The Memory Artists

by Jeffrey Moore

  “Really?” says Norval. “Well, it’s your lucky day. Here you go, enjoy. Steaming fresh.”

  “Ah! Merci, monsieur, merci beaucoup!”

  “Any time. And there’s more where that came from.”

  March 14. Just reread that last entry. I was wondering if it was one of those you-had-to-be-there anecdotes so I told it to Mom this morning. She didn’t crack a smile. So I told it again, with a slightly different angle and emphasis, and she laughed, hard and long. But not as hard and long as I did when it had happened: a sustained belly laugh that left me hurting and gasping, the kind you get, if you’re lucky, when you’re young, and almost never when you’re old.

  March 20. Mom’s been up and down—good days and bad, good seconds and bad. Her mind is like a malfunctioning TV—sometimes the colours are off, the picture blizzardous, the horizontal or vertical slipping. Sometimes, after a good shake, things come in loud and clear—or dead-silent and blank.

  March 21. Spring equinox. Dr. Vorta wasn’t at the lab this morning—he had a press conference about some award—so I asked Dr. Ravenscroft about a hormone therapy regimen, an estrogen plus progestin combination, which seems to be all the rage for post-menopausal women. He said that brain scans hint it improves blood flow to parts of the brain important for learning and memory. And that longitudinal studies suggest women who use hormone replacement have about half the usual risk of Alzheimer’s. Later in the day, when I repeated all this to Dr. Vorta, he replied, “Noel, Charles Ravenscroft is a simpleton. We will never use hormone therapy for any type of memory disorder. Every single claim for its benefits has come down like a house of cards. My own studies suggest it doubles the risk of dementia. The results will be published next month.”

  March 23. Learned today that Mom has been accepting offers from telemarketers and phone salesmen. One of them, “Ray,” sold her something called an X-TERPA, a “miracle machine that measures electromagnetic energy flows and blockages via electrodes in your skin, then alters those flows to cure all ailments, including cancer and brain disorders.” With taxes and handling charges, she paid just under fifteen hundred dollars for it.

  March 25. Mom received yet another delivery today, the third this week, and I was beginning to wonder if she was having an affair with the Fed-Ex man. This box she hid, unopened, until just before going to bed. After I read her a Somerset Maugham story (“Mr. Know-All”), she whispered in my ear that there was a parcel behind the curtains, or in the closet, and that I could open it if I liked. It was not behind the curtains. Or in the closet. I finally found it under her bed, beside an “Australian Hunter’s Lamp.” I opened the new package, clumsily, and under styrofoam pellets and polystyrene bubble wrap I discovered a black pistol, like a science-fiction ray-gun. According to the enclosed pamphlet it was a “Gamma Gun that activates the quarks and superstrings that kill the parasites that cause cancer and other diseases, including Parkingson [sic] and Alzheimer.” According to the enclosed invoice, she got it at a special discount price of 5 easy payments of $99.

  March 26. This morning, after gently knocking on and then opening Mom’s door, I noticed she was looking at images on the Internet. I was pleased—I’d set it up weeks before and it was the first time I’d seen her using it. But after shamelessly creeping up behind her and looking over her shoulder, I discovered that she’s been corresponding with a gentleman named Alex H. from Hartford, Connecticut. Today Alex sent her a full frontal of himself, complete with oiled breasts like a wrestler, nipple rings and shorn pubic hair. Not a happy combination. In return he asked for a j-peg of her in a similar pose, and a Fed-Ex box with her “pantie-hoze” inside. After dinner, while Mom was taking a bath, I changed her e-mail address.

  March 27. Mom has taken to circling dates on her calendar and writing things on her skin. Her left hand is covered with blue reminders: across the palm and up and down all five fingers. And these sad words across her wrist: “I am Stella Burun.”

  March 28. At bedtime Mom and I paged through an album of photographs— including a priceless one of her in hysterics—of a trip we took to Italy in ‘89. One of the great things about travelling in Europe with Mom, among many great things, was that she knew almost everything about each country’s history. All the rulers, battles, scandals, intrigues, etc. I could listen to her for hours. And so could others. At the Palazzo Diamanti in Ferrara, a group of New Zealanders followed us around from room to room, hanging on her every word as she talked about the Borgias for close to an hour.

  Now she walks from room to room carrying a bucket or broom, whose purpose she’s already forgotten.

  March 29. This afternoon, as I was finishing up some work for Dr. Vorta, Mom decided she wanted to go to Mount Royal Cemetery to place gladioli on Dad’s grave. “Won’t be a tick,” she said. When it finally registered what she was doing, I went running outside in my slippers. But the car was already half way down the street. Oh well, I said to myself, it’s only a five-minute drive. She was gone for four and a half hours. The whole time I told myself there was a perfectly rational explanation for her being away so long (a friend of hers lives near the cemetery, for example—maybe the two had just stepped out when I called) but I was tortured with worry—and about to call the police—when I saw her pull up the drive. She couldn’t remember where the cemetery was, she explained, so she turned around and—eventually, after driving onto a ferry which took her to an Indian reservation—found her way home.

  March 30. Today Mom took a computer driving assessment test with Danielle, one of Dr. Vorta’s assistants. She had to respond to various driving tasks and situations by touching the screen or pushing a button. Those who score in the top third, Danielle explained, are considered competent to drive; those in the middle have to take the test again; those in the bottom third should “get the hell off the road.”

  “Madame Burun,” said Danielle when the test was over, “I want to emphasise that this evaluation does not reflect upon your intelligence, only on your ability to continue driving. Do you understand?”

  Mom nodded. She placed in the bottom third.

  March 31. Took Mom’s keys away. Painfully hard, on both of us. But I wouldn’t back down, even when tears as thick as glycerine beaded and fell from her eyes. Because I’m afraid she’ll forget the difference between red and green.

  April 3. Tonight we watched one of Mom’s favourite shows, Jeopardy, which I suspect she always wanted to go on. She was certainly as good as any champion I’d ever seen. But ten years ago, when I encouraged her to audition, she said it was a silly show made ludicrous by having to put your answers in the form of a question. It made no sense, I remember her saying, to ask the question “Who is Abraham Lincoln?” to match the answer “He was assassinated on Good Friday.” Tonight, in any event, halfway through the show, more tears came, a regular occurrence these days. I knew why she was crying but asked her why anyway. “Because,” she answered convulsively, “I don’t … I can’t … not a single …”

  And yet after dinner she was quite cheerful. We played cards, children’s games like Crazy Eights, until well after midnight. We got on a laughing jag at one point and couldn’t stop—we were shaking with laughter, crying with laughter. About nothing really.

  April 4. Mom seems very fond of her new Australian Hunter’s Lamp, which she shines while roaming through the house in the middle of the night. She’s also starting to look in on me, while I’m sleeping, shining the 200-watt beam in my eyes like an interrogation lamp.

  April 5. Bath time still looms up as a major project for me, almost like scaling Everest. If I don’t start the bath and practically rip her clothes off, Mom simply won’t take one. So I phoned Health Care and arranged for a Bath Lady to come in twice a week, on Tuesday and Friday. Maybe she’ll also sort out Mom’s closet and make sure she changes her clothes. And scrub the ink off her hand.

  April 6. Dad’s birthday. Would he be alive today if he had taken one of the tricyclic or SSRI antidepressants like Prozac, which came out aft
er his death? The question’s been haunting me for years. I know from sorting out his free samples that he must have taken phenelzine sulphate and tranylcypromine, which are real horror shows.

  April 8. At bedtime Mom said, “Tell me a story, Noel dear. Tell me about my life.” So I told her about the time she and I went camping in Algonquin Park in ’85, when I was sixteen, and a cinnamon-coloured black bear came to our tent. As I shone a quivering flashlight at the bear, it calmly sifted through two garbage bags, sniffed at our tent as we held our breath, then nonchalantly left. We didn’t sleep for the rest of the night. When the sun came up, Mom discovered that the bear had taken something hanging from a tree branch: her bathing suit. She’d laughed and laughed at the time, perhaps picturing the bear in a bikini … But tonight she merely smiled at the story, which clearly didn’t register, then informed me it wasn’t proper for us to be living together. I told her it was fine, that we were mother and son. “No, my son’s name is Noel.” I told her that I was Noel; she asked for proof. I showed her my birth certificate. She said that proved nothing.

  April 13. My mother’s French seems to have disappeared. She used to be fluent and now she speaks English when people speak French to her (including Dr. Vorta). And she used to watch Ultimatum, the French version of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire, but now she just gets angry. Tonight she told me to “Turn off that gibberish. What country are we living in? Gibberia?”

  Had my recurring dream last night, the one in black-and-white, where I run along the squares of a mammoth crossword puzzle, looking for clues and numbers that aren’t there. So I run blind, and the squares turn into deserted alleyways, and the alleys turn into a labyrinth with towering hedges, except there’s no exit and I know there’s no exit but I keep running anyway, looking for signs, getting more and more lost and tired and terrified … But last night, for the first time, I thought I spotted a light in the distance—the exit?—but when I opened my eyes I saw it was the ray of my mother’s hunter’s lamp.

  April 14. Mom has a rash of some kind on her left inner thigh, which she claims is from the “chemicals” I’ve been spraying her with. She then added that I was treating her like “some sort of weed.” I’ll have to get the Bath Lady (who Mom calls the Wife of Bath because she’s had several husbands) to have a closer look.

  The Bath Lady—the Home Health Nurse I guess I should call her, a Portuguese woman named Sancha Ribeiro—has this breathy amber voice which is kind of nice. She’s also very warm, touching me on the arm with her multi-ringed hand when she talks. She wears next to nothing in the house— summer clothes, beach clothes—I guess because it’s so hot in the house.

  April 16. “Alzheimer’s is the disease that kills two people”—that line is still haunting me. It’s from Iris Murdoch. Tonight Mom and I watched a video about her last days with her husband. I’d planned on watching it alone, and tried to in my bedroom, but Mom came in around midnight with her trusty power-lamp and asked me to rewind it. “When are we leaving?” was Murdoch’s repeatedly asked question. Mom’s is very similar: “What time does the train leave?”

  April 17. Mom wandered all night long. At 3 a.m. I found her at the front door in her nightgown and yoga shoes, with a purse around her neck and plastic bags stuffed with photos and underclothes. “What time does the train leave?” she asked. Not sure what train she’s referring to. After my father died, we used to go back to Long Island every few weeks to visit friends and relatives. But when she was a young woman she also used to take a train from Aberdeen to Edinburgh, almost every weekend, to see her boyfriend (my father). In any case, I managed to get her back to bed without too much fuss.

  April 19. Looked through a stash of old letters of my mom’s, some of which I read to her. Now, after midnight, with Mom sleeping, I’m feeling awful, thinking of all the letters Mom wrote to me after I moved out, travelled, then got my own apartment. I threw them all out, once after laughing with a friend at the banal summaries of her day. But that’s all life is! The everyday details that accrue to form a life. The problems with the vacuum cleaner, a plant that died, a pet that strayed, making gifts for friends … How I wish I had kept those letters, each one brimming with love and thoughtfulness. Or committed them to memory instead of some poem or story or chemical formula! I seldom finished the letters, I shudder to admit, let alone replied to them. And along with every letter she would enclose newspaper articles (“Thought you’d enjoy this,” she’d write on a yellow Post-it, “Thinking of you when I read this …”). How I wish I had those letters and articles now! How I wish I could hold them to my heart, thank her from the bottom of my heart for thinking of me when no one else was.

  April 21. At breakfast, over a pot of her favourite tea (Yorkshire Gold), Mom said she was worried about “the mountain.” Which mountain, Mom? “You know very well which one.” Mount Royal? “Yes, it’s going to erupt, I heard it on the radio.” Your radio is broken, I pointed out. “I’m worried about you, not me—I hope I die in it, fall in the … whatever it’s called.” The crater? “Yes, the crater.” She then said when the time comes, to please end it for her, quickly. “Noel, if you really love me, do it. Push me in. Do you promise?”

  April 24. When I got back from the library, the minute the Bath Lady left, Mom bombarded me with questions: “When are we going back to our other house, and stop renting this one?” You own this one. “How much did we pay for it?” A lot. “How many bedrooms does it have?” Seven. “Where did we get the money for it?” From selling your mom’s house in Aberdeen. “When is that lady going to move out?” Which lady? “How much rent do we pay?” None, you own it. “Where did we get the money for it?” From Dad’s insurance and selling your mom’s house in Aberdeen. “When the lady moves out will she take the clock and the microwave?” Which lady? “Where does that door go to?” To the basement. Any more questions, Mom? “Yes. Where are my car keys?” Any others? “What time does the train leave?”

  May 2. My matinée day with Norval (Tati’s Jour de Fête). Mom freaked when I told her the Bath Lady would be staying with her all afternoon. “I hate that sexpot and I hate this Norval creature!”

  In the audience was someone who works for Dr. Vorta, an eccentric gentleman named Jean-Jacques Yelle (“JJ”). When Norval saw him he ducked down in his chair, but too late—JJ spotted us both and came bounding over to sit beside us. A white candy cigarette was hanging out his mouth and he was wearing pink socks. He’s a really nice guy, smiles a lot, but I sometimes have trouble with his voice, which has the cracking quality of an adolescent. When the film started Norval told him to go back to his seat.

  After the movie I discovered that Norval is an absolutely merciless judge of his mother. Most of the people I know, in fact, complain about their parents— the way I complained about my mom when I was a teenager. But the fact is, without any bias at all, she was is one of the most beautiful women in the world, inside and out. The most selfless person I’ve ever met. Do women like her still exist today or is that a thing of the past?

  May 8. We watched a video this afternoon: House of Mirth. Mom had told me that she wanted a “matinée—like you have with your boyfriend, whatever his name is. Be careful of him, by the way, because he carries a knife.” She’s never met Norval (and never will). She then told me that my cousin Rita got married and that we should have gone to the wedding “at St. Rose’s.” Three times she told me this, and three times I agreed with her, although I don’t have a cousin named Rita. And St. Rose’s is not a church, but a building not far from where we used to live in Long Island, on Route 110 in Farmingdale. It’s derelict now, its windows smashed and roof long gone. It used to be a home for wayward girls.

  May 11. Had another all-nighter. First at 2:15 and then at 4:30 Mom woke me with her trusty lamp. How is it that she loses everything but her bloody Australian Hunter’s Lamp? When I shouted at her, ordered her back to bed, she said, “This is not working out. You’re impossible to live with.” She stormed off and slammed her bedroom door. I tosse
d and turned for half an hour, then went to her bedroom, where I got her another blanket, as she seemed to be shivering. I said I was sorry, but she just stared silently at me, her face empty of expression, looking like a waxwork model of herself.

  May 19. Tonight I made tuna tartare with roast tomatoes, which I didn’t think was all that bad. But at the end of the meal Mom said she couldn’t “understand why this place keeps serving this junk. Hard as a rock. You could’ve soled your boots with it.”

  May 24. Mom didn’t get up until 4:40 in the afternoon. Three times I tried to wake her, but no go. When she finally did get up she claimed it was my fault she slept so late. “I sleep a lot better when you’re not here playing your bloody music,” she said. I replied that I only play classical music (which she used to like) and never when she’s sleeping. She looked at me and said, “I sleep a lot better when you’re not here playing your bloody music.”

  May 29. Mom was in a foul mood today, again. Among other things, she accused me of “ripping off” her stuff, including her shower cap. She then concluded a long and scattered tirade by saying that I should “fire the bloody postman for not bringing the bloody post every day.”