The mention of my grandfather and the fact that he is missing, or lost, or whatever he is, feels like a light fist to the stomach, a reminder of what I have and what I haven’t and what I will likely lose. We are wandering through a small park now, and though I am still scanning for him, I am not sure what I am looking for. Do people look different when they get lost? Could he somehow camouflage with the swing set, the patchy grass, the homeless laid out on park benches?
“Emily, you have to realize that we are all making it up as we go along,” she says, and swings her arms about to explain that she means this too, our roundabout search. I nod and tuck the advice away somewhere I can take it out again, later, when I may need it. We are all making it up as we go along. Ruth takes a breath and stops talking for a moment, as if to decide something, and pats her hands around her circle of hair. She looks up at me, with a smile on her face now.
“But there is one thing I must, must tell you.” She leans in again, as if preparing for an important speech. She can see the hungry look in my eyes, I think. She knows I need her help.
“Yes,” I say, eager for the morsel of guidance.
“1985 called, and they want their dress back.”
We laugh so hard, a couple of people on the street glare at us, as if the noise we are making is noxious, one more pollutant to the Bronx air. But it feels too good to release some of the tension and to forget our mission for just a minute.
At the end of the park we turn left again, “securing the perimeter,” as they say in cop shows. As we look, I try not to keep checking my cell phone, though neither the police nor my father have called. We talk some more about work, and I even say a few things about breaking up with Andrew. I don’t mention what happened last night, though. That wound is still too raw, my presumptuousness embarrassing. All I can do is plead drunk. That’s the only defense I can come up with for my idiocy.
I spot a diner on the corner, not our diner but one similar, with the same greasy smell and fluorescent lighting and cake case. I take Ruth inside, praying that Grandpa Jack is in here somewhere, that he decided the streets were too empty, perhaps took refuge in the restaurant noise. This is where I would come, I reason. This is where I would come to be found. A place with banging plates, and a jukebox, and crying babies who spit up on their high chairs. This is a place to be found and lost.
And sure enough, tucked into a booth with his back to us, his newsboy sitting atop his head, is a man who, at least from behind—plaid shirt, white thinning hair at the nape of the neck—looks just like my grandfather. Only much, much smaller. I point him out to Ruth.
We walk up to Grandpa Jack slowly, so as not to startle him, but when we approach, there is not a hint of relief on his face at having been found, only happiness to see us. My first thought is Thank you for not being dead.
“Well, hello. My two favorite ladies. Have a seat,” he says, and motions to the booth beside him. Ruth and I look at each other, wordlessly debating how to handle this, how to handle him. We slide onto the opposite side so we can both face my grandfather.
“So, what did my girls do today? Did you get the Caddy washed, Martha?” he asks Ruth, looking straight at her but somehow seeing my grandmother. Ruth just nods along, a little shocked maybe, but mostly defeated, I think.
“And you, my dear, how are things going? Please tell my son that he better hurry and knock you up. I want some grandbabies,” Grandpa Jack says, as he looks at me and chuckles. He thinks I am my mother.
I want to laugh with him, but of course that feeling fades as soon as it comes. Only a momentary aside from the overwhelming uncertainty that comes from being a part of someone else’s delusion, the overwhelming sadness that comes from having your existence forgotten by the one you love. To watch as he, too, is erased by a trick of the imagination. Right now he is living in a time before I was born.
“Grandpa?” I ask. “Are you okay? We’ve been looking for you.” I figure the best route is to ignore his words and coax him with mine. “We were really worried.” I scrunch my eyebrows together, an exaggerated expression to demonstrate that anxiety he may not hear.
“Ah, don’t be silly, sweetheart.” He waves me away, like I am the one not making sense. I am not sure if he recognizes me as me now, and I am both desperate and afraid to find out. In a way, there is comfort in his vagueness. Maybe I can pretend that he is fine, that this morning was just a temporary loss of his grip on sanity. People bounce back.
“Jack, we had the police looking. You can’t just walk away like that. I was worried. The nurses were worried.” Ruth uses her eye contact as a tool to bring him back. It doesn’t work. My grandfather just looks at her and shrugs her off. A casual, almost comical, lift and drop of his shoulders.
“Aw, come off it, Martha. You are always worrying about nothing. I’m fine. Just went for a round of golf is all.” His accent has changed too. Deepened, more New York. “See here, Charlotte, your mother-in-law is always on my back for no reason. You let my son out once in a while, don’t you?” I have nothing to say to this, nothing at all, since my heart is broken by the fact that Grandpa Jack appears to be broken. I may not be a doctor, but I know enough. We all do. Ruth and I are both thinking the same thing. So this is what Alzheimer’s looks like. And then, another silent prayer, not so different from the one this morning: Please let him come back. At least for just a little while.
Two hours later we are sitting in the emergency room; Grandpa Jack looks tiny, with his skinny limbs poking out of his hospital gown. He sits up, his feet dangling off the side of the rolling cot, and looks around, bewildered.
“What are we doing here?” he keeps demanding every fifteen minutes or so. He goes in and out, well, more like back and forth, between a time long gone and now. When he disappears, Ruth and I just ignore it and pretend like he is making sense in the context of our conversation.
We talk to the doctors away from my grandfather; he is tucked behind an area cordoned off by a curtain. I tell them this seems sudden. Last time I saw him, at the diner, he was fine. Perhaps a little confused at the end of the visit, but overall he was fine. Ruth steps in, though.
“Emily, I hate to say this, but he’s been getting worse for a while. I tried to tell you last time you were here, but you didn’t seem to get it,” she says gently. My face gets hot, the shame sharp and painful.
“So what happens now?”
“Unfortunately, we don’t have any real way to treat him. He should see a specialist soon, but more importantly, we have to up his care,” the doctor says. His words feel like a second slap in the face. He is absolutely right, this man in the white coat, who looks to be only a couple of years older than me. I wonder if he has seen relatives disappear. I wonder if he can see my shame.
“He’s in a great facility now, but I think it is time he switches floors to what they call the ‘constant-care’ wing,” the doctor says. I want to scream that I know what the constant-care wing is, that my Grandpa Jack has told me that that’s the final tollbooth on the way out.
“He needs more consistent attention, where there are nurses who check in on him regularly. Listen, I don’t know how much you understand about Alzheimer’s…” the doctor says.
“Not much,” I tell him. “Only what I’ve seen on TV and I guess today.”
“Your grandfather is likely to deteriorate mentally, and eventually he’ll be unable to do many basic things. Like dress himself. But most people don’t die from this. They usually die from something else, you know, as they get on in age.” The doctor looks at Ruth apologetically, but she doesn’t seem offended in the least.
“So how does it work with him recognizing us? He seems to be going in and out,” I say. “Will it be like this from now on?”
“It’s hard to tell. He seems to be having a severe episode today, but tomorrow he may wake up and be much closer to normal. It’s a tricky disease. I imagine what happened has happened in some form before?” The doctor looks over at Ruth for corroboration, and she
nods her head yes.
“Not like this, though. Not this bad. Nowhere near. I mean, if I had known, I would have…” She doesn’t finish her sentence. She looks ashamed, complicitous. I want to tell her not to feel bad, that this is not her fault.
I am carrying enough guilt for both of us.
Much later, after I bring Grandpa Jack back to the retirement home, after I arrange for his floor switch, after I hire an additional private twenty-four-hour nurse, after I thank the police officers and the doctors, after I hide in Ruth’s bathroom and cry, after I hug her multiple times, after I order a huge bouquet of flowers to surprise her tomorrow morning, after I borrow a T-shirt and shorts and take off my dress, after I sign all of my grandfather’s medical forms and consents and find out just how much Blue Cross Blue Shield covers for “constant care,” after I say my good-byes to Grandpa Jack, I come home to an empty apartment and my answering machine. Blink. Blink blink blink blink blink. Blink.
There are three messages from Ruth, from before my day started. Before, when I was an Alzheimer’s virgin. There is also, finally, a message from my father.
“Hey, Em, got your messages. In D.C. at meetings all week. I’m sure you have everything under control. I’m sure he just wandered off. You know how independent Jack is. Call my assistant if you need anything.” I am too tired to react to my father’s obvious denial, which is as reflexive as it is convenient.
The first message is from sometime last night, what feels like a million years ago now, while I must have been asleep or on my way home from the party. Andrew’s voice is drunk and aggressive, but he is short and to the point. His message is one word, two letters, repeated three times.
“No, no, and no.”
Thirteen
The first time Andrew said “I love you,” we were sitting in a movie theater, about three quarters of the way through an action film. It was about gangs in L.A., or corrupt cops, or a serial killer, or something like that. I just remember it was graphic and stupid, and Andrew had picked it out. We had agreed on a system that for every action film I went to with him, he would see a romantic comedy with me, which we both thought was a pretty good deal. I remember sitting there before he said it, enjoying the warmth of Andrew’s shoulder against mine and feeling sticky and high from too much candy and soda. I was watching the movie but not really watching it, more observing it, I guess. Movie-watching as a spectator sport.
I have no idea why Andrew picked that moment, why he turned to me just after a tangential character lay on the sidewalk with a gunshot wound to the head and chest, brains and heart spilled out onto the sidewalk. A bloody show for the rubberneckers and the audience. But that’s the moment he chose, and I guess I’ll never know why.
He turned to me and whispered, and at first I couldn’t make out his words. I just felt the steam of his breath tickling my ear. So I leaned back again, as if to say I didn’t hear you, and also because I wanted to feel that tingling again.
And that’s when I heard it, on his second try. “I love you.”
I didn’t know what to do at first. I got trembly and hot and nervous and wet. I thought about saying it back, right then. And I did to myself a few times; practiced it in my head. I love you too. I love you too. I love you too. But I couldn’t bring myself to say the words out loud, because those are words that you can’t unsay. I wanted to take my time with it, to make it a decision and not a reflex, and so I didn’t say anything at all. I just took his hand and squeezed it. And, when that didn’t feel like enough, I leaned in and gave him a passionate kiss, eerily similar to the one we would see later at the end of the movie, just before the credits rolled.
The second time Andrew said “I love you,” we were lying in bed on a Sunday afternoon. It was about two weeks later, one of those humid summer days where it made much more sense to lie naked on top of our sheets with the air conditioner cranked up to high than to go outside. We lay facing the same direction, my back against his chest, and Andrew traced his fingertips up and down along my sides, making invisible doodles on my arms.
He started writing sentences on my body with his fingers, which I read aloud as he wrote. First cute ones, like E. smells and E. is a sex goddess. A. rocks E.’s world and A. is a hunk of man meat. We were both laughing hard, our shoulders shivering as if it were too cold. And then Andrew abruptly stopped laughing and took his fingers to write again. This time the tips tingled my right shoulder blade.
I love you.
I didn’t say anything back and didn’t read it out, like I had with his other messages. I just took his fingers to my lips and kissed them. I wasn’t sure if I had to say anything, really, because he hadn’t said the words out loud. But apparently he wanted my echo, because there was no more laughing after that. We lay there for a few minutes more, each of us suddenly unplugged from the other. I thought about saying it aloud then, when it was clear Andrew needed to hear it, but instead, I just practiced again and again in my head, frozen by fear, by doubt, the words never making it to my lips.
Shortly thereafter, Andrew got up, picked his jeans and T-shirt off the floor, and got dressed in the bathroom. He left me there, naked and alone on the bed, and walked out the door and into the heat, without either of us saying another word. Not even an easy one, like good-bye.
We never discussed that Sunday afternoon. When I next saw him, two days later, he looked me in the eyes and said, “Let’s just drop it.” And I did, because I got to put off doing something that couldn’t be undone. So Andrew didn’t say “I love you” again for a long time, and the words went unspoken, both of us recognizing that they would not be reintroduced into our lives until I said them myself.
A year later we were in a coffee shop, the kind taking a last stand against Starbucks with its thrift-store chairs, vegan cookies, and over-promising teas with names like Serenity or Inner Peace. I was curled up with a stack of cases, trying to get in a few extra hours of work over the weekend, and Andrew sat with one hand gripping his mug, his nose in The New York Times; the two of us a parody of the yuppie couple of the new millennium. We sat silently that way, though there wasn’t silence at all. On top of the typical coffee-shop sounds—the whir of an espresso machine, the click of the cash register, the bell above the door—Andrew was making his noises, an occasional snort at something he read in the paper, the jangle of his keys in his pocket, a sniffle since he was getting over a cold, a clearing of his throat. And as we sat there, all I could do was listen to those Andrew-specific noises, the rhythm of his breath, the in-out in-out, its low whistle. Snort. Jangle. Sniffle. Clear.
Hypnotized. I wanted to buy his soundtrack.
This must be what love is, I thought. Not wanting his noises to ever stop. And I said it to him then, out of the blue, without any premeditation or prompting. Before I could stop myself and think about the consequences.
“I love you.”
Andrew just smiled and nodded and went back to reading the paper. He didn’t say it back just then, because he knew I wouldn’t want it to be a reflex. Later, in bed, he said it again, for his fourth time, and I said it back, my second. And then, only then, were the words made part of our lives, a couple of new beats we added to our other noises in the nighttime.
On Sunday morning, when I wake up to an empty apartment, I realize I need to take back control of my life. I first call Grandpa Jack, and he recognizes my voice. Since I somehow found religion yesterday, I talk to God again. Thank you, I say. All I need is a little more of this.
Pre-yesterday, Grandpa Jack and I would have long conversations on the phone, especially on the weekends, when I would often be too lazy, or too busy with work, to make the trek to Riverdale. We would talk about everything and nothing, really, movies we had each seen (never the same ones), the politics of the residents’ association (until recently he was the president), restaurants (both of us vicarious eaters), and my father (an endless enigma and an object of fascination for us both).
Today we talk about the weather.
“What’s it like out?” he asks.
“I dunno. Fifties probably. Partly cloudy. Wear a jacket.”
“Not my winter coat.”
“Nope, that would be overkill.”
“Umbrella?”
“I don’t think so, Grandpa. But you might want to bring your cap.”
“Okay.”
“Why, where you going?”
“Out. Outside. For a walk.”
“Bring a nurse, please.”
“Emily.”
“Please.”
“Cap, check. Jacket, check. Nurse, check, got her stuffed in my pocket. Okay, I’m off.”
I hear one of the nurses from last night in the background, the one with the heavy Jamaican accent, telling me not to worry, that she’s going with him.
“Emily?”
“Yeah?”
“You okay over there?”
“I’m okay, Gramps.”
“Wear a jacket, okay? But not your winter coat.”
“I love you,” I say, just before we hang up.
“Love you too, kid,” he says. “Bundle up.”
Next I need to make amends for my big screwup the other night. I know I owe Andrew an apology, but I don’t want a do-over conversation. Instead, I just want to erase my ever having humiliated myself, and him, with my aggressive presumptuousness.
E-mail is the best route, I think. Perhaps the easy way out, but there it is. The virtual equivalent of a note on the pillow after a one-night stand.
To: Andrew T. Warner, [email protected]
From: Emily M. Haxby, [email protected]
Subject: Sorry
Hey, A. Want to apologize for the other night. Apparently, seeing the King got me “All Shook Up.” Seriously, though, I am sorry. About everything.
Good-bye, Andrew.
XO,
Emily
I don’t hit send right away; instead, I let it sit on my computer screen for a while. I come back to it every few minutes and read it as if for the first time. What do you want to say, Emily? I wonder if it is too flip, if a joke is inappropriate. Is the Good-bye, Andrew too melodramatic? Should I mention his message? No, he was drunk, and I deserved it. I have erased it already in the only way I can.
The Opposite of Love Page 11
