“I’m tired, that’s all.”
“Gregory …”
“We’re past deadline on the school in Landover.”
“Gregory …”
“I forgot my best friend’s name.”
An hour later Diane moved close to Gregory beneath the bedspread and turned the plasma television to a jazz channel. The voice of Abbey Lincoln oozed into the room.
“Gregory, how does it feel?” she asked. “When the memories leave you? When you can’t bring them forth?”
How could he create for her the sensation of the past, of all that he knew, was sure he knew, evaporating like steam, like thoughts turning to ash? When he tried to turn his mind into a hand, a fist that could retain the words and thoughts? Only to find that too often, he was not fast enough.
“I look at my driver’s license twenty, thirty times a day to remember who I am, what my face looks like. I can’t stand to drive anymore. What if I get lost, or go over the speed limit and get stopped, get arrested all because I can’t answer a cop’s questions?”
He can’t tell her that he has imagined a way out if it is what he fears and what he dreads. Would he even be able to do it? He might start the process and in the midst of it have no idea how to finish. He could never say the word to Diane. He couldn’t be that selfish.
Diane turned on her side and moved closer to him, closing her eyes, lying against his chest. Gregory clutched her arm and thought about how he had—yes, he had—touched Juliette, touched her. Even now, in this moment he remembered the feel of her strong hips beneath the silky softness of her dress, and how he had wondered at the color of her slip, her panties. He trembled, fearful and shamed that he had done that. He lay beside his wife remembering that moment, when so many other things he wanted to call forth were now gone. No, he couldn’t tell Diane. What she had seen was more than enough. He couldn’t tell her everything.
He reached for the remote and punched in a channel for classical music.
“Mercer,” Gregory said, whispering his friend’s name over the sound of the Brahms symphony. “Mercer,” he declared, vowing never to forget it again.
He heard Diane’s gentle breathing as she slept beside him. The Brahms symphony couldn’t block the shame that warmed him. Gregory held tightly to Diane, both solid and fleshy beside him. His agitation woke her. She yawned and then her fingers rested on his penis, gently probing, fondling. Her tongue rimmed his earlobe. His hand pushed her gown up.
“I’ll never forget how to do this,” he murmured, words which fell warm and true against Diane’s neck.
“I love you, Gregory.”
“I’ll never forget that either,” he said as his fingers parted her thighs.
“I’m not begging. I’m not pleading. Not anymore. Bruce gave me the name of a neurologist and we have an appointment on Tuesday.”
Diane made the announcement, a stern satisfaction in her voice as she poured Gregory a cup of coffee. He tried to block out the words as he sipped his coffee—black with a touch of sugar—its warmth filling him with a salutatory sense of healing.
Sunday morning and they had finished breakfast. Sections of the Washington Post and the New York Times were scattered between their plates. A member of Congress was being interviewed on Face the Nation, which filled the TV screen in the living room. Outside it was raining.
He didn’t want to resist. He didn’t want to fight. Not anymore. Not about this. This thing had encroached on every part of his life. There was no hiding, no possibility of subterfuge. One morning Diane had come into the bathroom and seen him shaving with his toothbrush. The next day she woke up to find a gallon of ice cream melted in the microwave. He had put it there because he thought it was the freezer.
He knew it made no sense, his fear of a diagnosis. But he also knew it made perfect sense. The news that awaited him, and he knew it was bad, would obliterate his identity and gradually make everything, from drinking this cup of coffee, to loving this headstrong, determined woman, meaningless. And that would be his cross to bear alone.
“What if I refuse?”
“Gregory, you aren’t a child. Stop talking like a three-year-old.” The impatience in her voice stung him, stung him as though he were a three-year-old. All of them now, Mercer, Diane, his children, eyeing him like he was an alien or a broken object they couldn’t decide whether to repair or throw away.
“We know something’s wrong,” she insisted.
“Nobody—nobody—knows how much is wrong as well as I do,” he shouted.
“How can you stand this … not knowing? This isn’t you.”
“How do you know what’s me anymore? This is me now.”
Diane plunged into a bristling quietude, an absence, he thought, of even the sound of her breathing, a pulling back of her presence and energy as she looked out the kitchen window at the rain. Over three decades together and now this, he thought. There was no name for this betrayal. Her face had melted with age into a soft, certain beauty that reflected what she now possessed inside. She refused to dye her hair, and the gray and white strands framed a face of vulnerable, shimmering strength.
“You’re not alone,” Diane said, turning to face Gregory.
“You can’t be there for all of it. Not inside my mind.”
“I won’t let you do this to yourself. To me or our family.”
“So it’s about you?”
“It’s about all of us. Maybe you are afraid to know. But we all deserve to.”
Dr. Lance Ogden had been a neurologist for forty years. In the initial visit, during which Gregory and Diane shared the changes in Gregory over the past year and a half and discussed his general health, he was compassionate and accessible. Today, Diane and Gregory sat facing him across his desk as he casually reviewed Gregory’s test results.
“The MRI didn’t reveal any strokes or tumors. It was perfectly normal. But the PET scan results are a different story.”
PET scan, Gregory thought; the name sounded so innocuous and harmless. The procedure was an imaging test of his brain using a radioactive substance called a tracer to look for signs of disease and injury. It revealed how well or how poorly his brain was working. That’s what Dr. Ogden had told them. He’d taken the test in a room down the hall, sat before a computer and was asked questions. He’d been so nervous he could barely think. He was being analyzed, judged; how could he possibly do anything but fail? If he couldn’t think of an answer or took too long to respond, or couldn’t remember something that had flashed on the screen a few seconds or minutes earlier, all that counted against him. Against him and his brain.
“Mr. Tate, are you listening?” Dr. Ogden asked gently. Gregory stared at the tiny brown spots on the doctor’s balding head, his drooping yet oddly alert eyes, and wondered how he could stand telling people bad news all day long.
“Yes, of course,” Gregory said, squeezing Diane’s hand.
“The results of the PET scan reveal significant decline in your cognitive and logical thinking.”
“Logical? I’m forgetting things, not going crazy.”
“Gregory, please let him finish,” Diane said.
“Mr. Tate, this is an objective measurement of what you have been experiencing. And in your initial visit, when I asked you dates and places and tested you for recall in our conversation, your performance was haphazard.”
“Haphazard?”
“When I look at the MRI results, which revealed nothing abnormal, the PET scan results, which do, and factor in your accounts, this tells me that you likely have early-onset Alzheimer’s disease.”
Gregory felt himself upright, sitting beside his wife holding her hand, and simultaneously choking, drowning. All with his eyes wide open.
“What do you mean likely?” Diane asked.
Dr. Ogden paused and leaned back in his chair. He swiped the top of his bald head as though brushing back strands of hair. “Actually, the only method of definitively diagnosing Alzheimer’s is with an autopsy or biopsy. It’s
a clinical diagnosis. It’s too early to see on an MRI.”
“My father had it,” Gregory said mostly to himself, but loud enough to be heard. “It wasn’t called Alzheimer’s then. I think they called it old age or dementia.”
“Neither dementia or Alzheimer’s are a natural part of aging. As its prevalence has increased, many think of it as result of living longer, but it’s not normal.”
“Early-onset, what does that mean?” Diane asked.
“It’s not strictly a disease of the elderly. I have worked with patients as young as fifty who have it.”
“I’m sixty-five,” Gregory said.
“It’s still early-onset.”
“Well, at least now we know,” Diane whispered. She turned and faced Gregory, enfolding him in an embrace that enclosed them in a world of their own making. They sat breathing in the sanctity and solemnity of the moment.
“Do you two need time alone?” Dr. Ogden asked.
“No, no,” Diane said, releasing Gregory. “We’ve got work to do. Tell us what’s next.”
“I want to put Mr. Tate on Aricept. It’s not a cure, but it will help with the symptoms and slow their progression. You are diabetic, but seem to have that under control. You aren’t overweight and your cholesterol is good.”
“Why, Dr. Ogden, why?” Gregory asked. “Because of my father?”
“Not necessarily. Some people in the field argue that it is heredity; others think members of the same family can develop it for different reasons. Telling you I don’t know why is almost as difficult as telling you that you have Alzheimer’s.”
“How long do I have?”
“You don’t need to try to answer that, Dr. Ogden,” Diane cut in.
“Mr. Tate, I want you to continue all the healthy things you’ve been doing, eating right, exercise. I don’t advise alcohol. It’s also important that you keep up your social networks. Engage in work as much as you can. Spend time with friends. Practice a hobby. We want to preserve every neuron and synapse possible.”
Friends. Gregory thought of how isolated he and Diane had become, how friends and acquaintances had begun to drift away, embarrassed by something he had said or done or just by their being healthy and strong, not knowing what to say.
“How long have I had it?”
“Generally, the disease can take years before symptoms are apparent. It could have begun developing a decade ago. I don’t have a patient for another half hour. If you want to sit here for a while, you can,” Dr. Ogden said, rising from his chair. “Zoe will have the prescription for you at the front desk and will make an appointment for another visit in six months.”
They both watched him leave, Gregory thought, as though he was exiting the scene of a crime he had stumbled upon.
The image of him touching Juliette rose up like the sparks of a flame. If he could do that, if he could think about her what he had thought, what else could he do? Turning to Diane, he whispered, “If I ever hurt you, I want you to do what’s best for you. I don’t want to be a burden.”
“Gregory, I’ll never—”
“Don’t make any promises,” he said, his fingers gently pressed against her lips. “The treachery of this disease will make liars of us both.”
They walked to the parking lot of Washington Hospital Center still holding hands, as they had been holding on to one another since entering the physician’s office.
“We have work to do.”
Sliding her key into the ignition, Diane repeated the words to herself. That was how she had managed to talk back to the diagnosis they had received. But now she did not want to go home. She was parched for the sound of laughter, a sighting, however brief, of joy. Surely they could not lose that. They had to fight for it. They had to find it. Somewhere in the city on this sweltering July afternoon.
“I want an ice cream cone,” she declared, pursing her lips and braving a smile, casting it upon the still waters of her husband’s face. “What about you?”
“Why not?”
They drove to Georgetown, parked in a lot, and entered their favorite upscale ice cream boutique. She could not speak for Gregory, but reading the blackboard, which listed thirty different flavors, Diane savored the return of childlike anticipation that had her mouth watering.
“Let’s try a flavor we’ve never had before,” she told Gregory.
“Yes, your honor.” He winked at Diane, a minuscule action that after what they now knew she accepted as a miracle.
Gregory ordered a double scoop of banana split and Diane, Oreo cookie. Busily, greedily licking their cones, they left the store and walked into the rays of a broad-shouldered sun. They crossed the street and sat in the park facing the waters of the Potomac River. For nearly an hour, they sat watching tourists board the boat that would take them on a ride across the river to the islands on the other side, children squealing in surprise and delight as they were drenched in water beneath the waterfall in the center of the park, and cyclists, lean and strong, whizzing past them.
“You asked Dr. Ogden how long you have. It’s not over yet. I’m not through loving you. That’s how long we have.”
“Let’s go home,” he said. “I want to be alone with my wife.”
At midnight, in the dark, Gregory said, “I want to say it. I want to tell them.”
“Are you sure?”
“It’s important for me to try.” This was the first night she would hear him weep, without restraint. It would not be the last.
Two days later, the family convened in their living room. Margaret, accompanied by Bruce, Lauren, Sean, and Mercer, all entered the house and hugged Gregory. None had asked what the family meeting was about.
“We have something to tell you,” Diane had told each of them during the call.
Margaret settled in their midst, still feared a little by all them. She sat in the high-backed, royal blue taffeta-upholstered chair she had given Gregory and Diane as a housewarming gift when they moved into this house. Over the years, Diane had come to think that Margaret had purchased the chair for herself. She could not recall a time when the family was gathered in this room that Margaret had not sat in the chair, which made whoever sat in it resemble a monarch. Her salmon-colored, cowl neck blouse revealed a swath of Margaret’s wrinkled neckline, and her auburn hair was pulled back in her signature bun, now thinner and marbled with swaths of gray. She gazed at her family with a face that was lightly rouged and largely unlined.
Gregory leaned forward and released his grip on Diane’s hand. He looked at each one of them, lingering on their faces, faces Diane now knew one day he would not recognize.
“Diane and I went to see a neurologist, and I have Alzheimer’s.” Gregory exhaled a hollow, despairing breath, as if exhausted by the declaration, which he had offered as a kind of confession. He looked at his hands and when he lifted his eyes he told them, “One day I won’t know who any of you are. I’m sorry.”
“Are they sure?” Sean asked.
Diane was relieved when Bruce, sitting on a hassock beside Margaret, began to explain all that their internist and Dr. Ogden had told them about Gregory’s illness.
“So he has to die in order for them to know if it was really Alzheimer’s?” Sean shouted, storming into the kitchen where they heard the refrigerator door open, cabinet doors slamming. “Bullshit, bullshit!” The hoarse screams came from the kitchen, along with the sound of Sean’s shoes scraping the floor.
Mercer shifted uncomfortably from his perch near the mantel. “You can come to the office as long as you want, Gregory.”
“For what?” Gregory asked, looking up at his friend in surprise.
“I want to apologize,” Diane said. “We suspected … we know you all have known there was something terribly wrong. We couldn’t figure out how to face it.”
“I hoped that if this showed up again in our family it would take me, not any of my sons,” Margaret offered wistfully. “What can I do, Diane, how can we help? Was there something that we could have do
ne earlier? My goodness, one day he called me and asked to speak to Ramsey. I didn’t know what to say, but when I heard that tremor in his voice—the one I heard sometimes when Ramsey asked for the impossible or inquired about things he should have known—I told him that his father had gone out of town for a few days. What was I to do? Bruce, you told me he came to you and asked for help. Why didn’t you do more? Wasn’t there something you could’ve done for your brother?”
“They went to see the specialist I referred them to,” Bruce said defensively.
“Listen to all of you, talking about him as if he isn’t even here,” Lauren shouted. “Mom said there’s medications Dad can take. He’s agreed to participate in a study that Hopkins is conducting. Isn’t that right, Dad?”
“When did I say that? Study my brain? Why, there’s nothing wrong with me.” Gregory stood up and threw his arms open in supplication and reassurance. “It’s the drug companies. They want to get us all doped up, that’s all. Sure, I forget sometimes. But I’m not sick. Ask me anything,” he shouted, bounding over to Margaret, his face bright with a terrifying lucidness. “I know you, you’re my mother. I know today’s date. I know my phone number. I know who you all are, you’re my family.”
When Sean reentered the room, Gregory looked at him pleadingly. “Tell them, David. Tell them there’s nothing wrong with me.”
The next day, Gregory was lucid and clear-eyed when he came into the office. He eased into the ergonomic chair that faced Lauren and said, “I wanted us to talk before I lose everything. While I can tell you what I want you to know about the business, about other things, too.”
“Dad, there’s no need. You’ve been a great teacher.”
“It may be their building but it’s your vision,” he said ignoring her words. “Never work for anyone who doesn’t respect you. We’ve had clients who thought our job was to just draw lines on paper. We’re hired for our ability to give the client what they didn’t know they wanted until we designed it. They can fire us, but we can also fire them.”
The Wide Circumference of Love Page 11