Splinters of Light (22 page)

N
ora stood in the evening sunlight, spraying down the house. It had been so hot, reaching the midnineties every day for a week, something it rarely did for more than a day or two in Marin. So hot, and so dry . . . Nora couldn’t stop worrying that something would catch the house on fire. It was silly. Most of the year’s fireworks had stopped as local kids’ stashes dwindled. But some of her neighbors used those weed torches, and what if a piece of flaming Bermuda grass sailed up and over a fence, landing on her roof? What if someone tossed a cigarette out carelessly, and the wind blew it into her siding?

If there was the slightest possibility she could make her home safer, she would.

It was more than silly. It was ridiculous.

And it was normal, apparently. Just one more fantastic symptom of EOAD. “Hypervigilance can present in some cases, leading to excessive worry where little if any is warranted,” said one Web site. One of the dozen new meds she was on could actually
exacerbate anxiety. Of course. On a forum she’d reluctantly joined, she read that one man who lived alone had gotten so paranoid about break-ins that he’d booby-trapped every window with hair-triggered nail guns. He said that if he ever needed the fire department to come in and help him, he knew they’d get hurt on the way in, but he hadn’t been able to quiet his mind enough to take down the traps.

Nora felt the same way about the hose. If she weren’t out there when the thermometer rose above ninety-five, the house would burn down. It would spontaneously combust. If she wasn’t paying attention to everything at all times, she’d lose everything. It was four weeks since she’d hit Ellie. She’d almost lost everything that day. Four weeks of not believing Ellie really forgave her the way she said she did.
Mom. Get
over
it already. Move on. I have. You’re acting crazy. It’s fine. I understand. Whatever.

Nora sprayed the southern side of the house this time, what she could reach of it. There was a spot that she couldn’t quite reach on the far side of the chimney. That part up there was as dry as old parchment, she knew it. At least she’d be able to spot smoke rising quickly.
Crazy.
She kept her head on a slow swivel—she checked the siding and then she scanned across the tree line below the house to see if any tendrils of smoke were curling upward. Then she checked her roof, especially around the chimney and the part she couldn’t reach with the water, and then started the whole scan over again.

It felt crazy.

Crazy.

This was how insane people acted. This was how people with Alzheimer’s—old people with the normal kind of Alzheimer’s—acted on their good days. They worried about crazy things, things that didn’t warrant such care or attention. In all her life, Nora had never had more than a passing worry about fire. For the last three days of elevated temperatures, it had been all she could think about.

She sprayed water in the air, enjoying the immediate shiver that ran through her body as the droplets smacked her skin on the way back down.

What if instead of drifting apart—like the fibers in unspun wool—her mind actually fractured? What if it splintered suddenly and violently? What if this—right now—was the beginning of the end?

What if this was her last summer?

Okay, with the drugs she was on, she might have longer. This might not be her
last
summer. There were people who had two good years. Three. There were a couple of men in Texas and one woman in Rhode Island who had been on the treatment for more than five years and still weren’t all the way gone. The longest holdout, though, a woman who had said she’d been cured by a combination of the treatment and a holistic healer in Colombia, had died two months ago in a care home. No one in the online forums was talking about anything else. She’d been a poster child of health, the only real EOAD success story, and now she was dead at fifty-one, her fairy tale morphed into a nightmare.

Nora shot the hose at the wind chime Ellie had made when she was in summer camp. Built from driftwood and beach glass, it only clunked, but Nora had always thought it was the prettiest sound in the world. She sprayed it again, trying to memorize its particular wooden
bonk
.

She’d decided to visit an Alzheimer’s care home. Googling “caring for an Alzheimer’s patient” wasn’t very goddamned helpful. It either brought up cheery-looking ads for dentures and care homes for the seventy-and-up crowds or it brought up terrifying stories of wandering elderly parents who were found dead of dehydration, days later, under freeway on-ramps.

Being the one who was cared for: nothing—
nothing—
made her feel worse to think about. The other day (what day? she couldn’t remember . . .) she’d woken up on the couch, Ellie shaking her shoulder.

“What? What? I was just napping.”

“Your eyes were open.”

Nora had tried to laugh it off. “No, they weren’t.”

“You were stuck.” That’s what Ellie called it when Nora lost time.

That day, Nora had blasted into the kitchen and made a double batch of almond macaroons. No one who was losing it, no one who was “stuck,” could possibly pull them off without ruining them, and it gave her pleasure to offer Ellie a plate of them, hot and rich and perfect.

Ellie hadn’t even looked at her, just kept her eyes on her
Queendom
game, tilting her laptop slightly so Nora couldn’t see the screen.

Nora
was
Ellie’s
caretaker. No one else was. And it did
not
go the other way around.

She chose a facility in San Ramon, an affluent community in the East Bay. She told the care home management it was research. “A piece I’m writing for my column in the
Sentinel
. I’d love to come by and ask a few questions. I write about domestic issues, and many of the women baby boomers I write for are starting to think about elder care . . .”

On her way, Nora had made a side trip to the fire station and spoke to the paramedic unit assigned to the area. Each firefighter said no way in hell would they let a loved one be taken care of at that place. Well, then, she asked, where?
At home,
they said adamantly. The only place to be was at home.

“What if they don’t have that option?” Nora had asked. “What if they’re too young to have children old enough to take care of them?”

Confused glances all around. “You mean, like their kids are too far away?”

“Sure. Whatever,” she said.

The firefighter with the biggest mustache chuckled as if the
idea was humorous to him. “I’d eat a bullet before I got shuffled in there. Oh. Don’t quote me on that. Off the record, right?”

On one hand, the care facility was a “nice” place. You could tell upon entering, it was the kind of care that would cost a small fortune. Bright metal wind chimes tinkled cheerily on the front porch. Inside, it smelled good, like pinecones and vanilla. Nora wondered exactly how much they spent on air deodorizers every year. Was it a line-item expense? Did it fit under “Facility Maintenance”?
Because someone was
on
that beautification shit. On it, literally. The norovirus had run through this place a few times already this year. No matter what, no matter how many masks you issued and how many gloves you made your staff wear, feces and vomit traveled faster than BART did under the bay.

Her mask carefully in place, Nora asked the head nurse about the patients. “What about the ones with Alzheimer’s?”

“Which ones?” The nurse was Filipina and reminded Nora of a fire hydrant in her short squatness. Over her head hung red streamers. Faded Fourth of July banners decorated with gold foil clung to the white walls. They should have been removed weeks ago. One banner had lost its stick on one side and hung drunkenly toward the floor, a half-flapping, almost-dead symbol of freedom.

“The ones with Alzheimer’s.” Nora spoke more clearly.

“I heard you the first time, honey. I meant which one? All of them have dementia.”

“Excuse me?”

“They all got it. All of ’em.” She waved her hand to include the five or six elderly patients grouped around the nurses’ station in their wheelchairs. If Nora didn’t know better, she would have wondered if they were zombies. Their eyes were vacant, their mouths moving slowly as if trying to form words they’d once owned, once used with authority, confident their wishes would be carried out. Now they were lucky if they got themselves cleaned quickly after crapping themselves.

“How old are these people?”

The nurse didn’t look up from the computer. She clicked boxes as quickly as Ellie texted. “Old, honey.”

“No, I mean the range. What’s your inpatient range, from youngest to oldest?”

The nurse’s tired gaze finally met Nora’s. “They all old, honey. All them.”

Nora kept pushing. “Who’s your youngest resident?”

“Simone.”

“Can I meet her? For the article?”

The nurse’s expression was tolerant. She’d seen reporters come and go. They all did the same kind of article, the shock-the-boomers piece, the article that was meant to get the reader to buy that much more life insurance. “Sure, honey. If you wanna.”

Simone was asleep in her bed when the nurse led Nora into her room without knocking. “She our youngest.”

Nora felt as if she wanted to sit on the floor, collapse to it, even though she’d promised herself she would touch no exposed surface in the residence care home. “God.”

“She forty-five.”

The woman could have passed for late fifties, easily. Her skin was good, yes, and her hands looked better than Nora’s. But the muscles in her face had degraded to the point at which it seemed her cheekbones were trying to escape. Simone was sound asleep, her mouth hung open, and a raucous snore ripped from her, the sides of her nose flapping with the exertion of it. Something green clung to her cheek, something Nora tried very hard not to stare at.

“Simone!” The nurse didn’t bother with niceties—she went in with a shout and didn’t back down.
“Simone. Wake up, honey. You have a visitor.”

Simone’s eyes opened slowly.
Blink.
One, two, three. Her mouth didn’t close, and Nora could see that no silver gleamed as it had in the skeletal grins of the two elderly men who’d smiled
at her in the hallway, her dental work new enough to include only porcelain fillings.

“What.” Simone’s word didn’t sound like a question as much as an autonomic response.

“You have a visitor. She wants to say hello to you, honey.” Now that Simone’s eyes were open, the nurse’s voice was kind, lower in volume.

“Hi, Simone,” said Nora. She didn’t hold her hand out to shake—it didn’t look as if Simone could move. Instead, Nora thrust her hands into her pockets and gripped the piece of beach glass she’d chosen that morning. Green, she remembered. Foggily glazed, with a smoothed chip on one side. It had once wheeled and spiraled in the waves, too.

“What.”

“I’m just here to check to see if you need anything.” Nora hadn’t planned to say that; if she had, she would have had questions prepared for this astonishingly young resident.
How did you get here? Who dropped you off? Do they still visit? Are you still in there, Simone? The one you were before?

“What.” Simone’s voice was a croak, and the sound ripped into Nora’s chest.

“Okay, then. I’m not going to bother you anymore.”

“Did you know.”

Nora ceased her backward crab step. “What, Simone?”

“Did you know.”

“Did I know what?” What if this was the moment they made a connection? Simone needed someone to talk to, someone who would understand. Nora stepped forward and picked up Simone’s cold, waxy hand.

“Phhffbt.”

Spittle touched her forearm and Nora jerked back her hand. “Simone . . . ,” she started, but she had no follow-up. She’d interviewed hundreds of people over the years, one of them a sitting president of a small island nation. Nora was known for
bringing her warmth into her questioning, making even politicians feel relaxed enough to share their favorite pumpkin pie ingredient even while the red light glowed on her voice recorder.

But she had nothing to ask Simone.

Fear scrabbled at Nora’s windpipe, choking her. The terror didn’t so much run through her as it coagulated in her veins, slowing down all her bodily processes. She wanted to smile professionally at the very helpful nurse and then run down the hall, bashing through the heavy glass doors until she was out, out, out, back in her car, back in a world where the sick were taken care of, invisible. Forgotten.

“She just like this, honey. You know.” The nurse grabbed a washcloth from the tiny, badly lit bathroom and rubbed briskly at Simone’s cheek. “You got some peas here, honey.”

In the parking lot, when Nora finally—politely, professionally—made it out, her hands shook too much to put the keys in the ignition.
She’s just so young,
Nora had said to the nurse as they’d walked back toward the front door.
Nothing good about early-onset,
the nurse had said simply, as if Nora had been asking for reassurance that there was.

She probably had been.

“Mom?”

The hose jerked in Nora’s hand. She’d forgotten where she was. She’d been right there for a moment, back in that care home. She could almost smell its acidly sweet tang. “I’m fine,” she said to whatever Ellie was asking.

“Do you think you’ve watered the porch enough?” Ellie’s voice was softer than her words. She was humoring her, something Ellie shouldn’t ever have to do.

“I’m fine, honey.” Nora smiled. “Really.”

“Yeah?”

Her daughter was so beautiful. So
alive
and so gorgeous. She didn’t even know it.

Ellie said, “You should call Aunt Mariana.”

Nora knew she should. They hadn’t spoken since that night, the night she’d hit Ellie, the night Mariana hadn’t told her where she was, the night Mariana had failed to do what any reasonable adult would have. When she’d failed to bring her daughter home immediately. Whenever Nora thought about it, she felt heat bloom in the center of her chest. Mariana had said she hadn’t known her text had failed, but Nora couldn’t believe that. Mariana’s whole life was her phone. She checked constantly to see how many were using the app. The first time BreathingRoom had a thousand people meditating at once, Mariana had bought the office pink champagne from Trader Joe’s. Nora and Ellie had gone over to celebrate with them. It had been lovely to see her sister that happy. Nora had a picture on her desk that had been taken that night. They—all three of them—looked beautiful in it, even Nora. They’d been delirious in that moment, yelling
Breathe
instead of
Cheese.