Her Last Words

by Jo Barney

  Roger tells me that I do okay at this sort of gathering. I am cheerful and willing to listen to others, to nod and pat arms. “It’s not important that you remember everything they tell you. Did you ever?” he asks, and I’m sure I did not, but there are moments when raised eyebrows inform me I have asked the same question more than once of the lovely red head in the jade green dress or the smiling husband of the hostess. However, I’m quite sure that few acquaintances have figured out just how out of order I am. Roger, my guardian angel, rescues me whenever he can.

  Not your usual angel, of course. When I first met him as he lifted the metal gate off its hinges and settled it into the back of his pickup, I was a little frightened of him, of the kerchief banding his forehead, his dirty hands. The gate had warped, needed to be replaced. I found him in the Yellow Pages; European craftsmanship, he claimed, and while I wasn’t sure what that meant, the new gate was lovely. He pointed out the smooth welds, the intricate scrolls of iron, the brass tips on the spears. ”A perfect match,” he said, looking over the sixty feet of iron fence his gate was joining. “Perfect for this house, too.”

  I’d bought the place on a whim after signing a three-novel contract. Spanish stucco, tile roof, iron casement windows that flung themselves out into the summer, a garden that beckoned, and a new kitchen with a gas stove and two sinks. I didn’t need two sinks, or the three bedrooms, or the three bathrooms, because I lived alone, wrote every day, rarely entertained, but I could afford the place because my books were selling. I would have room for grandchildren, if my sons ever gave me any, and I just might be inspired by these lovely arches and dark floors to have a party or two, which, in fact, I did, to celebrate first, Jimmy’s marriage and then, Grant’s, to competent young women whose careers took them to other parts of the world.

  A few years later, the gate rusted. Roger came to repair it. And he came back to work on the iron balconies outside the bedrooms, on the interior railings on the curved stairway. And he came back finally because I asked him to, and he stayed. He still wears his hair in a ponytail, gray now, pulled back from a high forehead, and he looks at me with intense brown eyes, a kind-faced man, six years younger than I. He uses his headband only when he is welding, and I am still amused by my friends’ reaction to it. His hands are usually clean, now that he is living in my house.

  I remember all this because, as we lay curled into each other each evening, Roger whispers this goodnight story until I sleep.

  * * *

  “Hello, Madge!” His voice seeks me. “It’s almost time to go to the meeting.”

  “I’m washing up now.” I look at my calendar, see by the marching X’s that it is Tuesday, read “AD group,” pat my hair and feel my stomach tighten.

  Cookies and coffee wait on the paper-covered table to one side of the circle of chairs. Five or six people mill about the room, unwilling to sit down too early, to appear too anxious. At least this is how I feel as I pour myself a cup of decaf and watch Roger do the same. The group was his idea. “I don’t see how sitting around moaning about our failing memories, our embarrassing moments, or crazinesses will be helpful to me,” I had protested. “I don’t want to talk about it!”

  “You don’t have to talk,” he answers. “Just listen.”

  “I don’t want to listen, either.”

  “Just once.”

  So I went, sitting beside Roger and inspecting the twelve people circled like a wagon train against the unknown. The sick ones were not distinguishable from the ones who were well. All carried an aura of sadness that blued their words. I did not speak. Nor had Roger.

  Afterwards, the counselor, a gray-haired plump woman with soft hands that reached out to arms and shoulders, thanked us for coming, invited us to come again. The door opened, and I felt as if I were exiting an airless tunnel. I shook my head, took Roger’s arm. We had walked a few steps away from the building, a church of some kind, when I felt a light tap on my arm. A woman, fifty-five, perhaps, one I had noticed in the group because of her tailored suit, gold earrings, polished shoes, said, “Try it again. It may not seem so now, but you will begin to find solace here. Trust me.” For a moment I wondered how the woman knew it was I and not Roger who was ill. Then Roger handed me his handkerchief, and I realized I was crying.

  So we have returned, several times. I have begun to talk. So has Roger, and I understand that he needs the group more than I. It is difficult to listen to the stories because what I hear is my future, and I’m quite sure I will not be as brave or calm as these people seem to be.

  “At work, they would tell me to do an assignment, and I would not be able to do it and not understand why. Every day, I would look at the top of the newspaper to see if it was a day to go to work.”

  “I just couldn’t think of a word and the person I was talking to did this ’come on, come on’ thing with his hands and it made me very angry.”

  “People don’t look at me anymore, just at my husband.”

  “I’m using a tape recorder to take notes at meetings and use my Spell-check when I write. When I need to make a phone call, I write down what I want to say. I’m not sure how long I can do this. Katharine helps me.”

  Then I speak. “I’m learning to deal with my…forgetfulness, by changing the subject, or I answer questions with other questions. I find myself trying to disarm others by praising them.”

  “Oh,” Roger turns to me. “Is that what you’re doing? I was hoping you really do think I’m terribly good-looking.”

  The group laughs, not for the first time that evening, and even Phil, who is depressed enough to admit being treated for it, tells of looking in the mirror and seeing his son. “What a way to lose 25 years.” Laughter again.

  I can’t help joining in again. “So how depressed should I be when my mother appears in my bathroom mirror?” Phil, on cue, reaches in his pocket, offers me a vial of pills.

  “Damn! How can we laugh?” I ask Roger on our walk home.

  “How can we not?”

  I have not lost my libido. In fact, it seems to be blossoming, like a flower on a forgotten cactus, in an unlikely way for an old declining woman.

  * * *

  A barrel cactus, its yellow petals stretching toward the light filtering through the blinds, greets me as I open the door. I have not been in this room for months, the length of time it has taken me to stop hating Jerry.

  I am stunned by the flower and the chaos. Blueprints and drawings fan across the workroom floor. Cabinet doors hang crazily; inside, books are toppled, some ripped apart. The cactus, a souvenir of our trip to the Southwest the year before, is the only intact survivor of Jerry’s last swing at the world.

  I sit down at his desk, weep for my dead husband, for my marriage, for myself and then I begin to pick up papers, file them in the deep drawers lining the walls.

  * * *

  Cactus. Blossom. Myself. I retrace the sprawling trail of my thoughts. Ah, sex. Roger doesn’t seem to mind me waking him at night, touching him, whispering Please. I haven’t had the courage to mention this compulsion at the group meeting, and Roger and I have not talked about it, although once he patted my hand in a gentle warning as we sat in a restaurant, my fingers creeping towards his zipper. I wonder if this sexual itch is a secret kept by everyone with Alzheimer’s. No one I know talks about sex.

  Not like in college, when the sisters would stay up and tell jokes and get aroused. We called it getting hot. Once over a carrot suggestion, I remember. Even back then, however, no one admitted to actually doing it under the bushes in front of the sorority house, even though hands pushed up under cashmere sweaters, squeezed past waistbands of Pendleton plaid skirts, leaving strings of mucous dripping into a toilet bowl to be inspected, wiped away.

  Nowadays women in novels call it getting wet, not hot. And even at my age, I get wet sometimes as I hold, stroke, Roger’s penis. But I don’t speak of it. Some truths refuse to become words. The truth, for instance, that I never loved Jerry, ever. The truth behind his d
eath, discovered amidst the debris of his workroom, a note to a young, unattainable boy.

  * * *

  “I’m in love with someone else,” he confesses at dinner.

  “It doesn’t matter,” I answer, because the Someone Else doesn’t matter. “Everyone has fantasies,” I say, “even happily married architects with two years of contracts on his desk, with a somewhat successful novelist wife, two fine, straight-teethed, un-acne-ed boys.” A life. The Someone Else is a figment to be observed, not touched, I tell him, from a park bench or the stands of a high school gymnasium. I have guessed about the existence of other figments, as a storyteller might, and I am quite pleased with my tolerant acceptance of them.

  * * *

  This, at least, is what my journal tells me.

  He did not deny their existence. However, this one looked back at his figmentor, (Is there such a word? I later wonder in the same journal) as he wiped his salty face with a white towel, picked up his racket and went on to win the set.

  That look is the beginning of the end of Jerry. I know this from the letter I uncovered in his workroom that day I found the courage to enter it, a letter now tucked into the rumpled pages of an old journal, a confession both of love and of shame.

  * * *

  I can’t continue this torture. I love you as I’ve never loved anyone, and you threaten to report my calls, my following you, to the police. You laugh at me even as you hold someone else’s cock in your hand, your tongue in his mouth. Tonight you asked for money to keep silent. I am being played for a fool. I am a fool.

  * * *

  I have never written of Jerry’s despair. Another truth that refused to become words, like the truth of the depth of the grief I feel at this moment for my own self, for Roger.

  However, this is a good day. I find this year’s journal and open to a new page. My pen moves slowly as I make my plans, try to find the words for what will happen. To remind myself, should I forget.

  When the doorbell chimes, I glance at my watch, then at the calendar. It does not reveal an appointment. I rise and go to the door. When it opens, I see a familiar face.

  “Hi, Mom. I had a layover in town so I decided to drop by.”

  My son. Jimmy. Who lives in…someplace on the east coast. I wrap my arms around his waist, pull him into the house. “I’m so glad!” I inspect the man who grins at me. His dark hair is his father’s, his hooded eyes mine. He is and he is not the little boy who still lives in my memories. Then he laughs, asks if I have any cookies.

  “Let’s see.” I go to the freezer and pull out a plastic container. Inside are the chocolate chip cookies I must have made a week or so ago, the recipe checked off at each ingredient. I pour a glass of milk, set them in front of my son at the kitchen table. “I knew I baked those cookies for a purpose,” I say. So far everything is okay.

  “So how are you, Mom?” he asks, “and Roger?”

  “We’re good.” I answer his question with another. “But how are you? And the job? And everyone? You look wonderful.”

  Jim describes his work as an engineer, Jennie’s work (ah, Jennie, that’s right) at the magazine, the house they are thinking of buying in Bethel, not far away from where they live now, but more in the country. “You remember when we drove through it on the way to Vermont,” he says.

  I wonder if this is the time to tell him.

  I practice silently. “Actually, I don’t remember. I must be getting old, Jimmy. I’m having trouble with my memory.” And he will laugh, “Everyone has trouble with their memories nowadays, Mom. We’re all overloaded with information, need to kick back, relax.” And he’ll ask what I am doing for fun these days and when we are coming back east again. “New York is only four hours from Boston, you know. You could take in a few plays…” Boston. Of course.

  No, I decide. It’s not time yet.

  The back door bangs open, and Roger pushes into the kitchen, his arms wrapped around two large grocery bags. “Whew!” he wheezes as he puts them on the counter and then he turns and sees Jim. “Oh, my God! What a surprise.” He glances at me, back at my son. “How long are you here for?” When he hears, he says, “Too bad you can’t stay longer. Can you reschedule?” He unloads the bags, puts away the groceries. “I’ve bought enough food to feed an army, and the guest room is ready and waiting.”

  The words seem innocent enough but Roger’s smile is his troubled one, the one I’ve seen only a few times, in doctor’s offices, in late night talks. He knows, of course, that Jim can’t reschedule a plane flight. Why would he even suggest it? And why isn’t Jim noticing the reversal of roles here, Roger the housewife, I, relaxed at the table biting into a half-frozen cookie? It’s clear to me that Jim’s visit is not a casual drop-by in between planes. He has come for a reason. Roger seems to know this also. Tension wraps like yellow warning tape around his words. Caution, he is signaling. To whom?

  Then Jim says, “I think I can do it. Let me check.” He pulls out his cell phone and moves into the living room.

  His voice murmurs softly as I stand, walk to Roger bending at the fridge, wait until he rises and say, “You asked him to come, didn’t you?”

  Roger reaches to me, places a hand on each of my shoulders. “Madge, they have to know.”

  “Of course, but I wanted to do it. Later. When it needed to be done. Why this charade?”

  “I hoped to make this easy on you, to not worry you, just an unexpected family gathering. I should have known you would see through it.” I flinch as he leans forward, kisses my cheek. “Grant is coming. Later tonight.”

  My sons. Tonight. “I hate you for this,” I whisper as I pull myself away from his grip on my shoulder.

  “I know.”

  When Jim comes back into the kitchen, Roger says, “Your mother has figured it out.” And despite my stiff body, lowered eyes, my son takes me into his arms and holds me. His hand rubs the small of my back, in just the way I used to soothe him.

  I have not forgiven Roger by the time the door chimes once more. I am sitting in my chair in my writing room, going through the alphabet bringing back Grant’s wife’s name, H - Heather. I am not sure I can go downstairs. It is too much like the other time that my sons came to me to learn of a tragedy. I do not need a journal to bring back that scene. Not yet.

  * * *

  Jerry slumps in his car, dead. The ambulance and the police arrive, his body is closeted somewhere else. His sons need to be told. I call each boy, catch one of them at a dorm party, the other‘s phone is answered by a girl who calls to him, “It’s your mother.”

  One son comes home stoic and tight-lipped; the other weeps quietly in his room and at the service. The silent one finally says, “I never knew him when he was happy. Was he ever?” His brother asks, “Why?” And I have no answer for either of them.

  * * *

  I push myself up from the chair, rub my eyes, and go to greet this second son. When he sees me coming down the steps, he runs to meet me, takes my arm as if I am an invalid. “Grant,” I say. “No crying tonight.”

  He squeezes my hand, manages to say, “Okay.” He kisses my forehead. Already his eyes are moist.

  Roger offers wine as he stir-fries our dinner. Jim mixes the salad; Grant sets the kitchen table with the familiar everyday dishes. I let them do these tasks, sipping my white wine, listening to the bravado of their cheerful voices, laughing when they do, the love in the room a poultice for the pain inside me. We sit down to eat and then the dishes are cleared, coffee poured, the last of the cookies on a plate between us.

  I look at Roger, say, “This is your show. Get on with it.”

  Roger ignores my anger. “I love you, Madge. And I respect your sons and their connection with you. They deserve to know how your life is changing, that you trust them to understand. Shall I tell them or will you?” He speaks so slowly that I know he has rehearsed this preamble, that he abhors what is about to happen as much as I do.

  It is not that I cannot find the words to tell my sons of m
y diagnosis or that I believe they will disintegrate upon hearing it. Sons, stoic or tearful, manage this sort of news and go on. The problem is that I am afraid I will disintegrate as the words leave my mouth, that I will burst like a rubber balloon at the prick of its skin, the truth let out to the world. Holding it in is what has kept me…what? Still believing I could stave off reality? The way I felt when my doctor handed me the prescription for a new drug, even as he said, “Not a cure; but it may slow it down.” In denial, of course, of the fact that I will end up in diapers, as guileless as a babe, gleeful at the pretty flowers I am handed.

  “At least she seems happy,” they will say. “Always glad to see people even if she can’t remember who they are.”

  And at the end, my sons will visit their mother in the locked wing that reverberates with the moans of my fellow sleeve-plucking patients. My boys will find me in front of a TV in the crafts room, and I will look up and say, “Who are you?” Jim’s face will go stone still, and Grant will turn away.

  Until then, Roger will cook, read to me, clean me, spend years of his life consoling me or what is left of me as I dissolve until I cannot remember how to swallow, to breathe. I’ll keep Roger the longest, I think. But what can I offer him in return? He will pour himself out to me until he is an empty vessel, as empty as I, and at the end, alone.

  I raise my chin.

  “Another glass of wine, please.” The boys point at their own glasses as Roger pours. I begin. “I’m not sure how Roger got you both here; perhaps he’s hinted at a disaster, and if so, it is. I have Alzheimer’s Disease. I’ve been diagnosed by my doctor and several others. My symptoms are the usual. I am losing the names of things and people. I can read, but in the last month my writing has slowed down. My fingers are disconnected from my brain, from the keyboard. Sometimes I don’t remember what I’ve written and have to start all over again. I also have trouble recalling what I have said or what people have said to me, especially when I am tense or worried. I make notes to remind myself how to clean the house, run the washing machine. More often, Roger makes the notes. I look about the same, but when you came to the door this afternoon, Jimmy, I could not think of your name for a moment, even though my heart told me I loved you dearly.”