RENÉ FOUND MARY CURLEY IN ONE of the activity rooms. Three other women were at the main table doing cut-and-pastes with an aide. But Mary sat alone in a corner with puzzle pieces piled in front of her.
As she approached her, René became aware of Mary’s outfit—a ruffled white blouse under a pink and white jumper. Some residents needed help getting dressed. Others could dress themselves. According to the charts, Mary was in the latter category because of her improved functionality. But what startled René was that Mary looked like a geriatric Little Bo Peep. “Hi, Mary. Remember me? My name is René.”
Mary looked at her. “I remember you.”
René didn’t really believe her since several weeks had passed. “The last time we met, you were doing a puzzle of a kitten.”
“That was Daisy. She’s over there.” And she pointed to a shelf of puzzle boxes.
René was shocked at her recall. But Alice’s words shot through her head:
This is what it’s all about.
“That’s right!” But as soon as the words were out, René’s eyes fell to the picture puzzle—a little girl with a dog. And the little girl was dressed in a pink and white jumper. “Mary, that’s a very pretty dress. Where did you get it?”
Without missing a beat, Mary said, “My daddy.” She clicked another piece into the puzzle. “He’s going to take me to the museum today.” And she checked her naked wrist as if reading a watch.
“He is? Isn’t that nice? Which museum?”
“The Museum of Fine Arts in Boston,” and she enunciated the words with slow deliberation.
But what sent a jag through René was the woman’s voice. As if somebody had flicked a switch, Mary sounded like a little girl. Even her deportment seemed to shift as she rocked her head with each syllable, the pink tip of her tongue wetting her lips.
“He’s going to take me to see the mummies. You like mummies?”
“Yes. I like mummies,” René said, feeling as if the room temperature had dropped ten degrees.
“No, you don’t. That’s not what you said yesterday. You said you didn’t like mummies. You said they were all dry and scary-looking, and you didn’t want to go the museum.”
“But I didn’t see you yesterday.”
“You did so.”
“Mary, what’s my name? Do you remember?”
Mary looked up at her with a slightly quizzical expression. “Barbara Chin, silly.”
“My name isn’t Barbara Chin. It’s René.”
Mary snapped another piece into the puzzle. “I’m not afraid of mummies. And you shouldn’t be either. They’re dead.”
As Mary continued her weird monologue, René noticed how she kept licking her upper lip like a child and how she fidgeted with the folds of her dress and twisted strands of her hair as she studied the scattered puzzle pieces, or put a twist of them in her mouth, sucking the ends as she searched for connections.
But what unnerved René was not just the full-faced innocent hazel eyes entreating her to explain her fear of mummies. It was that voice: It had none of the resonance and timbre of an elderly woman but the thin violin sharpness of a little girl’s.
“I remember you have a dog also,” René said, as Mary completed the spaniel’s head in the picture.
Mary licked her lips and her face lit up. “His name is Jello.”
“Yes, Jello. I like the name. What kind of dog is he?”
“He’s a golden retrieber.”
“Retriever.”
“That’s what I said,
retrieber.
”
René kept feeding her questions not just in fascination at Mary’s recall, but the weird sense of double exposure. Half the visual cues told her that René was having a conversation with a seventy-eight-year-old woman. But the dress and gestures and voice were those of a child. Every so often Mary would look up full-faced at René, her watery eyes staring at her full of little-girl innocence but through a face of crinkled, doughy flesh and liver spots. These were not the eyes of a dementia patient who looked out in fear and confusion at a meaningless kaleidoscope of colors and shapes. Nor were these
the eyes of a woman who was being stripped away inside. These were the eyes of a child pressed into the face of an old woman.
“Mary, can I ask you a question?”
Mary looked up at her blankly, her eyes perfectly round orbs of milky blue innocence.
“Where are you?”
For a hushed moment, Mary just looked at her with that broad soft open face. “Henry C. Dwight Elementary.”
“And how old are you?”
“Seven.”
“No,” René began. But she was cut off as Mary grabbed her hand, and for a second René thought she wanted to be helped up. But she pulled it to her mouth and in the instant before she took a bite out of it, René snapped it away.
Mary hissed at her. “I don’t like you.” Then she pushed her chair back and stood up. She inspected her wrist again and started moving away.
“Mary, where you going?”
Then in that little-girl voice again, she said, “Jello needs to go out.” And she got up and shuffled out of the room.
“IT WAS CREEPY. SHE WAS IN a time zone of seventy years ago.”
“That’s not unusual with these patients,” Nick said.
“But this was different. She was coherent, not scattered or fragmented. Neither was her delusion. She was back in her childhood and apparently enjoying it, except when she tried to take a bite out of me.”
They were jogging along the river again. The day was cool and overcast, and because it was October only a few sailboats were on the water.
“Then that’s something we’ll be looking into,” Nick said. “Which brings me to why I called. Feel like moonlighting? I’m going to need help tabulating data for the trials. We’re getting lots of positive results, but I’m concerned over these flashback events.”
She was relieved to hear him say that. She was beginning to wonder if she was the only one who saw this as a potential problem.
“That’s something we have to deal with. And that’s going to mean cross-referencing these events with population demographics, genetic profiles, et cetera.”
“What exactly would my job be?”
“Your title would be behavioral data analyst.”
“Why do I have the feeling that you just made that up?”
“Because I did, but who’d be better than a consulting pharmacist?”
“I’m flattered, but won’t that be a conflict of interest?”
“Au contraire,
and didn’t I see that coming? You’re an employee of CommnityCare pharmacy, which makes you an outsider to both the homes and GEM Tech. And since you’ll be in my employ, that puts you out of range of GEM.”
She thought that over for a moment, feeling a slight uneasiness.
“Unless, of course, you have problems with receiving compensation from me.”
“No, but my guess is that it will be coming from GEM Tech, right?”
“Yes, but you’re participating in clinical research for me, and God knows I can use the help. And you can use the money.”
Was this ever true. Nearly forty thousand dollars remained to be paid off in student loans. And on a salary of seventy thousand dollars, she’d be paying it back for years. Plus her car was beginning to break down, and her wardrobe was full of gaps, and her credit card debts were mounting up.
“Also, you’re the last person who’s going to look the other way if there’s a problem.”
“What exactly would I be doing?”
“Compiling data on meds and behavior from the clinical nurses, maybe even taking note yourself of any changes in the behavior of patients.”
“How long do I have to think it over?”
He nodded down the path. “Until we reach that tree. And the rate is fifty dollars an hour.”
“That’s ridiculous.”
“So is GEM’s potential profit.”
“How many times can I sell my soul to them?”
Nick laughed. “Do I hear a yes?”
Screw it. “Yes.”
“Good.”
They jogged silently for a few yards. “By the way,” she said, “is Jordan Carr working with you on the Jack Koryan case?”
“No.”
“Oh.”
“Why do you ask?”
“He requisitioned a blood assay of Mr. Koryan.”
“He did?” Nick looked genuinely surprised.
“Then later he asked Alice to fax it to another number. I checked,” she said. “It’s the office of Gavin Moy.”
“Gavin Moy?” Nick nearly stopped, but he caught himself and continued his pace again.
For several moments they jogged along without further comment. But René sensed a festering behind Nick’s silence and the way he stared at the water as if half-expecting something to surface.
BY MID-OCTOBER, BETH HAD CUT HER visits with Jack at the rehab center to once a week. In spite of the aggressive efforts at sensory and motor stimulation, the staff at Greendale had failed to elicit any on-command response from Jack. He could breathe on his own, cough on his own, make occasional meaningless sounds. But for all practical purposes, Jack was dead.
Meanwhile, Yesterdays opened to rave reviews in both the Boston Phoenix and the
Boston Globe
. Because Beth had no interest in the restaurant she had sold Jack’s share to a cousin of Vince’s.
And Jack slept.
And one night at the Bristol Lounge in Boston’s Four Seasons Hotel Beth met George King, an investor from McAllen, Texas. He was in town for a week of meetings. He was a kind, handsome man, and they spent the evening together walking through the Boston Garden. His wife had died the year before of breast cancer. To Beth’s mind they shared a common loss. On the eve of his departure, they shared his hotel bed.
And Jack slept.
When she visited Jack again, Beth felt less conflicted with devotion and honor than she had been. She knew she was slightly neurotic, more concerned with herself, thinking that she could end up like one of those family members waiting seventeen years for their loved one to wake up. But she had to be honest with herself. That just wasn’t her. She was no bedside wife. Besides, she had considered leaving him before all this happened. If he were awake, he’d understand.
When the nurses left, Beth laid her hand on Jack’s and, her eyes pooling with tears, she kissed him softly on the forehead. “I’m sorry, Jack,” she whispered.
The next day she filed for divorce.
“WHO’S FUZZY SWENSON?” RENÉ ASKED Christine Martinetti.
Christine looked startled. “How do you know about Fuzzy Swenson?”
“Your father. He was a little confused the last couple times I was in and asked if I was Fuzzy Swenson’s sister.”
“I don’t know about her, but Fuzzy Swenson was a buddy of Dad’s in Korea. He’s got a picture of him in his room.”
“I saw it.”
“What did he say about him?”
“Nothing. Just that he thought I was his sister. Also became a little agitated.”
Christine nodded and sighed. “I think his real name was Samuel. He was in a POW camp with Dad in North Korea. He died over there and I guess it was pretty bad what happened to him because Dad never talks about it. Funny thing is that he’s beginning to talk more about his Korea days—the good stuff. Maybe it’s the Memorine.”
“Maybe. His cognitive test scores are beginning to improve.”
They were sitting in the conference room on the locked unit having coffee and waiting for Louis to finish his shower. Christine, who was about René’s age, lived in Connecticut and visited her father maybe once a week.
“He’s otherwise so healthy. He could live another fifteen years.”
“Absolutely.”
Christine was silent for a few moments. “From what I’ve read, nobody ever dies of Alzheimer’s. They die of heart attack or cancer, but not the disease itself, right?”
“Yeah, it’s usually some prior condition. But if they’re in advanced stages and are confined to wheelchairs or a bed, they’re susceptible to internal infections and pneumonia.”
“Because they forget how to walk and eat. So they starve to death.”
René nodded at the primal reality. “By then they’ve lapsed into a coma, and the family usually decides to discontinue feeding and not to take any extraordinary measures to resuscitate.”
“I don’t want him to go like that.”
“Of course not.”
“I don’t think I could take it.”
DNR. One of the countless antiseptic shorthands.
It’s what René had finally yielded to.
Do not resuscitate.
To spare her own father from pain and more humiliation. Because she did not want him to linger on until the basic circuitry of his brain had become so gummed up that he had lost memory of how to breathe. It was that raw eventuality that caught up to her—when she had come to accept the fact that he would never recover, that no matter what she did or what the doctors came up with he would never come back but continue to descend into the disease. So she signed the DNR order. And the day he died was a release for the both of them. Her only compulsion was to be with him at the moment of his death. And when that came, she held him in her arms and told him over and over again that she loved him, that he and Mom had given her a beautiful life, and that he was going to be with her soon. Of course, he heard none of René’s words. And even if he did, they meant nothing to him. They were for her.
His breathing came irregularly, in short gasps and long intervals. Then in a long thin sigh that seemed to rise out of a fundamentally held resignation of all living creatures, he died. In a blink his life and all that had gone into making him who he was ended. She held her face to his and sobbed until she thought her heart would break. When the nurses came, they sat with her. Then they left to give her one final moment with him.
For the last time she kissed him on the forehead and whispered, “
Tell them I remember you.”
Against that memory flash René forced a bright face and matching voice. “Well, if he continues to improve the way he has, that may not happen.”
“You really think it’s working, that he may actually recover?”
“It’s really too early to say for certain, but from what I’ve seen around here the signs are very promising.”
“God, I pray it’s true.”
René felt the tug in her chest again. “Me, too.”
An aide stuck her head into the room. “He’s all ready.”
René followed the aide and Christine down the hall and into the dayroom, where Mrs. Martinetti was sitting with Louis at a table. Louis was looking at black-and-white photographs. Old photos of the Martinettis in younger days.
“Good morning, Dad,” Christine said with a big smile, and she gave Louis a kiss on the forehead. “You look so handsome in that shirt.”
His white hair was still damp from the shower and his face had a bright
sheen. And although the bright red polo shirt gave a youthful glow to his face, it could not mask the confusion in his expression as he looked at Christine, then back at René.
Christine pulled up a chair beside him. “So, what’s new? What’s been going on?”
Louis continued to glare at her in bewilderment. Finally he said, “Where’s … my other daughter?”
“What other daughter? You only have one daughter—me. Christine.”
Louis looked at René for help. “I have another daughter. Not her.”
Christine’s body slumped. “No, Dad, you only have me. You just forgot.”
“She’s not my daughter,” he insisted, looking at René. Then he lowered his voice. “She’s somebody else.”
“Dad, how can you forget? It’s me, Christine. You remember.”
The photos were of Louis and Marie posing with Christine when she was a girl. Louis’s face turned angry and red. “You’re somebody else. You’re an … imposter.” He again turned his face away, clapping his eyes on René for safety.
“I’m not an imposter. You’re just a little confused.”
René could hear the fracturing in her voice. It had only been a few days since Christine was last here. Remarkably, his scores had increased twenty percent since he had first entered the home eleven months ago.
René knelt down and took his hand. “Louis, you remember me, right?”
He looked at her at first with a disconcerting scowl. But then his face smoothed over. “Yeah, you’re the pharmacist woman.”
“That’s right. We’re friends—you can believe me. And this is Christine. Look at her, Louis. She’s your daughter, Christine.”
Louis did not look at Christine. But he shook his head. She asked him again to look at Christine, but he refused.
René got up and nodded to Christine to follow her. “We’ll be right back,” she said, and led Christine out of the dayroom and into the hall where Louis couldn’t see them.
“How can he not recognize me? I was here three days ago, and he was fine. He’s supposed to be getting better.” Tears puddled in her eyes.
“It might be that he’s remembering you from years ago—the old photos. That happens often. In fact, it’s called Capgras syndrome—when they think that loved ones are doubles or fakes.”
“Can’t you give him something? I means with all those meds you got?”
“He’s been treated with antipsychotics.”
“Maybe you can recommend they up the dosage or something.”
The nursing staff would give him Ativan or Haldol when he got seriously agitated or threatened to disrupt the ward. But they could not medicate back the recall every time he forgot his daughter. Ironically, Memorine was supposed to do that.
Christine looked distraught. Rene took her hand. “Let’s try this,” she said, and led her back into the dayroom. “Hey, Louis. Look who’s here. It’s Christine.”
Louis looked at her for a prolonged moment. Then his face brightened into a smile. “Where you been?”
“The traffic was bad.” Christine walked over and gave her father a big hug. “So what’s going on? How you been?”
They talked for a while. Then Louis glanced at René as she was about to leave them. “I couldn’t stop them,” he whispered. “I tried, but I couldn’t. I’m sorry.”
“You couldn’t stop who, Louis?”
“Sorry.” His eyes filled with tears.
“Dad, what are you talking about?”
But he disregarded Christine. “Louis, you’re getting confused,” René said. “What’s upsetting you? Tell us, please.”
He looked at Christine, then back to René. “Sorry about your brother.”
“Louis, I don’t have a brother.”
He nodded. Then his face tightened. “But I’m going to get them back some day, the fuckers.”
“Get who back?”
He nodded to himself as if he had just settled something. “They’ll know.”