Ann, listen to me, honey.” Mother’s voice came from behind. “Quit flitting around the kitchen like a housefly afraid of getting swatted. I’m trying to be sensible while I can. Neither of us can escape the truth.”
Carrie gripped the countertop with both hands and stared at the diamond pattern of the tiled backsplash. The grout needed cleaning. She bent to the cabinet below and reached for the Tilex. “We don’t have to talk about it all the time.”
Mother’s hands, strong from a lifetime of busyness, gripped her shoulders and forced her up. “Your grout is fine, Carrie Ann, as spotless as everything in your life except me. And Tilex will not fix what’s happening in my brain. Sit down. Every time I try to bring up the subject, you start cleaning something. Today we’re talking. No cleaning. Do you have any Mountain Dew?”
“No.” Carrie slumped into one of the Queen Anne side chairs.
“No Mountain Dew?” Mother huffed as if insulted. “Iced tea then.”
She retrieved the filled pitcher Carrie kept available in case of company, poured two glasses, plunked them down and then sat, too.
“I’ve known something was wrong for a long time,” Mother said without preamble. “Now the problem has a name. We can plan for it and deal with it.”
Carrie stared into the amber-colored tea and absently slid a finger and thumb up and down the damp glass. She didn’t want to hear this, but she was too old to run away and hide in the back of the closet to avoid facing unpleasantness. Hiding hadn’t worked for her at ten, and it wouldn’t work at forty-two.
“You never said a word.”
“What could I say? I hoped I was experiencing normal forgetfulness. Where were my keys, my reading glasses, that kind of thing. Then I started getting confused at work, mixing up files and phone numbers. One day I was talking on the telephone and got so confused, I hung up. I knew what I wanted to say but the words wouldn’t come out right.”
“I didn’t know,” Carrie said past the ache in her throat. Her mother had been in trouble and she hadn’t even noticed. “I thought you were being your usual goofy yourself.”
Frannie’s eyes widened in mirth. “It helps being crazy in advance.”
“Don’t, Mother. Please don’t.”
Fannie patted the back of her hand. “Okay, if it makes you feel better. Laughter’s good medicine, though. That’s Bible. Wise old King Solomon himself said that. Anyway, back to this forgetting thing. I thought I was overdoing, tired, whatever, so I tried getting more sleep, taking vitamins. I even started taking cod-liver oil because it’s supposed to be brain food. Can you imagine?”
Carrie squinched her eyes and shuddered. “Yuck.”
“Yuck is right, and the nasty stuff didn’t do anything but make the cat want to lick my face.” Frannie grinned, but the emotion didn’t reach her eyes. Her lipstick had faded with the day, leaving the rim of red liner.
Carrie had a horrible thought that her mother would be like this. All the color and vibrance fading away with only the outer shadow left behind.
She took a sip of the cold drink in an effort to wash down the dark taste of sorrow. Mother may be putting on a happy face but Carrie couldn’t.
The ice maker rumbled and the clock on the stove ticked once. Her mother took a deep breath, held it, held it, held it and then slowly exhaled.
“I was in the hardware store yesterday and not only forgot why I was there but what kind of store it was. I kept looking around at tools and light fixtures and wondering if someone was having a garage sale.” She made a self-deprecating sound through her nose. “Isn’t that silly? It’s like this cloud comes over my brain, then after a while moves on, letting the sun back in. It’s the weirdest feeling.” Her voice dwindled to a stop like a car slowly running out of gas.
“Oh, Mother.” Carrie leaned her forehead onto the heel of her hand. Why God? Why are You doing this?
Frannie sipped at her tea and grimaced. “Unsweetened. You should have warned me.” She plunked the glass down and swiped at the condensation ring on the table. “You know what I discovered in my cupboards last night?”
Carrie shook her head. “I’m not sure I want to know.”
“Twenty-two cans of chicken noodle soup.” Frannie slapped her thigh and cackled. “What do you think? Maybe I was expecting a flu epidemic?”
How could Mother laugh when Carrie wanted to run screaming from the kitchen. “How did that happen?”
“I don’t know. Well, I do, actually. When I would go shopping, I’d wonder if I was out of soup, but I wasn’t sure so I bought more. Guess what else I stocked up on?”
“Do I dare ask?”
“Eight bottles of ketchup, nine giant jars of dill pickles and—get this—sixteen cans of creamed corn.”
“You don’t even like creamed corn.”
“No, but Lexi does. That child can eat creamed corn like most kids eat peanut butter and jelly. I guess I didn’t want to disappoint her by running out.”
“Oh, Mother,” Carrie said again, voice as heavy as her heart.
“I know, honey,” Frannie said, patting her shoulder. “At least I know today. I may forget in ten minutes but I know right now. Someday I’ll be able to hide my own Easter eggs.”
“Stop it! Stop joking about this. There is nothing funny about Alzheimer’s disease.”
Expression mild, Frannie answered, “No, there isn’t, but this is my new reality. I can face it with a smile or a frown, but I have to face it. The Lord has always taken care of us, Carrie. We have to trust that He’s in this, too.”
Yeah, well, if He was in this thing, Carrie would like to know where. How could Mother go on blithely trusting a God who was letting her down in the worst possible way? If He cared at all, He could stop this awful thing from happening to a woman who had served Him all the days of her life. If He cared.
Carrie shoved away from the table and stalked to the kitchen sink to yank the drain plug.
Frannie followed her, heeled slides tip-tapping on the tile. “I told Dr. Morrison to put me on the list for trials and drugs tests and anything experimental.”
“Oh, like that’s going to cheer me up.”
Swishing the pink sweaters up and down while running a blast of cold rinse water, Carrie had a vision of her mother with probes and electrodes poking from her head like Frankenstein. Knowing Frannie, she’d probably wear the conglomeration like a hat and march down the street in the Independence Day Parade.
“If I have to have this silly forgetting disease, I want somebody to get some good out of it. If not me, someone else. God can take this bad thing and bring something good from it the way He always does. Besides, I like the idea of being a pioneer,” she said, cheerfully. “Just think, Carrie, if they could find a cure through me. Wouldn’t that be magnificent?”
Magnificent
