Along Came the Rain

by Alison R Solomon

  “So,” Dr. Larson says, turning specifically to me, “let’s get started. Do you know what I do?” This strikes me as exceedingly odd way to start a conversation, but I decide to take her at face value.

  “Yes. You’re a pediatrician.”

  “Hmm. Well, not exactly, but I guess that’s close. Do you know where you are?”

  “I’m in your home,” I reply, sneaking a glance at Barker to see if she finds this conversation as peculiar as I do. But her gaze is on the bookshelves, where large tomes nestle next to each other. I left my glasses in the car, so I can’t make out their titles from here, but if I had to hazard a guess, I would say that they’re professional books rather than Danielle Steele novels.

  “Tell me how you and Barker got together,” she says. I like people who are direct, and I like when they want to know how we met.

  “Why don’t you tell her, Barker?” I don’t want to monopolize the conversation and Barker has barely said a word. But she shakes her head.

  “No, you go ahead, honey.”

  “It’s one of those typical lesbian love stories,” I say. “She was dating a woman called Jan and I was dating Linda. Jan and Linda were best friends so we used to go out as a foursome. Well, then Jan started seeing another woman called Bev, and unbeknownst to me, Linda started having an affair with Bev’s girlfriend—”

  “Whoa!” Dr. Larson cuts me off. “This is getting way too complicated. I don’t know how you can even remember all this!”

  “Okay, you got me. It’s not really how we met, it’s just how every other lesbian couple we know got together. Barker and I met at a fundraiser but that’s a much less interesting story. I’d never be able to remember a story that complicated. I have a terrible memory.” I smile ruefully and take a sip of water from the bottle she gave me. I remember the days when hostesses provided water in glasses, with ice, and then offered fruit or cookies to their guests, but nowadays shoving a plastic bottle into someone’s hand seems to be about it.

  “Tell me more about your memory problems,” Dr. Larson says and I think, boy once a doctor, always a doctor. Can’t she just talk about the Rays or the Buccaneers? But still, I humor her.

  “My mom had dementia, so naturally I worry that I’ll get it too. It’s hard to know what’s menopausal fog, what’s a senior moment, and what could be a real sign of something more serious. In fact, Barker keeps telling me I should get evaluated, but I really don’t think it’s that bad yet.” Dr. Larson glances over at Barker, who smiles in an absent kind of way.

  “Since you mention your memory, let’s do a little exam. I’m going to tell you three things to remember and I’ll ask you what they are in a few minutes, okay?”

  “You want to see if I’m gaga yet?” I laugh. “Fine by me.” This woman definitely has odd social graces, but if I can get a free memory test, why not?

  She tells me the three words. “Shirt. Brown. Honesty,” then looks up at me. I wonder if she’s waiting for me to repeat them, but I decide I’d rather steer the conversation in a different direction.

  “This place is gorgeous. How long have you owned it?” I ask. She looks a little taken aback, like she’s the one meant to be asking questions, but then she can’t help herself because who doesn’t like to talk about their home?

  “A few years now. It was a fixer-upper. I made the plans and bought all the materials, and then had some day laborers do the work.”

  “It turned out beautifully. Those tiles in the staircase look Mexican. Did you bring them back yourself?”

  “Hardly.” She laughs, though not with her full belly, just a polite little chuckle. ”They’d be awfully heavy. There’s a store in town that has everything Mexican: equipales—you know the wicker and pigskin furniture—Talavera tiles, the marmol fountain you saw out front.”

  “Well, it’s beautiful,” I turn to Barker. “Isn’t it, sweetie.”

  “Yes, delightful,” she responds and then falls quiet again. It’s not like her to be so silent and I wonder what’s going on with her.

  “Back to those three words, I gave you,” says Dr. Larson. “What were they?”

  I’m startled. I totally forgot about them. I meant to repeat them to myself, but to be honest, I wasn’t even paying that much attention when she said them.

  “No idea,” I answer, smiling.

  “Let me give you some prompts,” she says, but I’m tired of this. I’d rather talk more about her house.

  “Nah, that’s okay. I’m fine with not knowing them, trust me. There’s too much in life to remember without having to put things into my brain that I’ll never need again. Tell me where that store is in town. I’ve been telling Barker how much I’d like some of those black iron sconces for our patio.”

  She gives us the address then says, “Let’s try something different. I’m going to give you some words and you’re going to tell me what makes them alike. If I were to ask you how an arm and a leg are similar, how would you respond?”

  I really think this woman is weird, but I’m here for Barker so I answer. “How about: if I were to see you professionally, you’d probably charge me an arm and a leg?”

  Dr. Larson sighs and turns to Barker. “I think this is probably enough. How about we talk more tomorrow at work?”

  I get that Barker needs allies at work, but I’m not sure if I would trust this woman. She may be a good pediatrician but she sure as heck is a weird human being. I’m kinda glad when she stands up, intimating that our visit is over. I shake her hand politely and we make our way back down the curved staircase. This is one colleague of Barker’s I won’t be in a hurry to see again. The things we do for love, I think. And then I start humming that song with the same title.

  Chapter Twelve

  Kallie, June 15

  I wake up, my head throbbing so badly it feels like someone’s banging on it with a hammer. I’m not wearing anything, which is totally out of character, and for a moment I can’t place where I am. I open my eyes and see the red satin sheets and the vanity, and it starts to come back to me. I lie in bed, trying to remember everything that happened yesterday, but it feels like my brain will burst. Then I remember John taking pictures and think, let me piece it together with the pictures on my phone. I stumble out of bed and look around for the cell phone. My clothes are in a pile in the corner along with my backpack. I tip out the contents of the backpack but it’s not there, so I get dressed then tiptoe across the hall and peek into Mikki’s room. She’s out cold, snoring underneath the red satin sheets. I go into the living room and am surprised to see that it’s immaculate. You’d never have known anyone was even here, except for a stale smell of cigarettes, marijuana, and beer. John must have cleaned up. The bottles and joint butts are gone, and apparently so is he. In the kitchen, a couple of clean plates and glasses are stacked neatly in the dish drainer and other than that, nothing’s out of place. I open the larder to make sure all the food is there, and sure enough, the cupboard is still full.

  I decide to wake Mikki up and see if she has my cell phone. I go into her room and shake her on the shoulder. She rolls over, putting her back to me.

  “Mikki,” I whisper. “Wake up.”

  “Go away,” she mutters.

  “Come on, I need to ask you something.”

  She pulls the sheet over her head and I figured her headache must be even worse than mine. So I go back to the kitchen. Since there’s nothing else to do, I decide to have some breakfast. I take out a can of Coke from the fridge and place a Pop-Tart in the toaster. When it pops up, I go to sit on the love seat, the one where we all started doing the crazy stuff, and stare out at the ocean.

  I don’t know where John’s gone—I still don’t even know who he is—but I figure when he gets back he’ll tell me where my cell phone is. I go to the front door to see if maybe he’s in the hallway, but when I try to open it, I can’t. It seems like it’s jammed or something, because when I turn the deadbolt, it just spins around in circles without unlocking the door. I gue
ss John will fix it when he gets back. Meanwhile, it’s okay that I can’t go out, since I have no idea where I am and wouldn’t know how to get back in if I went out. I go back to the living room and sit down, trying to remember everything that happened yesterday, but it’s all a bit hazy. I know that three friends of his came over, all guys. I know there was a lot of boozing involved. And even though I swore I’d never smoke a joint, I’m pretty sure I did anyway. And possibly more than one.

  I sit for a long time opposite the window, looking down below to where people who look tiny carry their beach chairs and coolers onto the beach. I see a car pull into the parking lot and a couple get out carrying Dunkin’ Donuts paper bags. It’s a long way down, but I’d recognize the Dunkin’ Donuts logo and colors anywhere. After a while, I get a little bored so I pull a puzzle book out of my backpack and figure I’ll do some puzzles until Mikki gets up. By lunchtime, when she still hasn’t come out of her room, I decide to go wake her up.

  When I open her door, I see she’s on her bed, fully dressed.

  “Hey,” I say. “What are you doing? Don’t you want to get something to eat?”

  “Leave me alone,” she snarls.

  Earlier I thought she was just hungover, but now I’m starting to think it’s something else.

  “Are you mad at me?” I ask her, still standing by the door, waiting for her to invite me in and sit on the bed with her.

  She shrugs.

  “Come on, Mikki, what’s going on?”

  She turns her head towards me, but looks beyond me. “Aren’t you embarrassed?”

  “What about?” But even as I say it, I start to get a clue.

  She puts her head down. “You know…”

  The problem is, I don’t. I remember in the afternoon, when it was her and me and John, and yes, I do remember licking her nipples and thinking I was in heaven. Is that what she’s referring to, or was there something else. Something worse?

  “I don’t remember much about yesterday, especially not about last night. In fact, I was thinking that if I looked at the pictures on our cell phones, it might help me remember. But I can’t find my phone.”

  Her eyes grow big and then I see tears well up and spill over onto her cheeks.

  “I can’t find mine either,” she gulps. At first, I don’t know why she’s crying and then it hits me: this is no coincidence.

  “He took them?” I whisper, a very sick feeling starting to stir in my stomach.

  She nods. “I guess.”

  I decide to risk going into her room and I go over and sit at the vanity.

  “Tell me what happened last night that I don’t remember,” I say. But she shakes her head.

  “If you don’t know then you’re lucky,” she says. I start to mentally check my body and see if anything hurts but nothing does, so I don’t think there was any violence. Before I put my clothes on this morning, I glanced at myself in the mirror and I don’t remember seeing any marks anywhere, so I don’t think they did anything perverted. I don’t think either of us had to fight or struggle with those guys though I’ve been in enough sex ed classes to know that if you’re drunk or passed out and someone does something to you, it’s rape. I’m pretty sure Mikki isn’t a virgin, so I don’t think sex per se would have been an issue, unless someone made her do something against her will.

  “Did they hurt you?” I ask and I know my voice is thick with concern. I’ve always felt protective of Mikki, and if one of John’s friends did something to her, I swear I’ll take a knife from the kitchen and stab him with it the moment he comes through the door. I don’t care if it puts me in prison.

  She shakes her head.

  “So what—?”

  “Drop it, okay?” she says and pulls herself up from the bed. “I’m going to get something to eat.”

  And that’s as much as I can get out of her. After a minute, I follow her into the kitchen and make myself a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. I try not to think about the fact that both our cell phones are gone. I try not to think about the fact that there are all kinds of pretty sick pictures on the phone. And most of all I try not to think about the fact that we are locked in with no way of escape. I try really hard not to think about that.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Barker, April 16

  “How bad is it?”

  I’m at work and have finally caught enough of a break that I can go chat with Dr. Larson, or Elizabeth, as she’s asked me to call her. I knock on her door and she invites me in. She has one of the nicer offices in our suite. In one corner, there’s a rack of dress-up clothes; archetypal princesses and monsters used by children who can’t verbalize their feelings but can act them out. In another corner is a sand-tray, and behind it a shelf with glove puppets and stuffed animals. Elizabeth is sitting at her desk, typing into her computer.

  “Come in, come in.” She smiles warmly and waves me to a seat opposite her as she continues to tap rapidly at her keyboard. “In the old days, I’d have had such a high pile of files sitting on this desk everyone would know how behind I am on the documentation and leave me alone. But with electronic medical records, my desk is so clean for all anyone knows I’m totally on top of things and just sitting here playing solitaire!”

  “I’m sorry. I can come back—”

  “No, no, I didn’t mean to imply that. I always have time for you.” She looks up and locks her eyes on mine, and I feel a little flutter in my stomach. Is she flirting with me? “I just find it fascinating, how easy it used to be to diagnose people just based on the state of their desk—messy piles of external chaos everywhere versus obsessive-compulsive neatness—and now we can’t do that.” She pushes her chair away from the desk.

  “Talking of diagnosis, how bad is it, with Wynn?”

  “I didn’t want to put anything on the computer, so hold on while I retrieve my notes.” She fishes into a tan leather briefcase at her side. “Even without notes I can tell you she definitely comes across as confused. I think your suspicions of dementia are probably pretty accurate.” I had told Elizabeth some of what I’d noticed with Wynn over the last few months.

  “So that’s what you think she has?”

  “It certainly seems that way.” I nod my head. I’m not surprised that she’s corroborating my layperson’s diagnosis.

  “Can you tell me specifically what you saw that leads you to that conclusion?” I ask her, ready to take my own notes.

  “A number of things. I presume you told her exactly who she was coming to see and why?”

  “Absolutely. I mentioned that you recently started at our agency because you wanted some experience with children, but that before that you worked extensively with older adults and that you’re considered one of the best neuro-psychiatrists in the county. We’d talked about her seeing a psychiatrist or a neurologist and although she was hesitant, in the end she agreed that it would be a good thing. But as I told you before you agreed to meet with her, getting an appointment through the regular channels was going to take months. I called a bunch of people on the insurance list for her, and the soonest appointment was four months away. So when you said we could come to your private practice office, I was thrilled. And she certainly wasn’t against coming, though she did mumble something about everything always being about my workplace.”

  “I wondered, because it was almost like she thought you were paying a social visit. I saw an odd mix of deteriorating cognitive skills along with a real sharpness and a sense that she’s still pretty on top of certain things. Which isn’t unusual at all for people with dementia. Especially in the early stages, often it’s only apparent in one sphere of life, and they’re still extremely functional in other areas.” This fits my own research. I’ve been reading a lot about dementia, and there have been a spate of documentaries that all show how someone can be very functional in some areas and completely out of it in others. Wynn fits right in.

  “As you probably realized, I was attempting to do a mental status examination with the question
s I asked. She completely failed the memory part—people usually make a real effort to try to remember the three words. When they can’t they’ll often make an excuse like saying that they weren’t important enough to remember, which is what Wynn did. It’s the same thing with orientation to time. Often when I ask people what day or month it is, they tell me that those kinds of things aren’t important to them anymore so they don’t hold on to them. That’s the tricky thing with dementia; people can still come across as highly functional, and it’s only their immediate family who notice the little things that don’t sit right.”

  A lot of what she’s saying isn’t new. I did notice how Wynn made the comment about not wanting to hold onto the words because they weren’t important enough, and I thought, if it were me, I’d want to prove to the doctor that I could do it, I’d want to impress her so that she could reassure me that I was fine.

  “I also observed that she used humor to cover up what she didn’t know, which is also common among my clients. When I asked her what was similar about an arm and a leg, she made a joke. I can’t tell you how many times people have made jokes like that when they can’t come up with the correct answer. But let me ask you something. I’m talking to you somewhat as professional to professional. But we’re talking about your partner, not a colleague. How are you doing with all this?” She’s sitting at her desk, and I’m sitting in the patient chair and as she leans forward, I feel as if I’m in therapy.

  “It’s not anything I wasn’t prepared for,” I answer.

  “That’s not what I asked. I asked how you’re feeling,” she says, getting up and walking over to my side of her desk. Her empathy is touching and I feel moisture forming in the corner of my eyes. “It’s hard stuff, Barker. Very hard.” She sits next to me and I’m struck by the soft scent of patchouli and the warmth in her milky-grey eyes. A wave of hair falls across her brow and I wish I could lean over and push it back. In some ways she reminds me of Wynn when I first met her: long limbs, tight body, and an undefined feeling of sensuality that exudes from her, even as she’s telling me my partner may have a very serious illness.