Everything Is Perfect When You're a Liar (26 page)

“What kind of music do you like?”

“Metallica.”

“What's your favorite album?”

“
Master of Puppets.
” There you go.

“Do you listen to it at home a lot?”

No answer. More head rocking.

“Where do you live?”

Roger yelled at me. Just a loud sound, another bark. I'd agitated him, and immediately I realized why. He had short-term memory issues. He didn't
know
where he lived. And he was pissed. I'd be pissed too—everyone
would
be a bitch from hell if they couldn't remember anything post–
having their fucking head semi-amputated when they were twenty-four by a piece of shrapnel in a country half a world away
.

I pulled back and just worked away for a while on his hands, which had really soft skin, though the nails and cuticles were a mess. My only regret now is that I didn't give him a manicure.

When I heard some other patient crying, I realized that Roger had gone silent, and it bugged me.

“What do you think I look like?” I asked.

Roger stopped with the head rolling.

“Blond,” he said. “Green eyes. Big tits. Nice makeup.” It was cute—he was imagining me as Pamela Anderson.

“What am I wearing?” Looking back, this seems like an inappropriate question, and maybe it was, but I was honestly just curious. And my curiosity paid off.

“Burgundy sweater. Black jeans. Chuck Taylors.”

“Oh my God! You can totally see me.”

“Nope.”

“Yes, you can! You just described what I'm wearing.”

“You're a cunt! And a bitch from HELL.”

Was he mad because I was talking too much or because I knew he could see me? Roger had suddenly become the most interesting person I'd ever met. Was he fucking with everyone?! I wanted him to like me, to tell me he wasn't blind. I wanted him to like me enough to confide, only in me, about his non-blindness. “Do you hate me?”

“NO.”

“You can see, though, right? Tell me you aren't blind!”

“BAH!!!! BAHH!!!! BAHH!!! BITCH!!!!” Roger was going nuts. Suddenly, I remembered I was supposed to be a professional. Which seemed dumb, considering I wasn't getting paid. In my view, that nonpaid status gave me license to do some of my own investigating on the job. I was a student! I was there to learn! What if I discovered that some brain injuries cause people to fake blindness, call us bitches, and fuck with us?!

But I needed to stay there in order to learn more about my patient, so I stopped with the inquisition, which was causing Roger to go mental anyway and causing everyone else to stare at us.

Okay, then. “Let's play Trivial Pursuit.”

“Okay.”

Roger kicked my ass at Trivial Pursuit all afternoon. His long-term memory was intact. Roger was a goddamn genius at Genus Edition, particularly history and arts and literature, which I found impressive—for anyone, not just this guy.

That night, I burned a copy of
Master of Puppets
for Roger. I brought it to him the next day and put it in his backpack. He seemed a little ambivalent. I was expecting him to be excited about it. I knew he didn't have the album. Was this part of his brain injury? It was confusing—he showed so much affection for the album before. Why not now? Was it because he didn't have a CD player? WTF?

The next day, Roger didn't seem to recognize me, even when we worked together.

“You want a coffee?” I asked. He just rocked in his chair, no answer. He didn't even mutter
bitch
. Maybe he was mad at me, I mused. Maybe I'd gone too far. I can imagine NO ONE had ever questioned the blindness. Holy shit—I was
insane
for asking him if he was faking blindness! BUT at the same time I had just given him his favorite album. Shouldn't he have been a little happy about that? I know guys are confusing communicators, but a guy with some of his brain missing is even more confusing.

We went through his exercises with little talk that day, which is probably the way it's supposed to be. Boring. The same was true of every day that followed.

Nancy would check in on us, and apparently I was doing everything right, but to me it felt like the first day was right and every day afterward was wrong. Nancy's appearances became less regular after one of her teens accidentally lit himself on fire and she had to take leave. I wish I was kidding about that.

But, as far as Roger goes, I couldn't help feeling we still had some sort of familiarity. Roger seemed to enjoy my company; he would stop rocking when I got there, or at least slow down, and he stayed calm until I left.

The center ran a music therapy class once a week. Roger refused to go. He hated “Itsy Bitsy Spider.” He hated the clapping.

“BULLCRAP!” he said. It wasn't, really. It was just a woman with an acoustic guitar. I left Roger comfortably in his room and went in to join the crowd in the large lunch area, another room attached to the kitchen. We sang the stupid happy children's songs and clapped and laughed a lot. I looked around the room and smiled, seeing everyone in the group so happy, showing exactly who they were before their accidents. Smiles penetrate though the broken mind, the broken body.

But Roger never came along, which made me sad. At first I didn't blame him, but the class was so positive that I started to feel like he was really missing out.

One afternoon, the music therapist was packing up her guitar when one of the younger guys yelled:

“JONI! ‘BOTH SIDES'! NOW!”

Everyone went quiet. Another guy started nodding vigorously.

The therapist pulled her guitar back out and started strumming.

But now old friends are acting strange,
They shake their heads, they say I've changed
Something's lost but something's gained
In living every day

The guy who had requested it was Brandon, a twenty-two-year-old who'd had a kayaking accident the year before. Brandon didn't talk or make facial expressions. He sat wide-eyed, staring to the left, mouth open and unchanging. His body was in one of those twisted positions, stuck like a statue. His face looked nonstop horrified. In his room, his parents had hung photos of Brandon before his accident; he didn't look like the same human being at all. The boy in the photos was a young Ben Affleck—in his EMT uniform at work, on a hike with his dog, smiling—not a crumpled statue with wide, horrified eyes, but a “normal” young man.

Until Brandon asked for “Both Sides Now,” I'd heard nothing from him. But when the therapist started to sing, he started to cry. Other patients started crying too, but their cries sounded sad in a familiar way. Brandon's cries were guttural. He couldn't move his mouth or tongue; he just moaned. It was terrible. It was beautiful.

I knew then why Roger never came to music class. This was fucking traumatic.

 

After music class, I walked over to Roger's backpack, which hung from his wheelchair, and opened it. The Metallica CD I'd made him was still in there. I'd thought for sure he'd been listening to it, but suddenly I remembered that I'm an idiot.
He has no short-term memory, Kelly.
He wouldn't even remember where his backpack was.

I walked up to his caregiver, who was the typical Tobias Fünke look-alike, as 65 percent of caregivers are.

“Why didn't you give him the CD I told you about?”

“What CD?”

“I told you, I put it in his backpack. It's a Metallica CD I made for him. It's his favorite album. You're his caregiver. What's wrong with you?”

Then I broke down.

Trying to collect myself, I walked into Margaret-with-the-beautiful-hair's room. She was alone and laying on her bed. I shut her door.

“Sorry, Margaret. I just need a second.”

And I leaned against her wall and cried.

Roger didn't have his dad with him, like Brandon did. He didn't have photos on his wall. He didn't like being bathed, so people skipped out on washing him. Roger's caregiver was a dumb fuck.

I wasn't going to be able to help him. I'd never be able to help any of these fucking people.

Margaret reached her arm out. I looked up, feeling stupid. Then I walked over and took her hand. Earlier that week, I'd helped roll her onto her side and hold her as an aide changed her diaper. It was only fair that she see me cry.

“Ahhhh, I'm an idiot,” I said.

Margaret moaned some words I couldn't decipher.

I smiled and wiped my tears.

“I wish we could have a rum together,” I said, pointing at her feeding tube. “If I had some, I'd pour it in there.”

She laughed and coughed and got some tears in her eyes.

I never found out if Roger got to listen to his CD. I hope he did. I hope he didn't cry, and I hope that every woman he meets is still Pamela Anderson.

“James, maybe I'm doomed to be Rosie Perez after all.”

“You aren't.”

“Can't you just see me? That Strong Single Mom who works with accident victims or dying people all day and has these emotional moments, then at the end of the pilot episode she comes home to an empty house and some dirty latchkey kid and you find out she's a widow, and everyone is all, ‘Awwwwwwwwww, she's just as damaged as those people'?!' ”

“I'm not dead.”

“Well, when you are, I'm going to be that girl!”

“Better than being a waitress. And you'll make thirty dollars an hour.”

“Waitresses make more than thirty dollars an hour.”

“What waitresses?”

“Well, I don't know. Naked waitresses, maybe.”

“Rosie Perez NEVER played a waitress who made more than thirty dollars an hour.”

Next it was the senior center, which was beside the freeway. Somehow I convinced myself that that would be less upsetting.

Wrong again, Florence Nightingale.

It started out okay. I spent the first couple of days feeding Mildred. She was the nicest woman there. Quiet, sweet, beautiful, and not a sloppy eater. She didn't eat very much and she liked me to dab her mouth after each bite. I'd stare at her mouth, at the comb of wrinkles that led down to her lip, the long downy hairs on her face, and listen to the shallow and short breaths she'd take. I'd try to breathe like that. In-out. In-out. So. Quick.

Feeding people wasn't actually part of my job description. As an occupational therapy assistant, I was supposed to be teaching people how to feed themselves, or giving them devices, like spoons with special graspable handles, that would help them gain independence and feed themselves.

But Mildred was ninety-six. Why should she have to feed herself? Was she about to move out and get an apartment? Was she heading out on a backpacking trip through Japan to sample beer this summer? No, so I fed Mildred.

One morning I walked into her room to pick her up for breakfast, and her bed was being stripped.

“Hey,” I said a little brightly. “Is Mildred already in the dining hall?” Please let them just be doing laundry.

“She's gone, Kelly.”

“So I should just meet her down in the dining hall??” I said, peering out from behind my denial.

That was their cue to reassure me that Mildred was fine, that she'd had some weird burst of energy that morning and wanted breakfast a little bit earlier than usual, that she'd woken up twenty years younger and swaggered out of the place in high heels and red lipstick, that she'd just gone to live on a beautiful farm in the country. But no. She'd died.

I was fine for the first few seconds. Then I went all Kathy Bates—not Kathy Bates from
Misery
, but Kathy Bates from
Fried Green Tomatoes.

“What are you going to do with her sheets and art? Her pictures?! Don't take the stuff off her walls! She just left!”

I decided not to get close and bond with a senior citizen again.

Of course that didn't work. Because I'm an asshole who cannot stop talking.

The next woman I was assigned to had dementia. She was convinced that we were in an English teahouse.

“ 'Tis two o'clock, m'dear! Get m'hat out! GET M'HAT OUT!!!!”

It was nine
A.M.
and Doris was already a full day's worth of crazy.

“
JOANIE!
” She called me Joanie. “Joanie, what are you doing here?”

“I came for tea.”

“No, what are you
really
doing here?” She gave me the squint eye and leaned toward me with her hand on her hip like some elementary actor.

“I'm earning my diploma as an occupational therapy assistant.”

“Why?”

“In case my husband dies and I have to raise my daughter alone. I need some sort of security.”

“Is he dying?”

“No.”

“You're an idiot, Joanie. I've always told Harold that. ALWAYS!”

And she left.

I was an idiot? I thought I was being responsible.

“Wait.” I followed Doris down the hallway. “Doris, what do you mean I'm an idiot?”

“EXCUSE ME?!” Doris whipped around. “Excuse me, but WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE? Why are you TALKING TO ME??
Police!
POOOOOOLICE!
”

Okay then. Never mind.

 

I'd been in the palliative care center for an entire month. I liked the routine the patients had: breakfast, recreation, exercise, lunch, nap, dinner. The palliative care facility was a less depressing pill to swallow than the brain injury center. These people hadn't had their lives cut short. There were no accidents, and the overall feel wasn't as dark, though it could still get dark.

I generally tried to get into the senior center early and get out before sundowning began.

Sundowning
is the therapy word for a whole mess of confusion, mood swings, and emotional turmoil that people with various stages of dementia tend to experience in the late afternoon. It's bizarre that it's a circadian rhythm thing, but I saw it with my own eyes. At around four o'clock, even the most rational of the folk with dementia tend to lose it a little, and like almost everything I experienced in this environment, it's upsetting to watch.