Apart From Love (12 page)

“Now how do you know all that?” I challenge him.

“Because,” he says, “I was there.”
 

Which catches me off-balance, and I cry, “No! You are lying to me! You and mom, you had already separated by then. And she, she was traveling! It was you who told me so! And you knew, didn’t you, that I would believe you, because... Because for her sake, I wanted it to be true! You said she was touring, taking her performance all over the world, and appearing in glitz and glory, in the best concert halls, and to rave reviews, too! New York, Moscow, Tokyo... How, then, could you possibly be there, in the same place with her—”

“No,” he says darkly. “You are not listening to me. Now, it is hard enough to tell the truth—and even harder to tell it when you have already decided to block it out.”

“Here I am, listening,” I say, waving both hands in the air, and bowing to him, mockingly. “See, here? I am listening now.”

“I was there, Ben, sitting by her bedside, even as she was writing to you. That’s how I know. And,” he adds, “I came prepared. I brought a stack of papers with me, and an envelope, you see, with your address already typed in, so I would not have to bring a stack of envelopes as well; which saved her the trouble, so she would not have to copy that, too.”

He tries to read gratitude in my eyes—but I know that he cannot find it, because there is nothing there but a burning accusation.
 

“Then you lied to me, both of you!” I cry. “You made an idiot, a complete fool out of me! There was no tour? No travel around the world, no concerts, even? And what about the reviews?”
 

My father bites his lip, and with each one of the questions I shoot at him, his teeth leave deeper marks; which brings out the rage in me, and I point a finger at him, and pass my judgement. “You!” I bellow. “You always hide things from me.”

“Well, no. Not always,” he corrects me. “Did I not tell you, just last night in fact, that she was brought to the hospital, to visit me? That she sat there, beside me? That she touched my arm—”

“Aw, I thought you were just seeing things.”

“No, son. No. Now, we are talking reality.”

“Reality?” I laugh, with an acid tone. “What is that, really?”

“Your mom,” says my father, “never left town. Now, that is reality. And,” he adds, “she never bothered to take her grand piano out of here. Have you never asked yourself, Why is it still here?”

After a moment of confusion, I demand, “So then, where is she?”
 

And glancing at me cautiously, without committing to specifics, he offers, “It is a nice place, Ben, a pleasant one, really.”
 

“What is the name of it?”

“Sunrise Assisted Living.”

“What? Assisted Living?” I scream. “You fucking bastard! How dare you put mom in a place like that?”

All of a sudden—even as I curse him—I remember how mom contemplated such a place for uncle Shmeel who, at the ripe age of ninety, was still living by himself. She felt a bit uneasy about the whole thing, I mean, having to decide the fate of the old man, who in the end would blame her, with great bitterness, for the loss of what he cherished most: his independence.

She sifted through a list of these so-called homes, muttering that they were designed for people in the last stretch of life; which is why the name
Infinity Home
was so insidious, and the name
Our Sweet Home
was, at best, misleading—as was the name
Sunrise
.
 

“Sunrise?” I say deridingly. “That place is for old people. Not for Mom!”

“Indeed,” says my father. “She was only thirty-nine when I noticed it for the first time. I remember: she gave me a look as though she did not understand what I had just said. Then I noticed that from time to time, she had trouble saying the names of her students. She seemed unsure about names. A year later, she could not remember the word Piano. Can you imagine that, Ben?”

I shrug, “Anyone can forget a word here and there.”

But he would not let me deny it.
 

“No,” he insists. “Not a woman with her musical gifts! The way she used to play, Natasha could have become world famous, one of the greatest concert pianists! How, how could that happen? Ben, how could your mom forget
Piano
?”

At a loss for a better answer, I suggest, “Maybe she was under stress?”
 

“She was terrified,” he says. “At first, they prescribed antidepressants. Then she took antibiotics for six months, to treat what doctors thought might be Lyme disease. The neurologist suggested an MRI scan, a scan of the brain. But then, when the results came in, they said that at this point, there was no way to tell whether there was anything wrong, or whether Natasha’s brain had always looked that way.”

Now I feel I cannot absorb, cannot take much more of this—but there is no stopping him. The sentences keep pouring out, as if a dam has broken in him.
 

“The most difficult aspect,” says my father, “was that we used to be a team—but now I had to start making the decisions on my own. All except one: she was determined to divorce me, which was my fault—but her mistake, because unfortunately, she deteriorated so much faster after that.”
 

“Stop right there,” I tell him. “It makes no sense to me! Why would she want to leave you right then, at the turning point of her life, when you could be there, by her side, fighting to hold her back, away from the brink?”

“This,” says my father, “is something I, too, do not understand. Up to that point Natasha has changed, quietly, and grown so much stronger than me, to the point that, no matter how hard I tried, there was no pleasing her. Then she got word, somehow, about my moment of weakness: my fling, this little, one-night thing—that was all it was, back then—with Anita.”

I look at him as if to say, Who cares about your moment of weakness? So far it has lasted ten years.
 

He looks away, saying, “Your mom, she was mad at me. She flared up in anger. It was painful. More painful than I had expected. Was she too proud to forgive me? Did she expect me to fight harder for her, so that she may take me back someday? There was no way to know. My God, she let me feel I was done, I was no longer needed.”

“But, dad,” I say, “did she believe she could face it alone, whatever
it
was? Was she willing to risk everything, and for what? For no better reason than pride?”

“God,” he says. “I wish I knew.”

“Enough,” I say. “I don’t want to hear it.”
 

“That’s just the thing, Ben. Natasha kept quiet, all these years, and so did I, for her sake. Gradually, her memory problems got worse and yet, no one knew: not our friends, not even her students, because she was so afraid, afraid to lose them. Teaching, for her, became more than a livelihood: it was the last token of her independence.”
 

“You should have told me, dad.”

“Well, how could I? There was no one here to whom I could talk.”

“So, since then, has mom been diagnosed?”

“Well, son, it took a long time,” he says, in a tired tone of voice, “Four years after she had left me, that was when they found out, at long last. And you, Ben, you were in Europe then, off to your medical studies, or something, with a light suitcase, and a heart heavy with anger, who knows why.”
 

I want to say, Because I had to go, to be some place else. Because I had no family, with you cheating and mom throwing her wedding ring away. That’s why. But without waiting for an explanation, my father moves on to say, “I just could not do it, could not bring myself to open up, to tell you about it.”
 

Suddenly his voice trembles, and he wraps his arms around me, which makes me unsure if this is to lean on me—or perhaps, to protect me.
 

“Ben,” he says, “this disease, unfortunately, it can strike in the prime of life. Natasha was forty-six when, after years of knowing that something was going terribly wrong, and not being able to put a finger on it, they finally diagnosed her.”

“And,” I hesitate to ask, “does it have a name?”
 

There is a sound by the entrance door, then a knock, once, twice, three times—but neither one of us moves. There is a somber expression on his face. His gaze is locked into mine, and something passes between us which I cannot express in words.
 

Meanwhile, between one knock and another there is a smaller sound: the click of the clock. Under the glass crystal, the black hand moves around the dial, from one minute mark to the next. It advances with a measured beat, the beat of loss, life, fear—until at long last, my father takes a long breath, and allows himself to say, “The doctors, they call it Early onset Familial Alzheimer’s disease.”
 

Then he passes by me on his way to open the door; which gives me a moment to think of mom.
 

I picture her staring at the black-and-white image of her brain, not quite understanding what they are telling her.
 

The doctors, they point out the overall loss of brain tissue, the enlargement of the ventricles, the abnormal clusters between nerve cells, some of which are already dying, shrouded eerily by a net of frayed, twisted strands. They tell her about the shriveling of the cortex, which controls brain functions such as remembering and planning.
 

And that is the moment when in a flash, mom can see clearly, in all shades of gray blooming there, on that image, how it happens, how her past and her future are slowly, irreversibly being wiped away—until she is a woman, forgotten.

So when aunt Hadassa pops her head through the door, and marches in followed by her sisters, and each one in turn brushes a finger across the console table to check for dust, I push by them with barely a nod. And before my father can say a word I bolt out, and hurl myself down the stairs.
 

I can hear him behind me, calling, “Ben! Ben!” And I know he is doing his best to limp, somehow, down the stairs, to try to catch up to me, because in his mind, this is an unfinished conversation. But by then, I am already running at full speed down the street, running away, far away from it all.

As Told by Ben

I
t is evening already, and a light breeze starts coming up from the Pacific Ocean, where the faraway, ruffled surface can be seen, mirrored—by some trick of twilight—in row after row of splashy store windows. And one intersection after another, a gust of wind blows, ever so gently, across my path. I wish it would lash its tail. I wish it would turn vicious. A storm would have been perfect, really.

Since noon—more precisely, since that conversation with my father, from which I was fortunate enough to break away—I have spent hours running in circles, trying not to think about what I have learned from him, and about having to face her, because maybe it is not mom I would be facing, but her illness.
 

I have been bouncing back and forth between Abbot Kinney and Wilshire, losing myself in a web of streets. Some places, especially those close to Santa Monica bay, seem vaguely familiar. I figure I must have visited them a long time ago, as a child. My hands still keep the memory, the touch of wet sand, and the sequence of scooping it, packing it tightly into a bucket, turning it upside down, away from the wave rolling in, then lifting the bucket away to see a castle take shape. But on the whole, gazing at this town now from a higher elevation, I feel detached.
 

A foreigner, that’s me: unwanted and unwelcome in a strange, foreign place.
 

Car horns can be heard honking as I dart across the street. From time to time a police car cruises by my side and I can sense a quick, curious glance, which I ignore. I have no idea where the hell I am going; which makes attacking the streets with such anger, such blind, aimless haste a bit confusing, because of being unable to tell whether I have arrived—or whether I am still at the outset of a new ramble.