The Things We Keep (7 page)

“Now, that,” I say, giving him a high five, “was a fun day.”

I glance at the tree in this garden. Its long, thick arms are solid, forking out in different directions, many low enough even for Ethan to jump to from the ground. Once, I'd have noticed that tree immediately. I'd have been the one to suggest to Ethan that we climb it, all the way to the top, then throw acorns down on Hank and Brayden and Jack. Once, not so long ago.

When I look back at Ethan, he's already looking at me. His joker-smile is a question:
Are you game?

I know what Jack will say:
It's not safe. Anna can't climb, her depth perception is off, she might fall. I'll climb with you Eath,
he'll say. So I don't look at Jack. Instead, I nod at Ethan infinitesimally. His smile widens. And together we sprint toward the low arms of the tree.

Now,
this
is the memory I want to leave my nephew with.

 

6

I sit in the parlor all afternoon. Southern Lady drifts off to sleep in the seat opposite me, and Young Guy stares out the window. It's nice, not having to talk, especially today. In the real world, people talk a lot. Conversations move quickly. By the time I've caught up enough to ask a question or make a point, everyone has already moved on. But at Rosalind House, things move slower. Everyone takes the time they need to digest what's been said. If I want to say something, I have time. And if I don't want to say anything, I don't.

Ethan and I had a good climb, and I managed to give Jack a hug without causing any suspicion (I think). It wasn't the good-bye I would have liked, and I don't think I had them utterly convinced that I was happy. But it will have to do. Because now I have a plan, tonight is the night.

“Visitors' day wears people out.”

I look up. Young Guy is watching me, stretched out, dwarfing the small armchair he is sitting in. “No kidding,” I say. No one has said much all afternoon.

“You have a good visit?” he asks. He's wearing a faded denim shirt with the sleeves rolled and jeans that are torn at the knees. It's a nice look on him, I decide. Scruffy-chic.

“Sure,” I say, though I'm not sure it's a good idea to be talking to him. At this point, the last thing I need is a distraction. And he—with his dimple and his scruffy-chic thing going on—is definitely a distraction.

“Who were they?” he asks. “Your v-visitors.”

“My brother,” I say. “And his family. Who were yours?”

Good one, Anna. So much for not talking to him.

“My mom.”

I picture the older woman, white-haired and stooped.

“Mom's old,” he says, answering my unspoken question. Then his face sort of tenses. It's virtually unnoticeable, just the slightest indication that speaking requires a little effort. “She was … fifty when she adopted me.”

“And … the other woman?”

Once I would have felt too direct asking this. I would have spent time talking around the issue and tried to slip in questions naturally. But I've lost patience for that stuff. It's hard enough retaining new information without having to add in social graces. I can only hope he feels the same.

“Sarah,” he says, pushing his hair behind his ear. “My brother.”

“You have a brother called Sarah?”

He frowns, and immediately I want to take it back, pretend I didn't notice. Then he shakes his head. “Sister. I meant sister.”

I don't know much about Young Guy's specific form of dementia other than what he told me at breakfast the other day, but from his expression, I can tell his slip is dementia-related. Idly, I wonder how many slips I have without noticing. Less idly, I think about how I'd like people to respond when I do.

“My sister was here today, too,” I tell him. “Jack.”

I watch as the joke connects with his brain and a smile wriggles onto his face.

“It looked intense,” I say. “Whatever you were discussing.”

“Just … who is in ch-charge of my affairs when I can no longer hold a pen.” He grimaces, trying to come up with the word. “You know the…”

“Power of attorney?” With an attorney as a brother, “power of attorney” is probably the last expression I'll keep. After I was diagnosed, he bandied the word around more times than I could count, the one part of my disease that Jack could control.

“Yes!” Young Guy exclaims, and I feel a surprising thrill at being the one to provide him with the word.

“Mom has my p-power of attorney, but she's getting older. And she wants to g-give it to Sarah.”

“And you don't?”

“I'm just not sure she'll respect my wishes.”

“Which are?”

He looks at me. “I want to live.”

“Ah,” I say, as though this makes everything clear. “And your sister wants to kill you?”

He blinks, then laughs loudly.

“It's okay,” I say. “I'm pretty sure my brother wants to kill me, too.”

Now we both laugh. It's one of those laughs that starts as a chuckle and winds up in a full-bellied guffaw. I get so lost in it that I startle when he suddenly leans forward in his seat, then falls onto his knees in front of me. My laughter vanishes. He's so close, I can feel the warmth of his skin on mine.

“Hey, you've g-got a…” He reaches for my face, and I forget to breathe. What is he doing? If I leaned forward an inch or two, my lips would touch his. I can't remember the last time I was this close to someone. Then again, I
wouldn't
remember.

“Eye-hair,” he says finally, swiping a hair from my cheek. He balances it on his fingertip for me to see. I get the feeling that “eye-hair” is not the word to describe it, but I am too acutely aware of the proximity of his body to think of the right one. He blows the eye-hair away, then sits back. “Sorry. What did we … what were we s-saying?”

I can't remember, and I suspect it has nothing to do with the Alzheimer's. I can still feel his warmth, the burn of his fingertip on my face.

“Uh, was it … your sister?” I ask.

“Oh. Yeah.” He shuffles, pulling his knees to his chest and wrapping his arms around them. “Sarah's c-cash-rich, time-poor, and a believer in finding solutions.” His throat works with the effort of speaking. “I just worry what she'll do down the road, when the next … ‘problem' p-presents itself.”

He doesn't need to explain what the next problem could be. I already know. Delusional episodes. Loss of bladder and bowel control. Feeding issues. Catastrophic reactions. DNRs.

“Sarah cares, b-but … I'm not sure that she'd make the same decisions that I would, when it came to the crunch. I don't want … diapers … the first time I have an accident or to be f-furnished with a chalkboard when my speech deteriorates. I don't want to be … p-pushed in a chair with wheels when I can still walk.”

This little speech looks like it's taken an enormous amount of effort. And while I don't entirely share his convictions, there's something to be admired about his passion. It might be the fact that it's difficult for him to speak, or maybe just the pendulum of moods of Alzheimer's, but as I listen to him talk, my eyes fill.

“At some point, I'm going to have to start letting go of control,” he says. “But I have n-no plans to do it without a fight. And Sarah, I can just see her—Luke's having trouble dressing himself, let's p-pay someone to do it for him. Luke's not doing enough … exercise; let's schedule some activities. Let's give him sleeping tablets to help him s-sleep, let's feed him. No. That's not what I want. I don't want to exist. I want to love.”

“Live,” I correct, but he doesn't seem to notice.

I have to admit, I think he's right to be wary of handing his affairs to his sister. It's one of the reasons I don't want my life to get to that point. As good as Jack's intentions are, I wouldn't want him pulling my puppet strings down the road.

“Brothers,” I say with an over-the-top sigh. It's funny, even though we've just been discussing dementia-related stuff, for the last few minutes, it didn't feel like either of us had dementia. It felt like we were just a guy and a girl, discussing life.

“Luke?”

We both glance at the doorway, where Eric is standing.

“Your doctor is here to see you,” Eric says.

“Oh. Sure.” Young Guy,
Luke,
rises to his feet.

“Would you like me to take you back to your room, Anna?” Eric asks.

Luke looks at me. He kicks his foot gently against mine—a benign enough gesture that somehow has me blushing. “W-will you be here when I get b-back?”

I glance to where Eric is standing: red-faced, fat and smirking. Then I look back at Luke. “Well,” I say quietly, “I've had some pretty tempting offers, but yeah, what the hell, why not?”

To Eric I say, “Thanks but I'm fine right here.”

Luke grins and wanders off toward Eric. In the doorway, he pauses, staring at the thin, shiny strip of metal edging on the carpet, separating the parlor from the hall. Then he lifts his foot to knee height, stepping over the strip as though it were a raised bar or stair. At first I don't know what he's doing. Then I do.

The first time I saw Mom do this was at my basketball championship. She'd been diagnosed with Alzheimer's six months earlier. She'd sat in the third row during the game, cheering and clapping when we got a three-pointer (and occasionally, when the other team did). After we won, everyone tramped onto the court, greeting us with hugs and high fives. As the shooter of the winning team, I was lifted onto my team's shoulders and tossed about. It was from there that I saw Mom. She was on the edge of the court, frowning at a line on the floor as though it were some sort of intricate puzzle she couldn't figure out. I tapped someone to let me down, but before I could get to her, she shimmied up her skirt and stepped over the line as if it were a waist-high fence. A few people looked, but most were distracted by the commotion on the court. Once over the line, she smiled at me, a little relieved, and gave me a hug.
“Congratulations, darling. Great game.”

When I told Jack about it, he told me that for some people, depth perception is one of the first things the brain casts off when it starts to degenerate, making it difficult to tell the difference between flat and raised, high and low. That's the thing about dementia: You can forget for a moment, even an hour. But sooner or later, dementia reminds you—and everyone else—that it's there.

*   *   *

Before I had Alzheimer's, I used to listen to a radio competition called
Beat the Bomb.
Callers who dialed in had the opportunity to play for up to twenty-five thousand dollars. When the game began, the clock would start ticking, and every few seconds, an eerie, prerecorded voice would announce an amount of money.
“Five … hundred … dollars. One … thousand … dollars. Five … thousand … dollars.”
It kept going up. As soon as the contestant said stop, the money was theirs, but the longer they waited, the more they risked the bomb (buzzer) going off and getting nothing.

When I was sixteen, Jack and I came home one day to find Mom in the garage. The car was running, and she was in the passenger seat with the car windows open. Her head lolled against the open door. I ran to call 911 while Jack dragged her from the car. By the time I got back to them, she was awake. Drowsy, making no sense, but awake.

“If I don't remember,” she muttered. “Will I have been here at all?”

When the paramedics arrived, I listened as Jack explained that she had been diagnosed with Alzheimer's and that she was easily confused. She must have thought she was driving somewhere, he said. Or perhaps she thought it was her favorite chair and decided to have a sleep. I wondered if Jack really believed that. As he talked, I stared at Mom, trying to catch her eye.
“Is that what happened?”
I'd whispered
. “Were you confused?”
The fact that she wouldn't look at me told me all I needed to know.

After that, we never left her alone. She had a nurse that stayed with her all day. Dad had already left us, so Jack or I slept by her side at night. After a few months, she went into a nursing home. She'd gone downhill so fast that by that point, even if she'd still wanted to kill herself, she wouldn't have known how. The window had closed.

Most people who want to kill themselves can wake up and decide,
You know what? Today's not the day.
If I feel terrible tomorrow, I'll do it then. Or the day after. Maybe next year. But the thing about having Alzheimer's is that you're a ticking clock. You don't have the luxury of waiting. You have to beat the bomb.

*   *   *

I'm back in my spot by the window, sitting in my chair, looking into the dark night. I wonder if, after I'm gone, there will be an imprint left in this chair. A marker that I was once here. I won't leave much else in the way of markers. No money. No friends. No children.

Something a lot of people don't understand about Alzheimer's is that while you won't find Alzheimer's listed as the cause of death on my death certificate, it will
kill
me. Trouble going to the bathroom will lead to bladder infections. Problems with swallowing may make it hard to eat. Less mobility will result in blood clots. And if I'm not eating and not moving while fighting infections and pneumonia, guess what? I'm on a one-way street to God's waiting room.

In front of me is a row of envelopes, clean and white, addressed with first names. Jack. Ethan. Hank. Brayden. Helen. (I didn't want her to feel left out.) Dad. I thought about that one awhile: Dad. What do you say to the man who left your mother right after she was diagnosed with Alzheimer's? On second thought, perhaps there was a lot to say to a man like that? I decided not to go with the torrent of abuse, tempting as it was, and instead wrote down memories. Of Mom's death-ceremony-thingy. My graduation. The birth of Jack's children. For some reason, it felt important to document them. Maybe it was my way of responding to the letters he'd sent me over the years, the ones I'd burned during my pyromaniac years, and simply thrown out after that. Or maybe I was trying to rub it in, to make him feel the sting of what he missed. Or maybe it was just the idea of having it all on paper, something tangible that would exist after I'd gone.