The Body Farm, page 16
Rosalind thought the strength of the curse would fade as we got older. Eventually we would be normal again, no longer tainted by our father’s desertion. We could go out into the world and become like other people, whatever that meant.
Dolores felt sure that Father would come sailing back home many years from now, withered with age and racked by guilt. We would not recognize him, he would be so changed. Thinking him a beggar or miscreant, we would send him away. His heart would break, and that, in turn, would break our curse.
Clara believed that Father would die at sea, probably very soon. His ship would founder and sink, and when he breathed his last breath, the curse would lift. We could leave home then, and marry if we chose, but we would only ever have daughters.
And Gracie told us that the curse would intensify as we grew up. Now, in our girlhood, our sphere of influence was limited to our estate. But as we aged, the curse would ripple outward, spreading to the nearby town and maybe even beyond. Who knew how powerful we might become? As we transformed into teenagers, young adults, grown women, the curse would gather strength and speed, a wild wave splashing to the edges of California. It would wash away the male half of the population, taking them at work, at home, everywhere. Gracie could see it all, she told us. One day the force of our magic would devour countries and continents, surging around the wide world until all the men, including Father, were gone.
Lastly there was Emilia, who always kept an open mind. How would our story end? Each time the question arose among us, she took the coin from her pocket and flipped it in the air. She smiled no matter how it landed.
Childish
I have fallen in love with a willow tree. I first saw it a week ago, on a hot, dusty afternoon. You and I were out for our daily constitutional. You move with a walker these days, tennis balls affixed to the bottom. You hunch over the metal frame, a shuffling figure with a cap of white curls.
It was one of the last warm days of autumn. The trees were shedding their leaves in spirals of crimson. I strolled at your side, the two of us moving at a gentle, incremental pace. We were on our way to the hobby shop. Passersby darted around us in a steady stream. My arm rested on your back. Long ago, my skin was darker than yours, clay to marble. But time has weathered us both, like wind on stone, eroding us to the undifferentiated granite of old age.
Inside the hobby shop, you settled into a chair, catching your breath. I walked between the aisles. The air smelled of wood shavings and bleach. The fluorescent lights buzzed dully.
To this day, I am not sure how I stumbled into making stained glass. It is an odd pastime for a man like me, a little namby-pamby. But I like it. I have done it for decades. Tracing the outline on the panel. Applying pressure with the blade. Wrapping each shard tenderly in foil. The soldering iron. The smell of melting copper. It is a meticulous business, with no room for error. Over the years, I have filled our house with splendid lampshades and windowpanes.
I had finished my most recent bit of glasswork and was looking for something new. On that autumn day, I moved along the rows of tools, batteries, rubber bands, and hoops of wire. At the back, the shop owner was crowing about some difficult project. Seated at his desk, he pushed a sheet of paper at me.
A lampshade pattern. A willow tree. It had never been done, he said. It was too complex, too fragile, ever to be assembled. Many had tried and failed. Three thousand pieces, some no larger than a dime. The finished lampshade would comprise the canopy of the tree, falling nearly thirty-six inches from the crown to the tips of its swaying branches. A two-foot circumference. Almost barrel-sized, this creation. The bottom edge was not smooth but intentionally rumpled and curved, mimicking the natural unevenness of plant growth. Staring down at the pattern, I could almost hear the branches creaking. Thresh and ply. Glints of sunny gold.
Ever since, the willow tree lampshade has taken hold of me. The past week has been strange. I have all but lived on the sun porch, my workspace. On warm days, that room, with all its windows, grows as steamy as an oven. No air conditioning, just an ancient, rattling fan. I have bent over the table, cutting the glass, manipulating the foil, sweat beading on my back. I have worked until my hands start to tremble.
The pattern aches to be finished. It has followed me out of the sun porch, into my daily routine. As I refill your pill organizer, as I prepare our meals, as I collect the mail, my brain is aglow. You have laughed at me for being inattentive, arranging the shards in my mind when I should have been listening to you. At night, lying beside your slumbering form, a part of me is still at the worktable, blade in hand.
○
At the age of ninety-one, you have come down with Alzheimer’s. The disease is a force of nature. Like a tornado, it has devoured you. It has erased your memory, your history. It has laid waste to the landscape of your mind.
You have forgotten little things, like people’s names. You have forgotten big things, like the nature of time—the movement of the clock, the changing of the seasons. You have lost things I did not know could be lost: Your sense of humor. Your understanding of our relationship, the fact I am and always will be your husband. Your ability to recognize yourself in the mirror.
In addition, you have a bad knee, a bad hip. Your knuckles are permanently swollen, changing the shape of your hands. The arthritis makes your movements awkward. Whenever you grab for something, there is a hint of squirrel about you. Wet weather makes you ache. You limp and totter. You are blind in one eye, and the other is no great shakes either. Your skin is fragile. A scrape, a brush, and you begin to bleed. You still have a bruise on your leg from a year ago, an inopportune collision with the table. Maybe it will never completely fade.
But none of this bothers you, because of the Alzheimer’s. You are unaware of your litany of incurable maladies. The tornado has gobbled up your cares. You have forgotten your dementia, your osteoarthritis, your congestive heart failure. You are not burdened by the memory of what you have suffered or the anticipation of what you will continue to suffer. No past, no future. You live moment by moment. A moment of pain. A moment of hunger. A moment of laughter. A moment of sunlight. A moment of pain. A moment of pain. A moment of pain.
○
This morning, I worked on the willow tree for hours. One whole hemisphere of the lampshade has come into being, a network of branches weaving and dancing across a bowl of blue. Glasswork is always magical. I am building something out of nothing, shaping a puzzle out of thin air. Beyond the window, the sidewalks were streaked with cold rain, printed with the shapes of leaves. The sky hung low, an oppressive gray. Autumn has begun to deepen and darken.
When I emerged from the sun porch, I heard you laughing. I rounded the corner to find James in the living room. You sat on the couch, and he stood over you, engaged in some kind of playacting. When he saw me, his demeanor altered. His arms fell to his sides, his face sobering. At the age of sixty, James is a spear of a man—tall, slim, and angry. He wears his gray hair clipped close, his beard nattily trimmed. He still had his work clothes on. His tie was askew, a smear of ink on his cuff.
“I had an idea,” he said. “I thought I’d give it a try.”
“Oh?” I said.
“Look here.”
He pointed. There were squares of color on the wall, the dresser, the hutch. Squinting, I saw that James had gone around my house, putting up Post-it Notes. Each bore a single word: CLOCK, LAMP, BOOK.
“It might help,” James said.
I nodded. “It might.”
You have misplaced your words. You often trail off in the middle of a sentence, unable to come up with a central noun or the correct verb. You will open and close your mouth like a goldfish. Sometimes you give up the struggle, folding up your thought and tossing it away. Other times, you spit out an unexpected, nonsense term: milk instead of keys or girl instead of bird.
James circled the room, pointing. COUCH, WINDOW, LAMPSHADE. You clapped your hands like an audience member at a show.
“Well,” I said. “Thanks, I guess.”
He shrugged. “No trouble.”
“You got a minute?” I said.
He checked his watch.
“Come see the lampshade I’m working on,” I said. “It’s going to be a masterpiece.”
“No time. I’m running late.”
He leaned over you, cupping your chin in his palm.
“Bye, Ma,” he said. “I’ll see you in a couple days. You hear me, Ma?”
You looked at him blankly.
“I don’t have children,” you said.
He straightened up and met my eyes. For once, I knew exactly what he was thinking.
○
I prefer to remember James as he once was. Lean and brown. Light-boned. He would fit on my lap, brow against my throat. I remember coming home from work, my back stiff and shoulders bowed, the dust of the commute still in my mouth. You would be in the kitchen. You were always immaculately dressed; I didn’t notice it at the time, but I remember it now. You danced between the range and the table, tending the pasta, a wooden spoon in one hand, a romance novel in the other. James would sit by your feet, engaged in one of his interminable wars, every surface littered with army men. God forbid anyone ever disturbed their formations.
I remember him splashing in the wading pool in the backyard. I remember him raking leaves into maroon piles. He crafted mud-and-snow forts each winter. Once, when he was ten years old, he and I spent a whole week assembling a model ship. We hung the network of rigging, pinning it to the mast. I had to use a magnifying glass to manage the tiniest spars. James painted the hull and the deck. As he worked, I watched him grow still, no longer jiggling one leg or picking at his fingernails. In those moments, I could see the resemblance between us. That focus, that capacity for silence, was something we shared.
You have lost all those things, of course. Your memory is a knitted scarf that is perpetually unraveling. You have lost any recollection of your pregnancy. The taut bulb of your stomach. The butterfly brush of the fetus kicking. The nausea that kept you bent over the toilet. You have lost the birth—long, difficult, bloody. (I was not with you, of course. I hovered and paced in the waiting room, unlit cigar in hand. That was what fathers did back then.) You have lost James in diapers. James on the seesaw at the playground. James in the full regalia of his Boy Scout uniform. James in the dozy light of evening, bent over the piano, practicing his scales. You have lost your memories of a boy who was small enough to be held. You have lost your memories of yourself when you were strong and steady enough to hold him.
Sometimes I pity you. Sometimes I envy you.
○
A few nights ago, I awoke to a thump. I reached automatically for you, but your side of the bed was empty. There was a dent in your pillow, the blankets askew. For a moment, still bleary with sleep, I wondered if you had died. Ascended directly to heaven. Vanished from this mortal realm. Popped like a soap bubble.
But no—you had fallen out of bed. You were lying on the floor, staring at the ceiling, hands folded across your belly.
“You all right?” I asked anxiously. “Nothing broken?”
“I don’t think so,” you said.
I groped for the clock. Four in the morning.
“I’m on the ground,” you said.
“I know.”
You could not muster the strength to sit up. You struggled like a bug on its back, your limbs waggling. You groaned in frustration. James has been telling me that you must work on your “core.” I don’t know where he picks up these things. I don’t know where your core might be.
I climbed out of bed and stood over you. You gripped my hands, and we engaged in a bizarre little dance, me leaning forward, you arching upward, your body swaying and pivoting at the hips, nothing changing. I was too weak to lift you.
You began to laugh. I sat on the edge of the mattress, and you lay helpless on the rug, and we laughed until the tears ran down our faces.
I did not call James. I did not call an ambulance either, since you weren’t hurt, just stuck. At 7:00 a.m.—a more reasonable hour—I scuttled next door and got a neighbor to help me. A kind, portly man. I caught him on his front walk, dressed in his robe and slippers, out to pick up the newspaper. He trundled after me with a bemused expression. He got you on your feet with a minimum of fuss.
When James stopped by, later that afternoon, I told him everything was fine.
“That’s right,” you echoed. “We’re doing quite well.”
I was lying, of course. But I don’t know whether you were lying or not. Perhaps the panic of that dark hour had already drifted from your mind, caught in the current of your forgetting, wafting on the river, away and away.
○
There are a lot of things I have not told James.
I never told him how I found out about your heart condition. He knows about it now; he knows about the cardiology visits and the pills you take. Congestive heart failure. Chronic, yet manageable. It leaves you weak, slow, and weary. But I never told James how it started. How your heart wasn’t up to snuff. How it couldn’t pump properly. How the leftover liquid began to settle elsewhere—your lungs, your belly, and finally your legs. Twenty pounds of excess fluid. I woke up to a damp bed. Moisture was soaking the sheets, oozing out of your calves.
I never told James that I have lost my sense of smell. Anosmia, my doctor calls it. A common occurrence in old age. It shouldn’t be an issue, my doctor says. Except that I’m responsible for changing your diapers. For knowing when it’s time to change your diapers. James is aware that you are incontinent. But sometimes you have to slosh around in a soup of your own fecal matter and urine for far too long.
I never told James that you try to cook, even now. A few weeks ago, I found you wandering around the kitchen, carrying a pot of tepid water, your arms shaking beneath the weight. All the flames on the range were ablaze. Your manner was bewildered, the liquid splashing down your front. You wanted to make pasta, but you did not remember what to do next. I got there just in time to snatch up a dishcloth that was sitting on the stovetop, inches from the fire. It had begun to blacken and smoke. Since then, I have removed the knobs from the range.
○
Yesterday James stopped by again. This time, we got into a quarrel. He came over to fix the gate. He usually turns up with a specific task to perform: restock the fridge, check the plumbing. He decided to stay for lunch. I took him out to the sun porch and showed him, at last, the willow tree lampshade—half-finished, the branches vanishing into empty air. He gave me his sweet, sideways smile.
At lunch, he and you were in a mischievous mood, laughing together over my little peccadillos. Even after all this time, you still find amusement in the way I put ketchup on my scrambled eggs, the way I organize the spare change in my pockets into piles on the countertop. For a while, everything was easy and calm.
Eventually, though, I was due for my scolding. I could just about set my watch to it. James has a few complaints. He doesn’t like me leaving you alone during the long afternoons. The doctor said I shouldn’t, not even for a brief spell. But if I put you in front of the television, I can grab a free hour here and there. You can’t manage the stairs to the front door on your own. (James doesn’t like that either—the stairs, though there are only four.) So you putter around the house, watching one of those reality shows where people dance, while I lounge in the backyard, just being. Tasting the frost in the air. Watching the leaves walk on the wind. Being alive.
James doesn’t like that we don’t have some busybody nurse coming by to check on us. They call themselves “angels,” those people, which is too self-congratulatory for my taste. James doesn’t like that I’m in charge of your medications. You have seven in all, each administered differently (after waking, at bedtime, with food, without food). He doesn’t like that I’m the one who does all the cleaning either. My work doesn’t meet his standards. I suppose that with his young eyes, he can see cobwebs in corners I have missed.
In short, James wants you in a nursing home. He wants it now. He wants it yesterday.
“It’s time,” he said. “You know it is, Dad.”
“Over my dead body,” I told him, and I meant it.
We were shouting by then, both standing up, him on one side of the table, me on the other. You sat between us, your head bowed, as though praying.
“They’ll prepare all your meals,” James roared. “The medical services alone—”
“No,” I said.
“She needs supervision. You aren’t able—”
“No,” I said.
“You’d still be with her, for God’s sake. You’d have the freedom to do what you want, and she—”
“No.”
James made an explosive gesture, his hands rising and falling like a tiny bomb had gone off somewhere inside his person.
“Why not?” he said. “Tell me. Give me one good reason.”
I drew in a breath.
“Our house is a place for living,” I said. “A nursing home is a place for dying.”
I don’t know if he understood. He slammed out of the house soon after. I went to the window, watching him stride down the street.
○
In the old days, before Alzheimer’s was a disease—before it had its own name—I remember my mother talking on the phone. I was a boy of nine or ten, underneath the table, hidden behind the fall of a tablecloth, reveling in the shadowy coolness. My mother sat at the countertop, the phone crooked between her shoulder and chin, smoking a cigarette and exhaling clouds toward the ceiling. She was in her thirties then, with coal-black hair and fine, burnished skin. I always liked eavesdropping on her conversations. This time she was gossiping about an elderly relative.
“He’s in bad shape,” she said. “Something will have to be done soon.”
There was a pause as she dragged on her cigarette.
“The poor thing,” she went on. “He’s getting childish.”
