She reached up to press her palm to his cheek. “Oh, John, if I died tomorrow, I’d have no regrets.” Her voice was beautiful in his ear—low and husky and familiar.
A glint of fear came to her eyes and the corners of her mouth turned down. “But…I’m afraid of living beyond tomorrow…. Oh, John. I’m going to be such a burden to you and the kids. I…I love you, John. I love you so much…so very much. And I know with all my heart that you love me, but I’m terrified our love won’t survive this…this monster!” Her voice rose a tremulous octave and she grabbed tufts of hair at the side of her head and yanked. “I feel…possessed! I’ve never felt so out of control like this before. It terrifies me! Oh, John, I’m so scared.”
“Shh, shh…” He held her, stroking her hair until she calmed down. And they held each other that way, praying together, drawing strength and comfort from the physical embrace and from the presence of the God they knew and trusted, even though they didn’t understand.
As the fire in the hearth waned, their embrace turned to passion. They drank each other in, making love unhurriedly, but with fervid insistence…with sweet familiarity.
Afterward, John brought a quilt and pillows from their bed. He stoked the fire, and they slept on the floor in front of the hearth until the harsh light of morning flooded their pallet, and the embers grew as cold as the reality they woke to face.
Chapter Nine
John stood at the fireplace gazing into the fading embers of the first fire of autumn. One by one, the sparks grew faint and died. It seemed rife with symbolism.
Dr. Gallia’s words the previous spring had proven prophetic. As the months passed, John had watched Ellen fade before his eyes. Her memory losses became more frequent and more glaring with every week that passed.
Ellen had always loved to cook, but now, most days she could no longer remember even the simple recipes she’d made from scratch since she was a young girl growing up on the farm.
She would try to tell John about a phone call and come up completely blank. She could tell him someone had called, and that it was important, but she couldn’t remember what the message was about, or whether it was a man or a woman she’d spoken to. She tried writing down phone messages, but too often the jumbled scribblings on the notepad failed to give John—or Ellen—a clue about the call. Sometimes he wondered if she was remembering a call from last week—or worse, if the calls were all in her imagination.
After missing half a dozen important calls, John finally bought an answering machine. But he couldn’t make Ellen understand that she should wait to see who was calling and then decide whether to answer the call. The first time John called, Ellen answered on the second ring.
“Ellen.” He tried to keep the impatience from his voice. “I thought you were going to wait and let the machine pick up.”
“But it’s you, John. Why did you call if you didn’t want to talk to me?”
“But what if it hadn’t been me? That’s the whole point,” he explained patiently, “so you can let the machine take the call after you find out if it’s me or not.”
“But…but it is you,” she stuttered.
He laughed in spite of his frustration, and tried to explain it to her again.
“But what if one of the kids tries to call, John?”
“You can pick up if you recognize their voice, Ellen.”
“But…I won’t know it’s them unless I pick up.”
“Yes, you will, Ellen. Don’t you understand how an answering machine works?” He felt his blood pressure rising. “It’s like your voice mail at work.”
“What do you want for dinner?”
He sighed. She’d taken to changing the subject whenever she got frustrated. It was a challenge not to let his exasperation match hers. An answering machine was apparently too confusing and complicated for her. He let it drop.
“We could eat out,” he said. “Maybe you’d like to call someone to go out with us?”
“Oh! I hadn’t thought of that. We could have those people…you know…those people from church…”
“What people?”
“You know. The ones we like so well.”
“Rob and Cathy?” Lately the names of even her closest friends seemed to escape her, and though she could usually conjure them up eventually, increasingly her conversations had become erratic and bizarre.
“Is that their names? Rob and Cathy?”
“Yes, honey. You know that. Rob and Cathy McLaughlin. We’ve known them since the kids were babies.” He bit his lower lip. He wasn’t sure he was up for socializing, especially if Ellen was in one of her less lucid states.
“I’ll get my coat.” The phone went silent and he guessed that she was already headed for the hall closet. He wondered if she would remember what she was looking for by the time she got there.
Almost comically, John started finding things in the strangest places. A pencil in the toothbrush holder, a slice of toast in the desk drawer by the telephone and a stick of butter—thankfully still in its wrapper—in his sock drawer. He had to laugh at that one. Even Ellen had seen the humor in it, though she was angry when she heard him laugh with Brant about it on the phone.
They hadn’t yet told the kids about the diagnosis. “I don’t want them worrying,” Ellen had told John the last time he broached the subject. John had to respect her wishes, but he knew that the children were worried and puzzled by the changes they saw in their mother. They had caught her in some of her silly mistakes.
“Maybe they got a little carried away with those highlights in your hair, Mom,” Kyle had said when Ellen had put ketchup on the table with the pancakes one morning when he was home for the weekend.
“Huh? What are you talking about, Kyle?”
“A little too much blond in the mix, maybe? Get it?” he joked, wiggling his eyebrows Groucho Marx style.
“Oh, Kyle, stop.” Ellen smiled, but John sensed the tears were threatening.
John pulled Kyle aside later. “Hey, bud, go easy on Mom, okay? She…she’s got a lot on her mind right now.”
“Hey, I was only kidding.”
“I know, but…just take it easy. She’s a little emotional right now.”
“Yeah, okay. Sorry.” Kyle shrugged and looked at John as though he was the one losing it.
He tried to prepare Brant and Jana for the news, too, dropping little hints about Ellen not feeling well, and having a lot on her plate. But they were busy with their own lives, and he wasn’t sure they caught the concern in his voice.
There were brief intermissions—sometimes lasting for days or even weeks—when Ellen seemed to be her old self. During those times, John found himself hoping it had all been a terrible mistake. Maybe the doctors were wrong. Maybe this was something else. Maybe it was all a terrible mix-up and she was getting well after all.
It amazed him that he could be so devastated when the symptoms returned. It was like finding out about the Alzheimer’s all over again. He almost wished those little remissions wouldn’t occur, because the telltale warnings always came back, and when they did, they seemed worse than before, usually bringing some new loss of memory or function.
Sometimes she just lost words. She would be talking along making perfect sense, when suddenly she would stop midsentence, unable to think of the next word she wanted to say. Often, John could supply it for her. They’d always finished each other’s sentences. But more and more she lost words that he couldn’t find for her. And she would become agitated when he reeled off a multiple-choice list.
Unfortunately, the answer was often “none of the above.” Occasionally, if he was patient and allowed her to concentrate, she could dredge up the word. But most times she would wave him away, leaving the thought unfinished and both of them feeling frustrated.
More disturbing, John noticed that she had begun to use completely nonsensical words. Sometimes she was aware that what she said hadn’t made a whit of sense, and she could backtrack and find the right word, the right phrase. B
ut most of the time she seemed unaware that she had spoken amiss. If it hadn’t been so tragic, it might have been comical.
One October evening, while she and John were watching TV in the den, she turned to him, eyebrows arched, fire in her eyes. “I don’t see why these donney on the brackers!”
“What?” John asked, looking at her askance.
She sighed and slowly articulated, as though speaking to a half-wit, “I don’t see why these donney on the brackers!”
“Ellen, I don’t have the faintest idea what you are talking about.” A sinister warning bell clanged in his subconscious.
But she laughed and wagged her head like a dog shaking dry after a bath. “Well, I don’t either, John.” She started giggling. It was a contagious, bubbling laughter, and John had to laugh with her. They laughed till they were holding their bellies and wiping away tears. Then abruptly Ellen’s face contorted, and her guffaws became sobs—maniacal, bellowing sobs. Within seconds, she was hysterical and inconsolable. Alarmed, John tried to put his arms around her, but she shoved him away with a strength that surprised him.
When she finally quit thrashing, she hunched on the sofa hugging her knees to her chin, rocking back and forth, weeping uncontrollably.
John felt like a spineless coward, but he could not stay in the room with her another minute. He backed away, grabbed his jacket off the hook in the front hall and fled into the chilly night.
The street was dark and a light mist dampened the pavement so the streetlights were multiplied in the reflection. He jogged briskly for a few minutes. Then, out of breath, he slowed to a walk.
The streets were deserted, but he was painfully aware of the lights that burned in the windows of the stately two-story homes lining either side of the street. Here and there he could hear music floating from an open door. And through curtains, not yet closed to the evening darkness, he saw life going on as usual for those within. Businessmen read newspapers in their easy chairs; children argued over games; mothers rocked their babies. Their world—his and Ellen’s—was falling in upon them, yet all around them life went on.
Despair crept over him like a vine. What would become of them? Communication had always been the foundation of their marriage. He and Ellen had taken immense joy in discussing people, politics, philosophy, psychology. And if an exchange turned into a debate or even an argument, so much the better. They had never been happier than when they wrangled over some controversial topic. It had become a high for them, an energizer. With their words, they played an exhilarating game of catch—tossing ideas and waiting with anticipation for them to be thrown back. Now he threw words against a hard wall, and if they came back to him at all, they came back senseless and unpredictable.
There were so many things he and Ellen could have gone without—their wealth, their sight, their arms or legs. Why? John railed. Why did it have to be their words? And it was their words, for Ellen’s silences left him as impotent of speech as if he physically shared her disease.
The rage simmering in him boiled over. He shook his fist at the heavens, and through clenched teeth he shouted into the darkness, not caring who heard. “Why, God? Tell me why!” But the heavens were like a canyon. His voice echoed back to him through the empty street—the only answer the gentle sound of rain on the pavement.
He sat down on the curb, utterly exhausted. The rain soaked into his jeans, leaving him shivering and damp. Hopelessness seeped into every fiber of his being, and for the first time since little Catherine had died, he put his head in his hands and sobbed.
He wept till there were no tears left. Finally, he picked himself up leadenly and walked slowly back to the house. The lights were off downstairs, but the lamp in their attic bedroom still burned.
When John came up the stairs, he saw Ellen through the bedroom door. She was sitting up in bed reading—or pretending to read. John wasn’t sure she could even make sense of the printed page anymore. He came quietly into the room. He looked at her and shrugged, having no idea what he could say to her that would make things right.
She started to cry. “Oh, John. Please. Please don’t look at me that way. I don’t want to be this way…can’t you see? I want what we had before. I want my…my life back. I want…I want…oh, I don’t even know what to say…how to say it. I don’t even know…” She gave him a look of sorrowful apology. “I’m losing my mind, John. I feel like I’m losing my mind.” She grabbed her head and started rocking.
The resignation in her voice, in her posture, broke his heart. He went to her and sat down beside her on the bed. He wrapped his arms around her and pulled her into his embrace, leaning back against the headboard, cradling her in his arms.
They lay that way for a long while, until gently, wordlessly, John got up from the bed. He kissed her cheek and pulled the covers around her, tucking her in like a small child.
Then he went into the bathroom to perform his nightly ritual of brushing his teeth and washing his face.
Chapter Ten
“No, John! Please. I’m begging you. I don’t want them to worry about me!” Ellen’s voice rose an octave and she kneaded the linen placemat underneath her dinner plate.
“They’re already worried, Ellen. I’m sorry. But I don’t think we should put this off one more day. It’s time the kids were told what’s going on.” John had agreed to hold off as long as they could, but in the months since Ellen had been diagnosed, her children had become all too aware that something was wrong, and had been for a long time.
She looked up at John, her eyes pleading. “I don’t want to spend the time I have left with them watching me…waiting for me to do something stupid—just waiting for me to go crazy.”
“You think it’s better for them to wonder why you’re…behaving the way you are? I’m sorry, but that’s not fair. Not to them or to you.”
“Or to you, you mean.” Now anger tinged her voice.
He wasn’t sure how to field that one. Yes, he wanted to get things out in the open and get it over with. And maybe it was for his own sake. It had been agony trying to keep up appearances for the kids, being careful not to slip up and say something that would give away Ellen’s secret—their secret.
“Please, John, just let me wait until they’re all home for Christmas. We…we can tell them then—after the holidays are over. But let me have one last normal Thanksgiving and Christmas. Please…”
He’d finally relented, but Thanksgiving was anything but normal. Ellen had been withdrawn and irritable from the moment the kids stepped through the front door. After a subdued dinner, Mark and Jana left early in the evening and the boys had decided to drive back to school Saturday morning, claiming they had papers to write before Monday morning. Worst of all, Ellen seemed not to mind—or realize—that she’d chased everyone off.
The following week, Dr. Morton started Ellen on a new medication, and by mid-December John thought maybe it was doing some good. But then the boys came home for Christmas and Ellen sank into a depression, taking to her bed most of the time, and she was distant and short-tempered with everyone when she was awake.
John made a wide berth for her, keeping Brant and Kyle occupied decorating for Christmas. It was a Brighton tradition, since they’d moved into the big Miles house, to outline the roof, doors and windows with white lights. He’d waited until the boys were home to help him; he certainly didn’t want Ellen on the roof. Now, perched precariously on the roof with his sons feeding him strings of lights, John was grateful for the warmer-than-usual December weather and the absence of ice or snow.
It was late in the season to be putting up lights, but he couldn’t bear to not put them up at all. When the lights were all in place, the Brighton men put the tree up in the living room and hung five stockings on the mantel. Ellen was up, though still in her bathrobe. She shouted suggestions from the kitchen but left the decorating to them.
The rest of the days leading to Christmas were spent playing basketball at the high school gym and watching football on TV.
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Jana and Mark came from Chicago two days before Christmas. They hadn’t been there an hour before Jana cornered John in the kitchen.
She looked around at the empty countertops. “Dad? Mom hasn’t done any baking yet? I was going to help, but I checked the cupboards and there’s not even enough flour or sugar to make cookies, let alone all the other stuff for Christmas dinner.”
He looked at the floor. “Your mom has…she’s been a little under the weather lately.” It was true, but he felt like a liar. “We’ll go shopping this afternoon.”
She eyed him suspiciously. “Okay. Well, let me know what I can do.”
“Thanks, honey.”
He escaped to the den to try to make a grocery list. He wrote down flour and sugar, then realized that he hadn’t a clue what else they would need for the dinner. He prayed Ellen would be coherent enough to fill in the blanks while they were at the store.
She came along with him agreeably and was actually pleasant company, though not very helpful. He bought cranberries for his favorite sauce…a dish Ellen had made for him every year of their married life. He doubted now that she could remember how to make it. Oh, well. Howard and MaryEllen were arriving on Christmas Eve. Maybe MaryEllen could be persuaded to prepare the sauce. It didn’t matter anymore, really.
They finished their shopping, and drove home. John carried the groceries into the kitchen, setting the heavy bags on the countertop. Ellen made no move to put things away, so John enlisted Mark and Jana to do the job while he hunted for the recipes and assembled the ingredients for the dishes that needed to be started early.
Jana tried to catch his eye several times, but he avoided her and pretended not to see her questioning glances. It was so out of character for him to be supervising the kitchen. He knew Jana must be terribly confused and worried.
“Are you feeling okay, Mom?” Jana put a hand on her mother’s arm.
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