The Wide Circumference of Love

by Marita Golden

  “I’m an architect.”

  “Damn, I’m impressed.” Gerald’s eyes had widened and then narrowed. Lauren felt herself momentarily shrink and then she sat up in her seat, blossoming in the studied aim of his gaze.

  “You’re blushing. I can see you better now. I can see all of you.”

  “Really?”

  “Really.”

  The statement, Lauren thought, was preposterous. If he meant, which she hoped he did, that he could see inside her, her longing for peace of mind, healing for her father, for love, for a connection with a man who could calm her perennial ache, then she hoped the preposterous words were true, even as she trembled at the thought. She hadn’t wanted to talk about her father and how he founded Caldwell & Tate, but there seemed no way not to. And then she found herself telling him about her design work for a new children’s museum at National Harbor, a contract the firm had finalized earlier in the week.

  “I’ll never look at D.C. the same way again, knowing you and your dad got your hands all over it.”

  “What keeps you busy?”

  “I’m with an IT firm in Northern Virginia. We do a lot of cyber security work.”

  “If you told me the name of your clients would you have to kill me?”

  He’d blessed her with a reprise of that laugh, a storm of happiness. “Believe me, we’re not that deep, but we do okay. You come here often?”

  “My first time. My friends brought me. Actually I hate places like this. I was afraid I’d feel invisible.”

  “I hope you feel seen. I hope you feel discovered.” Gerald’s fingers brushed her hand. “Why’d you come with your friends if you hate places like this?”

  “We’ve been friends since high school. I’d run out of excuses, and they asked how I could hate someplace I’d never been. So I took a deep breath and got dressed. And they’re always saying I work too much.”

  “Do you?”

  “I have to. My father’s been ill.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that.”

  At that moment the waitress placed their drinks before them.

  Gerald had raised his glass and said, “Let’s toast to the fact that life still goes on.”

  “Are you sure?” she asked.

  “You wouldn’t be here if it didn’t.”

  Maybe her father no longer had a life. Not the kind of life he would have thought was his due after the years of work, dreams, and family. But Gerald had told her over and over these past three months, when they made love—her appetite for him, an astonishment—when he visited her at her office, that life went on, brutally, sullen with darkness and lit with grace. Life went on.

  Just then she saw the call from her mother come in and answered it saying, “Mom, I’m on my way.”

  Chapter Three

  “Do you think this will be enough clothing?” Lauren asked skeptically. Lauren wore tight-fitting jeans, a Cornell University football jersey, her copper-colored locks shaped into a bun—an outfit Diane thought more suitable for moving someone into the dormitory of a college campus rather than into an assisted living facility.

  Toiletries, a week’s worth of underwear, socks, slacks, and shirts on wooden hangers lay on the sofa. There was Gregory’s worn chessboard and the sturdy chessmen (he would never play the game again, Diane knew, but it had once meant so much to him), a photo of the family gathered for Gregory’s surprise sixtieth birthday party, and a stack of blank writing pads. Armed with the blank sheets of paper, he could spend hours drawing, though the wobbly, childlike sketches he produced now looked nothing like the designs that had been a signature of his professional life.

  “You were there when they told us not to bring much. The fewer choices he has to make about what to wear when he looks in that cubbyhole of a closet, the easier it will be for him.”

  “I want him to take this, too,” Lauren said, as she walked to the mantel above the fireplace and lifted a picture of Gregory building sand castles with her on the beach on the Outer Banks in North Carolina. In the photo she was five years old, digging a moat around a sand castle in the shadow of Gregory’s love-filled gaze.

  Hugging the framed photo to her chest, Lauren said, “We still don’t have to do this, Mom. I can move in here, work from home. Mercer and I have discussed me having a more flexible schedule.” The words were a deflated life raft that inspired an annoyed shake of Diane’s head.

  “Lauren, we’ve been through this. You’ve done enough. I can’t ask any more of you. I can’t ask any more of myself.”

  “Daddy deserves better, he deserves more.”

  What more? And where would that more come from, Diane wondered, seething and offended. Would it spring from some secret reserve of resilience she had not tapped already? Turning away from Lauren, she began piling items in cardboard boxes and said, with an iciness designed to quell further discussion, “We all deserve better than this. We all deserve more.”

  “I know it’s been hard on you, Mom, I …”

  They heard Gregory’s footsteps and turned to see him standing at the bottom of the stairs clutching the nicked and scarred leather briefcase Diane had given him as a wedding gift, which he had carried to work every day. Barefoot, his corduroy jacket on inside out, the legs of his pajama bottoms inexplicably rolled up to his knees, Gregory’s face was luminous and expectant. He looked like a boy ready for the first day of school, a boy who was over six feet tall with white hair.

  The incongruity and absurdity of what Diane saw set off a seizure of flashbacks: finding Gregory’s shoes in the refrigerator and a gallon of ice cream stored in the microwave. The sight of Gregory watering a large boulder in the backyard as though it were a flower. Suddenly laughter engulfed Diane, filling her chest, bursting through her throat. She sank to her knees, the raucous mirth astonishing her daughter but giving her a chance to breathe. On my knees. Perhaps that was the best place to be, she thought, vainly attempting to quell the outburst and wondering why she felt it necessary to derail what had suddenly steadied her. On my knees. Maybe I should pray, she thought and then decided that the laughter was more than enough.

  “I’m fine, I’m fine,” she whispered as Lauren helped her up from the floor. Diane walked to her husband, held him in her arms, and kissed him. She then stood back and gazed at his elongated face, the prominent, slightly crooked nose, and that damned beard. A face beautifully battered. A face bland and blank.

  The tan corduroy jacket and striped pajama bottoms had been removed, and Gregory sat naked on the bed. The white tufts of hair on his still broad chest bloomed thick and unruly. At sixty-eight, Gregory’s arms and shoulders had maintained a sinewy musculature. His member lay tucked between thighs beginning the descent into a benign flabbiness. And his legs and feet, which Diane had always found beautifully tapered, had grown somehow smaller. Those strong legs, those thighs had carried him so far.

  Once they had walked early mornings and early evenings down Montague and the lovely surrounding streets. They’d walked for exercise—Gregory striding slightly ahead of her—for solace and relaxation, on springtime evenings, holding hands as Diane shared the details of a particularly thorny case or Gregory fumed about the impact of micromanaging neighborhood councils or bungling city agencies on Caldwell & Tate’s projects. The streets of their neighborhood had called to them. How many hundreds of miles had they walked together over the years? Now, for Diane, the thought of walking with Gregory conjured the fear of him being swallowed up, evaporating into thin air if she turned away from him for even a second.

  Kneeling before Gregory, Diane opened the legs of his boxer shorts. Gregory stepped into them, holding on to her shoulder. Thank God he doesn’t need diapers yet, she had thought more than once, envisioning herself wiping Gregory’s butt. And each time she allowed herself the thought, both brutally honest and shameful, she beat it into submission with the knowledge that she would wipe her husband’s ass if she had to. Standing up, facing Gregory, Diane lifted his arms and helped him into a white T-shi
rt.

  “Gregory, today we’re going to a place where they’ll help you feel better,” she told him as though he could understand her lie. Running his hands over his chest, Gregory suddenly pushed past her and headed resolutely and for no apparent reason toward the bedroom door. She pulled him back into the room with the combination of force and gentleness she had now mastered. This was the tightrope she walked: communicating in a way that did not condescend, show anger, or impatience. Remaining poised because she had to be prepared for absolutely anything to happen—to be pushed aside, hit, squinted at, or walked away from, because those actions now substituted for a verbal response.

  She handed Gregory a black shirt and watched him investigate the collar and the buttons for several moments before correctly slipping it on. As she watched him meticulously button the shirt and saw him gazing at his hands performing this act, she silently prayed that this ruse would work. What else could she say? What lie or half-truth would suffice to voluntarily get Gregory to leave this house for good?

  Gregory had successfully stepped into his pant legs and now, with her help, was buckling his belt. As she held him around his waist, Gregory grabbed her hands in a suffocating grasp. His gaze was deep and empty and she flashed back to the moment when he had struck her.

  He had burst into her study as she sat reviewing case files. That voice, that anguished, guttural scream, she sometimes still heard its echo:

  “What did you do with my memories? My memories, what did you do? Why did you take them away?”

  Then the blows, the slaps, her horror. Lauren miraculously entering the house in time to pull Gregory off of her. And the crater of distance that had engulfed them in the aftermath, a distance that led her to sleep behind a locked bedroom door. Since that day, every moment in his presence had been a breath-holding negotiation of unfamiliar, eerie emotions that had crept into the seams of their marriage. It did not matter that a sinister apparition now occupied Gregory’s body, a force that tortured and enslaved him. Those blows had been the first ever between them.

  “I’ll be there,” she assured Gregory now, looking away before the words had left her lips and Gregory freed her wrists. She was a lawyer and so had parsed the truth. Never once had she told him she would stay. But this was her husband, not opposing legal counsel. This was her bedroom, not a court of law.

  “You look very handsome,” she beamed, trembling, as her hands brushed Gregory’s cheeks. And he did. Looking at Gregory Tate, no one would suspect for even a moment what was happening to him.

  Diane sat in the driver’s seat of her car watching Lauren walk with Gregory to the entrance to Somersby, their figures receding across the small parking lot. Lynette, a certified nursing assistant, waited for them in the lobby of the assisted living and memory care facility. While Lynette cared for Gregory, Diane and Lauren would unload the boxes and clothing. Diane placed her head on the steering wheel, eyes closed, and surrendered to this self-imposed moment of solitude. She breathed in and out, slowly, counting each breath, a trick she had learned to calm herself. Sometimes it worked.

  But not a single breath quelled her fury at Sean. Sean, who had called last night and told her that today would be more than he could handle. More than he could bear. He couldn’t and wouldn’t go with them to take Gregory to Somersby. He simply couldn’t do it. Tearfully, he had admitted and confessed everything. He was selfish. He was a coward. He was as terrified as she was, as was Lauren. But he wasn’t there yet. Not where they were, able to face this day. But now sitting in her car, encased in a shell of anguish, breathing in, breathing out, there was nothing left of Diane’s shattered heart to break.

  Four years from the first signs, to the diagnosis, to this place—an odyssey of denial, drugs, “alternative treatments,” dashed hopes, and unanswered prayers. If she could drive away now and not witness what her yearning had wrought, she would.

  A blast of cold air startled her when Lauren opened the passenger-side door and asked, “Mom, are you okay?”

  “I’m fine,” she lied.

  Somersby masqueraded as an upscale hotel with its décor: walls in calming, soothing earth tones; wide windows that flooded the floors with sunshine and light. Somersby was nestled in a residential neighborhood near Silver Spring, Maryland, and Diane had been charmed by the name that inspired images of a country estate or manor. The movie theater, private dining room for families and guests, the library and computer lounge, and the cozy living areas with fireplaces all provided comfort and a quality of life designed, it seemed, mostly to assure the families of those who now called the facility home that at Somersby, elderly fathers, mothers, and siblings would not waste away.

  When Lynette, a tan woman of commanding girth and compassionate bearing, opened the door to Gregory’s room, she said brightly, “Here we are,” as though ushering them into a palace rather than a room so small it resembled a cell or a dorm room. Diane had forgotten how small the rooms were, how pitifully tiny the bed seemed, and how inadequate the desk and bureau appeared to store the material objects of a life.

  Lauren sat gently on the uncovered mattress, as though afraid the bed might break, and looked at her mother.

  “It looks small, I know, but he’ll spend a lot of time in the dayroom, the dining room, on trips. We keep them busy.” Lynette’s apologetic smile did little to lift Diane’s sudden gloom.

  Busy, Diane thought. Busy performing tasks that meant little to the residents but provided the framework for a reasonable facsimile of life, rather than a mere existence. She had been told about the memory exercises residents performed designed to stimulate what remained of memory, to beat back the disease even by an inch. But in the end, Alzheimer’s always won.

  Gregory’s life had shrunk to the width and breadth of this room, the length of the hallway outside his door, the space of this three-story building. The anger and sadness Diane felt was as much for herself as for Gregory, because her life had shrunk into the tight parameters of this room as well.

  Gregory peered into the room from the doorway, and Lynette said, “Let me take him down the hall, I’ll introduce him to some other residents while you get the room ready.”

  Lynette gently steered Gregory away from the room and rested her arm on his shoulders, saying, “Mr. Tate, I’m going to do everything I can to make you comfortable here.”

  “So this room will be his life,” Lauren said, the moment her father and Lynette were out of earshot.

  “You heard what she said; he won’t be in this room much. They make every effort to keep them out of the room, active and socializing with others.”

  “You sound like a brochure. Mom, this is a prison.”

  “What do you think our home was for me? For him? I can’t do it anymore. I can’t do and be everything he needs. I no longer even know what he needs.”

  “I was ready for this when I woke up this morning,” Lauren said. “Sure, I could do this. Now it feels even worse than I imagined.”

  She marched into the hallway and began bringing boxes into the room. They took refuge from each other in silently unpacking clothing and filling the closet and drawers. The chess set and the photo of Lauren and Gregory on the beach sat atop the chest of drawers.

  “Now it looks like a cell masquerading as a bedroom,” Lauren concluded once they were finished, looking around in dismay.

  Lynette and Gregory walked back into the room. “I was showing Mr. Tate the library. I think he’ll like it there.” Diane heard the soothing neutrality in Lynette’s voice, designed, she was sure, to mask what was taking place.

  Lynette’s cheery aplomb set Diane’s stomach roiling. She feared she would throw up, and took a deep breath, willing her body to halt its incendiary rebellion at the thought of what in this dreaded moment they were actually doing.

  “Where is everyone? I haven’t seen any other residents,” Diane asked.

  “They’re in the dining room. Let’s head there.”

  The memory care unit was both hermeticall
y sealed and spacious. Residents’ rooms lined a carpeted hallway that opened up at intervals to reveal dens, meeting rooms, an area with an open kitchen space, and several islands where residents often practiced setting a table as a test of memory.

  This is where we will break bread, Diane thought, holding Gregory’s arm as they entered the dining room. Here he would stay, among absolute strangers. People stranger than even she and Lauren and Sean were to him now.

  A faux fireplace sat against a wall, plants hung from the ceiling, and a wide swath of floor-to-ceiling glass doors framed the facility’s dormant garden. Autumnal beauty—mellow, radiant, and still—was rooted on the other side of the glass. She surveyed the faces, clothing, and demeanor of those sitting at the tables. Only a few people looked up as they entered; most seemed enmeshed in their own worlds.

  Gregory gazed curiously around him and, at Diane’s urging, slid into a chair beside her. Looking around the room at the wheelchairs, walkers, and faces that revealed everything and nothing, Diane told Lauren, “This is his new family.”

  “How will we fit in?” Lauren asked. Diane did not even attempt to answer the question.

  “Hi. Welcome to Somersby. I’m Miss Shirley.” The woman seemed to appear from nowhere, suddenly standing beside the table at Lauren’s shoulder in a bright orange dress, cream-colored apron, and hairnet. Miss Shirley’s voice was craggy with a smoker’s velvet trill and she squinted through thick-framed glasses, smiling at them.

  She handed them each a menu and explained that the residents were always given a menu from which they ordered their meals. Diane showed Gregory the menu and pointed to her choice for them both.

  At a nearby table, four women sat chatting coherently and she could hear snatches of their conversation. Leah Temple, the director of Somersby, had told her that some residents had been placed here not because of severe mental decline but because they had wandered away from home, nearly been lost, and family wanted them in a facility that could ensure their safety.