Trust No One

by Paul Cleave

  Oh yeah, and your favorite nosy neighbor—Mrs. You Know Who (but in case you don’t, it’s Mrs. Smith—I’m not kidding, that really is her name)—came over yesterday. Sandra wasn’t home. She was out with Eva going ooh and ahh at napkins, and you were lying in your office staring at the ceiling. The house has a wireless doorbell that flashes a light that sits on your desk in your office, on account of you having the stereo dialed so loud you’d never hear the bell ring. In fact, because you always write with the stereo turned up, you had to have extra insulation installed in the walls so the music wouldn’t annoy Sandra or the neighbors. The entire room is soundproofed. You could shoot yourself in here and nobody would hear. So the doorbell light went off, and you went to the door in your robe and pajama bottoms and there she was, Mrs. Smith, and really have you ever seen her wearing something not saturated in pastel? Her clothes were in fashion sixty years ago and again thirty years ago, but are currently in the out-of-fashion stage of the cycle. Her lips were painted bright red in an attempt to distract from the many wrinkles lining her face, wrinkles deep enough to swallow a penny. She smells like cheap perfume, mixed in with a little bit of earth, as if she’s always out planting flowers in the garden or toiling through her husband’s grave.

  She came over and she just wanted to have a quiet word, you know, just a brief in-your-ear mention that some of the neighbors—not her, mind you, not her at all, although she would have to agree with them, but some of the neighbors—have been talking. You live in a nice house, Jerry—and hopefully you’re still there now—a nice house on a nice street, an expensive street where people have expensive tastes and expensive cars and expensive lives, most of them working less than you or not at all, their working days behind them, retirement homes on the horizon. She came over to be polite, just to let you know that some, that some people are, well, a little—not angry, no, not angry, or upset—more worried, yes, Jerry, I would say worried, worried that your garden has gotten a little out of shape. And she did have a point—the lawn hasn’t been mowed in three weeks, the garden is full of stinging nettle, the roses need trimming back, and the yard is starting to look like jungle animals could be hiding in there. Mrs. Smith hasn’t been the only one to mention it. Sandra has mentioned it too. She’s been so busy with the wedding that she’s had no time to do any weeding, and anyway, taking care of the garden is your thing. Sandra has mentioned hiring a gardener, but every time she does you tell her no, that you’ll get onto it tomorrow. You’ve been very insistent on the matter, and Sandra understood when you explained it was important because hiring a gardener felt like it was opening Pandora’s box. First the gardener, then a maid, then a nurse, then somebody to shower you, somebody to clean your teeth. Hiring a gardener is bringing that Dark Tomorrow you’ve been fighting to put off one day closer.

  I know things have been . . . difficult for you lately, Mrs. Smith said, and doesn’t that really just sum up the dementia beautifully? Difficult for you. Yeah, lady, really fucking difficult. Between Sandra being obsessed with the wedding and you being obsessed with the need to mope (gotta mope while you can still remember why life is worth moping about), the gardening has taken a backseat. She suggested you get a gardener. You wanted to suggest she mind her own business. You knew your house was letting down the street, this beautiful little Stepford Wives street where everything is just so, everything except your garden and your Big A. You told her you would take care of it. She said she was sure that you would.

  That sums up day thirty. Sums up the first month.

  It’s time for another nap. The gardening can wait.

  Good news, bad news—you know what? I don’t really feel like doing that today.

  His name is Jerry Cutter Henry Cutter, his name is Cutter Grey and he is an author and this is a nursing home and this is the real deal and he didn’t kill anybody even though he knows he did.

  His name is Jerry Henry Cutter and he is an author and none of this is real.

  His name is Jerry Jerry and he writes crime novels and none of this is real.

  “Jerry?”

  “My name is Jerry Cutter and I am—”

  “Jerry, do you know who I am?”

  He is sitting by the window looking out at the gardens. It’s sunny. There’s a rabbit out there, twenty yards away, hiding in the bushes, but he can see it, oh yes he can, hiding there watching him, watching him, stealing his thoughts, using its tiny little rabbit brain to steal Jerry’s thoughts to try and make its own brain bigger, stealing Jerry’s thoughts to write a novel of its own, a rabbit novel about rabbits.

  “Jerry?”

  Jerry turns towards the voice. Nurse Hamilton is standing over him. “He’s going to have to fake it,” Jerry says, because a rabbit can’t really know what he’s thinking.

  “Jerry?”

  “Yes I know who you are, goddamn it,” he says. “You’re the nurse who won’t shut up. Surely you have something better to do.”

  She smiles at him, and why would she smile? “Jerry, there are a couple of policemen here who want to talk to you, is that okay?”

  “Policemen from the books?”

  “Policemen from real life,” she says.

  He looks back towards the window. He’s not interested in the policemen. They can’t be as much fun as fictional ones. He can’t see the rabbit anymore, but he knows it’s still in the same bush, still watching him. It’s undercover! “Is the rabbit a policeman? Where’s Mom and Dad?”

  The nurse doesn’t answer him. Instead she turns towards two men who are standing behind her who he hadn’t really noticed, and doesn’t really make much of an effort to notice them now. “I don’t think this is a good idea,” she says to them. “There are bad days and there are okay days. This is one of the bad ones,” she says, and Jerry has no idea what she means.

  “It’s important,” one of the men says.

  “Rabbit,” Jerry says.

  “Look at him,” Nurse Hamilton says. “Anything he says can’t be trusted, not like this. He’s going to confess to a dozen crimes. Two dozen.”

  “We’re only interested in one,” the man says.

  “I know that, but he’s not going anywhere.”

  “Isn’t he? He has before.”

  “I had a rabbit when I was a kid,” Jerry says, and they all look at him and he feels the need to explain. “I owned it for two days before it escaped and ran away. It wasn’t my fault. I was seven years old and what seven-year-old is going to remember to shut the door on the rabbit hutch?” He stands up and puts his hands against the window. “That’s him!” He turns towards the nurse and the two men with her. “That’s Wally! Where’s Mom and Dad? They can help me catch him! Quick, we have to get out there!”

  The nurse puts her hands on his shoulders. “Sit back down, Jerry, please, we’ll deal with the rabbit soon.”

  “But—”

  “Please, Jerry. Just do what I ask, okay?”

  He looks out the window, then at the men behind the nurse. The way they are looking at him . . . he doesn’t like it. He sits down but keeps looking outside.

  “We’ll keep a close eye on him,” Nurse Hamilton says to the men. “Perhaps you can come back tomorrow?”

  “Hey, hey, Jerry, are you in there?” one of the men asks, and leans forward and taps Jerry on his forehead hard enough to hurt.

  “Don’t,” Jerry says, and swipes at the man’s hand. Jerry doesn’t like him. Not at all.

  “Hey, come on now, enough of that,” Nurse Hamilton says, and she reaches out and pulls the man’s hand away, then steps between him and Jerry, so all Jerry can see is the back of her cardigan.

  “How do we know he’s not faking it?” that same man asks. “Faking the whole thing to get away with murdering—”

  “Don’t say that around him,” Nurse Hamilton says, interrupting him.

  “I didn’t murder Wally,” Jerry says, then looks back out the window. He doesn’t want to look at the men anymore. Just wants to find Wally. The rabbit is all
he wants to think about.

  “Now I’m going to have to ask you both to leave,” Nurse Hamilton says.

  “Ring us if he gets any better today,” the first man says, and Jerry sees movement from their direction and turns to see that man handing a card to the nurse. He wonders if that man is a rabbit salesman. “If we don’t hear from you, we’ll come back tomorrow morning and try again.”

  They watch the two men go, Jerry’s back to the window, and he can feel warmth from the sun as it comes through. He wants to go outside, but not while the two men are here. They may be rabbit salesmen, but that doesn’t make them good people. He decides he will wait for ten minutes. That’s a good amount of time for people to disappear. He thinks that some people can disappear off the face of the earth in less time than that, and he’s not sure why he would know something like that, let alone think it.

  “Who were they?” he asks, once they’ve gone beyond the doors to the room.

  “Just a couple of people who came to see how you are doing.”

  “Rabbit salesmen?”

  “No.”

  “Friends?”

  “Not exactly.”

  “They don’t seem like friends,” he says. “I didn’t like them.”

  “I didn’t like them either, Jerry.”

  He turns back towards the window. “I want to go outside. I want to find Wally.”

  “Let’s get you cleaned up first,” Nurse Hamilton says.

  “Cleaned up? Why?”

  “You’ve had an accident,” she says, and when he looks down he sees that he’s pissed himself, and when he looks back up he sees Wally running away, disappearing into the trees.

  DAY THIRTY-ONE

  Holeeee shit!

  Hey Grumpy Smurf! How you doing, Grumpy Smurf?

  All better? Yes. Yes, you are!

  God you feel good. Gooooooood!

  The last few weeks—they were stage four. STAGE FOUR! You’re really ripping through them now. Can you imagine going along to a support group with people treating it like a competition, people going No, I got depressed quicker, No, I got angrier than you did, or I accepted it first and you denied it longer.

  Sandra came home yesterday with these little blue pills to make you feel better. To balance out your mood, and to be honest you didn’t want to take them, and then you thought, you know what? You should take all of them. So that’s what you decided to do, only Sandra wouldn’t give you all of them, instead she handed them out like clockwork, two every four hours, and then she made sure you were taking them too, she even made you open your mouth and go ahh so she could check you weren’t storing them up to take in one shot. By this morning you felt better, and by this afternoon betterer, and this evening even bettererer! You are on the mend! In fact, you are so on the mend that it’s looking like this Alzheimer’s thing can be kicked. People with dementia can’t feel this good, can they?

  Time for a quick good news, bad news summation. Good news—you’re pretty sure the diagnosis is wrong, and that there is nothing wrong with you. So that’s not good news—that’s great news! That is the best news you could give yourself, which is exactly what is happening here. You’re no longer Grumpy Smurf. No longer Drinky Smurf.

  Bad news—there is no bad news.

  Eva came around today.

  She left Hip-Hop Rick at HOME.

  And she came ALONE.

  Yo.

  And she came with wedding magazines and photographs of dresses she had printed from the Internet, and she was buzzing with good news—oh yeah, more good news—none of the places she approached had any cancellations, but there is a church that has a spare date ahead and, get this: they are getting married in six weeks! That’s going to put it somewhere around day seventy in the Madness Journal. That gives you me us we something to look forward to. Even though your suit is only six years old, you need a new one, according to Eva. And according to Sandra.

  You started working again today on The Man Goes Burning. You’ve had the house to yourself, as Sandra has been busy heading into work on and off this week. She’s defending a teacher who was fired from his job after photographs posted online showed him kissing another man—his partner. Enough parents complained about their children being taught science by a gay teacher that the school ended up terminating his contract. Homophobia doesn’t run very deep at all in this country, but it still pops its ugly head up every now and then. You’ve never understood homophobia. Gay guys tend to be better groomed and better dressed and more sophisticated than the rest of us—if they were straight, they’d be stealing all the women. You’d never have met Sandra. With Sandra at work, and you on the mend, the day has felt like one of the classics, just you and your stereo cranked up, that feeling you get from editing when you can feel the magic happening, and there’s no way you’d feel that way if you weren’t beating the disease. It’s quite possible you were misdiagnosed.

  Good news—the other two bottles of gin showed up. You’d hidden them in the garage, and that came to you just this morning. You might have a celebratory drink later on. You shouldn’t, because of the pills, but you will, because you want to. More good news—if you can’t shake, shake, shake the Big A, then the Big Bill from the wedding won’t worry you so much.

  Bad news—you get the idea Sandra thinks you need a good suit not just for the wedding. Every dying man needs a good suit in the end, don’t they?

  “You don’t remember any of yesterday?” Eric asks him.

  The two of them are outside, walking past a group of people being sung to by an entertainer who comes to the nursing home twice a week. The guy is playing a guitar, he’s playing a bunch of old-school songs, the kind of music Jerry loves, only he loves it on his stereo, with loud lyrics and drums and electric guitars and saxophones blaring. He loves the way it used to get his creative juices flowing. This guy is playing the songs as if this were a cruise boat for hundred-year-olds. There’s a van parked near the front door, a maintenance worker messing around with the outside lights, and Jerry wonders how hard it would be to stow away in the back of that van and go for a ride. Quite difficult, he imagines, because there’s a dog sitting in the front seat. The sun is out but not hot yet, however it’ll get there soon, and most of the residents are in short-sleeved tops. It’s ten in the morning and he’s only just gotten up. He hasn’t had breakfast yet. Eric’s question makes him realize he hasn’t even thought about yesterday. Hasn’t realized there should be something to remember. Whenever somebody points out to him that he’s forgotten a period of time, there’s a sense of disorientation. They keep walking. He runs through a small checklist that, when he remembers to use it, he finds useful. Where is he? Well, a hotel is a hotel is a hotel, but this isn’t that. This isn’t him on tour. This is a care facility. His name is Jerry Grey. He is a man without a future becoming a man forgetting his past. He is a man whose wife doesn’t come and visit because she filed for divorce because all of this was too difficult for her.

  Jerry nods. “Sure,” he says, then realizes he doesn’t remember it at all. “Was it memorable?”

  “What about the day before?”

  This time he shakes his head.

  “The name Belinda Murray,” Eric says, “does that mean anything to you?”

  “Belinda Murray?” Jerry thinks about it, letting the name filter though his memory banks. It goes through his mind without catching. “Should it?”

  Eric claps him on the shoulder and smiles. “Possibly not,” Eric says. “How are you feeling this morning?”

  “I feel good,” Jerry says, which he knows is a stock-standard answer, which must mean at the very least he’s still remembering how human beings act in society. He also knows half an hour ago when he woke up, he was confused for a little while. He realizes he hasn’t asked how Eric is, so maybe he has forgotten a few of the social going-along-to-get-along rules. He does that now.

  “I’m good, buddy,” Eric answers.

  Then Jerry remembers something else. “How’s th
e writing?”

  “Good,” Eric says, looking thrilled to have been asked, and Jerry is equally as thrilled to have remembered. “I’ve been inspired by something. In fact, I can have you to thank for that. You and your advice of writing what you know.”

  Jerry wonders what that advice might be. “You’re writing about an orderly?”

  “Ha,” Eric says, and slaps him on the back. “That’s closer to the truth than you’d know. I better go and get some work done, and you need to go and have some breakfast and get ready soon too, as you’ve got visitors on their way.”

  “Sandra and Eva?”

  “Sadly not, buddy.”

  The visitors end up arriving just before noon, and it turns out to be a pair of policemen, which is disappointing, he thinks, but not as disappointing as being visited by your accountant. The first cop introduces himself. He’s a guy by the name of Dennis Mayor who looks nothing like any Dennis that Jerry has ever known, and the second guy is Chris Jacobson, who looks more like a Dennis than a Chris. They tell Jerry they came out yesterday to see him, and he almost calls them liars, because they weren’t here yesterday . . . but then he thinks it’s possible they were. Plus now that he thinks about it, they do look vaguely familiar. The introductions are made in a bedroom that is currently unoccupied, the previous patient dead, Jerry imagines, since nobody here really ever gets better. There are five of them—the two cops, Eric, Nurse Hamilton, and there’s him, Jerry Grey, crime writer. When they’re all sitting down he realizes this isn’t just an unoccupied bedroom but an interrogation room. The two cops are sitting opposite him, and Eric is to his left and Nurse Hamilton to his right. He feels concerned. He feels like he should be asking for a lawyer.