Over dinner, my grandparents and I would discuss books and current events, we would shake our collective fist at President Reagan, and, eventually, when we were done chewing, we would adjourn to the living room where my grandmother would play a little Beethoven or Bach or Chopin on the piano and I would dance in a faux-balletic style for the amusement of all. Finally, we would return once again to the kitchen for a slice or two of Grandma’s special, still mostly frozen, dry-as-the-desert raisin cake, another victim of the infamous Cooking-Freezing Torture. In this case, though, the cold helped the taste. Actually, no food was ever served by my grandmother at a temperature others considered standard. But then, why should it have been?
Just because a person can’t cook doesn’t mean she’s crazy.
When my grandfather passed away of presumably unrelated causes, the dinners increased in frequency and decreased, if that was even possible, in variety. But other meals were added, lunches at a nearby diner and Sunday brunches, which were rescued by David, who, to the endless delight of my grandmother, could make pancakes. Once in a while, praise God, we ordered Chinese food or pizza.
A little over a year ago, cashews appeared on the surface of the soil of my grandmother’s house plants. Had she read somewhere that rubber plants crave salt? Perhaps. We did not question it. Who would want to know the answer to such a question? Next, the soil itself disappeared entirely from one large pot and the roots of the plant were wrapped in newspaper. Incredibly, it lived, unwatered, in such a fashion for perhaps eight months, maybe a year. Where did the dirt go? Why did the dirt go?
She stopped making chicken. She couldn’t remember how. Cook it then freeze it? Freeze it then cook it? Does it need to be cooked at all? There was a book that everyone was supposed to read in high school called I Heard the Owl Call My Name. If you haven’t read it here’s the general premise: a guy hears an owl call his name and his days are numbered. I don’t know if it really called his name or just hooted; I was too busy rereading The Outsiders. Anyway, one evening I was encouraged by my grandmother to sup on what I can only presume to have been a brand-new recipe for uncooked chicken. Note to fellow cooks: cinnamon is not an appropriate substitute for paprika.
A flare went up, a bell tolled. The owl hooted.
Not long after, I found my grandmother, a tireless, impeccable housekeeper, vacuuming the living-room carpet without the vacuum plugged in. We had what seemed to be an intelligent debate, which I lost, about the relative benefits of electricity. Happily, the ten-inch strips of carpet nap which ran hither and thither throughout the apartment and still comprise one of the sharpest visual images of my childhood—a strange green Cubist landscape—could be maintained by the pressure of the Electrolux alone, that is, sans Electro. Soon my grandmother couldn’t tell a cabbie to take her to Lord & Taylor. She couldn’t order French toast or blintzes or noodle soup. If she found her way to the diner without me she had to sort of describe what she wanted. Eyeglasses became teacups and telephones became combs and a lot of things became just “things.” I was startled to notice one day that her Times crossword was filled in with nonsense words. She had taken her address book apart and only A through K and S remained. Thank God she could still play the piano, although the selection dwindled to four pieces, two Chopin, one Bach, and one rather dramatic-sounding Czerny speed exercise. They are all now burned, like the multiplication table, into my consciousness.
My parents came in every weekend from Connecticut and over time I found myself at my grandmother’s apartment at least two or three times a week. She needed an escort around the neighborhood, a companion. I posted my phone number next to the kitchen phone, which I soon regretted. She took to calling me several times a day to ask when I was coming. She lost all track of time. Sometimes she woke up at three o’clock in the morning and thought it was three o’clock in the afternoon. She dressed and went downstairs and neither we nor the dark of night could convince her otherwise. If you told her you were coming at ten in the morning she would sit by the door for hours the night before, finally calling to ask in furious tones, “Where are you? Where are you?” Worst of all was that she knew something was wrong. Her head felt funny. Things were not as they should be, they were all off. She was becoming aware of gaps and was frustrated and angry and scared.
My grandmother’s visits to the doctor now included a seemingly impromptu question-and-answer session between her and the doctor. The doctor asked: “Where do you live?” and “Can you draw me a picture of a horse?” My grandmother’s answers were: “I live where I live” and “Are you crazy?” The doctor diagnosed her with Alzheimer’s disease.
We had hoped that perhaps it was any number of other things: your garden-variety senility (whatever that is), a couple of small strokes or “episodes,” or perhaps even depression. We wanted it to be something treatable. The only way to be absolutely sure it was Alzheimer’s was a genetic test, which we decided against. She was very old. Let her go crazy in peace, we said. Let her go in peace.
And indeed she has, pretty much. For her. In her own demanding way. A low dose of Zoloft helped considerably for a while, but the truth is she was never a peaceful person to begin with. My mother can certainly vouch for that. More weekends than she’d like to remember her in-laws parked themselves at our house in Connecticut. My mother would serve meal after meal, nosh after nosh. Over endless cups of Sanka my grandmother would quiz my mother on the price of everything in sight. What did she pay for the chopped liver? What did she spend on her hair? How much did the gardener cost? Wasn’t that a lot? The only time she didn’t ask was when my mother was giving her a cashmere sweater or a silk scarf or a Waterford bowl, although most of these things she put away and didn’t use because they were “too good.” Meanwhile, my dad would have come back from tennis or golf just in time for the afternoon nosh and a nap. Recently my grandmother has taken to referring to my mother as “the maid” or “the woman who works for Jack.” The truth will out.
My grandfather, on the other hand, was a sweet, slightly hypochondriacal man who loved to sing bel canto songs (he breathed expertly from his diaphragm) and read whatever author was considered the hardest to read. Thucydides. Solzhenitsyn. He laughed at any joke that wasn’t on him and occasionally some that were. He had large, smooth hands and a long, pale face with watery blue eyes and a majestic forehead. He resembled God without the beard. He swam and ice-skated until the age of ninety-two and when he died at almost ninety-seven he had all his marbles. The worst thing you could have said about him was that he told you the plot of the same opera every time you saw him and that he was a closet capitalist. He faithfully toed the socialist line until you put a porterhouse steak in front of him. The only person ever to do that was my father, who had his own business. My grandmother didn’t buy expensive cuts of meat. And even if she had she would have cooked it until it was unrecognizable. Until it was a porterhut or a porterhovel. On one of the many occasions my grandfather held forth on the subject of his Russian childhood, he described his family as Gentlemen Farmers. “Ha,” my grandmother spat. “Ha ha!” It wasn’t a laugh; she actually said the word Ha.
My grandmother had her own brand of socialism. She really didn’t like anything to be too good. Serviceable was the best. Nice was acceptable under certain conditions. Fancy was suspect. In a restaurant, anything more exotic than shrimp scampi was not to be trusted. And she was very particular, very judgmental about people. She was intimidated by education and wealth and often felt as if those who had them were lording it over her. She compensated for this with a sort of reverse snobbery. “She’s a prima donna,” she would say to you, under her breath, as soon as some unsuspecting acquaintance was out of earshot. Or some stranger; she didn’t discriminate. Later, as her hearing began to fail and she refused to wear the expensive hearing aids I forced her to buy, this became problematic. The insults came loud and fast. “She thinks she’s the queen.” “La dee da.” “How can a person be so fat?” She kept a leg up on people by withholding info
rmation from them, by not letting them in. Two days after my grandfather died, my grandmother and I ran into one of her neighbors. The woman kindly asked, “How is your husband?” My grandmother responded, “Not so well.”
It has never been my belief that my grandmother and I were alike. I definitely look like her side of the family, but I have to hope that my personality descends from my mother’s side. There is, however, a place where my grandmother and I come to a meeting of the minds. There is nothing more satisfying to her than when some fancy-pants is brought to justice. Like the voice-over says in The Magnificent Ambersons, people eventually get their comeuppance. Perhaps this was a holdover from her socialist beginnings, or perhaps it was a result of a life full of struggles. Whatever the source, it appears to be her legacy to me. I, too, have an innate sense of spite, an ongoing low-level resentment which is occasionally capped off with glee in the face of what I perceive to be the well-deserved ill fortune of select others. My grandmother and I are not vengeful, exactly; we prefer to wait for something more like karmic justice to be done. Besides, revenge is an act, you take it and you are done. Resentment is a state of mind, ongoing. Seething is something one can reasonably do for a lifetime, if one is so inclined. One day, many years ago, while we sat with my grandfather as he lay dying in St. Vincent’s Hospital, my grandmother told me the story of Ceil, the Phillips’ Milk of Magnesia heiress, who’d married into the family by stealing my grandfather’s sister Sarah’s boyfriend, who was the brother of their sister Beatrice’s husband. (Don’t try to parse that out; just move on.) The family agreed that Ceil was not a very nice person, but what really irked my grandmother was that Sarah’s potential husband had been filched by a rich girl, a Capitalista. When Ceil’s later life was marked by terrible tragedy, my grandmother was unsympathetic. “Ceil got hers” is what she said. Frankly, I’m usually satisfied if someone I don’t like was reviewed badly in a play. I’m still young, though.
Despite all this, there were always people for my grandmother to have lunch or play bridge with, or attend a concert or visit a museum. Just because she criticized them behind their backs didn’t mean she had no friends. In recent years, though, many of them have died or have disappeared into their own troubles or live too far away. And of course, my grandmother is further isolated by her diminished comprehension and impoverished vocabulary. I’d say her poor hearing and hard-to-please nature were obstacles as well, but they never stopped her before. Occasionally she tries to make new friends, but despite her best efforts things still go wrong. A woman in her building asked her to lunch but then only served her a glass of seltzer.
I tried to involve her with a senior group designed for the hearing and memory impaired. There were coffee and dry cookies, her favorites. There was mural painting and bead stringing and poetry reading. The people were nice. One woman spoke Yiddish to her. My grandmother smiled and nodded in response. While she was smiling and nodding she would turn to me and hiss, “Let’s get out of here.” She hated all these old deaf people, and she wasn’t game. If she didn’t understand the point of something, like stringing beads while you chat to make the time pass and keep your fingers nimble, she made a conscious choice to be too good for it. Also, I don’t think she could understand or even hear a lot of what was said, which, of course, was the point of being there in the first place. It is too bad my grandmother never really understood irony. We only went to the senior group three times and always left within an hour. The last time was when I made her stay for the armchair exercises to music. Big mistake.
As my grandmother’s dementia worsened, my family stubbornly contended that she still knew who we were. She might not remember our names, but she knew us. We recently came to the painful realization that often she has no idea who we are. My father is alternately “my son,” “my husband,” “my father,” “the man,” “the men,” “Yashka,” and in a spectacularly successful distillation: “The Jew.” My mother is “her,” “the woman,” “Sylvia” (not her name), “Emma” (no), the aforementioned “maid,” and, after a recent visit to Connecticut, “that wonderful woman” and conversely, “that bitchy woman.” My brother, Steve, is “Bob.”
I am “the girl,” “one of the girls,” “the tall one,” “the short one,” and “your sister,” as in “I told your sister that I want her to have all the dishes.” I nod in approval. That will be lovely, I say. Fortunately, because I happen to like those dishes, I don’t have a sister. My grandmother doesn’t remember that I am married, although she adores David. She cannot fathom the idea that we sleep together. Or that my mother sleeps with my father. (That makes more sense; she’s the maid.) I asked her, “Didn’t you sleep with Grandpa?” and her answer was: “No, of course not.”
It has been our intention, through all of this, to honor my grandmother’s wishes and respect her independence, but it has gotten to a point where she needs help. More help than any of us can give. Professional help. We considered hiring a nurse or attendant but she didn’t want a stranger in the apartment. She wouldn’t let a stranger in the apartment. Well, that is if you don’t count the time, recently, when she asked a strange woman, a woman off the street, to come up and dust the furniture for ten dollars. The woman came. It’s worrisome, I know.
My parents have found a good nursing home near them and have put her name on the waiting list. “Going to Connecticut” has become our euphemism for the thing we know she’ll hate, but still we are trying to prepare her by talking it up as if it is something to look forward to.
“Wouldn’t you like to go live in Connecticut?” I asked.
“What is it, in Connecticut?”
“It’s very nice. It’s in the country. Near Mom and Dad. There are lots of nice people. You’ll make new friends.”
“Oh, that sounds very good.”
Thanks, perhaps, to the Alzheimer’s, she is not suspicious of our vagueness. And I think, with her growing limitations, her own home has become a burden. Or something worse. She often says to me, as we sit in her apartment looking at the furniture and paintings, the books and dishes, the appliances and even the wallpaper, “I don’t want it. Enough.” And “It doesn’t feel like mine.” Sometimes she is more vehement: “Get me out of here, I can’t stand it, I’m going crazy.”
I am reminded of the plant wrapped in newspaper. Alive, or so it seems, despite the fact that the most elemental things are stripped away. Without the dirt and the water, without the alchemy, though, it cannot live for long. It is dying from the inside out and will eventually collapse. Implode. Is this the way of Alzheimer’s? I don’t know. It is just one way to describe the slow, dismal ruination of everything but the body, the shocking exposure of roots to air.
When she goes I’m not sure what I’ll do. I have gotten used to the squeezing of everything into each day—work, marriage, Grandma. I’ve gotten used to the terrible dinners and the wonderful Chopin. I’ve gotten used to repeating myself, loudly, ad nauseam, and pretending to understand what she is saying when I don’t have any idea at all. And I have gotten used to saying good-bye to her as she stands in her doorway, turning and waving every few steps until I am out of sight, as if to say I’m still here, I’m still here.
better safer warmer
IT happened very suddenly and was, perhaps, the most violent act in which I have ever participated. A space became available and we had to grab it or risk waiting maybe six or eight months for another. I don’t know why I thought there would be more warning. It’s not like they call you up and say we’re expecting Mrs. Feingold to sign off in about two months so you should start to get ready. Mrs. Feingold or whomever just dies and they clean up her room and they call you. That’s it. So my parents and I packed up my grandmother’s winter clothing, a few pictures and books and some of her music, and tore her out of the ground like a mandrake root, and although she came willingly the silent scream was there, not so silent; I could hear it, we all could. Despite our best efforts to prepare her, there was no way she could have known what wa
s happening. And despite our best intentions, here is what was happening: Come, put on your coat, get in the car, you will never see this place, your home, again. Sorry, sorry, sorry.
At first she was excited. She was finally out of the apartment, out and on her way to, where? Well, to the good new place, we said. To the place near Mom and Dad. With a piano. None of us could say nursing home. But then after half an hour in the car she stopped wanting information and started wanting soup. When we got to The Place everyone gave my grandmother the big welcome. They gave her soup. They gave us all soup. We walked her around the common rooms and garden, which were beautiful. Nurses and aides and administrators made a fuss over her, which she loves. She was bubbly and charming and spoke nonsense and everyone thought she was adorable. My parents and I made furtive eye contact; it was going so well, but still, all I could think was: Just wait.
We went to her room, or rather her half room. It was small and the wallpaper was a psychedelic flower pattern that it seemed to me could itself induce dementia. The furniture was old and the bed creaky and hospital-like. I went out into the hall and cried. There was a roommate who was incensed to find people in her room. We drew the curtains that divided the space. At least my grandmother had the window half, looking out onto the garden. At least, at least. She had not shared a room with anyone besides her husband in seventy years. Now she was going to share it with a mean stranger. I went into the hall again and cried. My grandmother was taken off for evaluations of some kind. We waited in her room in a state of what can only be described as wistful dread. Surely the other shoe was going to drop.
Why I'm Like This Page 9
