by Africa Fine
* * *
That night we ate at Mamma Mia’s. Aunt Gillian’s mood turned sour. She berated the server for bringing too much bread.
“Ernestine can’t eat all that bread. You should know that,” she told her.
When the confused waitress walked away, I excused myself and followed her.
“I’m sorry about that. My aunt, she’s…not well.” I found it difficult to say my aunt had Alzheimer’s.
The waitress nodded and smiled when I handed her a twenty. It was a preemptive strike, since I knew that when Aunt Gillian got like this, it got worse before it got better. We could leave, or I could pay off the waitress.
“For your trouble.”
She smiled. “Thanks. My grandmother had Alzheimer’s, so I know how old people can get sometimes.”
Hearing the word out loud made my stomach clench.
“Thanks. For understanding.”
She nodded. “My mom took care of Grams up until the end. It was hard.” She paused and I could see tears welling. “But my mom, she stayed strong.”
I nodded. She gave me another fleeting smile before dashing off to the kitchen. I hurried back to the table, hoping my aunt hadn’t caused more trouble.
Aunt Gillian ordered penne pasta. When it arrived, she claimed she had ordered eggplant. Jack placated her by offering to trade his chicken parmesan for her penne. She traded plates with him, took one bite and complained that the food was cold. I could see steam rising off the plate, but I knew better than to argue with her. She was loud, and I could feel the eyes of the other diners on us as her voice grew more strident. I wondered what they were thinking, but I didn’t have the nerve to meet their eyes. I kept my eyes on my plate or on my aunt. Jack did most of the talking to Aunt Gillian. She never seemed to get mad at him, whereas she disagreed with everything I said.
Jack just agreed with all of her demands and offered solutions that caused a minimum of fuss. We ate quickly and left a large tip on the way out.
Things only got worse when we arrived back at the bed-and-breakfast. As we were getting ready for bed, Aunt Gillian glared at me.
“I don’t need a baby-sitter.”
“What?” I was in the middle of changing into my pajamas. My body felt sore and weak, as if I had spent the day in physical combat. I was starting to think this trip had been a mistake.
My aunt was already in her nightgown. She slipped into the bed and lay right in the middle.
“I’m perfectly capable of sleeping alone.”
“But Aunt Gillian—”
“Get out!” she demanded.
I weighed my options. I could argue with her and sleep upright in a chair. I didn’t think it was a great idea to leave her alone, but I could take the room key and remove anything that could hurt her if she got up in the night.
I looked over at my aunt. Her eyes were closed and I thought she was asleep.
“Stop staring at me and get out.”
I sighed. I made a brief reconnaissance trip around the room, taking a few possibly dangerous items with me, and left. I went next door and knocked. After a few moments, Jack answered, his face half-covered in shaving cream.
“You shave at night?”
He looked down at the razor in his hand. “You knock on men’s doors at night wearing your pajamas?”
I shrugged. “Touché. Now can I come in?”
He stepped aside.
“Aunt Gillian kicked me out.”
He laughed. “So now you’re homeless?”
“Just roomless. Can you take in a poor waif?”
He pretended to consider it for a moment. “I suppose so. But the waif has to agree not to criticize the generous benefactor for shaving at night.”
“The waif agrees.” I sat down on a chair while he went into the bathroom to finish shaving. Sniffing the air, I now knew why he always smelled of lemons.
I looked around the room while I waited. My gaze fell on the king-sized bed, and it occurred to me that unless someone slept in the chair or on the floor, Jack and I would have to share a bed.
He appeared in the doorway of the bathroom. He was wearing just a t-shirt and shorts, and I became aware of how little clothing we were both wearing. I wore light cotton pajama pants and a tank top. We had seen each other in bathing suits, but somehow this seemed more intimate.
He looked over at the bed.
“So.”
“So.”
There was a long pause. I tried to read his expression but couldn’t. He cleared his throat.
“Maybe I should sleep in the chair,” he suggested.
I was sitting in the chair. It was stiff, okay for a brief stay, but I couldn’t imagine spending eight hours in it.
“I couldn’t let you do that. It’s too hard.” I weighed my words, not wanting him to think I was coming on to him. If it was a come-on, he would have to respond somehow, and I was afraid his response would be no, thank you. Or worse, hell no.
“Maybe we could sleep in the bed together? I mean, not sleep together, but in the same bed. It’s big enough. We wouldn’t have to touch. I mean, well, you know what I mean.”
He held up a hand to stop my babbling. “I know what you mean, Tina. It’s not like you came over here to seduce me.”
Maybe I did want to seduce him. Maybe I could have argued with Aunt Gillian, or just waited for her to fall asleep, and then crawled into bed with her as we had arranged. Maybe I did mean this all as a come-on. But Jack didn’t even seem to think that seduction was a viable possibility.
I shook my head. “Right. So, good night, then?”
We moved toward opposite sides of the bed. I raised the duvet and slid in, and Jack did the same. We hugged the edges of bed, careful not to let any parts of our bodies brush.
Jack clicked off the lamp and the room plunged into darkness. There was just the sound of Jack’s breathing and the smell of his shaving cream. I wondered what he was thinking.
“Sweet dreams, Tina.”
“You too, Jack.”
His breath grew deeper and more regular. I thought I would never fall asleep lying this close to Jack, wanting to touch him but afraid to. I lay there, listening for sounds of Aunt Gillian next door, wishing the night would pass faster so we could go home and the torture of lying inches away from Jack would end.
But I must have fallen asleep, because I started awake just after dawn. I was facing the window and I could see the night haze fading into daylight. As the fog of sleep cleared, I realized that Jack’s body was pressed against mine, his arm thrown over my side. I thought about moving away, not wanting him to wake up and be embarrassed or regretful. But I didn’t move. Instead, I memorized the feel of his chest against my back, the feel of our thighs touching, the feel of his breath on the back of my neck.
When I woke again, the sun was up and I heard the shower going. Jack was singing an off-tune version of “Staying Alive.” I smiled and missed his body next to mine.
Chapter 21
“Sometimes, not knowing is a gift”
After our Niagara Falls trip, our daily lives didn’t change much in the wake of Aunt Gillian’s diagnosis. Elaine became our permanent nurse instead of temporary caregiver. She worked days, and it wasn’t long before I stopped thinking of her as an employee and started thinking of her as a friend.
I was fifteen years older than she, and the more we talked, the more I saw that we had led very different lives. If she had been born in America, she would have been Homecoming Queen, one of those girls who are popular with guys because of her beauty and popular with girls because they knew all the guys. She had gone to high school in the States, but being an immigrant had made her afraid to immerse herself in the frivolity of American adolescence. She could not forget that most of her family remained in Haiti. No matter how few new outfits she had each school year, her family had even fewer back home.
So she had studied instead of dating, and we had that in common, though our reasons for doing so were different. Also, we both had been rai
sed by aunts. Elaine was sent to the States by her mother, who stayed behind to care for five younger siblings.
Elaine’s aunt had died years ago.
“That’s why I like Miss Gillian so much. She reminds me of my Auntie Hermione.”
We were sitting on the back patio, enjoying one of the first cool breezes of the season. It was October, and the cool air was the first hint that summer was giving way to what passed for fall in these parts. It was Columbus Day, and I had decided to celebrate the day off by grading no papers, writing no articles, and returning no phone calls.
My aunt was napping, so I’d asked Elaine to share a pitcher of iced tea and enjoy the late afternoon air.
I smiled at the idea that Aunt Gillian would inspire fond memories. As they had become more comfortable with each other, Elaine and my aunt had settled into a familiar routine that I envied. But lately, the more help Aunt Gillian needed, the more she asserted her independence. She’d even insisted on cooking us dinner one night. Jack, Elaine, and I spent the meal choking down sugary, overcooked rice, underdone boiled chicken, and a salty peach pie.
“Your aunt Hermione must have been an interesting person.”
Elaine gave one of her wide-mouthed laughs. “She had good spirit. Like Miss Gillian.”
“Spirit. I suppose that’s one way to look at it.”
This time, we laughed together.
The next day, I felt rejuvenated when I returned to my office and classroom. By this point in the semester, the college community was settling into its routine after the relative freedom of summer. My students in particular seemed more relaxed than they had been at the beginning of the semester.
Back in August, I had noticed that many of my students were reticent, watching me with what seemed like suspicion. I had become an unknown quantity and they weren’t sure what I was up to. This seemed odd to me, because I’d been teaching at the university for years and most students knew me by sight, if not by experience. It took a week for it to sink in: Many of them hadn’t seen me since last winter, when I’d lost all the weight. I’d been on campus during the spring, but it made sense that the weight loss wouldn’t have registered if they hadn’t been in one of my classes. Also, students tend to see their professors as extensions of the classroom, not as human beings with personal lives. Being fat had been a part of who I was as a teacher, and I did not compute as a thin person.
All of this occurred to me at the end of the first week of classes, when a student in my black poets class made an offhand comment as she was leaving the room.
“You look good.”
She had stopped in front of the desk where I was stuffing papers and books into an old leather messenger bag I’d had since college. I looked up at her and smiled. She was a senior, I remembered, one of a group of black students who sat in a group near the front of the class. From what I could tell about her in the few class meetings we had had, she seemed interested but not eager. She had been attentive in my early lectures, but paid just enough attention to her friends so as not to come across as a complete nerd. She was petite and walnut-skinned, with a long tangle of curly hair that looked like a very expensive, well-maintained weave. She was pretty in a serious way, and I had wanted to like her.
I smiled at her words, although I wondered whether it was appropriate for a student and a professor to comment on each other’s appearance. Then I realized that she wasn’t smiling back, and I wondered whether she had meant it as a compliment at all.
Since I had lost the weight, I noticed that not everyone was happy for me. Certain colleagues expressed what seemed like dismay at my weight loss, and I’d overheard snide comments about stomach stapling and starvation diets more than once. Men were happy for me, or didn’t even notice my appearance, depending on whether they were looking for sex. But women were all too often critical and seemed disappointed at the prospect of my smaller-sized thighs.
This student seemed to be one of those women. I decided to keep smiling.
“Thanks.”
She nodded but said nothing else. The encounter was on the verge of being uncomfortable, so I cut it short.
“Well, have a great weekend.” I went back to gathering my things and she left. I shook my head. All my life I’d dreamed of being thin, and now that I was, it was like I was learning about the world all over again. People saw me as a different person, and even though I resisted the notion, I had to consider that maybe they were right.
I soon learned that despite the smooth transition Elaine had made into our lives and the myriad of treatment options Dr. Ortiz suggested, life with a chronically ill person was never calm for long. In late October, we received a form letter from Dr. Ortiz’s office, saying that he would no longer accept the health insurance Aunt Gillian had carried for years. When I’d asked about insurance during that first hospital visit in Cleveland, she had told me that Medicare was for poor people and that she, Gillian Jones, was not poor. She paid extraordinary premiums for health insurance, but she claimed it was worth it to be able to avoid what she termed “government-sponsored quacks.”
I called Dr. Ortiz’s office to explain our situation and find out what our options were. The secretary provided referrals to other physicians for my aunt. She asked me what insurance I had and I told her.
“You know, the best thing would be to get power of attorney from your aunt and put her on your insurance as a dependent.”
“Thanks.” As I hung up, I was pessimistic about the chances that Aunt Gillian would be persuaded that she was no longer able to handle her own affairs. And I also knew that number nine on the Alzheimer’s Foundation of America’s to-do list had just risen to the top of mine. “Take care of financial, legal, and long-term care planning issues. Try to involve your loved one in decision-making, if they are still capable of providing input, and consider their wishes related to future care and end-of-life issues.” Not only would I have to talk to Aunt Gillian about her finances, but I knew this would involve a trip back to Cleveland.
I obsessed over the perfect way to approach my aunt. Firm and uncompromising? Gentle and persuasive? Acknowledge that this was a big deal? Pretend it wasn’t? I couldn’t make a decision, and in the end, I was too scared to ask Aunt Gillian about the power of attorney. I let Jack do it. He came over the Saturday after we received the letter from Dr. Ortiz’s office. It was an overcast, cool day so he invited Aunt Gillian out for a walk.
She giggled and preened, as she always did when Jack flirted with her. “I’m not as quick as I used to be, you know.”
“Well, then, I guess we’ll just have to amble instead of walking,” he said, grinning as he covered her shoulders with a sweater and took her arm in his.
I spent the entire time they were gone making various deals with a God I wasn’t on familiar terms with, but it turned out that I could have saved my prayers for another time.
“Jack and I decided that you should handle all my affairs,” she said breezily as she took off her sweater and sat down on the sofa. She sat straight and still, but I could tell the walk had winded her. I reminded myself that, Alzheimer’s aside, she was getting older and didn’t have the stamina she used to.
“I never liked worrying about all that stuff anyway. Did Elaine make lunch?”
I opened my mouth to ask what stuff she was talking about, since power of attorney means different things to different people. Would she agree to give me full control of her finances and health-care decisions? Or did she envision limitations? As if reading my mind, Jack looked at me and frowned, and I stopped. Aunt Gillian couldn’t even remember that it was Elaine’s day off—I shouldn’t expect her to make a complex legal decision after a twenty-minute walk around the neighborhood.
“Soup and sandwiches for lunch, Aunt Gillian.” I said this in my perkiest voice and avoided correcting her about Elaine.
“As long as it’s not tomato. I hate tomato soup.” Jack and I smiled. I mouthed “thanks” to him and followed them into the kitchen.
Th
e following week I canceled my Monday and Tuesday classes to meet with an attorney Jack knew from his days working at his engineering firm. We’d had dinner with him and his wife a few times, but the last time ended badly after his wife had made a nasty comment about an overweight couple a few tables away. She had assumed that we skinny people were aligned against the fatties. That was the last time I had seen the couple. But Jack’s friend was smart and seemed very nice, and he was clearly embarrassed when his wife had made the comment. At the end of our meeting, I wrote him a check for his retainer. He would handle the logistics of the power of attorney and the sale of Aunt Gillian’s house. All I had to do was have the remainder of her things moved to Florida. I drove straight to Palm Beach International from the meeting and boarded a flight to Cleveland.
It was rainy and cold when I arrived. I always remembered this about Cleveland: the dreary atmosphere was a prelude to the endless, dank winters. Of course, Cleveland was, and is, more than the sum of its precipitation levels and cloudy days. But in memory, I was always swathed in layers of clothing that separated me from others who were dressed the same. We couldn’t speak through our woolen scarves, we couldn’t feel through our gloves, we couldn’t hear through our hats and hoods. This was the Cleveland I returned to, perhaps for the last time. I donned my seldom-used peacoat and I didn’t believe I would ever miss this city.
The movers offered to pack Aunt Gillian’s things for me, but I insisted on doing it myself. I wanted to see if there was anything else in her house that would provide clues about the past, about my parents, about me. I didn’t find any more photo albums, but I did find a loose photograph at the bottom of a dresser drawer in the spare bedroom. It was a picture of my father and Aunt Gillian, smiling at each other instead of looking at the camera. The photo was a close-up of their faces, so I couldn’t see where they were. Their smiles revealed little except happiness, and I figured that my mother must have taken the photo. It was nice to see Aunt Gillian smiling. I slipped the picture into my bag and continued packing.
Later in the day, I called Jeremiah. After thinking about his story, I had the impression that however much he had told me, there was more that he was leaving out. I wanted to know how he had convinced Aunt Gillian to marry him, why they’d gotten divorced, what more he knew about my parents. I wanted to know about Lily, and I knew he could tell me. The question was, would he?
