People Who Knew Me (11 page)

The coffee table was covered with mail—some opened, some unopened—and protein bar wrappers. That must have been what she was subsisting on; cooking anything would require too much effort. A fallen stack of newspapers occupied half the couch. It was like she hadn't had time to clean, but she had all the time in the world; she'd been on disability from work for months. Time wasn't the issue. She couldn't take care of herself, plain and simple. That realization, in that moment, changed me, changed what I'd assumed for the future, our future. I grabbed her purse off the kitchen table and disregarded the mess—figurative and literal—knowing it would be waiting for me later.

When I came outside, Drew was helping her into the passenger's seat. He strapped her in, closed the door, and jogged to the other side of the car. On his way, he gave me another look, this one terrified, telling me,
I didn't know it was this bad
. I took a breath deep enough for him to see my chest rise and twisted my mouth to one side. I didn't know it was that bad, either. It wasn't just the broken wrist, but all of it, the totality of her life, a life that had led to this broken wrist. We just didn't know.

The ten-minute drive to East Orange General was another mostly silent one. I sat in the back, but I could see his mom in the side mirror. Her lip was trembling. She was terrified, too. It was like even though she'd been living this, even though it was her body, and her life, under siege, she didn't know it was that bad, either.

*   *   *

The ER was crowded for a Wednesday night. Drew went up to the registration desk while I walked his mom to one of the few available plastic chairs in the waiting area. There were all types: a feverish Hispanic woman with sweat beads on her forehead; a tired-looking white woman with a toddler sprawled out next to her, taking up two seats; a college student holding a bloody washcloth around one finger; an Indian family, the women in saris, with so much calm in their faces that I didn't know if any of them had an actual emergency.

“It shouldn't be too long,” Drew said, coming back and sitting beside his mom. I was on her other side. He put his arm around the back of her seat, reaching over to massage my shoulder. I gave him a small smile to show my appreciation, but I didn't want to look at him. I knew he'd want to start the conversation about canceling our trip and I wanted nothing to do with that conversation.

The nurse didn't call us back until ten o' clock, two hours after we'd arrived. Drew's mom was rocking back and forth slowly in her chair, still clutching her arm. It had swollen up noticeably. We didn't need an X-ray to confirm anything.

The nurse showed us to one of the examination areas. She pulled the curtain shut for an illusion of privacy, though we were well within earshot of all the other patients and their ailments. She took his mom's vitals, needing the child-sized cuff to get the blood pressure reading. She said a doctor would be right with us and then disappeared beyond the curtain.

The doctor looked younger than Drew and me. He was an Indian man, small-boned, with receding hair. He could have been one of those unfortunates whose hair started disappearing in high school. That tragedy probably drove him to his books and success in academia. He mentioned his name quickly, but I didn't catch it. His accent was still heavy. He couldn't have been in America more than a few years.

“Let's see what we have here,” he said, sitting on a stool with wheels and rolling up to Drew's mom. He was gentle and compassionate, confirming his newness to the profession. In time, he was sure to become the prototypical seasoned doctor—gruff, blunt, tired of people and their injuries. He peeked at her arm, careful not to hurt her any more than she already was.

“I'm going to have someone take you to get an X-ray, okay?” he said, talking to Drew's mom like she was a child, which she was, essentially.

She nodded sheepishly.

“This is what happens when you try to shoot the basketball too much,” he said. He laughed at his own terrible joke and we smiled politely.

An X-ray tech with tattoos visible underneath the sleeves of his scrubs and earrings in both ears came to escort Janet. She looked scared to go with him, and I didn't blame her. The three of us—the doctor, Drew, and I—watched her walk away. It was a shuffle more than a walk. She couldn't risk raising a foot completely, so she just slid across the floor.

After she disappeared around a corner, the doctor said, “How long has she had Parkinson's?”

He was looking at his clipboard, making notes. It was like he thought he was talking to colleagues, not family members.

Drew cleared his throat. “We're not totally sure that's what it is.”

That got the doctor's attention. He looked up, confused.

“Well,” he said, squinting his eyes, thinking, giving his words careful thought, “whatever it is, she is having a great deal of difficulty walking. She has fairly extreme rigidity. She can barely stand without aid.”

Drew nodded. I could feel the guilt emanating off of him. We should have known it had gotten so bad.

“I'm guessing she's struggling with day-to-day tasks,” the doctor said cautiously. “Is that correct?”

“She fell getting the mail, so…” Drew trailed off. He looked away and, as he did, I could see the glassiness of his welled-up eyes in the fluorescent overhead lights.

“I'm sure she takes falls on a daily basis,” the doctor said. “You should be grateful that she only broke her wrist this time. It could have been her hip, which would require a surgery that would be very hard on her body.”

I resented this little Indian man for telling us what we should and shouldn't be grateful for. I wanted to tell him about our vacation, about how we just wanted him to lie to us and tell us she would be fine and we could go.

“The tremors—the shaking in her hands—that's gotten better, though,” Drew said. His tone was defensive.

“That can happen in later stages of Parkinson's.”

We nodded as if we understood, but we didn't.

“Stages?” I asked, my voice quiet. I wasn't sure I wanted to be heard or answered.

“There are five stages,” the doctor said. “She is probably stage four.”

“What happens at stage five?” I asked, still quiet.

“Increased difficulty with movement—standing, walking. Most stage five patients have nursing care.”

He was too direct, too much to the point. We wanted to dance—twirl and spin—around the point, for at least a little while longer.

“It's not terminal,” he said. He blurted it, like it was the one piece of good news he had to give us and he couldn't wait to share it. I knew, even then, well before I'd see the worst of it, that it might not be good news that Parkinson's wasn't terminal. In the support group I'd join months later, the other relatives and caretakers would all admit that, in the darkest hours, they wished it was terminal, that it would all end. As it was, it could go on for years, decades even.

“What do we do?” Drew asked, with a helplessness that made me grab his hand and squeeze it.

The doctor reached in his pocket for his pager. Whatever it said startled him.

“You should start talking to her about caregiving options,” he said. Then he excused himself, said he would be right back. And we stood there, clueless as to what was ahead, but knowing that we wouldn't have “options.” She didn't have insurance and we didn't have a stash of money for a live-in nurse. We were the option.

*   *   *

It was after midnight by the time we got out of the hospital. Drew's mom chose a hot pink cast, a rather pathetic attempt to keep the situation humorous and lighthearted. We walked her into the house and Drew got his first look at the disaster it had become. His shoulders slumped in defeat. He sat her on the couch and moved some of the newspapers so he could make a seat for himself. As I made my way to the kitchen, I heard him say:

“Ma, we gotta talk about this.”

Drew and I had divvied up responsibilities while waiting in the hospital: he would talk to his mom; I would cancel the trip. I left a message with Jade, telling her I'd be in the office the rest of the week. Then I called Marni. I was hoping she wouldn't pick up so I could just leave a message, but she did pick up and I had to explain the situation to her. She said, “Oh, Em.” The sadness in her voice made my throat constrict and my eyes water. I told her I had to go and hung up quickly. I recomposed myself and then called the airline's twenty-four-hour help line. I told the woman on the line that we'd had a family medical emergency. She didn't say she was sorry for us. She just asked for our confirmation number and the last name on the reservation.

“So our credit card will be refunded?” I asked.

“No, ma'am, we can't give you a refund. But we can give you a credit so you can go to California on a future date.”

I hated her, the twang of her Texas accent, the fake graciousness of her voice. She was probably playing a game of solitaire on her computer while talking to me.

“Okay, then, a credit,” I said.

“You'll just need to send in proof of your medical emergency.”

“Proof?”

“A doctor's bill—anything with the date on it.”

“Fine, we'll do that,” I said. “We'll send in the bill.”

It turned out there wasn't one bill; there were many. I never made copies of them to mail in. It wasn't that I forgot. I remembered. But it became gravely apparent that California—or any vacation, for that matter—wouldn't be part of our lives as long as Drew's mother was part of our lives. On especially bad days, I considered getting the airline credit and taking the trip alone, even envisioned myself on a chaise lounge with a book and a fruity cocktail at my side. But I declared my own idea crazy before Drew had the chance to. I mean, what kind of wife leaves her husband and his ailing mother to sunbathe in paradise? A shitty one, I told myself. A shitty one.

 

TEN

Drew and I had this ritual: Friday nights, after a long week of work, we'd make calzones. It was our thing. He was in charge of the dough and I was in charge of the fillings. We tried to make them a little different every week—different meats, different cheeses, different vegetables. Sometimes we used a cream sauce, sometimes marinara.

On the day of the last calzone night I remember, he called me on my lunch break and said, “Babe, I was thinking pesto tonight.”

When was that? It must have been in that period of time after Drew's mom broke her wrist, after we canceled our trip, but before our lives changed completely.

“Pesto?” I said.

“As the sauce, as the base. It's genius.”

I couldn't help but smile. “Genius,” I said. “I'll pick up some tomatoes and mozzarella.”

When I came home that night, the house had that smell that I always looked forward to after excessively stressful weeks full of client presentations and unrealistic deadlines. Drew danced with me in the kitchen. A Goo Goo Dolls song was on the radio. He was in one of his good moods.

“My love,” he said, kissing my cheek, “tonight's calzone just may be the very best yet.”

I put my groceries on the counter and let him twirl me until I got dizzy. We ended up sitting on the linoleum floor, in hysterics, and I thought, for a second,
We can always be this happy
. I hadn't even had a sip of wine yet. I was just drunk on optimism.

*   *   *

Drew started visiting his mom regularly after her fall. At first it was just during the days, which were free for him because he didn't have a job. Slowly, caring for her became his job; or, Marni said, caring for her became the excuse he had for not finding a job. Sometime after the holidays, he decided to make her dinner a few nights a week, meaning I was on my own, eating takeout in front of the TV. When that became a norm, he started calling around eight o'clock saying, “I think I'm just going to stay the night here.” His voice was slurred; he'd had too much to drink. I wasn't about to insist he get on the road and come back to me.

By April, he was at his mom's house more often than he was at home with me. He had a duty, he said. He owed it to her, he said. The loyalty that I used to consider a strength began to reveal itself as a weakness. I tried to understand, but I was angry—especially on calzone nights.

*   *   *

On this particular Friday, I was determined to be the one who had too much to drink. I came home to the dark, quiet apartment, not as sad about his absence as I was about my acclimation to it. I fed Bruce, washed my dishes from that morning's breakfast, sorted through a stack of mail—bills, mostly, enough bills to drain the paycheck I'd just gotten that day. I took the cork out of a bottle of Merlot with at least two glasses left in it and poured the wine into one of those large plastic cups they give away as promotional items at fast-food restaurants. This one was from Wendy's.

I took a sip, then sat myself down at the kitchen table, pondering what to do for dinner. I decided on the Mexican place Drew didn't like. Even though he wasn't there to disapprove, I enjoyed the rebellion. I decided I'd been too agreeable with him, generally. I'd never pushed to get my way—for Mexican food and other matters—and look where it had gotten me. Alone on a Friday night.

As I called in my order to a woman who spoke very broken English, I took big gulps of wine, and started opening the bills, checkbook at my side. I was in charge of the finances in our marriage. It was a role I accepted early on, after Drew forgot to pay the electricity bill and our apartment went dark. He admitted money management wasn't his strong suit. Remembering this, I muttered to myself, “What
is
your strong suit?” while tearing open an envelope containing the credit card statement. I reviewed the charges, using a pencil to make checkmarks next to the ones I recognized. Drew used to tease me about my attention to detail with the bills. I'd told him he'd thank me one day, though that day never came.