Along Came the Rain

by Alison R Solomon

  When they see I’m getting ready to leave, our two dogs, Queen and Latifah, jump off the sofa and come running over. Queen jumps up, putting her Miniature Schnauzer front paws on my pants and I push her off quickly. That’s when I realize they need to be walked. I was so immersed in the necklaces, that I didn’t take my usual three o’clock break to run them around the block. I debate changing back into my shorts and T-shirt, but figure it will take too much time, so I quickly leash them up and run outside.

  We take off down the street and almost immediately, Queen has to stop and sniff a particular groove in the sidewalk. Our neighborhood association has strict rules about where the girls can relieve themselves and the sidewalk isn’t one of those places. “Come on.” I yank on her leash. “Let’s run to the grass!” Latifah hears the word “run” and takes off with a Labrador leap. “Wait!” I yell, but she takes no notice, and yanks so hard that I feel split in two between Latifah going in one direction and Queen digging in her heels on the sidewalk. The situation is resolved when Public Enemy Number Three—a nasty little mastiff who baits Queen at every opportunity he gets—shows up across the street and both dogs turn in his direction, barking furiously, ready to attack. In less time than it takes to yell, “Stay!” my left foot is skidding off the three-inch platform heel, while my butt heads for the grass verge. Latifah glances back and cocks her head to one side as if to ask why I’m sitting on the ground, but Queen plows on, stopping only when I yank so tightly on her leash that she almost chokes. I pull myself up and look sternly at the dogs.

  “Pee,” I command in my best alpha voice. “Now!”

  Both animals look contrite and do their business quickly. I hobble back indoors. My sandal is unwearable. I rush into the bedroom and find the only other pair of heels I own. They’re black winter shoes, but hopefully no one will notice underneath the wide-hemmed pants. I shove my feet in them, and head out the door. If I drive really fast, I can still make it on time.

  ****

  Amazingly, I find a parking spot just half a block from the restaurant. I hurry down the street, aware that I’m sweating rather profusely, but relieved that my watch registers 5:58 p.m. Perfect. I enter the restaurant and look around. I’m the first one there. The waiter offers me a table and I explain that it’s for four. He seats me and I order a glass of red wine. I sit so I can watch everyone entering and leaving. I’m shocked by how many gorgeous, petite, attractive young women seem to pair up with pot-bellied, short, balding older men. They cling onto their partners’ arms as if they couldn’t take a step without them, and the men march in looking prouder than the guy who just won the U.S. Open. I look at my watch and discover it’s already six fifteen. Panic starts to set in. Am I in the right place? This is one of those times when I understand why Barker thinks I should have a cell phone. I’ve resisted having one, just as I’ve resisted using the computer, beyond sending email and doing a few other basic things. Call me kooky but I’m just not ready to be a slave to technology. Still, if I had a phone now, I could call her and find out what’s going on.

  I drain my glass and the waiter is at my side asking if I want another. I don’t really, but I can’t just sit here, so I nod affirmatively. The couple next to me is having a heated discussion and I can picture Barker and me doing the same thing if it turns out I’m in the wrong place. I wrack my brain trying to remember if I’ve missed something. I distinctly remember last month at the sushi restaurant Dot saying we had to go Indian. I’m almost positive Evie suggested Bombay Queen, and I could swear that the last thing Barker said as she left this morning was, “See you at six.” (And of course she added, “don’t be late.”) It’s six forty-five and I suddenly realize that even though I don’t have a cell phone, the restaurant must have a phone I could use. I ask the waiter and he points me to the bar in the back of the restaurant, where I grab the phone and dial Barker. It goes straight to voicemail. In a surprising moment of clarity, I remember Dot’s number and quickly dial it.

  I hear the phone pick up but it’s so noisy I can barely make out what she’s saying.

  “Dot, it’s Wynn.”

  “Where are you?”

  My heart sinks. Clearly, I’m not in the right place. “Bombay Queen.” She says something but I can’t make it out. “I’m at the bar, it’s noisy,” I tell her. “Hold on.”

  I wonder where I can go and as I look around me, I feel a hand on my back. I whirl around so fast I almost smash into Evie’s ample bosom. She laughs, but I’m already a wreck. I put the phone down and we walk back into the main room of the restaurant. Dot is perusing the menu and Barker is just walking in. They’ve taken a corner booth and since I left my wine glass at the other table, I have to tell them I’ve been there since six.

  “But we agreed on 7:00, didn’t we?” Dot looks quizzically at Barker.

  “Yes. Don’t you remember, Wynn, last thing I said as I left—see you at seven?”

  “I…I thought you said six.”

  Barker glances at the other two and raises her eyebrows. “Don’t worry about it, honey. Go get your drink and come sit down and relax.” I turn around to go fetch my glass but Barker calls me back. “What on earth happened to your pants?”

  “What do you mean?” My head is swimming a little from two glasses of wine on an empty stomach, I’m embarrassed that yet again I messed up, and I’m nervous because being with D&E always puts me on edge.

  “You have an awfully large stain on your butt,” Barker whispers. Dot and Evie both look up from their menus and I can see they heard what she said. I can’t figure out what Barker’s talking about until I remember Public Enemy Number Three. I was so busy changing my shoes, it didn’t occur to me to check out my backside. I see the three of them exchange glances but Barker stands up and gives me a big hug.

  “Honey, you look good, whatever you’re wearing.” she says, “I’m just happy to see you. It was a long day.” She squeezes my butt and kisses me full on the mouth. That girl. She can make it so nothing matters. Her heart is so big it would melt Alaska. I hug her gratefully and hope she won’t notice my winter shoes. Maybe the evening isn’t ruined after all.

  Chapter Five

  Barker, March 15

  We are driving up to Cedar Key, a funky little town on the coast, so Wynn can check out the Spring Arts Festival. They have a juried art contest and since Wynn has her sights set on entering an art show in Jade County this summer, she plans to gather information. She wants to see what kinds of jewelry got accepted into the contest and which pieces win. I’m happy to go because Cedar Key is one of our favorite places. It’s so laid back, you feel like you’re traveling back in time, to a fishing village where life was simple and people didn’t abandon their kids and shoot up their veins.

  Not that I’m naïve enough to think that doesn’t happen in remote, rural, sleepy, picturesque towns. I know it happens everywhere, and that sometimes the places that have the fewest diversions to offer their residents are the breeding grounds for teens and young adults to start their careers in addiction and drugs. But sometimes I like to forget all that, and just walk down the sleepy streets of small town Florida and make believe life is the way it appears to be on the surface.

  We usually visit Cedar Key in the height of summer when it’s so hot only die-hard Floridians would choose to vacation here. We take kayaks out into the bayou, floating through the mangroves early in the morning as the sun rises. When we’re lucky we see roseate spoonbills wading in the shallow waters, sweeping their paddle-like bills from side to side to sift up shrimp and mollusks, their pink wings flaming. You can always tell who’s new to town when you overhear them on their cell phones telling their friends about the flamingos they saw. We natives know flamingos would never make it this far north. After we kayak, we go to one of the fish restaurants on the bay and buy enormous grouper sandwiches that last us all day. We nap in the afternoons and then take slow strolls through the sleepy town in the evening.

  But today there’s nothing sleepy about C
edar Key. There must be over a hundred booths lining the main street. The weather is perfect; sunny and warm with a very slight breeze, ideal for strolling through an art exhibit and that’s exactly what thousands of people are doing. The artwork is incredible—gorgeous pieces of sculpted glass, carved wooden statues, ceramic bowls, incredible watercolors, oil paintings and photographs, and of course, lots of jewelry. Wynn is as happy as a puppy with a new chew toy. Despite her arthritis, she darts back and forth from booth to booth, picking items up, examining them, asking questions, and talking to the artists. How do they decide what piece or pieces to enter into the competition? How much inventory would she need to have her own booth? How long does it take them to prepare for an event like this? Many of them sound like they’re almost permanently on the road, traveling from one art show to another. Others are regional artists who have pieces in the local galleries and never venture outside Cedar Key. While Wynn engages them, I wander off on my own, eventually finding a little café where I order a white chocolate latte with whipped cream and enjoy my own little piece of heaven.

  By the end of the afternoon, Wynn is ready to call it quits. I ask her if she wants to have dinner here but it’s so crowded we both agree we’d rather find a place on the road.

  “Let’s go to Pelican Beach,” she suggests as we head back south.

  “Sure,” I say, turning off the main freeway to take the coast road home. As we drive along the gulf, the small homes that line the gulf beaches turn into larger houses which, as we enter Pelican Beach, turn into massive condo buildings obscuring the gulf altogether as they sit like Monopoly buildings bunched onto Park Place.

  “You wouldn’t even know there were beaches behind all those buildings,” says Wynn, her expression one of dismay. “Now I know why we’ve never been here before.”

  I’m startled. “Yes we have. Don’t you remember? We came here when your mom visited us before she died.” Sometimes Wynn shocks me. How can she not remember that?

  “We did?”

  My heart sinks. This is what it was like when her mom was first diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. We’d go visit her and talk about things we’d done in the past, and she’d look at us and say, “Did we? I don’t remember that.” At the beginning she’d get belligerent—“you’re making it up, we never did that”—but when it got really bad, she stopped arguing and then it was even sadder because she didn’t seem to mind that she couldn’t remember anything. She’d ask about Wynn’s father and when we said, “You got divorced when Wynn was a teenager,” she’d say, “Really? Did I?” I dread that this is how Wynn is going to end up. Especially since she’s so young. Her mom was in her eighties when she got like that. Wynn is barely sixty.

  We park on the main drag, and go to a Cuban restaurant in a small shopping center. I purposely choose not to go to the restaurant we went to with her mom, because if I ask her—surely you remember this?—I don’t know if I want to hear the answer.

  “I’m definitely going to do the art show,” Wynn gushes. “The folks in Cedar Key were so helpful, and I got business cards from several of them who said they’d be happy to talk more on the phone.”

  “I’m glad it was such a successful trip,” I take a large forkful of my Lechon Asado and revel in the mixture of spices that make it one of the best I’ve had in ages. I can taste the garlic and oregano, but there’s something else that’s making the pork melt in my mouth. “You have to make this for our next date night,” I tell Wynn. “It’s out of this world.”

  The fact that Wynn blanked out on having visited Pelican Beach is still weighing on me as we sit and eat. I wonder whether she purposely tries not to remember places that might be associated with her mom. “Do you miss your mom?” I ask her. “Do you think about Viv much?” It’s been almost two years since she died. When I first met Viv, I couldn’t get over how vibrant and energetic she was. She loved anything that had to do with the water. We took her on a dolphin trip and parasailing and then she decided she wanted to snuba. We didn’t even know what that was.

  “I saw it on TV,” she told us. “It’s a mix of snorkeling and scuba diving.” She explained how you go deep down into the water like a diver, but instead of having an oxygen tank, you’re attached to the boat up above by a long hose. I thought it sounded scary and Wynn couldn’t do it because of her asthma. But Viv was determined, so on her next visit, we drove down the Florida Keys to Marathon, the closest place that had snuba diving. Wynn and I lounged at a nearby resort that had an infinity pool from which you could order drinks. When we picked Viv up four hours later, I’d never seen her so elated. “Best adventure ever!” she announced. Four years later, she was still showing everyone the pictures she’d taken with her underwater camera: white coral, multicolored angelfish, spiny lobsters, and dozens of tropical fish whose names we didn’t even know. Eight years later when we pulled out the photo album and looked at the pictures, she said, “That’s pretty. What is it?”

  For over a year Wynn drove back and forth to her mom, who lived about three hours away. She’d leave our house on Tuesday morning and come back Wednesday evening. Everything fell on her because she was an only child. She’d take Viv to appointments, buy her groceries, and clean her apartment. Occasionally we’d go on the weekend, so I could accompany her. It was easier for me to see how much she was deteriorating: the same questions asked repeatedly, the decreasing ability to cook and bake, the endless demands to search for things like her keys that turned up in the freezer or the oven. When it became clear that she could no longer live alone, Wynn suggested we bring her to live with us. I knew it was what many people might do, but I’d seen with my grandfather how people with Alzheimer’s could end up—incontinent, unable to feed themselves, even forgetting how to talk—and I wasn’t sure she’d want to take on such a responsibility. We talked about it for weeks and eventually our decision was made for us. A social worker from the local hospital called to tell us Viv had broken her hip after she fell while wandering in the street in her pajamas and slippers. From the hospital, she went to a nursing home to rehab her hip, and then it just became clear that we should move her to the dementia wing of that same nursing home. Unfortunately, it was a private place that cost a fortune and Viv had almost no money, but we knew we couldn’t move her at that point. Wynn continued to drive back and forth for the three years that her mom survived in the home, before thankfully succumbing to pneumonia.

  “When I think of her, I try to remember her before she went downhill. I picture us camping at Yosemite when I was a child, and traveling through Europe together when I was in my twenties. I miss who she was when she used to visit us here, but I don’t miss who she became before she died,” Wynn says in answer to my question, and I understand her feelings completely.

  We finish our dinner and head out of the restaurant. On the way home, I wonder to myself, will that ever be me? Telling people I miss Wynn when she was cooking complicated dinners for us on date night, and creating unique jewelry? That I miss the Wynn who kept up with politics and had strong opinions about them? I think about my grandfather and Wynn’s mom and I think, I’m not sure I could deal with it. I’m a social worker and I can help strangers. But I don’t think I could live with someone with dementia 24/7. I’d have to leave before it ever got that bad. Or put a pillow over her head.

  Chapter Six

  Kallie, June 13

  She tells us that we’re going to be staying in an apartment that is just for the two of us.

  “I can’t believe it,” I tell her. “No one ever let us be unaccompanied. There’s always someone telling us what to do or when to do it.” I can’t even imagine what it’s like to have no adult supervision.

  “I’m sure you girls can handle it.”

  Of course we can. You don’t get to be in foster care for ten years without becoming pretty independent. I can keep house. Heck, some of the places I lived in had me doing that when I was barely big enough to hold a broom. I know how to get myself up in the morning, how to shop fo
r bargains and manage money, even though I’ve hardly ever had any. For my entire fifteen years every time I’ve wanted to do something, or buy something, adults have told me, “You can do that when you’re older,” or, “When you’re living on your own, then you can do that.” Well guess what? That time is now!

  I don’t notice what button she presses in the elevator, but it must be pretty high because I feel my stomach flip when we whoosh upward. The front door of the condo is unlocked. We walk through it and she leads us into a small living room that has a sofa, love seat, standing lamp and not much else. But what draws me in is what I can see beyond the living room. I move towards the floor-to-ceiling windows and look out at the entire Pelican Bay laid out in front of me. Far below, the gulf shimmers in the sun and I can’t believe I’m going to stay in an apartment that has a view this spectacular. Who’s paying for this? I want to ask, but I don’t, because clearly everything is under her control and I’m not going to worry about it.

  We walk past the living room and a small dining nook into the kitchen. She opens the larder and I see it’s stocked with enough food for a week of breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Cheerios, Pop-Tarts and Little Debbie’s; ramen noodles and spaghetti; pork and beans, chicken soup and Spam. Then she shows us the pizzas and ice cream in the freezer, and I catch sight of some beer bottles in the refrigerator. I wonder if they’re for us, but decide not to push my luck and ask. Perhaps she didn’t notice they were there. Or perhaps they’re for someone else. But I make a mental note to grab one the moment she leaves. Mikki turns to the fruit bowl on the countertop and can’t stop herself from taking a banana.