Elsewhere: A Memoir Part 10

"Let me do some research," he told me. "If she's been upset about the move, it's possible the veil will lift. Can you bring her home with you for a few days?"

I thought of Barbara, who'd bear the brunt of this-the dressing and undressing and bathing. And I thought of what it would look like if I said no.

Noting my reluctance, he said, "She really shouldn't be left alone in this condition."

"Of course not," I said as we emerged into the outer office, where Barbara and my mother were waiting. My wife had heard the last part, and our eyes met. "I'm just not sure we can handle her."

"It doesn't look like she'll be much trouble," he said, and I really couldn't blame him for not understanding. My mother had been docile as a lamb during the examination, and she weighed all of ninety pounds. What the h.e.l.l kind of son would hesitate to take his mother, a sick and confused and lost old woman, into his home for a few days? Of course, I wasn't worried about my mother in her present condition, but of what might occur if, as he put it, the veil lifted.

"How about you bring her back tomorrow," he suggested, "and we'll see how things are progressing?"

I took a deep breath. "Okay," I said. "Sure."

ON THE RIDE BACK to Camden she continued to ask what time it was every few minutes, apparently still worried about missing the doctor's appointment that was now safely consigned to the past. At home we installed her in the guest room with all the books, but nothing in the real, physical world seemed to interest her but the gold-plated clock, which she refused to set down. She continued to spin the hands round and around, as if she feared time itself would stop if she quit.

Hoping to distract her, we turned on the TV in the family room and found an old movie we thought might interest her. It was only a matter of, well, time before she broke her clock, so I suggested we put it on top of the television where she could see it from the sofa. She reluctantly agreed, but then sat there staring at it as if the movie weren't playing. Every time I got up to answer the phone or get something from the kitchen, she'd have the clock in her lap again by the time I returned, still fast-forwarding its hands. Emily, our older daughter, was working the lunch shift and missing all this, but at one point I went into the living room and found her sister, Kate, sobbing in front of the fireplace. "It's just so terrible" was all she could say. Midafternoon, Emily called to say she'd been asked to stay on for the evening shift as well, and I encouraged her to. After all, there was nothing she could do, and seeing her grandmother in her present state would have torn her up. Kate went to work that evening herself, which left Barbara and me alone with my mother, whose interest continued to be strictly chronographic.

Instead of lifting, the veil that had lowered over her rationality seemed to descend even further. As the hours pa.s.sed she became increasingly anxious, though she couldn't explain why. We tried to get her to eat something, but that would have involved putting down her clock. By early evening it was becoming apparent that bringing her home had been a mistake. I called the doctor's office, which by then was closed, and left a message with Mark's service. When he returned the call half an hour later, I described our dilemma. Far from calming down, my mother was becoming more and more agitated. She was still obsessing about time and trying to understand how it worked and how to make it stay put or, better yet, reverse course. What worried us the most was what might happen that night. Barbara and I couldn't sleep in our apartment over the garage-that was too far away. We'd either have to take turns outside her bedroom door or risk finding my mother out walking the streets of Camden in her nightgown. This last fear seemed to convince him. "Do you think you can get her to come to the emergency room?"

Normally, getting my mother to do anything she was disinclined to would have been a struggle, but not now. I'd simply ask to see her clock, then tell her I'd give it back to her as soon as we were in the car. She'd follow that clock anywhere.

"THE FIRST THING I'm going to do," my mother announced from the backseat, "is get a new doctor."

We weren't even out of the hospital parking lot when she dropped this bombsh.e.l.l. Clearly she'd been saving it for some time and was anxious to see just how large a crater its impact would create. After four days in the hospital things had returned to the old normal, her new obsession and recent lethargy now past. Concerned about the number of medications she was taking and their possible negative interactions, and needing to establish some sort of baseline, Mark took her off everything but her blood pressure pills. When her blood work came back, it revealed a ma.s.sive sodium imbalance, caused in large part by the heavily salted, overly processed frozen foods that represented her entire diet. It was also possible that her worries about moving yet again had gotten the upper hand, and she'd been overmedicating. At any rate, within hours her rationality began to return-along with a tremendous fury. For the hospital staff it was unnerving to see an almost-eighty-year-old woman "wake up" from her sleepy doldrums so monumentally p.i.s.sed off.

For my mother, of course, being rational didn't guarantee that she'd now arrive at valid conclusions. "Bird, window, car, book," she continued. "Does he think I'm crazy? That I can't remember four simple words?"

Before releasing her from the hospital, Mark had given her the same examination that had been such a disaster earlier, including the memory test, and this time she'd rattled off the four words effortlessly. I was impressed, since on neither occasion had I been able to recall them all myself. She'd also given him her thoughts on Bush, which seemed to please him, though perhaps he was merely heartened by her lucidity.

Barbara was at the wheel, so I could turn around to look at my mother. "The last time he asked you about those same four words, you couldn't recall even one," I told her, not without misgiving. She had little memory of the days leading up to her hospitalization, and I knew this troubled her greatly. As her world had begun shrinking over the last decade, her need to control whatever remained became paramount, and the idea of losing time, of having to ask for help to fill in the blanks, left her both frightened and unmoored. She'd grilled both her granddaughters about the event she couldn't remember, as if Emily and Kate could be trusted more than their parents, who for all she knew might be in league with the doctor she now pledged to s.h.i.tcan.

"You've been very sick."

"And who does he think he is, saying I can't have my Paxil?" she continued, impossible, as always, to corner when she'd built up a head of steam and was determined to let it off.

"He thinks he's your doctor."

"Then I'll call my old doctor. He'll prescribe it."

"Actually, no, Mom, he won't."

"Plus," she noted, "I've got a good two-month supply at home."

At this Barbara and I exchanged glances. One of our first duties after she was admitted to the hospital had been to gather all her meds from the Woodland Hills apartment and bring them in. The stash she was counting on was gone, and I felt like a parent who'd disposed of the weed he discovered in the back of his kid's closet.

My mother's real beef with Mark was his quiet, calm refusal to be bamboozled. It was as if he wasn't treating my mother but his own. He was onto all of her tricks in a heartbeat. When she evaded his questions, he simply repeated them. When she pointed this out to him, he a.s.sured her that as soon as she gave him a clear, honest answer he'd be happy to move on to a new topic.

"Telling me what I can and can't eat," she continued, "like I'm a child."

"I'm sorry you aren't fond of him, but he's a good doctor, and he did save your life."

"Piffle," she said, but then she fell silent, examining the ugly blood blister on her right thumb that had resulted from her twisting the stem of that d.a.m.n clock for hours on end. Was she considering the larger implications of harming herself without meaning to? Her bedrock conviction in life had always been: I know what's best for me. Had enough evidence to the contrary finally caused her to reconsider? Might she be entering a new phase of trusting the wisdom of others and doubting her own? Was it possible at eighty to shift gears so fundamentally?

"How long will I be staying with you, then?" she wanted to know.

"As long as you need to." We'd been over this before, of course. She was in withdrawal, and the next few days were bound to be so ugly that she'd need companionship and support to survive them.

"Is there a lot to do at the apartment?"

"Very little," I a.s.sured her, which was true. I told her again how, in addition to Barb and me, the girls had pitched in to get everything ready for her, the clothes hung up in the closet, her dishes and gla.s.ses in the cupboards. She'd told us where she wanted things, and we'd followed these instructions she now couldn't remember giving. The aluminum foil and plastic wrap and wax paper rolls were safe in the oven, an appliance she had no other use for, relying on the microwave to warm her frozen dinners. She and Barbara had already arranged her bedroom, and we'd hung her pictures and mirrors on the walls. The television was hooked up, the cable turned on, the phone service activated. She and I would need to go grocery shopping soon, and she'd no doubt want to make a few cosmetic changes, but otherwise she was good to go. "And of course we'll have to reset all the clocks," I added.

For her, that had been the scariest detail of all. In the hospital, after the fog had lifted, I told her about how we sat on the edge of the bed the morning of her first doctor's appointment and she asked why the hands of the clock only went forward when she wanted to make them go back. "I must've been in la-la land," she said, shaking her head in disbelief.

Now, at my mention of the clocks, she grew pale again, so I said, "The worst is behind you, Mom."

She took a deep breath, hoping, I could tell, that I was right. As a general rule, I wasn't.

THE NEXT FEW DAYS proved every bit as rough as predicted. "I feel like I'm coming out of my skin" was how my mother put it. Clothes were insupportable, so she stayed in her nightgown and robe all day long. Unable to get comfortable, she moved between rooms like the ghost of someone who'd died a sudden, violent death. The girls, though glad their grandmother was recovering, were also grateful that their restaurant jobs got them out of the house. Barbara and I had no such refuge, and at the end of each day we huddled in our bed in the apartment above the garage, out of earshot for a few hours and thankful she couldn't possibly negotiate the stairs. By the end of the week, though, her appet.i.te returned, and she was clearly feeling better. She thought maybe the time had come to return to Woodland Hills. Her doctor agreed. So did Barbara. So did I.

The first thing she saw when she entered the apartment, as if for the first time, was the piece of paper on which she'd scratched 8:45 and then REAL TIME. I couldn't tell what scared her more, the message itself or that her beautiful Palmer Method handwriting was a barely legible scrawl. She pulled one of the chairs out from the dinette and sat down in it heavily, suddenly drained. The plan had been to take inventory of her kitchen, make a list of everything she'd need, and hit the supermarket, but I could tell she was done for the day.

"Is it too soon?" I said, trying to imagine what it must be like to return to a "home" she hadn't yet lived in and couldn't remember.

She shook her head. "I have to do it sometime."

"How about we make out a small list of stuff for the next day or two, and I'll go to the store? We can save the big order for later in the week."

"Whatever," she said, and paused. "Do you honestly think Mark saved my life?"

"I'm certain of it."

She was staring at the refrigerator now. "What am I supposed to do with all those frozen dinners?" A true child of the Depression, she hated few things more than wasting food.

"It's not that you can't have frozen dinners anymore," I reminded her. "Just that you have to eat some other things, too."

"No," she said, never one for half measures. "We'll toss them out." Next she turned her attention to the living room. "You did such a nice job with my books. You know just where everything goes. It's perfect."

We both knew it wasn't, of course. Over the next days and weeks, she'd find things that were out of place and rearrange them, making them, as she liked to put it, "just right." But she wanted to pay me a compliment, and I was pleased to accept it.

What she said then surprised me. "Do you think I'll ever be able to read again?"

She hadn't read anything at our house, which was predictable if you thought about it at all. How can you read when you can't sit still? Worse, there wasn't much inducement, our shelves sagging under the weight of Anita Brookner and her truth-telling ilk. What my mother really wanted to know wasn't whether she'd be able to read again but if that could ever again be a reliable means of escape. At the possibility that it might not, I felt my own spirits plummet in sympathetic dread.

She looked around aimlessly once again, though in a new way. "I hate it here," she said sadly. "I'm sorry. I wish I didn't, but I do."

Though normally I'd have pointed out that she hadn't been there long enough to render such a judgment, I was weary of such futile nonsense. She was going to hate it, and we both knew it. "We'll keep your name on the other lists," I a.s.sured her.

Actually, I'd driven by Megunticook House when she was in the hospital and noticed the exterior was being painted, so I stopped by and added her name to their list as well. (Later in the year a vacancy would come up, and this time my mother loved the place. In fact, the painting had transformed it so completely that she insisted I'd never taken her there before. She would've remembered, she said, because it was perfect, just what we'd been looking for, so much better than Woodland Hills.)