turned toward the fire. If I didn’t have to look at anyone, that would make it easier.
“I’m sleeping with Brown Bear.”
“Brown Bear?” David asked.
“Robbie’s cast-off bear that I gave him when he was little.”
“So that’s how he’s connected to you,” David mused.
“Robbie?”
“It’s the bear,” David said. “He had that toy for a few days, carried the thing with him everywhere, kissed and hugged him, before I acted the fool and made you take Brown Bear back home with you.”
“This bear?” I held up Brown Bear and Robbie smiled, reaching across his dad to smooth the fur.
“The little guy cried and cried,” David said.
“Connection,” Robbie said. “That’s how I know that you’re ill.”
“It’s not stress, is it?”
“It’s better when you’re calmer. Let me back in, Uncle Dart, I can help.”
“It won’t hurt you, being inside my head with whatever this is?”
He shook his head and his eyes grew distressed, then with hesitancy and intent, he leaned closer and one forefinger traced the path of destruction high across my forehead. I closed my eyes and leaned my head back against the chair.
“Can you take away the compulsion to touch other people’s hair? It makes them very uncomfortable, especially those of African-American descent. My friends understand, but what if I do this do a complete stranger?”
David groaned.
“Yeah, I know, very inappropriate behavior. Nothing would get me in trouble faster in academe. The compulsion is real, and I’ve tried to control it.” I remembered the time I’d touched Lea’s hair and the numerous times I’d patted Susan’s hair as I went by where she sat or stood. She’d accepted it as something a friend would do, the connection similar to touching one’s arm, or shoulder to get their attention, but the impulse had been more frequent of late. Susan had begun to suspect that what she’d thought was just connection might be driven by something more.
“When my symptoms first presented, I thought it was Alzheimer’s and, of course, I’m a researcher, so I read the research and the first-person accounts, and it became clear that my symptoms were different from those of people suffering from Alzheimer’s. I wrote it off as stress. Then, as Ash told you, the compulsions got worse. I can feel my motivation ebbing, the joy I always had about my job disappearing. That other self within me, she’s the one I try to listen to now, but the compulsions are too strong sometimes.”
“But the very fact that you know and are capable of understanding what is happening to you, that would indicate that you don’t have this disease.”
David’s denial was as strong as mine.
“Ash’s first wife died of FTD. He can tell you FTD presents differently in each individual. I’ve used my brain all my life, trained it, and developed my intellect. Robbie knows, and now I know that the corruption is there. I’m compensating for the corruption, or at least I think I am, but FTD is killing my brain, David. I’m dying.”
“Not for a while yet, Dart
.” Again, Ash reached for my hand. “With the proper diet, exercise,”—Robbie was nodding—“we’ll beat this thing.”
Ash was also in denial.
“You’re talking yourself into this, Dart,” David said. “Go see a doctor.”
“I already know what this is, David.”
“No, you don’t. Robbie could be wrong.”
I turned to my nephew. “Are you wrong when you dowse for water, Robbie?”
“Never.”
“And he’s not wrong about this or about your diabetes.”
“If I go first, I’ll save you a place.” And there David was in my moment of need, the brother I’d missed my entire life.
“She’ll go back to Dr. McCloud,” Ash reassured David. “I’ll see to it.”
Robbie visited me in my dreams through Brown Bear that night and every night after that. He brought his healing magic with him.
SIXTEEN
AFTER WE RETURNED to North Carolina from Illinois, I went to see Dr. McCloud. He sat down and took my hands in his. “Dart, we’ve known one another for twenty years. Let me be frank. Research can be a pesky thing. Medical students are convinced they have the most god-awful diseases because they read and think, yes, I have that symptom, and that one, and oh my God, I have cancer.”
“I don’t have cancer, but I’m disappearing.”
Not so much. Robbie’s massaging your brain cells.
And that was true, I’d been feeling better since coming back from the farm, but according to my research, FTD could plateau as the brain compensated for its loss, then plummet, then plateau, sort of like descending stairs and resting every third step.
“Of course you don’t. You think you have frontotemporal dementia.” He considered for a bit. “Tell me about the different types of FTD.”
And I began to regurgitate all the facts I’d gathered, when he cut me off and said, “Stand up while you’re doing that, would you, and try to balance on one foot.” I did as he requested and didn’t pause when he started to time how long I could keep my balance. It stretched to twenty seconds before I started wobbling and then to twenty-five before I put my foot down, just as I finished up with, “Behavioral variant FTD is the type I think I’m developing.”
“And why is that? And stand on the other foot, would you please?”
“Apathy, no drive, little emotion—anger and fear, yes, but not embarrassment or guilt. I ate three slices of cheesecake and didn’t remember eating any of them, I find myself searching for patterns, and I have what you medical folks label a compulsive and ritualistic behavior—I have to pet Brown Bear and touch hair.”
This time I managed ten seconds, not long enough, and he and I both knew it.
“What kind of hair?”
“Tabooed hair, the patterns of light get lost within the kinkiness but they lurk there. I have to find them.”
“Ritualistic behavior is a symptom of FTD,” he agreed. “The symptom is also related to aging, stress, and exhaustion. Sometimes it is the preparation stage for a career change, or a symptom of burnout, or, in highly productive people like you, contemplation of insight.”
“In other words, my wanting to lie around all the time may be anxiety because I’m procrastinating about preparing for Salzburg? I’m surprised you have a job with that diagnosis.”
“Didn’t you just get back from Illinois?”
“Family.”
“Creative spurts, or rebellion, or any number of things require contemplation and time to let things simmer.”
“I don’t feel like myself.”
“Smithers in archeology is interested in the fall of Rome, and Hastings in biology could care less because his snails didn’t have anything to do with the fall of Rome. Poverty’s not that sexy, you know. People have to work themselves up to be indignant about it. But then you’ve noticed that, haven’t you?”
“I don’t find solving poverty to be a priority anymore. I’m coming to accept that poverty is too big for me to beat, too big for humanity to overcome.”
“Professors can’t do what they do without spending immense amounts of time alone and inside their heads trying to find the pattern of things.”
“You think I’m exhausted, overwhelmed, and burned out on poverty?”
“FTD robs people of values, emotions—that’s why it’s sometimes called social dementia.”
“My dad believed that hard work overcame any obstacle.”
“But that’s not true of poverty or frontotemporal dementia,” he said. “Crap happens, and the resulting chaos takes away comfort, security, and hope. We like to pretend that chaos doesn’t exist, but what we really don’t like is looking at it.”
“The ones who have it made, like me, say ‘there but for the grace of God go I.’ Rather smug to believe that, isn’t it?” I looked at him, hoping he hadn’t noticed my vulnerability. “Maybe I’m bipolar, schizophrenic. . . .” I stopped as he reached for my hand. He leaned closer to me.
“Tell me, is it wrong for a husband to cheat on his wife?”
“Of course it is.”
“Do you laugh when someone falls down and hurts himself?”
“I don’t like reality TV.”
“Is it wrong to eat three pieces of cheesecake?”
“I didn’t eat three pieces.”
“You said you did.”
“My friends said I did. I don’t remember doing that.”
“What about reaching out and touching someone inappropriately?”
“Lea is a friend.” But I knew I hadn’t been able to control that impulse. So had Lea.
“You were in a professional setting.”
“Don’t forget the compulsions to continue doing it.”
“Well?”
“Yes, it’s wrong . . . and I didn’t care. I understand what is right and wrong, or at least I do now—who knows what I’ll be like in the next five minutes.” I looked at him and I know he saw the dismay on my face. “It just doesn’t seem to matter. One of the case studies in Lea’s research is about an FTD patient who liked to open mailboxes. She said ‘federal offense’ every time she opened one, and she’d been warned, many times, not to do it.”
I didn’t want to become like that.
“If I were to guess, Dart, I would say you might be in the very, very early stages of FTD.”
“But you said—”
“I know.” He took my hand. “No definitive test but based on the narrative and observation, maybe. We’ll need to do more blood work and testing to measure how your brain is functioning.”
“I failed, didn’t I?” That troubled me as much as the diagnosis. I was an academic. We don’t like to fail tests. “You tricked me.” I had expected to be asked to remember my address, or relate the conversation we had at the beginning of this visit.
“No trick. A test. FTD displays with people in their early fifties, although the range is from forties to mid-sixties. You’re showing very mild symptoms now, and you’re in your early sixties. If you weren’t so intelligent, my guess is you would never have noticed anything wrong. Certainly, the people around you haven’t said anything. It’s very unusual for the patient to pick up on the decline by themselves.”
“I have no one else to look after me.” Except for Robbie. I would always have Robbie, but my heart was breaking because if I accepted this diagnosis, I couldn’t stay with Ash.
“FTD affects the part of the brain that regulates social behavior. Your reaching out to touch Lea’s hair, to pat Susan’s head when you pass by her sitting on the sofa in the living room, your compulsion to pet Brown Bear when you’re around professionals, those actions trouble me. They indicate you are losing your self-restraint and self-control.”
He’s not wrong.
Dr. McCloud pushed back from me, the wheels of his stool creaking and grumbling on the tile floor, and clasped his hands together between his knees. “If this is FTD, you’re compensating for it, and I would expect nothing less from a brain that is as competent and
commanding as yours. The anomaly is that you spent fourteen hours finding the pattern in that vita.” I’d told him what I’d done with Hendrix.
What I hadn’t told him was that once I discovered the pattern, I wallowed around in the luxurious complexity, following the threads of inquiry to the bitter simplicity of her cheating, so I explained what had happened. He understood now how my behavior fit.
“Normal people would be outraged, but you were interested in the pattern. But you didn’t feel outraged, didn’t act on her cheating, and someone had to push to make you follow through. You’re still able to read other people and to act on their expectations. That’s good, and you could continue to function if you can maintain this level. If the FTD progresses, you’ll become more distant, more apathetic, more everything of what little you are experiencing now, but I don’t need to tell you horror stories. You know what this disease can do.”
Chills quivered and shot through me. I knew all too well that FTD could make me a moral monster and would isolate me. A lot of us ended up in jail because we no longer could distinguish right from wrong.
“I’m going to give you a diet to follow. Some have had success with the Mediterranean diet because their symptoms of dementia diminished.” He drew a deep breath. “But there’s no cure, Dart. For someone who is in excellent health . . . you can live for quite a while with this disease, as you are in the very, very early stages. Don’t quit your job. Stay at the university for as long as you are able to reason and deduce. Work with others so they can check your work. And if you are able, keep a journal of your symptoms. The medical establishment can use more information about what this disease does.”
He reached out to tip my chin up so that my eyes met his. “You’ve always been driven, Dart,” he said and his eyes met mine. “Empathetic. This disease will take that essence from you. You don’t have children or a husband, but that’s what the caregivers of people who suffer from FTD complain about most, that loss of empathy. The wife falls and hurts herself and the husband shrugs and continues watching TV.”
“I felt Ellen’s death here,” I said, covering my heart protectively, “but I couldn’t keep her in my thoughts when she had disappeared. And my work doesn’t seem to matter anymore, and I’ve spent decades studying poverty.”
Bring the Rain Page 21
