A Slender Thread (21 page)

“If all goes well they'll give Oliver a show later this spring,” Margot said. “We're keeping our fingers crossed.”

Alex cleared his throat. “I was telling Margot,” he said slowly, thinking this might be a good time to bring up the topic, “how I was going to be away so much this winter.”

Lacey shrugged. “If we knew the date for the opening”—her voice seemed to catch on something in her throat—“you could arrange your schedule . . . around it.”

Alex ignored this. “I told Margot that I was worried about leaving you so much.”

Lacey gave him a sharp look, and then appeared to force her face back into a pleasant expression. “It's not a problem. You know that.”

“The girls need to know what's going on,” he blurted out. He looked across at Margot.

“I agree with Alex,” Margot said, as if on cue. “I think maybe it's time that Wink and Toni know about your illness. You're okay now, but what if things were to change? I mean, with Alex so far away . . .” Her voice trailed off. She appeared to be watching him for the next signal.

“No,” Lacey said.

“We just think—” Margot said.

“We?” Lacey interrupted, her voice high-pitched. “What do you mean,
we
?” She set her cup down abruptly. She turned to Alex, her eyes intently focused. “This is about us.” Her eyes opened wider, as if she suddenly understood. “What? You wanted Margot to—”

“Wait,” Alex said.

“You wait,” Lacey said.

Margot stared at the floor, looking as if she wanted to disappear.

“Lacey, listen,” Alex said. “The girls have applied to college. This is their last year at home. They need time to get used to the situation.”

“I don't want to.”

“But why not?” Margot asked. “I think they're old enough to handle it.”

Lacey looked at Margot. “You don't remember.” Her voice was accusing. “I was in high school when . . .” She seemed to search not only for one word but for words strong enough to remind Margot of something she had forgotten. “When Mother was really sick. You were still little.” Lacey groaned. “If you had any idea—” She stopped and drew in a breath. “I don't want that for my girls. I want their last year to be . . .”

“Lacey, they already suspect,” Alex said. “I've given them excuses—you're tired, you're stressed. They're not little kids. They know something's not right.”

“Wink was worried about you at Thanksgiving,” Margot said. “Alex is concerned that—”

Lacey turned to Margot. “So he asked you to get involved?”

Margot seemed to shrink into her chair. “I came because we thought—”

“Stop!” Lacey covered her ears. “This is about my family. Not you.” Her face was flushed. Margot moved to the edge of her chair. Lacey pointed at Margot as if reprimanding a child. “You listen to me.” Her chin thrust forward. “I will tell my girls. When I'm ready.”

“Tell us what?” Toni stood at the door to the living room. Wink lingered in the shadow of the hall.

Alex stared at his daughters. He froze, incapable of saying a thing. All the breath had been knocked out of him. He and Lacey had lived with the diagnosis for several months. Primary progressive aphasia, frontotemporal dementia, cell disintegration—a tragic vocabulary that had entered his lexicon. Not an hour went by when some part of him didn't pause and cower, fearful of what was to come. He had become used to the knowledge. He didn't know how their lives would change, how they would cope, but the hard reality had settled into his consciousness, had become part of how he saw his life. It blurred his expectations.

“You started this, Alex,” Lacey said, backing away from Margot. “You tell them.” She pointed her finger in his face. Her entire arm shook. A horrible sound rose in her throat. She turned, sank down on the sofa and buried her face in her hands. “You, you . . . how could you?” When she looked up, her face was wet with tears. He had never seen such anguish on her face before.

He took a deep breath and launched into the sequence of events and the doctor's final evaluation. Toni leaned against the doorframe and Lacey remained on the sofa, saying nothing. Wink sat beside her mother and took her hand. When Alex finished speaking, Toni stepped over and faced him squarely, and began firing questions, her anger clear. “I can't believe this. You've known since before Thanksgiving and you didn't tell us? Why? God, you treat us like babies. That's called lying.”

“Daddy, have you talked to other doctors?” Wink, on the verge of tears, turned to her mother. “Your speech isn't that different. It could be years before you get worse, couldn't it?”

Lacey stroked Wink's face. “It's not that bad, sweetie. I'm going to be fine for a long, long time.”

“And you believe that?” Toni asked. “It's not like we're getting the truth around here.” She walked away from Alex and stood before her mother. “So you were giving me all this ‘must be menopause' shit when you have some weird brain sickness?” Toni's face crumpled like a child's before crying. “You lied too, Mom. You're just as bad.”

“Please . . . don't think . . . that,” Lacey said.

“What should I think? I'm supposed to take it calmly when my parents have done nothing but lie to me?”

“It's not like that,” Wink said, hope in her voice, though she had quietly started to cry.

“So it's like—” Toni made a choking sound, then continued. “You won't be able to talk one day, and eventually not understand, and then one day . . .” She couldn't go on. She too began to weep.

Margot remained silent, clearly distressed. Alex could see that the damage had been done. What could Margot do now anyway? “I'm going to set up a meeting with Mom's neurologist,” he said.

“So we can go in as a family and talk to him. You can ask him all your questions.”

“Like that's going to do any good,” Toni said.

Wink, her face now stained with tears, appeared to force a smile. “I'm sure he can tell us what we can do for Mom,” she said.

“You're right,” he said, relieved that one of his daughters was looking on the positive side. “Further deterioration might be years away. We need to help your mother, be supportive, care for each other.” As he said these words an overwhelming dread came over him.

Toni lashed out a final time. “I can't believe you didn't tell us, Mom. That's just so shitty.” Her voice broke.

“Your mom was only trying to protect you,” Margot said. “She didn't want to worry you.”

Toni paid no attention to Margot and headed back to the hall. “I'm out of here,” she said.

Alex was surprised by the bitterness in her voice. He called after her, “No one's going anywhere tonight.”

“And why the hell not?” she shouted back at them.

“Don't raise your voice,” he said.

“Raise my voice,” she said, coming back into the room. “Pretty soon Mommy won't have a voice.”

Alex watched her stomp up the stairs to her bedroom. He leaned against the banister, feeling sick and unsteady. Toni hadn't called Lacey “Mommy” in years. In the meantime Lacey had taken Wink in her arms and was swaying gently, almost cooing. “It's okay, sweetie, it's okay.” Alex continued to stand away from them, as if he were the monster that had brought this tragedy on everyone. Margot, looking forlorn, gathered the cups to take to the kitchen.

He drew in a breath and straightened before going back to Lacey and Wink. “It's hard, Winky, but your mom and I are adjusting.” He searched Lacey's face as he put his arm around his daughter. Lacey turned her head, avoiding his gaze. “We're going to manage. We're going to find ways.” He couldn't think of what else to say. The fire had gone out, but he didn't get up to put on another log. Lacey pulled away, drawing herself into the corner of the sofa. He stroked his daughter's back, feeling each fragile vertebra.

 

Margot rinsed the cups and put them in the dishwasher. She wrapped the leftover lasagna in foil. The casserole dish was riddled with hardened bits of cheese and charred cream sauce stuck to the rim. After scraping it as best she could, Margot set it to soak and slumped down at the kitchen table. Sorrow, nothing but sorrow, overwhelmed her. She felt like a fool. What had made her think she could do any good here? This was Lacey's illness. She and Alex would have to find a way to help their daughters live with it. Lacey's piercing stare when she learned that Alex had called on Margot to help him had gone straight to Margot's heart. Alex was wrong to have brought her into this decision. They had hurt Lacey deeply.

Margot thought again of the terrible week with Oliver. She longed for him now. What a mess. She kept turning the awful days over in her mind. If only this gallery in San Francisco would take his paintings and give him a show. That would be some solace. But then what? Lacey's illness wasn't going to go away. Now, by taking Alex's side, Margot had become involved more deeply than ever. And she had thought she could help. What a joke.

Alex came into the kitchen.

“Where's . . .” She started to ask about Lacey.

“Upstairs with Wink. Trying to calm her down.”

“Shouldn't you be with Toni?”

“Toni won't even look at me. And Lacey's furious.”

“I'm sorry, Alex.”

“Shit. This wasn't what I wanted.” He sat down across from her.

“You wanted the girls to know. Did you really expect it to be any different?” Margot pushed her chair back, wishing to be anywhere but here. “You knew the girls would be upset. Remember, we agreed they should know.” Margot was struck again that agreeing with Alex and ignoring her sister's wishes was a breach of loyalty—like switching sides, going over to join an enemy army. But she had chosen, and part of her still thought they had been right.

Alex stared blankly out into the dark garden. There was no moon. He closed his eyes for a moment.

“Alex, they had to know sometime,” she said, raising her voice. “Leaving for Chicago just pushed the issue.”

“Lacey wanted me to take the job.”

“I know that.”

“It's just so hard.”

“You have the rest of the weekend. Keep talking to the girls. Do something fun. Something normal—maybe go to the movies together or out to eat. Just live the way you usually do. That's what Lacey wants.”

“You're right.”

“Not totally. I shouldn't have come here.”

“Don't say that.”

“Alex, this is about you and Lacey. How you get on with your lives is between the two of you.”

He rubbed his forehead. “I just don't understand her these days. Everything has changed. It's like she's closing herself off from me.”

“Of course things seem different. But even though she's sick, she's still the same person.”

“I don't know, Margot.”

“Alex, you can do this.” She stood. “I'm going up to bed. If Toni's willing, I'll talk to her for a bit. Why don't you check on Wink?”

“Margot.” He looked up at her as if not quite sure of what he intended to say.

“I'm leaving in the morning. I need to get home.”

“I'm glad you were here. Even if . . .”

“I shouldn't have come.”

 

Margot pulled the blankets around her. The guest room on the third floor was not well insulated and cold air from the outdoors leaked in around the window frame. The sheets felt like ice. She shivered and longed to cuddle up against Oliver's warm body. After leaving Alex in the kitchen she had come upstairs to bed. From Lacey's room had come the sound of muffled voices. Lacey was with her daughters. Margot had slipped by unnoticed. Now, curled up in the dark, she knew sleep would be a long time coming.

January, she thought. Look how the new year was starting out. Margot clenched her teeth to keep them from chattering. She pictured the unheated cottage on Bow Lake. Sometimes in late August the temperature dipped into the forties at night. She and Lacey would huddle under the moth-eaten blankets that Granny Winkler took out of the trunk at the foot of her bed.

The August when Margot was eight and Lacey twelve had been incredibly hot. The temperature reached record heights in New Hampshire and one July day it peaked at 104. There, at Bow Lake, Granny Winkler gave each granddaughter a Japanese hand fan, and they sat on the shaded porch in the late afternoon playing Crazy Eights, one hand clutching the limp cards, the other fanning gently at the wisps of hair clinging to their sweating foreheads. Margot had particularly loved that game, being eight herself.

The old cottage had no air-conditioning and the hardest time of the day came at bedtime when the girls tried to fall asleep in the creaky old cots upstairs under the eaves. Margot remembered that night when the temperature hardly dropped, there was no breeze, and the sticky air weighed them down like an unwelcome wool blanket that they couldn't kick off. Margot tried to lie still and Lacey was telling her about the locker she would have for the first time when she went to junior high in the fall. Margot was already worried about what it would be like to be at the grammar school without her sister. The junior high started an hour earlier in the morning. They wouldn't even leave the house at the same time.

“Girlies,” their granny called up to them, “are you still awake?”

“Yes, Gran,” Lacey called down.

Margot thought their grandmother was going to scold them for talking so late at night.

“Moon's full,” their grandmother said. “Put on your suits. I think we could all use a swim.”