Bring the Rain

by JoAnn Franklin

  I waited until the door nicked shut, then folded my arms on the table and laid my head down. My lips still felt his. He was confusing me with his dead wife because—and I had to face this—I might be as sick as she had been.

  Widowers who sought female companionship wanted someone close to their own age and someone they knew. I was that person for Ash, and he wouldn’t turn away from me if I were sick. He wasn’t that kind of man. What I also knew was that some widowers sought women who reminded them of their wives. Those men felt secure and comforted in the role of caregiver.

  He’d made me a promise with that kiss, but I didn’t want that either. I wanted him to love me for who I was, even as sick as I was—if I was sick because, most of the time, I felt as if my mind functioned perfectly. I didn’t want to be his second chance to get it right. I wanted more.

  “We don’t have a simple test for Alzheimer’s, Dart. That’s a problem.”

  Dr. McCloud had me seated on the examining table. He had very kind eyes, and they were as gray as his name. My mother’s eyes had been blue, like the North Carolina sky when the sun was hot and high. For a cool color, Dr. McCloud’s eyes burned hot just like my mom’s had when she was upset or frustrated with something, which in retrospect wasn’t that often, although most of the time when that happened, Dad was involved.

  Why was I wanting both of them with me in this examining room?

  That was so freaking crazy because they’d never coddled me or comforted me. No, their expectations had been that I would face and conquer whatever life threw at me. Which is why when Dr. McCloud put his stethoscope on my back and asked me to breathe deeply, I said, “I have frontotemporal dementia. My behaviors fit the criteria for behavioral variant FTD, the same disease that had killed Jennifer Wright.”

  “We don’t have a simple test for that disease either. Or, for that matter, anything that remotely resembles either one of those diseases.”

  “So, what do you have tests for?”

  “Occupational hazarditis,” the doctor said as he sat down on the rolling stool beside the table.

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about.” I found nothing funny about this situation.

  He smiled and reached for my hand. “Professors who are stuck on themselves are prone to it.”

  “I have all the signs.”

  “Of course, you believe you do because you’ve been on the internet and remembered all the data points that agreed with your belief. They call that confirmation bias.”

  “I know what confirmation bias is. I teach the subject.”

  “Grip my hand.”

  I gripped his hand, and he nodded, then tapped that little hammer he had on my knee joints. My leg went up, then the other one jerked in response to a tap. “You’re a dedicated professional. Normal people don’t spend this much time trying to think. Half this campus displays the same symptoms you have. Professors are all a little demented, you know that, Dart.”

  “Not all of us.” I sighed. “We keep the ones who are borderline on the third floor.”

  “Which is where you have your office.”

  Funny guy.

  “Are you taking showers every day?”

  Hygiene became a problem for people who had this disease. “I was sane when I woke up this morning, and I showered and I ate breakfast. I had an egg, toast, and a banana.” Forgetting to eat, to shower, all those hygiene routine disruptions can be symptomatic of FTD, although the disease presents differently in each individual.

  “Working in academe is hazardous to your mental and emotional health. I told you that the first time we met.” He looked inside one ear and then the other.

  “No, you didn’t. You said I was lucky to get the job.”

  He’d been old even then, and so respected across the campus that all of the professors wanted him as their primary health care physician. I’d been lucky. He’d had a cancelation, and I’d managed somehow to get an appointment. I stuck out my tongue when he asked me to and tried not to blink when he shone a light in my eyes.

  Doc had prescribed a statin for me when my cholesterol skyrocketed in my late forties then took me off the statin when my arms started aching so badly I thought I was having a heart attack. That had been in my late fifties. He was up on everything current and had such a wealth of knowledge and experience that all of NCU’s faculty adored him.

  Maybe he’s right. Maybe you have been taking yourself too seriously.

  “Your motor skills seem fine and your memory is excellent. You have anyone studying FTD?”

  “Lea,” I said, knowing where he was going with that. Her research documented the three types of the disease, the symptoms for each type, and how changes in the brain manifested themselves in behaviors that required twenty-four-hour care.

  “Do you know what I have?” No call to be blunt, but sarcastic wouldn’t cut it either. He was one of those men, the kind that had to make up their own minds. Surely, he’d see the error of his ways. I’d been clear in my narrative as to those odd quirks I’d developed.

  “Repeat after me, please. Apple, Stone. Pasta. Building. Bugs.”

  While he stepped out of intimacy range, leaving behind a feeling of space where he’d once been close, I repeated the words while he opened cabinet door after cabinet door.

  “I can make a pretty good guess,” he said.

  “And that would be?”

  “Let’s make certain first.” He took down a jar of peanut butter from the last cabinet he opened.

  I eyed that and said, “I’m not hungry.”

  He laughed and opened the jar, smelled the contents, and hunted for a knife to dig out a scoop. Then he turned back to me, peanut butter laden knife in hand. It went rather well with the white coat.

  “I want you to close your left nostril.”

  I did.

  He held the knife under my right nostril. Was that a surgical knife? “Can you smell that?” he asked.

  I nodded.

  “Then hold your right nostril shut.” He held the peanut butter a little further away this time. “Can you smell it now?”

  “The smell is stronger this time.”

  He lowered the knife a bit.

  “Still smell it?” He held up the peanut-butter-laden knife.

  “Yes.”

  He withdrew and, at the sink, cleaned the knife, then capped the peanut butter jar, putting it back in the cabinet.

  “What were those words I had you repeat to me?”

  My mind went blank and terror surfaced because I hadn’t committed them to short term memory, then I recalled the mental trick I’d used to remember them the first time, ASP Brown Bear, and ticked them off for him.

  “What did that tell you?”

  He looked confused.

  “The peanut butter.” I indicated the cupboard he’d closed.

  “Alzheimer’s strikes the left occipital lobe and that’s where your sense of smell is located. Patients who have Alzheimer’s wouldn’t have been able to smell the peanut butter. Your olfactory sense is quite sensitive.”

  I almost wilted with relief. Everything grew lighter.

  “And the bad news?”

  “The test doesn’t work to diagnose other forms of dementia.”

  I may not have Alzheimer’s, but I could have FTD, Lewy body, other types. FTD fit my pattern of early symptoms because patients demonstrate unusual and antisocial behaviors. That’s because the frontal and temporal lobes are associated with personality, behavior, and language and when they shrink . . .

  He patted my hand. “But I think you’re just overworked and stressed. Stress does very odd things to humans. I’ll tell Ash to back off.”

  That scared me. I didn’t want him doing that. “You can’t share my information with him.”

  “You’re right, but I can share without naming names that I’ve had three professors from his college in my office this week and every one of you is overworked and exhausted.”

  Relief felt so good. Maybe I’d been w
orrying for nothing. “Don’t forget underpaid.”

  He laughed. “Of course not. Go home, Dart, put your feet up, read a good novel, and forget about your troubles this week. Go sailing with Ash.”

  “He sails?” I hadn’t known that.

  “Has since he was a kid. We grew up on the same street here in Wilmington. Of course, I’m fifteen years older, but our parents knew each other.”

  That night on the way home, I stopped by the grocery store. There, I bought a jar of peanut butter and, on impulse, picked up a romance novel set in Elizabethan times about a mad duke inventor who kidnaps a governess. Maybe Dr. McCloud was right. Maybe I should relax more. When I got home, I ignored the computer, fixed myself a peanut butter sandwich, and read my novel.

  “I worried about you, Dart. The whole trip, I worried about you.”

  Every syllable etched in exhaustion, Ash’s voice had me sitting up in bed, the cell phone cool against my ear. Pushing my hair out of my eyes, swinging my feet over the side of the bed, and searching for my slippers, I realized I didn’t know what to do next. What time was it? My clock radio said it was midnight.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “I can’t sleep.”

  “Ash.” I sighed and reached for my robe. This wasn’t the first time he’d woken me from a sound sleep. Some tension that I couldn’t understand came across in his quickened breathing, the huskiness of his voice. Something was different about tonight’s inability to sleep. Exhaustion perhaps. He’d just gotten back from his trip to China.

  Maybe this was just jet lag. I hoped so, because if it wasn’t, that meant the old nightmares were back and I’d thought him long healed from those wounds. But then, when a wife of thirty-eight years dies, for men like Ash—committed, conscientious, loving— learning to live without her might take longer. If that were the case, nothing could be more than it was between Asher and me.

  “Jennifer died two years ago. You don’t need to take care of her anymore. She’s not there.”

  “I know she’s gone, but you need me and I can’t fall asleep because I don’t know how you are.”

  This sounded neither like jet lag nor loss of sleep. This sounded like hallucinations, and he had never had those, or confusion. Perhaps he was confusing me with Jennifer, although that wasn’t like Ash. He’d never confused me with Jennifer even when I woke him from his office couch at three in the morning

  “When did you sleep last?”

  “Doesn’t matter. I can’t sleep . . . I remember all the times she needed me and I wasn’t there.”

  Of course, I didn’t agree. He’d always been there for Jennifer. “When did you last sleep, Asher?”

  “Three, maybe four nights ago. In China.” Silence. “Nothing works, Dart, not alcohol, drugs, music, nothing works to help me sleep.”

  I heard the clink of ice cubes. He’d be slouched in the armchair next to the fireplace, his face unshaven, his eyes heavy, his skin pasty, his shirt rumpled, and the glass of whatever drink he’d tried caught negligently in one elegant hand.

  And that’s how I found him when I let myself into his house in Spring Haven an hour later. The female faculty always commented on how good-looking he was, with those broad shoulders, abundant iron-gray hair, piercing blue eyes, those even chiseled features.

  I could look at him all night, but I told myself no, that he didn’t want that kind of relationship with me, despite that kiss in my office. Nothing had worked, not talking, not silence, not calling him back; nothing had worked because Ash didn’t want it to work. He wanted me there, so I’d thrown a coat over my tattered old sleep shirt, slipped on some shoes, and grabbed my purse on the way out to the Volvo. Traffic had been light and I’d made good time at midnight on a Monday evening. My imagination had invented all sorts of scenarios for how I would find him.

  “You’re here.” His voice was slurred, and I removed the empty glass dangling from his fingertips and put it on the coffee table before he forgot and dropped it.

  “You had another drink while you were waiting for me.”

  “Several drinks. Didn’t work. Nothing works.” He shoved his hand through his hair, combing the silky unruly thickness back from his forehead, but the slight curls wouldn’t stay in place. They tumbled back when he leaned toward me so that I could see. “You won’t go away.”

  “Come on,” I said as I bent down to help him up. “Let’s put you to bed.”

  We’d been in this situation before, not often, but enough that I knew the routine. He’d let me take him into the bedroom, I’d pull back the sheets, he’d fall on the bed, I’d take off his shoes and pull the sheets and blankets over him. Then I’d sit for a while beside the bed and read aloud until he fell asleep. That had always worked, and I had no reason to doubt that things had changed.

  “No use,” he said, but he got to his feet and, one arm around my shoulder and my arm around his waist, we walked into the hallway. When I got to the master bedroom door, I stabilized him with my hip, the hot, heavy imprint of him against my side, and shoved it open. I swept back the covers of the queen-sized bed and eased him down. He lay back with a sigh, as I unbuckled his belt, slipped off his shoes, and lifted his legs under the covers.

  When I straightened, though, and went to step back, he grasped my hand. Blue eyes snared any movement. “Don’t go. Please don’t go.”

  I sat down on the edge of the bed. “I’ll stay right here until you go to sleep.” That’s what I’d done the first time I’d put him to bed. Awkward then, but I’d done it several times since and knew what to expect.

  “No.” His head was restless against the pillow.

  “You need sleep, Asher. You’ve driven yourself crazy, that’s what you’ve done, thinking about all you didn’t do when you did more than any one man should have done.”

  “I need more tonight.”

  “You’re in no condition to do more, Asher.”

  He’d been concerned as a friend, and he wasn’t ready for any type of relationship. He was still in love with Jennifer.

  “Lie next to me and hold my hand. That’s what she did. She held my hand or I held hers, but we both slept when I did that.” Blue eyes stared into mine as he held on to me and wouldn’t let go. “Please, Dart. You’ve come all this way, please come a little farther.”

  My gaze went to the bare expanse of the sheet next to him—where Jennifer used to sleep. He wanted me to lie next to his warmth; did he expect me to share pillow talk, to be intimate with him?

  As if he’d read my thoughts, he said, “Just lie next to me and hold my hand. That’s all. Just hold my hand, and maybe I’ll sleep.”

  I’d hold his hand and he’d pretend I was Jennifer. And what did I pretend? But Ash looked so exhausted, his head on the pillow, his haunted eyes leaving my gaze to search the corners of the room, as if he expected Jennifer to be there, hiding or unconscious, drowning in her mind’s rebellion.

  “Close your eyes, Ash.”

  He refused, his eyes heavy with drink, pain, and anguish, so tired that he couldn’t sleep.

  “Close your eyes, Ash. You need to sleep. It will be better in the morning, I promise.”

  When I let go of his hand, his eyes snapped open and he grabbed for my hand, again anchoring me in place. “Don’t leave me.”

  “If you don’t let go, I can’t get into bed with you.”

  “I’ll move over.”

  And I panicked. If he moved, the bed would be warm from his body heat, and that intimacy would leave me aching for more than I could ever have.

  “No, no,” I said, and my hand reached out to stay his shoulder, the warmth of that sending heat down my arm into my heart. “Don’t move. I’ll lie down. I promise.”

  He watched me; every movement I made, his eyes followed, his head turning on the pillow toward me as I swept back the covers, the crisp sheets heavy in my hand. The expanse of sheet lay exposed—long, wide, and smooth. I couldn’t do this. But Asher watched and his gaze wouldn’t let me go.

>   My fingers trembled as I untied my coat and let it slip from my shoulders to the floor. Before I lost my nerve, I slipped into the bed, hoping his night vision hadn’t noticed that I wore an old, tattered sleep shirt, soft, worn, and faded from red to pink from so many washings.

  It had been a long time since I’d lain beside a man, and this wasn’t just any man, this was Ash. I hadn’t come for seduction, not that it would have worked if I had. If I could bring him comfort for a bit and find it myself, what did it hurt as long as I remembered that he would never love me as he did her. My hand slid across the cold sheet into the dark vastness between us. His hand grasping mine, I lay still beside him, unable to look at him, my eyes on the ceiling.

  “Close your eyes, Ash, and sleep. I won’t leave. I promise.”

  He sighed and relaxed, then shifted in my direction, just enough that I could feel the faint heat of his body. His breathing evened out, the tenseness in his grip relaxed, and Ash slipped into sleep, my hand in his. But not deeply asleep, not yet at least, for when I went to pull my hand from his, his grip tightened and his murmur of “no” faded into quiet when I froze, held in place by his need.

  Eventually his breathing evened out and, when it did, I found myself relaxing to the cadence of his sleep. That’s when I too closed my eyes and pretended I was there beside him because he loved me.

  Those dangerous dreams must have followed me into sleep, for I awoke to find his hand, still clasped in mine, under my cheek. I savored his touch, my eyes still closed, thinking I was dreaming, for I dreamt of him often. When I realized someone lay beside me, I stiffened with awareness.

  “Don’t,” Ash said when I went to pull my hand out of his grip.

  My fingers were numb. Given the lightness of the night, dawn wasn’t far away. We’d slept for three or four hours, not enough for Ash. I hadn’t meant to fall asleep, but our pillows were close, our lips even closer. I rolled away from him to lie stiff and straight on my side of the bed, my eyes closed, hoping that he would fall back asleep and let me go.