A glance at my watch had me flying out the front door without a backward glance. I had exactly eleven minutes to make the thirty minute drive across town to keep my appointment with the good Dr. Proctor.
Of course, I was twenty minutes late. It didn’t help that I hit every red light between midtown and Stone Mountain. At least that gave me a chance to peek in the mirror and make sure my face and hair were still there. I feared it had been some kind of trick with mirrors, but there I was, the new improved me.
I raced in the front door at Bradford Manor mentally rehearsing reasons for my tardiness. There was a different nurse at the reception desk. This one glanced up from the chart she had been flipping through as I entered.
“I’m Mrs. Graham,” I said breathlessly. “I have an appointment with Dr. Proctor.”
She opened her mouth, but then closed it, glancing over my shoulder. I thought maybe she was looking at a clock and was slightly insulted.
“I’ll take it from here,” I heard a male voice behind me say. I cringed, and turned.
His face was a mask of disapproval, the rest of him big and solid and threatening. His eyes raked me up and down. “Delayed at the hairdressers? Come with me, please. He turned on his heel and headed down the hall.
For a lunatic moment, I considered running out the front door and never coming back. After all, he wouldn’t track me down to my house, would he? Then the moment passed, and I followed his stiff back into his office.
It was scarcely bigger than Roger’s closet, a place I realized I would infinitely rather be at this moment. Crammed into the airless space were a desk and two uncomfortable looking wooden chairs, the kind they used to have in high school auditoriums a hundred years ago. In the corner were two file cabinets that were certainly empty, judging by the stacks of files on his desk. He squeezed his substantial frame behind it and sat down. I took one of the chairs. There was nowhere to hang my coat and no room to take it off, so I kept it on.
He had to suck in his stomach in order to open his desk drawer and pull out a sheet of paper. He pushed the paper toward me. “Fill this out please, Mrs. Graham,” he said, his voice as stiff as his back.
I looked at it. Name. Date of birth. I looked up at him. “It looks like a job application.”
He didn’t smile. I began to wonder if he knew how.
I filled in all the blanks and pushed it back across his desk without a word. Two could play his game.
He looked it over and stuck it in one of the hundred files on his desk. I was certain it would never again see the light of day. Then he looked back at me. He rested his elbows on the desk and laced his fingers. “Your father has Alzheimer’s disease,” he began, looking me straight in the eye.
“I know—”
He held up a finger. “And as a result of that, has little or no short-term memory left; however—”
“I—”
“If you’ll let me finish, please, Mrs. Graham. I promise to take up as little of your time as possible.” He waited a moment, his facial expression never changing. Then he continued. “However, he still has a fairly good handle on his past. He knows his name. He may not recognize you or exactly grasp who you are, but he knows he has a daughter named Louisa and a wife named Eleanor. These memories are very important to him. He spends a great deal of his day talking about you and his wife.” His face seemed to soften for an instant before he caught himself.
Clearing his throat, he went on, “It’s terrifying for an AD patient to suddenly realize they don’t know where they are or why. That’s one reason we try to involve the family—however unwilling they may be—in the treatment.”
I thought that was an unfair shot, but I wasn’t going to interrupt him again under any circumstances.
“We ask that the family spend as much time with the patient as possible. Reminiscence can be very soothing to them. Getting them to talk about the past can be quite reassuring. At this point in the progression of the disease, little else is.”
He shifted in his chair. I had the feeling he would have gotten up and paced if he had room. “Your father feels safer living in the past because he can’t get a handle on the present. Sometimes it’s not exactly the past as you might remember it, and sometimes it’s a past he creates to fill the gaps in his memory. He remembers you and your mother’s names, and he frequently talks about Sam and Jeff, whoever they are, and a number of other people. He vaguely remembers your children, but has no memory at all of his great-grandchildren. I asked him about them, and it only confused him.”
I was sure the doctor wasn’t aware of it, but as he spoke of my father, his face lost all its hostility and took on a look of—what? Affection? And he looked genuinely sad that my father couldn’t remember my grandchildren.
“…treated as a child.”
“I’m sorry, doctor. What did you say?”
He sat back in his chair, exasperation clear on his face. “Am I boring you, Mrs. Graham? Keeping you from something?”
I felt a surge of anger and my face flamed, but I refused to give into it. I now knew how abrasive the doctor was, but I wanted to hear the rest of what he had to say. I managed to keep my voice calm. “No, doctor. You’re not boring me. I was thinking about how wonderful it is that my father remembers any of us, and I missed the first part of your sentence.”
He blinked. Took a deep breath. “Oh. I was saying that it’s important not to patronize him or treat him like a child, even though you’ll notice that a lot of his behaviors are childlike. Don seems to be at a plateau. It isn’t uncommon in AD for this to happen, nor would it be uncommon for him to be either better or worse tomorrow. You seemed concerned about the possibility of violence.” He nodded as if answering a question I hadn’t asked. “It’s there. The possibility. But we keep a pretty close eye on the residents. If we see them tending toward aggression, we can usually head it off. I can tell you he becomes much more agitated later in the day than earlier. That’s typical of AD. Even more than that, he has bouts of suspicion.”
“Suspicion?”
He nodded again. “Paranoia is another manifestation of the disease. Nothing specific, and it has nothing to do with what’s really happening around him. Usually he can be distracted. A change of subject normally will do the trick.”
He seemed to remember who he was talking to. His face grim, he laced his fingers again. “I tell you all this in the hopes that, knowing more about the disease and feeling perhaps less intimidated by it, you might be willing to spend a little more time with your father. Too often a person with advanced AD is dumped into an assisted care facility and forgotten. That does no one any good. A family’s involvement in an AD patient’s care is vital. As I mentioned to you the other day, your mother can’t do it all, although she tries. If you won’t do it out of concern for her, perhaps you will because you owe it to him. After all, the man sired you and raised you. It doesn’t seem like a great deal to ask.”
I inhaled sharply at the attack. Rebuttal was almost out of my mouth when I had a sudden insight. “Who exactly are you angry with, doctor? Because I don’t think it’s me.”
He sat back, as surprised by my words as I was.
“It isn’t that I don’t want to hear what you’re telling me, because I do,” I went on, the words flowing from my tongue almost before they formed in my mind. “I’m afraid I know very little about Alzheimer’s disease. I don’t have any excuse for that, except that maybe it was a kind of denial. If I didn’t know about it, it wasn’t real. That kind of thing.” I shook my head. “I have to admit I was a little afraid of my father after he pulled a knife on that boy, but that’s not why Mother and I brought him here. He was the one who insisted on coming. We actually had no say in the matter. I’m sure you saw the signed forms in his file, and the date he signed them.”
He looked away.
“I can understand your disapproval of me for not coming to see my father more often. I did at the beginning, but—well, I guess maybe it was another form of denial.
If I didn’t see him getting worse, then he wasn’t. But I think your condemnation is out of proportion to my crime.”
It was the doctor’s turn to flush. He stared at me for a long moment without speaking, his face giving no clue as to what he was thinking. Then he got to his feet. He picked up a manila envelope from his desk—I noticed it had my name on the front—and held it out to me. “These brochures will tell you what you want to know. I have patients to see.”
With that, he turned and left the office. I sat where I was for a moment wondering what button I’d pushed. Then I wondered where those wonderful, astute words that traveled from my brain to my mouth originated. I hadn’t actively thought about any of it, not the whys of my ignorance or my reluctance to visit, but suddenly I understood. Maybe all the things Roger did to my head had knocked something loose.
I stood and tucked the envelope into my oversized handbag before walking out into the hallway. I started to turn to the outside door, but then I changed my mind. I turned the other way and headed toward the dayroom. As much as I hated the possibility of running into the doctor again, I wanted to see my father.
He was sitting with his cronies again. This time they were watching Jeopardy. I walked up and sat down near him. When he glanced up, I smiled and said, “Hi, dad. It’s Louisa.”
He looked blank. Then his faced cleared and he smiled at me, the old Don-Halloran-the-insurance-salesman smile. “I have a daughter named Louisa. Lou, I call her. She’s the cutest little thing.”
I swallowed hard. “Is she?”
He nodded. “Cute as a button.” He raised his hand as if to measure, “Can’t be more than—“
The man sitting next to him turned. “Shhhh.” he hissed.
My father looked from him to me, then away.
After a moment, I realized I’d lost him. For now. I stood and stepped over to him. He looked up; his face showing no flicker of recognition.
“May I give you a kiss on the cheek?” I asked.
His grin was huge. “You certainly can, young lady.”
I leaned down and gave him a quick hug and a gentle kiss. Then I turned. The doctor was standing in the doorway watching me, his face unreadable.
I heard my father tell his companions, “The ladies can’t stay away from me these days.”
I lifted my chin and walked past the doctor without acknowledging him. Tears blurred my vision as I let myself out of the center, but I was smiling.
It was five-thirty, but I wasn’t ready to go home. I had one more stop to make before I faced my house and my son.
To her credit, Mother showed no shock at my altered appearance. She was in blue this time, with silver earrings that jingled when she moved her head.
She took my chin in her hand and turned my head first one way, then the other. “Very becoming,” she pronounced. “Come on in,” she said, turning.
It was tempting. I could smell spaghetti sauce wafting from her kitchen. No one could make spaghetti like my mother. Just thinking about it made my mouth water.
I reached out a hand to stop her. “I can’t, mom. I have to get home.” I took a deep breath and let it out. “Greg came home two days early.”
She raised her eyebrows. “Last night?”
I nodded.
“Did you tell him?”
I smiled. “I didn’t have a chance. He had a hot date and raced out.” Then the smile faded. “I’ll have to tell him tonight. I wanted to stop by to thank you for my birthday present.” I leaned forward and kissed her cheek. “It’s one of the very best you’ve ever given me. You’re right. Roger is a wizard.”
“Wouldn’t have mattered a bit if you hadn’t had the right ingredients for him to conjure up his spell. About time you realized how pretty you are.” She reached out and touched my face “Good luck tonight. Call me if you need me.”
I closed my eyes. “Thanks, mom. I think I’m going to need all the good luck I can get.”
I got none. In fact, fate couldn’t have played me for more of a sucker.
Chapter Seven
There was a rental car in the driveway, which I knew in an instant had to be Greg’s. I tried to think of how I would approach it with my son. First, I’d make him a nice dinner. Surely in all the stuff I’d bought at the grocery store lurked the makings of one decent meal. Then I’d make us some coffee and we’d take it into the living room. I refused to discuss difficult subjects at the dinner table. Then and only then would I broach the subject.
I let myself in the front door. Greg must have heard me drive up. He was standing at the bottom of the stairs, his arms folded across his chest.
“Hi, honey….” The look on his face killed my words and the smile that accompanied them.
Greg’s features were too naturally pleasant and agreeable to actually form a scowl, but his expression was closer to one than I’d ever seen. His eyes were narrowed—and red, I noticed. That tore at me.
“Want to—” His voice broke. He cleared his throat and began again. “Want to tell me what’s going on?”
“Greg—” The tears I saw in his eyes dried up the flood of words I had so long rehearsed. I stared at him helplessly.
I could see his fingers digging into his arms hard enough to tear the fabric of his shirt. “What’s going on, mom? Where’s dad?”
“He’s working,” I said quickly. “He—”
“That’s not what I mean and you know it.”
I dropped my purse on the hall table, barely registering a long rectangular box sitting with the mail stacked on it. “Let’s go into the living room.”
I waited to make sure he followed.
Our living room was witness to so many of our family’s happy memories. It seemed almost a sin to sully it with what was about to happen. It was a compact room, but with a feeling of space. High ceilings, muted floral wallpaper above the chair railing, comfortable and slightly shabby upholstered furniture. It had always been a room that was used and not held for show. There was no television in here, only a stereo system hidden in a corner console and an old upright piano—no doubt out of tune now—against the far wall where each of the kids had practiced their piano lessons. It always put me in mind of a drawing room from Victorian days. Family pictures littered the fireplace mantel and the bookcases just inside the door. Photo albums, trinkets from long ago vacations; those little dust-catchers that made a house a home. It left me cold now.
I walked over and sat down on the couch. Greg didn’t sit. He walked over to the fireplace and stood, not quite meeting my eyes. Lost. Floundering.
“Sit down, Greg.”
He shook his head. “I don’t want to sit down. I want to know what’s going on.”
“I’ll tell you what’s going on, but not until you sit down.”
He hesitated, his face stubborn, but he finally perched on one of the chairs farthest from me. His shoulders rounded as he prepared for the blow to come. He cleared his throat several times. “Okay. I’m sitting. Now will you tell me what’s going on?”
“Of course I will. I wanted to—before—but I felt I should tell you in person,” I began, having no clear idea what I was going to say next. “That’s why I didn’t call you, and why I was glad you were coming home for a visit. And because I wanted to see you. I’ve missed you.”
His eyes flicked toward me, then away.
“Your father and I are separated, Greg, and—”
“No!” He jumped to his feet.
I flinched, not in fear, but lacerated by his pain. “Greg, sit down. Please.”
He stood at the fireplace, his back to me. I had no choice but to talk to that part of him. I kicked into my rehearsed speech. “We’re separated. It’s nobody’s fault. It’s something that happened over the years. I want you to know that your father and I love you. You and your sister both. The decisions we’ve made about our lives have nothing to do with you. We’re both very proud of you—”
“What happened?” he asked, his voice raspy.
Instead o
f answering his impossible question, I asked one of my own “How did you find out?”
He turned, making a sound that might have been a laugh. “It was pure accident. I was looking for a clean shirt to wear for tonight. All mine are dirty.”
“You brought home a suitcase of dirty laundry?” He hadn’t done that since college.
He ignored my question. His eyes still wouldn’t meet mine. “I went into dad’s closet to get one.”
I closed my eyes against when I knew was coming.
“And guess what? It was empty. So then I checked out the drawers. I mean, it was possible that every shirt and suit he owned was at the cleaners and all his shoes at the repair shop. Not likely, but possible. But his drawers were empty, too. So by then I was getting a little worried, and I called Jana—”
That opened my eyes. “You called Jana?” As far as I knew, they hadn’t voluntarily spoken to each other in ten years.
He ignored me. “Jana told me you were getting a divorce. I want to know why.”
This was going even worse than I’d expected. I nodded. I searched my spinning mind for words that weren’t actual lies. “I—your father and I—have a number of…differences…that we can’t work out. Believe me, we tried. We didn’t come to this decision lightly. We think it would be best for both of us if we divorce and give each other a chance to make a new life.”
“That’s not an answer,” he said, rubbing his forehead. “What do you mean by differences?”
“Differences, Greg. Differences that are between Darren and me and—“
“And not your kids? Is it none of our business what happens to the people we love the most?”
“You and Jana are grown adults and I don’t pry into the particulars of your lives.”
He slammed his hand down on the mantel. Frames bounced precariously. “The hell you don’t. The hell you both don’t. You were always involved in our lives to the nth degree, and I thought we were in yours, too. I thought we mattered—” His voice broke and he spun away from me.
An Irreconcilable Difference Page 6
