Grandma lived almost an hour away, but the assisted living facility my mom was interested in was on the edge of our town, which would make it easier for us to visit Grandma.
“I have some news, actually, Maggie, about Grandma,” Mom said, and I could tell by her voice what was coming next. “Remember when we talked about Alzheimer’s the other day?”
I drew in a quick breath. Obviously, I remembered. How could I forget? Mom didn’t wait for me to answer.
“Well, the disease has different stages. Early on, a person might just seem forgetful, like they can’t always remember where they are or can’t remember people’s names.”
Margie, I thought. I’d heard Grandma right after all.
“Or they might have trouble planning or organizing things, too.”
“I can help Grandma organize! I’m great at that!” I said.
“Oh, baby, that is so sweet of you.” We were stopped at a red light that was taking what seemed like an hour to turn green. Mom glanced back at me. “But I’m afraid it’s beyond what you, or any of us, can help with.”
I felt my hand tighten around the birthday card and had to force myself to relax. I didn’t want to bend the card. It was the most recent thing I had with Grandma’s handwriting—that big, curvy M for Mittens, for Maggie.
“Can’t they cure it?”
“No, there isn’t a cure for it, not yet. Doctors are working on it.”
“They should work faster,” I said quietly. “And besides, doctors can be wrong. It could just be old people stuff. Like, Dad forgets his keys all the time. He always comes back in the house to get his coat or his keys or briefcase, or whatever.”
“This is different,” Mom said. “And it’s getting worse. The doctor thinks she’s getting into the moderate, middle, stage of the disease, which means she’s going to have trouble with her day-to-day activities. She might get more frustrated, more angry, for no reason—”
“How could she be in the middle stage when I’m just finding out about it? It doesn’t make sense!”
“Maggie, please, I know it’s hard to understand. There’s a lot you haven’t seen. Grandma has been having these kinds of lapses for a while now. It’s just not something we’ve talked about with you.”
I threw my head back against my seat. “You should have,” I said, gritting my teeth. I stared out the window as we passed a big billboard for an insurance company that showed a flooded basement. Call now, before it’s too late! it said. Yeah, right, I thought. My family seemed to have an unwritten rule that they’d only tell me things once they’d become disasters.
“Maggie!” Grandma said and gave me a big hug.
I’d never been so glad to see her, or so glad to hear my name. She was wearing one of my favorite scarves, pink with all different types of birds on it. I tucked the cat card into the book I was bringing along since it didn’t appear I would need it.
After she got situated in the passenger seat, Grandma pulled out a peanut butter sandwich from her purse. “In case I get hungry,” she said, with a wink at me. Then she showed us her travel umbrella. “Weatherman said there’s a forty percent chance of rain later this afternoon,” she said, waving it, then shoving it back into her large, black purse.
From the backseat, I heard her mutter, “And that idiot doctor says I’m forgetful.” My mom cleared her throat but didn’t respond. Then a song came on with a guy kind of yelling Ahhhhaaahhhhhhaaaa. Grandma reached out and turned the knob until it clicked off.
I heard Mom mutter, “Here we go.”
“What did you say, Susan?”
“Nothing, Mom, never mind. Why don’t you rest your eyes until we get there?”
“I don’t need to rest my eyes. I just got up,” Grandma said irritably, but she did settle back into her seat and stared out the window. After a few minutes, she pulled out her sandwich and ate it.
I tried to stay focused on my book, which was called Color Me Happy. It’s about using color to create mood. Like, for example, a red dining room stimulates people’s appetites. I’d already read the book several times, but it had great before-and-after pictures, which I loved staring at. I especially loved one of a boring, neutral den that was redone in blues and greens, the same colors Mrs. Abbott had chosen for the outer office redo. Plus, there were yellow accents, just like Olive and I had gotten at the Shoppe.
I was so caught up in the book that I didn’t realize we were at the assisted living facility until Grandma made a hmmf sound in her throat, and I looked up to see we were turning into a winding driveway next to a pond with some very angry-looking swans. I wondered how they got them to stay there, or if the swans were just temporarily passing through on their way to somewhere else. Maybe the assisted living people had done something to their wings so they couldn’t fly, and that was why they were so mad. Or maybe they were just lost.
We parked and walked up to the door of a newish brick building, Grandma hanging deliberately behind. Her mind might be slow sometimes, but her body usually wasn’t. I hung back with her while Mom pressed a buzzer and spoke into a little box when a voice asked for her name. Then there was a loud buzz and a click, and we entered.
I was immediately struck by a strong smell, like the stuff Mom put on me when I got a cut or scrape before she covered it with a Band-Aid. The woman who met us in the lobby had curly blond hair and a red blazer and introduced herself as Jasmine, which prompted Grandma to let out another hmmf. I saw my mom try to take Grandma’s hand, but Grandma swatted it away and reached down to take mine instead. She squeezed it, and I squeezed back.
Jasmine talked fast to my mom, but slowed down when addressing Grandma, who she called Mrs. Hanson. She spoke more loudly to Grandma, too, even though Grandma had no problem hearing, as long as her hearing aids were in.
“And here is the aviary, Mrs. Hanson,” she said as she walked up to a huge glass case with a half-dozen birds flitting around some little trees.
They were very different from the types of birds I watched on the feeder outside our dining room window. These were brightly colored parakeets, in gorgeous green and blue. There were those colors again, in nature this time. Nature always knew what she was doing.
I put my face very close to the glass, catching the notice of a mostly green bird who cocked his head toward me, fixing me with a stare from one black eye that looked like a tiny marble. I wondered what he felt like, being trapped.
Mom asked Jasmine a bunch of questions about exercise programs, and what kind of food they served, and rules about visitors. For a moment, I thought about Tony, and what rules there might be for him visiting his mom. Was it even allowed? He hadn’t seen her yet, as far as I knew, and she kept not calling him when she was supposed to.
“You and your daughter are welcome to stop in at any time during visiting hours,” Jasmine said to Mom, pointing at me. “We highly encourage as much family interaction as possible. The fact that you live nearby will make things so much easier for you.”
“Yes, that’s exactly what we were thinking,” Mom said, nodding. I wasn’t sure who “we” was, me or Dad? From the look on Grandma’s face, not much information had been shared with her either.
Jasmine turned down a hallway with a sign that said “Memory Lane,” which opened into a kind of mall. It almost looked like a movie set, with fake storefronts that seemed old-timey, not my mom’s old times, but Grandma’s, maybe. There was a shoe repair shop, and a hat store, and a place selling “Ice Cream Sodas for 25 cents,” but you couldn’t go into any of the shops because they were all fake. That seemed sad to me, and also kind of mean. Being promised an ice cream soda for 25 cents and finding out the door wasn’t really a door but just a painted rectangle with a knob that didn’t turn? Mean.
There were a half-dozen old people sitting in this “Main Street,” some on benches, others in wheelchairs. Jasmine called them “residents.” One of the residents gave me a look that was kind of creepy, and the medicine-y smell was stronger here, which was starting t
o give me a headache.
Grandma looked like she had a headache, too. And why wouldn’t she? This place was nothing like her home. It wasn’t warm and cozy, and didn’t have the right smell or the right things, like that box in her bedroom of Grandpa’s clothes that she wouldn’t donate even though Mom told her to. You’ve got to be in sync with your space, I knew. Everything in my own room, from the way my closet smelled to the way I draped my gray sweater over my chair, was totally me. I thought of Tony again, in our spare bedroom, living out of a duffel bag.
I pulled on Mom’s arm. “Can we go now?” I whispered.
“No, Maggie, we still have a lot to see,” Mom said, shaking off my hand.
“Maybe she’d like to see the birds again,” Jasmine offered. She smiled sweetly at me, but I could see that was fake, too, just like Main Street.
“I’ve heard enough,” Grandma suddenly said, making all three of us jump back. She hadn’t made a peep the whole time. “We need to go, Susan,” she said. “Maggie doesn’t feel well.”
I didn’t know how Grandma knew that, but she was right.
“But I haven’t even shown you the cafeteria,” Jasmine exclaimed. She looked from Grandma to my mom and back again.
“Seen one, you’ve seen ’em all,” Grandma said. We turned and headed back toward the way we came in. Grandma led us.
In the car, Grandma searched her purse for the sandwich she’d already eaten on the way to the assisted living facility. She must have forgotten. Was that a sign of Alzheimer’s or just a normal, forgetful thing?
“I’m starving,” she said, so Mom suggested we go to a drive-thru and grab something, but Grandma didn’t want to.
“I don’t want to eat that terrible food,” she said. “The aide will fix me something at home.”
My mom had hired a home health aide to look in on Grandma each day, to make sure she was taking her medicines and eating right. I guess I should have figured out things were getting worse when that happened, but I just thought it was because we lived too far away to check in on her as much as we should.
I saw the golden arches pass by my window and quietly sighed with disappointment. There went the McDonald’s. The thought of some salty French fries had my mouth watering.
“I wish you had paid more attention on the tour, Mom,” my mom said to Grandma, irritation in her voice. I wondered if Grandma could hear it as clearly as I could. “That facility comes highly recommended.”
“By whom?” Grandma asked. “The zombies they have living there? Who knows how many drugs they’re giving them. Just drug them, and keep them quiet, that’s the ticket.” She shifted in her seat, adjusted her giant purse on her lap. “Zombies,” she growled again.
There might be a bunch of things happening to Grandma’s brain, but it was pretty clear we were still on the same page, at least about the facility. That place felt creepy. I wondered if Mom was overreacting about Grandma’s forgetfulness. She seemed like her normal self to me right now.
I watched the side of Grandma’s face as she blankly stared out the windshield, but after a few minutes she closed her eyes and fell asleep, and my mom turned on the radio, very softly, to a news station that I completely ignored.
We ate lunch at Grandma’s house, just some canned vegetable soup Mom found in the pantry and toast with lots of butter. Then Grandma wanted to take a nap, so she went upstairs to her room. We didn’t leave right away. Instead, we did a load of Grandma’s laundry and checked the fridge for expired food.
I twisted the cap off a gallon of milk and sniffed. “Yuck! This is bad, Mom.” She poured it down the sink, and I left the room while she ran the disposal for a long while to clear out the stench.
I set myself up at the coffee table in the living room, pulling out the box of crayons and the paper Grandma still kept in the drawer. I could hear Mom in the kitchen talking to the health aide on the phone, asking if she could come earlier to “discuss some things.” When I heard Mom start crying, I ran to the doorway, but her back was to me, and she seemed to have choked back the tears. She was talking details now, very businesslike, just like she was on the phone with a client.
I sat back at the table with the crayons. I hardly drew anymore, but as I made a picture of a lake, I found myself really enjoying the way the crayon moved across the paper, the waxy smell. It wasn’t a lake like the one at the assisted living facility with the angry swans. This one was huge and had smiling turtles on logs and lots of little yellow birds flying against a blue sky, where birds were supposed to be flying. Blues and yellows, calming and happy. I hung it on the fridge so Grandma could see it later.
“Sit up here with me,” Mom said when we got back into the car for the trip home.
“I thought that wasn’t safe, sitting in the front,” I said, “until I got a little bigger.”
“I’m living dangerously,” Mom said with a wink.
“Really?”
She nodded, patted the seat. “You’re almost big enough anyway, and I could use the company.”
She pointed to the radio. “You can pick the station.”
Seriously? The front seat and my choice of music? I looked over at her, and she was smiling, but her eyes looked shiny again.
“It’s okay,” I said. “I like your music.” Some of it was actually pretty good.
“Thanks, sweetie.”
From the front seat, I took in that big old road like I never had before. I got comfy while Mom sang along softly to some song about buying a ticket to the world, whatever that means. When the song was over and the DJ came on, I said, “Grandma doesn’t want to leave her home.”
“I know,” Mom said.
“Does she have to?”
“Yes,” she said sadly.
“Oh,” I said. It didn’t seem like something that should be up to us.
We drove along in silence for a few minutes. Everything was different up here in the front, bigger. But Grandma’s world was getting smaller. I couldn’t really imagine leaving my house. It was the only one I’d ever lived in. I’d had friends over the years who had moved to other towns or to bigger houses in our town. I couldn’t imagine being someplace else.
Then I thought about Tony, wondered what his old place was like. Were the walls white or different colors? What kinds of pictures did they have hanging up? Dad had mentioned that Tony and his mom lived in an apartment, so although our house wasn’t anything fancy, I figured it was probably better than what he’d had before, though “better” was kind of a hard word to define.
He certainly hadn’t brought much of his stuff along, but maybe he didn’t have much stuff to begin with. All I ever saw was his duffel bag full of clothes and his backpack. And of course, his basketball.
“What will you do with Grandma’s house? Will you sell it?” I asked Mom.
I could easily imagine Mom sprucing up all the outdated rooms, making it look modern again. Of course Grandma loved to decorate, and she’d redone the house so that it was once very stylish, but she hadn’t changed a thing in more than ten years, and even though that didn’t seem like a super long time, trends changed a lot faster than that.
An idea came into my head so quick, I almost patted my hair to check for the light bulb. I could help fix it up! The house had “good bones,” as Grandma liked to say about things that might be old but were still sturdy and wonderful. There was a little den that could be so cute if we painted the paneling. . . .
But then, I thought sadly, but then, it wouldn’t be Grandma’s anymore, would it? The “after” picture might be pretty, but it wouldn’t be her.
“No, I wouldn’t sell it,” Mom said. “Not right away at least.” “I’d like Grandma to be able to think she could go back to it someday, if the house was still there and still hers. That will keep her spirits up.”
“Will she go back someday?” I asked.
“No,” Mom whispered.
She was quiet the rest of the way home, not even humming along to the radio. There was a woman singi
ng a song about a guy cheating on her. Was it that common? People lying to each other? Until recently, I’d had no idea.
I closed my eyes for a while, thinking about Jasmine at the facility. The birds love it here, she had said when she caught me with my face pressed up against the aviary’s glass. The food looks delicious, Mom had said to Grandma when we’d walked past one of the employees carrying a tray with some kind of meat covered in watery gravy. The assisted living facility is “only temporary.”
Is that what my mom was going to tell Grandma? All lies, I couldn’t help but think.
“Mom?” I said as we passed the Welcome sign to our town. “Is Tony going home?”
“His mom is working hard.” She paused. “I’m sure it’s her greatest wish to have him back, as soon as possible.”
Her greatest wish. “Wishing doesn’t make it so.” That was something Grandma liked to say.
Later that night, I got a bad sore throat, and by Monday morning, I had a little fever, so Mom thought I should stay home.
“Try to get the place nice and clean after the gigantic party you have today,” Dad said, popping his head into my room.
“Ha, ha, Dad,” I said, heavy on the sarcasm, but honestly, I liked when he teased me. He was being his old, jokey-dad self, which helped me forget about everything that had happened. I wished he could stay home and make me chicken soup and read me Harry Potter, but he had to go to work. “American Power,” he said and flexed his bicep, but I could tell he’d rather stay home.
“Are you okay to stay home on your own?” Mom asked. She stood in my doorway biting her lip. “I have to go back out to Grandma’s and help her pack.”
Mom had spent a long time on the phone with Grandma after enlisting the help of the home health aide to talk some sense into her. Since my mom was an only child, the assisted living situation was all hers to deal with—one of the downsides of not having siblings that I’d never really thought about before. When I was in preschool and asked for a baby sister, my mom had gotten me a huge stuffed cat instead. I’d carried it around for a year. I used to rub its head, kind of like I rubbed my shell now.
The Rule of Threes Page 10