The wall clock’s needle-thin red hand sweeps in relentless circles. It strikes me as unbearably cruel that, as they sit in his office, Dr. Chen’s patients are forced to confront the dwindling of the very thing they desire most.
My mother reaches the wall and turns for another lap.
The swelling pressure closes in on me, and my voice sounds as high and panicky as it did when I was a child and awoke from a nightmare: “Mom!”
She stops pacing. She meets my eyes for the first time since we entered the office.
The news she delivers isn’t bad.
It’s catastrophic.
“There’s one thing I didn’t put down on the forms. Maybe I just couldn’t deal with having to write the words.… My mother and I were estranged, but she passed away right before she turned fifty. An old friend tracked me down years ago to let me know.”
This is the first I’ve heard of any of this.
I’m still reeling as my mom continues, “She died from early-onset Alzheimer’s.”
CHAPTER FOUR
RUTH
It turns out there’s yet another way to disappear. Your mind can begin to erase itself.
Catherine is driving us home, one hand gripping the steering wheel, the other tucked in mine. I know the look on her face, the set of her jaw. She’s holding back tears.
I’m sorry, baby.
I don’t say the words because they will send her over the edge, and I’m just barely keeping it together myself.
So I reach for the radio with my free hand. “Thunder Road”—the best version, the haunting, acoustic one from Brisbane—comes on and I exhale, feeling some of the rigidity leave my body.
“What kind of monster doesn’t like Springsteen?” I ask.
Catherine doesn’t immediately recite her usual comeback and I hold my breath. Then: “A monster with taste.”
I leave it there, not replying with my usual: “I should’ve given you up for adoption.”
A thin line can separate laughter and tears, and I don’t want to push her in the wrong direction.
Catherine turns onto the highway, heading toward home, and I give her hand a squeeze, then let go. She needs both on the steering wheel. Catherine drives too fast. What’s more, she expects everyone on the road to be as quick and decisive as she is, and she isn’t grateful for my helpful tips, even though I’ve been driving a lot longer.
I’m not one of those mothers who deludes myself her kid is an angel—or who flutters around, gushing that I don’t know what I did to deserve a daughter like Catherine.
Of course I deserve her. I’ve devoted my life to raising her well.
Catherine is a competent cook—probably out of necessity—and she’s smarter than me, except for her taste in music.
She’s a hard worker. She got that from me.
She’s not a shouter. She didn’t get that from me.
My daughter is tall and fine-boned and graceful, with delicate features that bely her grit and determination. It’s like someone waved a magic wand when she was born, gifting her with her grandmother’s thick, wheat-colored hair with the slight widow’s peak, her grandfather’s golden skin, and her father’s blue eyes.
Sometimes when I look at my girl, I’m awed that I created something so beautiful.
And sometimes I wonder how different my life would be if I hadn’t.
I lower my window a few inches, closing my eyes as fresh, cool air sweeps across my face.
I expect the whole drive home to be silent because Catherine always gets quiet when she hears bad news. It’s her pattern. When I tell her something she doesn’t like, she slips away, hiding inside herself. You can be right there in the same car, close enough to smell the sweet traces of the shampoo she used this morning, and have absolutely no idea what’s going on in her mind. The worse the news, the longer her silence.
I’ve asked her to tell me, more than once: You’ve got plenty of words, can you use some of them?
I’m just thinking, Mom!
Funny how you can’t get your kid to be quiet sometimes, but when you actually want to hear what’s going on, they act like you’ve barged in on them while they’re in the bathroom.
The quiet between us isn’t so bad right now, though. It’s actually a relief.
This appointment was every bit as horrible as I expected—I don’t think I’ll ever get over watching Catherine’s eyes shatter—but now that it’s behind us, I know exactly what I want and don’t want.
I’m not going to get a CT scan, or a lumbar puncture, or any of the other tests Dr. Chen and Catherine talked about.
I’m not going to see another expert.
I’m going to keep waitressing at the diner and living in our apartment.
And maybe this seems selfish, or narcissistic, or whatever term is in fashion these days, but what I want more than anything is for Catherine to put off her dream of moving to Baltimore and working at Hopkins.
I need my daughter to stay close to me.
CHAPTER FIVE
CATHERINE
I see my mother every single day, which is to say I don’t truly see her at all.
She has always been a touch distracted, but I missed the demarcation line she crossed when she slipped past ordinary forgetfulness into something infinitely darker.
I don’t know if I’ll ever forgive myself, even though it isn’t like she has cancer. Early detection won’t make a difference in how this turns out.
The thought is a live wire. I yank my mind away, forcing myself to focus on easing our Bonneville into a tight corner spot in our apartment building’s lot.
After we exit our car and push through the heavy side door into the lobby, we discover the elevator is waiting, its arms thrown open to us. It’s a minor miracle. With five floors in our building and eight apartments per floor, I usually don’t even bother pressing the call button.
As we glide up to the fourth floor, I study my mom, taking her in anew. Trying to see how I could have missed the clues, especially since my job constantly exposes me to tangible evidence of what she will become.
She isn’t wearing mismatched shoes or blinking in bewilderment or exhibiting irrational anger, like some of the residents I care for.
If anything, she’s too calm. That could be shock.
I catalog the furrow between her brows, her full lips, and the slight sheen to her skin.
“You okay?”
Her question jolts me. I realize the elevator doors have yawned open.
“Sorry.” I step onto the diamond-patterned carpet and lead the way down the narrow hall to 406.
When I was a kid, I loved fitting the long nose of a key into a lock. That thrill passed, but our habit stuck. Mom still lets me handle the task.
I wiggle in the metal key and hear the tumblers click, thinking about how she’s the only person in the world who knows that bit of my history. She is the co-architect of our existence: I do most of the grocery shopping, she keeps our car filled with gas, and we split the cleaning. She sat beside me on the couch, watching The Office reruns and making sure I ate, when my first real love, Ethan, and I broke up last year. Once we slept in our Bonneville for three nights, her in the front seat and me in the back, when a leak from the shower a floor above soaked our apartment and our jerk of a landlord refused to pay for a hotel. Our favorite dinner is something she invented called lasagna pizza, which we make with dough instead of noodles.