People Who Knew Me (14 page)

“Together,” Claire says, before I can answer. And when we shuffle into our gondola and take our seats, she reaches over and holds my hand tight, out of love or fear or both.

 

TWELVE

Drew's mom moved in with us a week after the car accident. We made our modest living space into her bedroom, filled our already-full closet with her clothes, covered our kitchen counter with the pills she hoped were magical.

“It'll be temporary,” he said, “just until I get my license back.”

His license was suspended for six months. He could no longer drive to her house to care for her. During this time, I had dreams of dominoes falling, one after another, in a seemingly endless line.

“Trust me, she doesn't want to be out of her house any more than we want her in our house.”

I got lost at the part where he said, “Trust me.”

*   *   *

I started staying late at the office or going out with Marni after work. I wanted to come home to find Drew's mom already asleep. I wanted to close my eyes on the short walk from the front door to the bedroom and pretend she wasn't there, curled up on the couch, drooling on my throw pillows.

“I really don't know how you and Drew are handling all this,” Marni said. We had just finished dinner at a Thai restaurant in the Village and were walking arm in arm to the subway station. It was one of those summer nights that had a hint of fall in the air—a brief chill, a preview.

“We're not. Or I'm not. Drew drinks whiskey to handle it. He's become something of a connoisseur.”

“Well, you're going to have to escape in your own way.”

“You're my escape, silly.”

“You're gonna get sick of me,” she said.

“Never.”

We hugged at the station. She kissed me on the cheek and I got sad as I watched her disappear down the corridor to the train that would take her home.

A few days later, Jade insisted I leave the office before six since I'd been doing so much overtime. Marni couldn't meet for dinner—she had a date. So I was home by seven. Drew and his mom were watching
Jeopardy!
, sitting so close on the couch that an unknowing visitor might think them an odd couple. My favorite blanket was draped over the armrest, a blanket I'd had since I was a kid. There were nights my mom left me alone and I covered myself in that blanket and waited for sunrise. Now there was a large damp stain on it.

“What happened?” I asked. I pulled it to my face to smell and I knew the answer before Drew had to say anything. His mom wet her pants on an almost daily basis. We had started putting trash bags over the couch cushions.

“She had an accident,” he said. “She didn't realize she was sitting on it.”

She looked at me with regret. “Sorry,” she whispered.

Drew must have seen my eyes enlarge with rage, because he said, “Don't worry, I'm taking it to the Laundromat tomorrow.”

That didn't help, though. I didn't want the blanket washed. It was delicate. It had never been washed—not in the two decades I'd had it. I liked that it smelled like the passage of years.

“Why don't you go for a walk?” he said, standing and guiding me to the front door like a bouncer attempting to divert a threat in a crowded club. He opened the door for me, practically pushed me out, told me with his eyes to come back when I was calmer, less likely to kill someone.

I walked down the steps to the sidewalk and when I rounded the corner of our block, I quickened my pace until I was running, until I was sprinting, until I was so exhausted that I was physically incapable of screaming even if I wanted to.

I was wearing my work shoes—loafers.

*   *   *

That escape Marni said I'd need? I found it. I started running nightly, until I was so exhausted that I could return to the apartment without anger. I got so good at it, started running so many miles, that I returned to the apartment with complete apathy. I didn't listen to music; I just listened to the rhythm of my feet and the cycle of my inhales and exhales.

Within a week, I was running before work and in the evening. I ran three times a day on weekends. I ran with the gusto of Forrest Gump. Over a midweek lunch with Marni—we didn't meet for after-work happy hours that often anymore because I didn't want to miss my evening runs—she said she was worried about me.

“Whenever women run, they're running away from something,” she said. “Every time I see a woman jogging, I pity her. I want to stop her and have a heart-to-heart and ask,
What the hell are you running from?
”

“But it's okay for men to run?” I asked, flexing a feminist muscle that I knew Marni would appreciate.

“Men have, like, a primordial need to run. It goes back to their days as hunters sprinting across the Great Plains to kill mammals.”

She stabbed a tomato in her salad as if it were one of those just-mentioned mammals.

“Marni, that's bullshit and you know it,” I said.

She used her finger to wipe up the dressing left in her bowl, then licked her finger shamelessly. “I just think you're running from something,” she said. “Which is fine. I would run, too, if I was in your situation—metaphorically, I mean. I'd never actually run unless some rapist was chasing me.”

“I guess I won't ask you to come along sometime,” I said, though I wouldn't have asked anyway. I didn't want a companion.

“Look, just don't get hit by a car or pass out from exhaustion or lose every ounce of body fat.”

She reached across the table and pinched my upper arm.

“Apparently I'm too late with the body fat thing.”

*   *   *

One day, at work, I was looking up information about Parkinson's online and saw a list of support groups. There was one for caretakers—in Brooklyn Heights. So, that Thursday night, I ran four miles, in the dark, to a church on Jay Street. I didn't tell Drew I was going.

There were seven of us total, including the group leader—a sixty-something woman named Pam whose credentials were twofold: she was a retired social worker and her brother had Parkinson's. The newcomers had to introduce themselves to the group, AA-style.

“Hi, I'm Emily. My husband's mother has stage five Parkinson's and she's been living with us since May.”

That was all I said. I didn't tell them that I made Drew get out of bed first in the morning because I didn't want to greet his mom. I didn't tell them that every time she started to topple over, like a diseased tree falling in a forest, I thought about whether to steady her or let her fall. I didn't tell them that I considered calling Social Services on myself, claiming to be a neighbor witnessing elder abuse, so that they would take her away. I didn't tell them these things because I thought they would tell me the same thing Drew did—to have a little compassion.

Everyone welcomed me, then moved along to the two other newcomers. I was the youngest there by about twenty years, which made me feel sorrier for myself. This wasn't supposed to be happening to me—to us—now. When his mother first moved in, I said to Drew, like a toddler throwing a tantrum about a time-out, “It isn't fair.” He told me it would be helpful if I'd complain only about things that had a solution. I didn't talk to him for two days.

The woman sitting across from me was also there for her first meeting. She had wild gray hair, long and wavy. She tapped one foot on the floor impatiently, like she couldn't wait for her turn to talk. When it came, she said:

“I'm Nancy. My seventy-two-year-old mother just moved in with me. Stage five. I'm about to lose my fucking mind.”

Everyone just stared at her. I tried not to laugh. She must have felt the need to explain, because she went on:

“I have siblings—three of them. None of them want to take in my mother. She was crazy before Parkinson's and she's even crazier now.”

She spoke fast, like she was on uppers, hands flailing all over the place. I liked her immediately. When she saw my amused smile, she winked at me.

Most of the meeting involved trading tips. It was like a Parkinson's advice swap meet. The group spent twenty minutes discussing adult diapers. “There's this new one that isn't as poufy as most of them. My mom doesn't fight me as much about wearing it at night,” this lady named Alice said. The others looked at her like she was the messiah and jotted down the name. They all had notepads readily accessible.

Then Pam spent a half hour explaining “circle theory.” I wasn't sure it was a real thing or something she made up. She instructed us to draw a circle on a paper and put the name of the Parkinson's patient in that circle. Then we drew a circle around that and put the name of the primary caregiver in that ring, then another circle with the name of the next-closest person, and so on. Pam said, “Comfort in, complaints out,” meaning we were supposed to offer comfort to people in circles more inward than our own, and complain only to people in circles farther out than our own. In my life, this meant Drew's mom could bitch and moan as much as she wanted, to anyone at any time. And Drew could bitch and moan to me as much as he wanted. I had to offer the two of them comfort. I was in the third ring. I could only bitch and moan to people farther out from the situation than me—Marni, mostly. Unloading my frustrations on Drew was a no-no.

After the meeting, Nancy tapped me on the shoulder at the snack table, which featured a sad-looking bag of Pepperidge Farm cookies.

“Is it just me, or is that circle theory a crock of shit?” she whispered. I scanned my immediate surroundings to see if anyone else was listening in on us. They all seemed preoccupied with others. There was lots of slow nodding and hugging going on.

“Yes,” I said. It felt like I'd just confessed a sin.

She asked if I wanted to go somewhere for a real snack and a real talk. I said, “Sure,” and we walked to a coffee shop down the street that displayed carrot cake muffins in the window.

Even though we'd left the meeting, we still whispered our confessions across the little round bistro table, clutching steaming mugs in our hands. I told her how overwhelming it was that Parkinson's wasn't terminal. I asked her if it made me an awful person that I wished it was, that I wanted nothing more than an end point.

She scoffed. “Honey, sometimes I hope my mom will catch a flu that turns into pneumonia.”

We both knew that was how most people with advanced Parkinson's end up dying—that or infected bedsores or a bad fall that leads to necessary surgery that the body just can't handle. I wasn't at all shocked by her revelation. I'd had the same thought drift into my mind when all the defenses of propriety were down. I was relieved, and she was relieved that I was relieved. We were fast friends—by necessity, really. We had no one else.

“You know what bugs me more than anything?” Nancy asked.

“Hmm?” I said, taking an exploratory nibble of my muffin, confirming it was edible. The girl at the counter had given it to me for free because she thought it might be stale. She couldn't remember when they were made. She looked high.

“When people say that God only gives us what we can handle.”

“Or when they say we learn from things like this.”

“All I've learned is that God must not know me at all,” she said.

I realized why I liked Nancy. She threw one hell of a pity party and I was happy to attend. After all, Drew wouldn't let me throw my own.

“Thing is, you're way too young for all this shit,” she said.

“I know,” I said. “Though I don't think anyone is ever at an age to deal with this.”

“True. But you're supposed to be planning your own life, not helping someone else survive the end of theirs.”

It felt good to hear the thoughts in my head verbalized, validated.

“Drew always says, ‘These are just the cards we were dealt,'” I said. “If he uses that line one more time…”

She took a long sip of her coffee. I asked how she could sleep after drinking a mug of coffee late at night. She said, “I don't sleep anyway. May as well have the energy to make the sleepless hours productive.”

“Sometimes I think about what we'd be doing if we didn't have to deal with his mom,” I said.

“And what would that be?”

I stared at the muffin, picked out the raisins, and put them on my plate. It wasn't that I disliked raisins; I just wanted some kind of project to distract from my current thought process.

“We'd probably have a baby by now,” I said.

A baby—the ultimate project to distract myself. I'd contemplated this hypothetical child a lot, mourned it as if I'd miscarried. This baby was a girl, in my head. Her name was Lila. Or Claire—sweet and simple Claire. Or maybe Winnie. I'd always loved Winnie in
The Wonder Years
.

“How old are you?”

“Twenty-eight in a few weeks,” I said.

She said, simply, “Guess it's about that time.”

It was that time. I'd always thought I wanted two kids, at least. I was an only child and wouldn't wish that loneliness on anyone. I'd done the math—even if I got pregnant that night, I'd have my first baby just a couple months before turning twenty-nine. After a year of adjustment—physically and emotionally—we would try for a second. I'd have that baby when I was thirty. That seemed old to me. I'd envisioned myself as a younger mom. When my own mother was thirty, I was already eight.

“It doesn't even seem in the realm of possibility now—having a child,” I said. “I mean, Drew's mom could go on like this for years.”

Nancy nodded. She understood. Like me, she'd read the online message boards with frustrated posts from people who had been doing their caretaking for a decade or more.

“She's your child,” she said, making no attempts to spare me the harshness of this reality. “You make her food, wipe her ass, put her to bed.”