“It’s okay, Aly. These things happen. It’s life.”
“But...it’s...not...fair!” I’d said between sniffles and gulps.
“I know. The best we can do is appreciate our memories and move forward.”
With my short attention span, coping had been easy. We got a replacement parakeet, Flavio, after deeming three weeks a respectful period of mourning.
I was driving myself insane with thoughts of dead pets and cut through his silence.
“Dad.”
“Alaine...”
My dad is a human ellipsis. He’s always pausing...and pondering...and dragging...and trying not to stutter like he used to as a child. He always thinks before he says anything and I’m sure that’s part of why he couldn’t make it work with my mom. She probably figured she got enough hemming and hawing from the politicians she interviewed for work and didn’t need it from her husband too. But this faltering wasn’t because of his usual lulls. Something was different.
I couldn’t stand the quiet.
“Just tell me whatever it is! Are you sick? Did somebody die? Did Mom smack another senator?”
He flinched.
“Your mother has Alzheimer’s.”
The room stood still. “I don’t understand what you’re saying... She’s barely forty.”
“You’re right. It’s early onset.” My dad mouthed the words to himself silently, as if to make himself believe them. I didn’t. My brain was on fire and couldn’t, wouldn’t make sense of what he was saying. No. That can’t be right. No.
“How can that even happen?”
“Scientists aren’t sure. There appears to be a genetic link, but she doesn’t seem to have many relatives who had it. Maybe her grandmother when she was old.”
Does that mean that I’m at risk? Am I terrible for having my first instinct be to wonder whether I could get sick too?
I tamped down my guilt and fought back the involuntary sensation of tears forming behind my eyes.
“When did she find out?”
“She confirmed the diagnosis with the doctor today.”
“Confirmed?”
“I...recommended she see a neurologist.”
I closed my eyes and the dam broke. A warm trail of salty tears slid down my cheeks as I held my face in my hands, shaking my head left and right, trying my hardest to not let what my father said sink in. And then something dawned on me.
“So you knew about this...this whole time...” I wiped roughly at the tears that wouldn’t stop streaming down. “I didn’t even know you spoke to each other enough to be handing out doctor recommendations! Why didn’t anyone tell me?”
“She called me when she became concerned... I think this is something she needs to discuss with you herself.”
“When? If she remembers to call in another week?”
I regretted my words as soon as they tumbled out of my mouth. My dad stood up.
“This conversation is no longer conducive to sharing information. I’m going to let you process this. We can talk later.” He patted my leg and, because I know he had no idea what else to do, placed a pint of ice cream and a spoon on the small nightstand beside my bed. I likened my father’s telling me the worst news of my life to the announcement of a rodent’s death. But unlike seven-year-old me, I’d attacked him for no reason other than because I was angry.
Alzheimer’s.
I looked at the ice cream on my nightstand and my vision blurred as tears threatened to flow again. No amount of chocolate chunk could soften the blow that my dad had just dealt. I crawled under my covers and stared up at the ceiling. How could this be? My mom was still young. She had her whole life ahead of her, a career that would stay on the rise once everyone got over stupid Slap-Gate. But the diagnosis explained her moment of confusion from a few months ago. A brain fart, I had called it. Her more recent outburst must have been because of this too... I didn’t even want to think about it.
If I was being honest, I felt sorry for myself. I’d always imagined that I would get to know my mom when I got older. She might not have the super nurturing mother gene, whatever that was, but I’d hoped that we could have a different kind of relationship later on. One where she was more friend than parent, since the latter hadn’t worked out so well. I would’ve been more than happy with that. But now it seemed that would never happen.
My gut clenched as I sank deeper into my sheets. That night, in my restless dreams, I watched my mother’s face sag into wrinkles and folds belonging to a woman with blank eyes I didn’t recognize.
PART II
AYITI CHERI, AYITI WTF
Wednesday, January 20
From: Estelle Dubois
To: Alaine Beauparlant
Subject: READ ME
Alaine, you have no idea how busy I am with PATRON PAL. This news of your behavior comes at a very inopportune time. I want you to listen to everything that I am saying (without interruption) so I’m sending you this email. And to be clear, this is about more than “The Incident” as you are calling it, Alaine. In the past two years alone, there has been:
A Situation: The time you said you couldn’t attend your physics class because you thought the feng shui was “off” and messed up your “chakra alignment”—which was, frankly, offensive
That Occurrence: When you staged a sit-in at the beauty supply store since you “no longer cared to subscribe to European standards of beauty”
An Overblown Fracas: The instance during your sophomore year when you decided that after fifteen years of private school education, it was no longer becoming of you to wear a uniform because it stifled individuality
And you’ve had an excuse for each. It’s never your fault and always a misunderstanding propelled by a force beyond your control.
Darling, you know I love you and think you’re quite special but you make it very hard for others to see what I see. (And if I had reviewed the paper you promised to send me, I would’ve told you what a terrible idea this whole thing was and stopped this chain of events before it even got started.) Principal Pollack doesn’t get to chat with you about your favorite sketches from Saturday Night Live or hear your thoughts on the merits of standardized testing. Your teachers, despite their good intentions, will never understand what it’s like to live your life.
BUT that doesn’t mean that you throw away your good sense and refuse to take responsibility for your actions. People are watching you, Alaine. You can’t go around joking about Haitian history when you’re the daughter of a very powerful journalist and the niece of the Minister of Tourism in Haiti. Your father sent us your assignment and I was disappointed. Again, why didn’t you come to me? Why do you insist on doing things the hard way? There is no dishonor in asking for help, Alaine. I promise it does not diminish your genius to do so.