All the Dancing Birds (6 page)

Yes. What a clever girl I am!

I tie on a crisp apron and line my Southern spaghetti recipe stickies along my arm. Before I start cooking, I congratulate my efficiency with an extra sip of red. The kitchen is warm and the wine tastes good.

I hear the laughter of my children from the family room. This is a moment to be recorded in heaven’s book of good days. I top off my glass with a bit of cooking wine and begin the first steps of my recipe.

With the stove on, the kitchen heats up quickly. Little beadlets of moisture spring to my skin; my apron sags like a wilted flower tied to my waist. It’s the middle of July on a spotless and sparkling Sacramento day. The outside temperature has spiked to 104 degrees and, in spite of this old house’s version of central air conditioning, it seems the kitchen isn’t far behind the outside heat. I push my melting hair away from my eyes as I stir my sauce and wait for a large pot of water to come to a proper boil for the noodles. I turn on the oven for the garlic bread. My hair falls again and I rub my arm across my steamy forehead. I take another sip of wine and wish the heat away from the day.

I cook. I sip. I cook. I wipe my face with my arm.

I disappear in the heat.

Sometime later (I don’t know how long), I find my feet rocking an endless side-to-side two-step in the middle of the kitchen; all my stickies missing from my arm, water nearly boiled dry, the oven practically cavitating from its burning heat, and spaghetti sauce blooping from its pot like spiking red lava.

I’m screaming.

I don’t know what to say when my children run to the kitchen and shake me to my senses. I see them turning off the stove and oven, looking at each other with startled eyes and great puzzlement.

I settle under their calming words, but nevertheless, I know my months of lies have been discovered. Most sadly, though, I don’t know how I could be so vastly and forever lost without ever having left my soft yellow kitchen.

Chapter Six

I
’m in a room that smells of rubber and paper and a thousand dying dreams.

My chair is rigid and cold.

I sit across from a small, young woman with a name tag that reads,
Bridget Ellison, M.D.
When she entered the room, she had with her a large manila folder tucked under one arm. Now she has placed her hands over the folder like it contains a secret that needs careful guarding. My name is printed boldly on the side tab.

Obviously, there has been a mistake.

Bridget Ellison, M.D., is smiling and already I don’t like her.

She talks about the heat of August and how she loves the color of my hair.

I struggle to keep up with her pleasantries because my mind is crowded with every man and woman who has ever had their memory questioned.

I’m here only because I had a little kitchen argument with a pot of spaghetti sauce and a few sticky notes. Oh, and the oven.

My beloved Bryan, my pragmatic, leg-jiggling, lawerly Bryan, has now dragged me to see a doctor. Not only that, he seems to be in cahoots with her.

I’m not sure I like him today.

As the pleasantries continue, I discover this is not just any plain doctor. No. I sit across the table from a neurologist who, in spite of her credentials, appears about twelve years old and who does a decidedly poor job of making small talk. Little Bridget Ellison, M.D., indeed!

She is obviously not from the South.

Bryan sits in a chair by the door, his arms folded across his chest. His face is severe with its attorney-in-charge look. I’m not impressed. I am, in fact, miffed with the whole event and can’t wait to be finished. After a comment about how I must be so proud of my attorney son, the child-doctor comes to her point.

Her first question feels abrupt and pokes sharply at me. “When did you start noticing problems with your memory, Mrs. Glidden?”

I reflexively poke back at her with my own stick of words. “Well, if I were having memory problems, you’ve placed me in a poor position,” I say. “If I tell you I don’t have memory problems, you’ll think I’ve for… um… forgotten that I forget things. If I tell you I do have… memory, you know, problems with forgetting things, I will have taken away your pleasure of testing me this morning.”

I smile over the clever logic of my argument. Dr. Ellison returns my smile and nods.

“You make a valid point, Mrs. Glidden, and I’m sure you’re totally fine. But it’s always wise to keep a good watch on our health, especially as we approach our older, more fragile years,” she says. Her voice is soft, but her words are sharp and pointy. They hurt.

I’m about to ask if she’s yet out of her training bra, but Bryan’s astringent look from under his eyebrows changes my mind. I sigh.

“Of course, these old, fragile years,” I say, sliding on a half-smile for the benefit of Bryan.

“Great! Let’s get started. I have just a few questions and I promise to be quick.” The doctor opens her manila folder. The sudden movement reminds me of a bird opening its wings in startled flight. Something snags deep in my throat.

“Okay, Mrs. Glidden,” Dr. Ellison begins. “I’m going to say three words that I’d like you to remember. I’ll ask you to recall these words for me in a few minutes.”

I nod my head, but I’m still stuck on the image of bird wings splayed open. I look down to my lap and realize my fingers are spread open like wings, ready for their own flight, if not for the fact that they’re clutched tightly to my legs.

“Okay, I’d like you to remember these three words. House. Lake. Shoe. I’ll ask you to repeat them back to me in a few minutes. But first, I’d like you to close your eyes. I’m going to place an object in your hand and I want you to tell me what it is without looking at it.”

I hold out my hand. My lids flutter together and then I feel an object, cool as ice, placed on my palm. I close my hand and roll my fingers over the thing. It puzzles me and before I can stop my eyes, they slide open, narrow windows of curiosity.

A key
!

I slam my eyes shut, but not quickly enough. I’m caught. Embarrassment fills my throat and exits as small laughter. “Oops,” I say. “I didn’t mean to peek.”

“That’s normal, let’s try again,” the doctor says. “This time, try to keep your eyes closed.” She places another object in my hand and, with the gesture, I think of Ma, her hands feeling every little object around her as a circle of blackness widened inside her eyes. The thing I hold is as cold and round as the circle of dark that invaded Ma’s eyes.

I recognize the object. I know the answer. “Oh, it’s money,” I say, pleasure filling my mouth.

“Very good.”

I’m beginning to like this doctor in spite of our earlier go-round. She pulls a piece of blank paper from the folder and hands me a pencil. “I’d like you to draw a regular clock, put in all the numbers and indicate the time as ten past eleven.”

I draw a circle and then wish I had a sticky to remind me of the time. “What time did you say again?”

“Ten past eleven.”

I’m dismayed. “I’m not much of an artist,” I say, stalling for time to gather my thoughts.

“Mom, it’s not an art contest,” Bryan says. “Just do the clock.”

I sigh and look at the piece of blank paper. “Of course.”

Then I notice a clock on the far wall. With the devious half-smile of one who’s found a way around the system, I copy the clock, my eyes flitting back and forth between my drawing and my model. I worry over my pencil, spilling my breath upon the paper in little puffs of concentration.

I draw my clock.

Even with cheating, I know my drawing is more than pitiful. I’m aware something is terribly wrong, but like everything else these days, I can’t figure out how I could be so mistaken. I reach out for another piece of paper.

“No… really, this is very good. You did just fine.”

Dr. Ellison takes the paper with my clock and my breath captured upon it and places it on the table. I look at Bryan and notice him looking from my drawing to the face of his watch. His mouth turns slim and rigid.

Dr. Ellison tucks my sad drawing into a pocket in the manila folder and softly folds it closed.

She looks up and fixes her face into a smile. “Next, I’d like you to count backwards from one hundred by sevens,” she says, her voice inappropriately animated for what she has just asked of me.

“Count backwards? From a hundred? I can try,” I say, speaking slowly, while silently screaming to heaven for help on this one teensy request. “One hundred… ninety… umm.” I roll my eyes and look toward the ceiling; heaven is clearly deaf. I begin to feel a prickle of embarrassment in my stomach.

“Oh, dear,” I say. “I’m afraid I’m not very good at this. Actually, I’m really awful. That’s what those… those little things that make numbers are for. You know those little things that do this, uh, whatever you call it. Um, math! Subtraction! That’s it… minus. Minus. Minus.” I realize I’ve slumped in my chair and try to straighten my shoulders. “I’ve always been terrible with math. But really, I’m very good at finding words.”

“That’s right, you were a writer,” the doctor says. “Many people aren’t very good with numbers… so, let’s switch to words, then. Do you recall the three items I asked you to remember when we first started?”

“Three items?”

“Yes. I asked you to remember three items.”

“Of course. Yes. Three items. One was a… oh, I know this. It was a shoe, right? And another was, ahhh… was it a tree? You said there were
three
words? Oh my, I guess I really wasn’t paying attention. Can you give me another three words? Shouldn’t we try this again?”

“No, that’s fine, Mrs. Glidden. You did just fine.
Just
fine.” The doctor pats my arm; I know she’s using her hand as a sad offering of consolation.

I also know I’m in trouble.

Failure has rented space in my brain and the payment I receive in exchange is a condescending pat on the arm, followed by a conversation that suddenly turns into talk about me as if I’m no longer in the room. I watch my son as the outer corners of his eyes dip downward and his lips disappear into the landscape of his face like he’s beginning to fold inside-out.

YOU TAKE. You take the news with surprising calm. Rather than screaming into the caverns inside your head, you sit like a lady, your hands folded on your lap. People talk around you like you’re invisible, but it doesn’t matter what anyone says. You look at your hands while you calmly listen to their words. Words like, “Evidence of mild cognitive impairment.” Then, “Your mother is relatively young, perhaps early-onset Alzheimer’s disease.” And, “We’ll obviously need to do a full assessment and complete workup before we can venture a definitive diagnosis or treatment plan.” You expect to hear the sound of your heart splitting, fracturing into shards and falling to the floor of your soul, but your heart stays in place. Surprisingly, with such a terrifying diagnosis rattling deep within the bones of your head, the most disturbing thing‌—‌the thing that hurts most‌—‌is how your son’s eyes fill with tears and how his chin trembles in a way you haven’t seen since he was twelve years old. When the doctor is done with you, she gently ushers you from the room with her patting hand, the manila folder tucked back under her arm. You make an appointment for more testing and then you do the only thing you can on a hot August day filled with bad news and poorly drawn clocks. You take your son out for ice cream.

When we’re done with ice cream and bad news and we’ve again found our brave and stalwart chins, Bryan drives me home.

“You gonna be okay?” he asks. I assume he’s anxious to get back to work with its ordinariness of contracts and endless verbiage regarding the movement of water through aqueducts or canals, or whatever it is my beautiful son does for a living.

“Of course. I’m fine,” I say. “Go do your water lawyer stuff. That’s what you do, right? Are you still a lawyer?”

“Yes, Mom, I’m still a lawyer. But, are you sure? I can stick around if you need me. I could at least make you some tea before I go.”

“No.
No.
Really, I’m
fine.
”
I wave my arm as if waving one’s arm through the air clears away any lingering words of disease or imperfect and troubled mothers. “Why don’t you and Allison come for dinner tomorrow? We can barbeque something large and lovely on the patio and drink enough wine to forget all about this doctor nonsense.”

“Good grief, Mom. Maybe you’re not well enough for that right now.” Bryan’s eyes threaten to cloud up once more.

“I’m quite well
.
Now get out of here and leave an old woman to her bonbons and Oprah.”

With his hands on my shoulders, as if holding me that way might somehow keep me from unraveling, Bryan bends to kiss my forehead.

“Love you.” His chin and his eyes barely maintain their decorum.

“Love you more,” I say.

“I’ll call to check on you tonight,” Bryan says.

I wave my arm again, but he’s already gone.

The house is dappled with afternoon light that, in spite of my wishes, rudely pushes its way through the partially open blinds. The news of the day has decided to settle into my lungs, making it hard to breathe through the room’s watery light. I try to catch onto the air as it leaves my mouth. I think of other, earlier days and I fumble my way to my cedar box. I drift through letters and papers and pull out something written across a creamy, thick, white notepaper that I hope will clear my lungs and strengthen my trembling fingers.

My dearest children:

I wish we’d had a Southern porch when you were young. You should have grown up with a porch‌—‌the kind that wraps around the front of the house, with a simple railing and unpretentious stairs leading to a sun-dappled lawn. Magic happens on a Southern porch; I wish to heaven you could have grown up with that simple truth. I wish you could have known the weightlessness of a child’s body when it hurls itself from the top step all the way to an explanation of how it got “those awful grass stains” on its knees. I wish you could have heard the music made by fingers pulling the strings of a banjo and I wish you could have sat and fanned your face with folded construction paper on a hot and humid summer night.