We Could Be Beautiful

by Swan Huntley

  Our mother sat on the shaded side. She looked small in her black blouse. Too small. Disappearing-small. Her posture was excellent, as it had always been: straight spine, hands clasped elegantly on the table. She gazed ahead at a light yellow pillar.

  “I’m taking my break,” Evelyn said. “You text if you need me. I can come back.”

  I realized then that Evelyn was one of those people who worked too hard so she could complain about how she worked too hard.

  “Thanks,” we said.

  “Ease into it, okay?” Caroline pulled her spaghetti strap up onto her shoulder. She was wearing a microscopic black skirt. It was inappropriate, especially for a nursing home. People were looking. An old woman gawked. Her mouth hung open. There was food in it. My heels made a conspicuous tapping noise on the tiles. I tried to walk with more weight on the balls of my feet, which was uncomfortable and didn’t help.

  When we got to the table, my mother did not look up. She was busy winning a staring contest with this pillar. I looked at the pillar to make sure there was nothing going on with it, and no, there was not. It was just a pillar.

  “Hey Mom,” Caroline said.

  She looked up then, her muddy green eyes. They used to be a much brighter green. Emerald, almost. It upset me to think that the people who met her now wouldn’t know this.

  “Mom,” I said. “Hi, how are you?”

  Caroline bent to kiss her on the cheek. I did the same. My mother took my wrist. This was new. She had never been one to initiate physical contact unless a social situation called for it. Her skin was old-person soft. “You look wonderful, Catherine.”

  It was not surprising that my mother would say this now, on a day when each of my ribs was clearly delineated through my thin white T-shirt like a xylophone waiting to be played. Mom had always liked us thin. (“Fat people are weak people.”) She let go of my wrist. I sat on one side of her and Caroline sat on the other, looking sad that Mom hadn’t told her how great she looked, too.

  She brushed a speck of nothing off her collar. “What are we doing here?” she asked, as if here were definitely the wrong place to be.

  “We’re having lunch, Mom,” Caroline said too loud.

  “Don’t yell, she’s not deaf.”

  “I’m not. That’s my normal voice.”

  I rolled my eyes and regretted it. I could not fight with Caroline today.

  “It’s very loud, I agree,” Mom said.

  “Sorry. God.” Caroline pulled her skirt down so she would have something to sit on.

  I was relieved Mom didn’t ask me where I had been for the past few weeks. It appeared she hadn’t noticed. That was the thing about Alzheimer’s. It was easy to take advantage. It asked you to do the right thing, whether the sufferer noticed or not, and it also asked you to let it go when your good efforts went unnoticed.

  “It’s really good to see you, Mom,” I said.

  She unfolded the white cloth napkin that had been standing in a triangle on her plate and put it on her lap. “Yes,” she said.

  An Indian man dressed in black filled our water glasses and gave us salads from a wheeling cart. Mom happily speared a cherry tomato and chewed vigorously, her mouth politely closed.

  “Your ring,” Mom said to Caroline.

  “She keeps doing this,” Caroline said to me, and I wondered if Mom’s interest in rings had started when I’d shown her mine at Da Castelli.

  “She? Do not refer to me as ‘she.’ I’m right here.”

  “Sorry, Mom.”

  “What about Caroline’s ring, Mom?”

  Caroline laid her hand flat on the table so we could see her diamond. A circular cut, a gold band. Mom laid her hand on the table. She still wore the ring our father had given her. It had been considered huge at the time, and was now considered average. Her gold band was shaped like a staircase that ascended on both sides to meet the diamond in the center, which was also circular. I put my hand down. My block of ice, and the band, also made of diamonds, sparkled ridiculously.

  “Yours is the biggest,” Mom said.

  “It’s huge,” Caroline said.

  “How is Fernando?”

  Caroline and I exchanged a look.

  “You really liked that guy, Mom,” Caroline said.

  “I adore the Italians.”

  “Well, Fernando and I aren’t speaking. He married someone else.”

  “Here,” Caroline said, “I’ll show you.” She took her phone out of her tiny purse. The size of that purse matched her skirt perfectly.

  “Married who?”

  “Anabel,” I said, annoyed she had a name.

  “Look.” Caroline showed Mom the picture of Fernando and Grandma Anabel from the wedding announcement.

  Mom squinted.

  “Put on your glasses,” I said.

  She held out a hand, expecting them to be passed to her.

  “They’re on your neck, Mom.”

  Her fingers followed the black beads down the chain until she found them. She put them on and looked at the photo again, holding the phone closer, then farther away, widening and squinching her eyes.

  “Who is this?”

  “Fernando,” I said.

  “Yes,” she said. “And the woman?”

  “His wife.”

  Mom had never been a person to admit she didn’t know things. She was very smart, and able to piece information together without letting on that she was clueless. She had always been this way. Now was no different, except that she wasn’t fooling anyone. When she said, “His wife, how wonderful,” she had a look of uncertainty on her face that hadn’t existed pre-Alzheimer’s. It was this same look that passed across her face when she asked a question she had just asked. I suspected she vaguely sensed the repetition, but of course she wouldn’t have admitted to that, and maybe she didn’t quite know either. The kind thing to do was to fill in the blanks and then to fill in the blanks again when she forgot again.

  “Fernando and I broke up. He married this woman instead.” I tapped the picture.

  “I am aware of that, Catherine,” she said.

  “Now Catherine is—” Caroline began.

  I shook my head in a very exaggerated way: Let’s not talk about William.

  “What?” Mom said.

  “Very happy,” Caroline said.

  “Well,” Mom said, “I’m glad you kept the ring.”

  “Do you like my ring, Mom?” Caroline couldn’t help herself.

  “Yes,” Mom said, “it is quaint.”

  “Quaint,” Caroline repeated, and frowned at her diamond.

  “So you didn’t play bingo today, Mom?”

  “I abhor bingo.”

  “Why?” Caroline asked.

  “A trashy game. The girl insists I play, but I won’t.”

  I looked at Mom’s earrings then. She was wearing her pearls today.

  “Evelyn said you think she stole your earrings,” I said.

  “She did,” Mom said simply. She seemed unemotional about this. She was just stating the facts. She wiped her mouth and set her fork and knife to three o’clock to signal that she was done, and only a second later the Indian man was there, removing our plates.

  “Do you remember which ones?” I said.

  “Of course,” Mom said.

  “Which ones?” Caroline said. “Maybe they’re in storage.”

  “Don’t be redundant, Caroline. The girl is stealing from me. That is the point.”

  Caroline said, “You thought a lot of your assistants stole from you, Mom, but they were never caught.”

  “That’s the problem,” Mom said. “They were never caught.”

  “Do you want to see pictures of the kids?” Caroline said.

  “Yes,” Mom said, though it was unclear if she knew who the kids were.

  Caroline handed Mom her phone again. “Here,” she said. “This is Spencer at Lucy’s annual costume party. He was a robot.”

  “Adorable,” Mom said.

  “Here are
the twins. They were flowers.” A photo of the twins being held by two nannies, who were dressed as Thing One and Thing Two.

  “Oh my God, you make your nannies dress up?”

  “They wanted to,” she said. “And here are the twins at the park.” Caroline was in this picture, standing between the two swings that contained the twins. “Do you recognize them, Mom?” The twins were only two, and Mom hadn’t spent a lot of time with them before she was diagnosed.

  “The twins,” Mom said.

  Good answer.

  “Here’s another one of Spencer. Remember this?” It was Spencer in his little suit at the engagement party.

  “Spencer, what a doll,” Mom said.

  “Do you remember this day?” Caroline said.

  Mom evaded the question. “Adorable,” she said again.

  The main course arrived—mushroom fettucine with frisée and walnuts on top. I took a bite. It was heavy and delicious. Mom ate all of hers—good, I didn’t want her to disappear—and Caroline pushed her plate away. She wasn’t in a pasta mood.

  We talked about Dad—“He must stop buying golf equipment, he has far too much of it,” Mom said, as if he could have been out golfing right this minute—and then we ordered espressos and Mom told us about how Dad had assured her the Upper East Side was the only place where they belonged. “He wouldn’t have stayed with me if I hadn’t looked the way I did.”

  Despite Mom’s shunning of her past, we still liked to ask about it. Was it just curiosity or were we trying to make sense of our own lives? I think we both sensed the opening Alzheimer’s provided us. Maybe this version of our mother would tell us more about herself.

  “Was it hard to grow up as an only child, Mom?” Caroline asked.

  “No,” Mom said, “it was not.”

  “Did you have a lot of friends?”

  “Of course I had friends. Everyone has friends.”

  “Why do you hate New Jersey so much?”

  “New Jersey was a fine place to grow up.”

  “You never miss it?”

  “I simply wasn’t meant to stay in the country.”

  Our mother had been raised on a farm. This was what had initially inspired me to take up horseback riding. I knew it was something she had done as a kid because she had a picture of herself on a horse. It was one of maybe three pictures she had from her childhood. Her horseback riding was the one thing she did mention to people—it was pedigree enough—though when she did, she made it sound as though the farm where she took lessons had belonged to someone else.

  “I do love horses,” Mom said. “I was quite an equestrian at one time.”

  When Evelyn returned, looking slightly more awake, Caroline told her, “We’ll take Mom to her room today.” This was obviously a new routine that had been formed in my absence.

  Evelyn touched our mother’s shoulder. “How was your lunch, Mrs. West?”

  “Don’t touch me.”

  Evelyn did not move her hand. “Okay, Mrs. West. I’ll see you after quiet time then.”

  •

  Mom’s suite—bronze placard 314—was not a bad place to live. We had chosen the most expensive option. It included a living room, a bedroom, a kitchenette, and a large bathroom with a tub. Its shallow design and gold safety handlebar were designed to make drowning impossible.

  Like the rest of the Avalon, Suite 314 had the anonymous quality of a country club, but with Mom’s art and smell. The rose oil was almost too much. “Wow,” I said, “it’s pungent in here.”

  “Mom spilled her oil on the carpet last week,” Caroline said.

  “I did not,” Mom said.

  I was jealous they had been spending so much time together without me. I hadn’t even been to Suite 314 since Mom moved in, when the room had looked exactly like the pamphlet.

  A photo of Mom and Dad on their wedding day at the Ritz and a photo of Caroline and me as kids, standing by the stone lions at our front door, were propped on the entranceway table, along with a few animal figurines. Mom had replaced the shoddy landscape art that had come with the room (I remembered the thick, Vegas-style textured gold frames) with her own stuff. A large Tina Barney of two overprivileged lanky teenagers eating Hostess cupcakes hung on the living room wall. An Egon Schiele hung above her bed. It was interesting that these were the things Mom had picked from the huge collection. The Tina Barney didn’t surprise me—she was one of Mom’s favorites. But the Egon Schiele did. A gaunt man peered creepily (lasciviously?) over his shoulder at the viewer. This seemed like a very wrong choice for bedtime.

  “What kind of tea do you want, Mom?”

  “I need to use the bathroom.”

  “Okay.” Caroline opened the cupboard. “Let’s have peppermint. Do you want some, Catherine?”

  “Sure.”

  “I would like peppermint,” Mom said, and closed the bathroom door too hard behind her.

  I sat on the pale yellow leather couch and watched Caroline in the kitchenette. She found the right cups and opened and closed the cupboards liked someone was timing her. If she had been a child today, she would have been diagnosed as hyperactive. But she was also impressing me with her usefulness. Besides her skimpy outfit, she actually seemed more like a mother to me in that moment than she ever had before.

  I took the will out of my purse and unfolded it. Our mother was taking a long time in the bathroom. The water boiled. Caroline brought the tea to the coffee table on a tray, which was unnecessary; the kitchenette was right there.

  “Oh,” she said when she saw the paper in my lap. “Are you just going to hand it to her?”

  Why was I so nervous? Maybe because Mom was in a good mood and I was about to ruin that. “What do you think?”

  “It’s going to be awkward no matter what.”

  A thud in the bathroom. Caroline went to the door. “Mom, are you okay in there?”

  “Leave me alone.”

  A minute later our mother appeared with newly applied lipstick all over her lips, and above and under her lips, and on her chin. She sat in the leather chair that matched the couch, crossed her legs. She wouldn’t touch her tea yet; it was still steaming. (“Never trust a steaming beverage.”)

  “Mom, go like this.” Caroline rubbed her chin.

  Mom looked at Caroline, considering her request. “No,” she said.

  Caroline shrugged. She was picking her battles, and this wasn’t one of them. “Fine.”

  I folded the paper. Maybe I didn’t need to show it to her. Caroline looked at me as if to say, Go ahead.

  “Mom, I have a question about the will you wrote.”

  “Yes?”

  “Why did you give everything from Eighty-Fourth Street to charity?”

  Her answer was stock. “Those are charities I care about deeply. You know I am a philanthropist. It was what I was meant to do in my life.”

  “But you knew the trust would run out of money.”

  “Your father’s trust?”

  “Of course our father’s trust.”

  “Yes.” She readjusted herself in the chair. “I hate this chair—it has zero support.”

  “You knew Caroline and I would run out of money.”

  “Yes.”

  I looked at Caroline, who looked at her tea. She wasn’t going to help me at all. “Well, why did you do that?”

  “Why did I do what?”

  “Why are you letting Caroline and me run out of money?”

  “I gave it to charity.”

  “Instead of your own children?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why? Mom, we’re your kids.”

  “There are lots of kids.”

  “Yeah, but—”

  “This conversation is over.” Mom pressed the armrests away, twisting her torso back and forth. “Get me a new chair.”

  Caroline sprang up and grabbed a wooden chair from the small table in the kitchenette. “Here Mom, take my hand.”

  “No.” With some effort, Mom got herself out of the leather
chair and into the wooden one. She smoothed her blouse. “Your father would never have stayed with me if I hadn’t looked the way I did.” She laughed to herself, enough to let us see her teeth, which was rare for Mom. She had imperfect teeth and she had perfected the art of hiding them.

  I put the will back in my bag. “I’m going to the bathroom.”

  “Don’t touch my makeup,” Mom said. This was another familiar refrain.

  “Don’t worry, she won’t,” Caroline said.

  On the granite countertop in the bathroom, I found Mom’s lipstick. Or the remains of it. The lipstick itself was outside the closed plastic holder, lying in its sticky residue. Lancôme, of course. She must have decapitated it without noticing. I cleaned it up with a Kleenex and threw it in the trash. I would mention it to Evelyn.

  Above the toilet was a shelf with a stack of magazines. W was at the top. Next to the stack I noticed a scrap of paper that had been rolled into a ball, and a pen. I don’t know what possessed me to uncrumple the paper. Maybe it was the pen. In her long cursive letters (which always reminded me of the lists in the drawer on Eighty-Fourth), Mom had written: “Guilt is cancer.”

  I thought that was interesting, and very strange, and put the paper in my pocket. On the way back to Caroline and Mom, I opened the drawers of Mom’s nightstands, looking for more balled-up papers. I found none. There were earplugs, a Danielle Steel novel, hand cream, a day planner with not one thing recorded.

  “I’m very tired,” Mom said.

  “We’ll let you take a nap then.”

  “Send the girl.”

  “Yes.” Caroline texted Evelyn.

  Mom stared out the window. She had her hands around her tea, which was no longer steaming.

  “What are you thinking about, Mom?”

  Mom looked at me. Her muddy green eyes. “We’re here,” she said. This was the other thing about Alzheimer’s. No one could say you weren’t living in the present moment all the time.

  “We’re here? That’s what you were thinking?” Caroline said.

  “Yes.” Mom brought the tea to her lips. “We are here.”

  17