What You Remember I Did (25 page)

"I think she sings sometimes," Patrick said. "It's kind of hard to tell, her voice is so quiet. Something about '
Tomorrowland
' and forgetting all about today?"

"Michel!" Nan exclaimed. "Michel
Marnet
!"

"Who's she?"

"
He
is the leading man, played by Charles Boyer, in the classic movie
Love Affair
," Nan informed him, sounding exactly like the supercilious big sister. "It's her current favorite."

Patrick shrugged. "Okay. Whatever you say."

"She must think she's Irene Dunne," Nan said, then hastened to add before he could ask, "The actress who played his great love."

Patrick had riffled through all the magazines on the end table between them. Apparently finding nothing to interest him, he leaned over and snatched a section out of her paper before she could stop him, a sneak attack perfected by years of practice.

Sometimes this sibling stuff was a game between them. Not now. She sized him up. He was out of shape. She could still take him.

"Don't even think about it," he warned her out of the side of his mouth, and added, "Seriously, this isn't good. Are you saying Mom doesn't even know who she is?"

"Hospitals can be really disorienting, especially for the elderly," Nan said, a little desperately. "It'll pass when we get her home."

Patrick stood up, no doubt so he'd be able to look down at her. "Come on, Nan, face it. She's been getting more and more confused. Needing more and more care. I don't think she's really recognized me for months, not solidly, you know?"

Nan did know. There were times when Catherine smiled and nodded and talked pleasantly to her as if she were a kind stranger, and other times when she no longer tried to disguise her fear at not knowing who this person was. "What do you think we ought to do?" she asked Patrick, doing her best to regard him as the competent man he was and not just her dear and pesky little brother.

"I think," he answered quietly, "it's time to put her in a home."

After a long moment, Nan looked away.

"It's time, Nan," Patrick repeated.

"I hate to do that."

"I hate to do it, too, but you can't be expected to take care of her anymore, not in this state, and her home health benefits will run out before too long."

"The aide left her alone the other day." This was perilously close to telling him about the tape; she hoped he didn't see her trembling. She also hoped he didn't ask her why, or how she knew, or figure out that "the other day" was the day Catherine had been rushed to the hospital.

"Son of a bitch."

"I reported it to the agency," she told him lamely.

"We can't take chances like that. She could burn the house down. She could wander off and get lost."

Or she could assault somebody, some little kid
, Nan found herself thinking, and thought she might throw up.

"We've got to do it, Nan. Stu and
Becca
think so, too."

"You consulted them without consulting me?"

"We knew you'd have the hardest time with this. You've always been closest to her."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

He passed a hand over his eyes. "Oh, for God's sake, Nan, will you give it up? Our mother did not–" he lowered his voice to a stage whisper–"sexually abuse you."

Chills raced through her. She hugged herself and cringed away from him.

"I just meant, being the oldest girl, you and Mom were always close. You were her favorite. Everybody knew that."

"You're nuts," she managed to say.

"Anyway," he said briskly. "
Becca
doesn't think she'll even notice, she's so out of it."

"
Becca
doesn't know her like I know her. None of you do. She'll notice."

He patted her shoulder. The gesture was so uncharacteristically affectionate that she winced. "Even if she does, Sis, we've got to do it. You know I'm right."

She knew no such thing. But she didn't know he was wrong, either. She didn't know what to think. About anything. She felt obligated to give it a last ditch try. "She could wander off from a nursing home, too, you know."

Now Patrick turned away. "That's why there are locked wards."

"Oh, God, Patrick. I can't–"

"Then I will." He started to walk out of the house, just the way he used to do when he couldn't win an argument and had to end it instead.

She leaped to her feet and stormed after him, shouting. "Don't you dare! I'll take care of it, just like I take care of everything else! Don't do it, Patrick, you hear me?" His hand gesture might have been obscene or merely dismissive. He drove off and she slammed the door as the phone began to ring.

When she saw on Caller ID that it was Matt, she didn't answer. At that moment she probably wouldn't have answered a call from anyone except the hospital, but she especially didn't dare talk to Matt. She paced around the living room and the kitchen and her mother's room, which smelled heartbreakingly and sickeningly of bath powder and pee, until enough time had passed for a message to be recorded, then dialed in to retrieve it.

"Hey, Nan." His gentle voice started her shaking again. "I thought you'd want to know, Professor Dawson died today. The funeral's Saturday."

He gave details of time and place. It appeared the curmudgeonly old professor had left explicit instructions. There was to be no viewing, no service save a few words said at graveside, and absolutely no poetry reading. One more line of a goddamn poem, he'd written in a note to Matt, and he'd rise from the dead and get them all.

"We could go together if you like. I'd be glad to pick you up. Just let me know."

There was no reason for her to be upset. She hadn't even liked Dawson. But she cried on and off until crawling into bed.

She woke early and called the hospital. "Barring one incident, your mother had a comfortable night," the nurse told her in a voice that seemed to intimate Nan should be there.

"What kind of incident?"

"She tried to attack the nurse who brought her meds during the night shift. Apparently she hit the pills out of the nurse's hands, pushed her away, and screamed at her.
 
Your mother said the nurse was trying to kill her."

"What did the nurse say?"

"The supervisor couldn't find her. She was a temp." She paused. "You should know that we're considering restraints for your mother."

"Absolutely not!"

"Then someone must be with her around the clock."

Nan had a full day of lessons ahead of her. Unless her mother's physical condition worsened, canceling them was out of the question.
 
"I have to work," she said. "I'll pay for a private nurse to be with her until I get there.
 
Can that be arranged?"

"Certainly.
 
I'll take care of it at once."

Nan sighed with relief. "Thank you. Give my mother my love and tell her I'll be there later."

To her surprise, Nan was able to focus. Even Ida was responding to her again, and Peter, watching from the sidelines, waved and smiled. Her cell phone didn't ring all day, and it was mid-afternoon before she checked messages at home. The hospital social worker had called to say that Catherine would probably be discharged on Monday, and could they meet before then to discuss plans? Nan groaned.

Friday was a light schedule. She took a personal day, not much caring whether the two private students were upset about having to re-schedule. The harried social worker who had called her gave her a list of nursing homes with Alzheimer's units, meaning locked wards, and Nan checked out those not too far away that had openings. The thought of her mother in a place like any of those was almost more than she could stand.

So was the conclusion she'd unwillingly come to about the videotape: She had to confront Tonya about it in person. She owed it to her, to her mother, and to herself. The prospect made her sick with dread.

She longed to see Matt. She was afraid to see Matt. She drove through rush-hour traffic, spent a depressing couple of hours with her unresponsive mother, and, certain she was too exhausted to sleep, went home and straight to bed and was asleep in minutes.

In the morning she was shocked to realize she'd slept through the night without once waking up thinking she should check on her mother. Was it this easy to adjust to such a major change? Intending to stop by the hospital on the way to Dawson's funeral, she found herself unable to decide what to wear, unable to find the shoes she wanted, unsure about how to find the church where the service would be.
She won't even know I didn't come
, she thought, and chided herself in response,
maybe not, but I'll know.

Finally she got into the car and there was a long, confused moment when she almost went back into the house for the videotape and drove to Tonya's office instead. She didn't even know why she was going to the funeral.
The mean old bastard won't know I'm there and wouldn't care if he did.

Rockland County Cemetery was located along the east side of South Middleton Road and south of Church Street, flanked on the north and southeast by two more cemeteries.
Here it is. The dead center of town
. The silly old joke somehow made her feel better.

She entered the cemetery and headed toward a group of people some distance ahead. A narrow pathway wound through gravesites lovingly covered with cut flowers. Dumb, she thought. Why didn't people plant something that would stay alive?

Just in time, she saw Matt. She found a spot as far from him as she could, and behind him where he would be unlikely to see her. Dan saw her, though, and came to stand beside her. A minister intoned a blessing and spoke a few words, his voice as sweet as marshmallow Peeps.

Dan leaned over and said in her ear, "How are you?"

She nodded.

"I didn't think you liked him."

She shrugged.

"You look terrible."

She rolled her eyes.

"Hey." He put a hand on her back. She flinched. "Hey," he said again as the minister began the eulogy. "Remember me? Dan? Your buddy? Let's go somewhere afterward and talk."

"I can't," she whispered in the sudden hush. "I–" What could she tell him? Why should she tell him anything?

She pulled away from him and fled.

The next day, though she didn't want to go out of the house, Nan kept looking for a place to move her mother. The first two nursing homes she went to were much like those she'd seen the day before, although the frail old man singing a Maurice Chevalier song while rocking on the porch of the second did give her some hope.

She was running out of options and starting to think about bringing Catherine home with her again, no matter what everybody said, when she turned onto a pleasant residential cul-de-sac and saw the sign for the facility from the hospital social worker's referral list. It was an ordinary-looking ranch-style house, blond brick, with flowers along the curving front sidewalk. She rang the bell and waited, thinking miserably of her mother and Tonya and Matt.

A woman in jeans and a bright red shirt, cheerful but not overly so, ushered her into a living room that looked like any other suburban living room, where two old ladies sat in the morning light. One was at a piano, playing softly, gnarled fingers moving with surprising grace over the keys. They other hummed the melody, a faraway look in her eyes. Noticing Nan, she smiled. "It's one of my favorites. Bertha plays it for me every day."

Behind her, lace curtains billowed softly in the breeze that wafted through a slightly open window. Nan smiled back at her. "'Night and Day.' It's one of my mother's favorites, too."

"Will she be joining us?"

"I think so. I hope so."
This is the right place
, Nan thought. When she left less than an hour later, she'd paid six months' room and board for her mother to share a spacious, sunny room with the lady who sang and meals at the big round dining room table. The back yard was fenced so the residents could go outside without wandering off. There were two staff members on duty all the time. Somebody would always be there to take care of her mother. She wouldn't have to worry about her any more.

She sat in the car for a while and cried. Then went to find a CD of the Nat King Cole rendition of the theme song from
An Affair to Remember
so it could be playing when Pat and
Becca
moved their mother in tomorrow morning. While she herself was otherwise occupied.

She played it in the car on the way home. "
A love affair to remember
." Singing along with the last line, she wondered which man that would apply to when her time trickled to a close. Gary? Matt? Someone who had yet to enter her life? For a split-second, she felt something akin to optimism, but was unable to sustain it.

Sad and exhausted by the time she got home, she poured a drink and slipped
An Affair to Remember
into the VCR. When Deborah Kerr was onscreen, she saw Catherine; when the actress spoke, she heard her mother's voice. The alcohol was giving her a headache, which made her think of Matt.