by Michael Rowe
Hank had called me in Toronto that year and asked if she could take the train up from Ottawa and stay over, because she had something important to tell me. In my dorm room at East House in Knox College, she’d told me that she was gay, and in love with a woman named Cosima, a journalism major. She told me that her life of trying to be what everyone had wanted her to be—a girl named Lucinda Jane—had almost killed her, literally as well as figuratively: she had seriously contemplated suicide when she was sixteen.
“I had the razor blades in the bottom of my sweater drawer. I kept them there, secret. No one knew. Men’s razors,” she said with a hint of something like pride, or contempt. It was hard to tell which. “Not those fucking pink lady razors.”
I was horrified. “Why didn’t you tell me, Hank? Jesus. All those times we spoke on the phone long-distance. You could have told me. I would have been on the next bus . . .” I trailed off, unable to contemplate what her suicide would have meant. A world without Hank in it was literally incomprehensible to me. “Why? How could you keep something like that to yourself?”
She sighed. “I couldn’t, Jamie. I couldn’t admit what I was feeling, not even to myself. Telling you would have just made it real, and I wasn’t ready for any of it to be real.”
Hank confessed that she had finally come to terms with the fact that, in an effort to please everyone else, she hadn’t succeeded in pleasing anyone, least of all herself. Her earnestness had moved me, but the news couldn’t have been less of a surprise, or less relevant to our friendship, and I told her just that as I held her tight.
Later, as we lay on the floor head to head, very drunk on Jägermeister, staring up at the swirling ceiling of my dorm room, she said she had something to tell me.
“What, Hank?”
“I fucking love you, Jamie.” I fuggen lovezu
“Me, too, Hank. I love you, too.”
“I wish you were my brother.”
“I wish you were my brother.” I started to giggle. “No, I mean, I wish you were my sister.”
“Not me,” she said with drunken solemnity. “I don’t want to be anyone’s sister. I wish I was your brother, too.”
“You are, Hank.” Buffeted on the waves of Jäger, it made sense. “You are my brother. Tell you what—if I ever get married, you can be my best man, okay?”
“You getting married? To who? Why didn’t you tell me?”
Now we were both giggling. “No,” I said, nearly choking. “I’m not getting married. But . . . when.”
“And you want me to be your best man? Wow.”
The ceiling continued to spin. “Yup. I do.”
Hank paused, then reached for my hand, squeezing it tightly. “Bro,” she said.
The next morning, we weren’t sure which of us had passed out first, but we realized two things through the haze of agony: We each had the worst hangovers of our lives. And neither of us could remember having been happier.
In the years since graduation, Hank, having eschewed law school, had become a very successful landscape gardener.
During her undergrad, she had spent her summers planting trees up north and working on outdoor landscaping crews in the city. In the process, she had discovered that she loved the work and, more importantly, that she had a natural affinity for the soil.
Before opening her own small firm in Ottawa, she had worked on various crews for other landscaping companies, first on summer vacations, then full-time upon graduation. She found that her communion with soil and seed was instinctive and unfailingly accurate. Her various employers noticed that she was a hard worker who put in long hours in the sun without complaining. They also noticed that she took an effortless leadership role with the crews, which were usually comprised of men, and that those men accepted her leadership just as effortlessly. Her supervisor, Sid, regularly slapped her on the back and joked that she was “just one of the guys” and “practically a man—and I mean that in a good way, so don’t go gettin’ all militant dykey on me now, eh?”
Hank always assured him she understood exactly what he meant, and laughed right along with him. Sid was still laughing right up until the moment Hank handed in her notice and quit to start her own competing landscaping business. She took two of the company’s best workers on the crew with her and, in the process, snapped up a plum condominium maintenance contract her former employers had been too lazy to bother formally renewing with the condo board. Sid had been furious. He’d called her a thieving dyke and promised her he’d blackball her so she’d never get another landscaping job in the city as long as he had breath in his body.
“Do your worst, Sid,” Hank said, saluting him as she walked out of the office for the last time. “You’re practically a man. And I mean that in a good way.”
Ame became less of a free spirit once we were actually engaged, and she wasn’t remotely pleased at the idea of a lesbian best man standing next to her fiancé at the end of the aisle in church. When she told me her parents and their friends would be horrified at the idea of a lesbian in their daughter’s wedding party, I suggested we elope or marry at City Hall, if she chose, or that her parents stay home. But if we were going to marry in a church, Hank would be my best man.
And so Hank was my best man. She was resplendent in a tuxedo that matched mine, her crew cut shining beneath a fresh coat of Brylcreem.
My mother, who flew in from Vancouver, with her second facelift and her third—very rich—husband, was the only person at the reception who called Hank “Lucinda Jane,” which Cosima, who’d come as Hank’s date, found hilarious.
Before ducking out of the reception, my mother kissed me on both cheeks and gave me a brittle hug.
“I haven’t been much of a mother to you all these years, Jamie,” my mother said. “I’m sorry about that. I’ve often regretted not being there. I didn’t regret leaving, because I had to find myself. But I regret leaving you. I’ve always loved you, though, son. I hope you and Ame will be very happy together.”
I didn’t believe a word of it, but I reached out and kissed her cheek. She stiffened in my arms, but allowed me to kiss her nonetheless, performing the traditional ritual homage to the normal mother and son relationship we’d never had.
“Thank you, Mom,” I said as sincerely as I could. “And thank you for coming. You, too, Stan,” I added for my second stepfather’s benefit. “It means a lot.”
My mother, who had studiously avoided my father throughout the service, pressed an envelope into my hand. “A little something for the honeymoon,” she said. “I know it’s not much, but it made sense to give this to you rather than another silly wedding gift you’re just going to throw away, anyway.”
When I opened the envelope, it contained a cheque for ten thousand dollars. I briefly thought of tearing it up, but I knew it would be an empty gesture, and ten thousand dollars was ten thousand dollars. If I genuinely didn’t bear my mother ill will for having left us, giving my father and me a chance at a happy life together—and I didn’t—it seemed hypocritical to throw her gift back in her face.
Ame and I had two good years together before I realized I had ignored the signs that had manifested themselves after we’d gotten engaged, and that I’d married a woman very much like my mother.
We divorced, much more acrimoniously than my own parents. Unlike the departure of my mother, however, the departure of my wife shook me to the core. Through Ame I thought I’d caught a glimpse of what a real marriage could be like, and I discovered that I’d idealized it much more than I’d ever dreamed. And perhaps I did catch that glimpse of what it could be like, but you can’t build a life together on a glimpse of anything so amorphous.
After my divorce, I moved back in with my father. He protested, of course, citing my youth and my new eligibility, urging me to “get back on that horse” and try again with a new girl.
“I feel guilty,” my father confessed, a bit shamefaced. “I believe that your mot
her and I were a fearful example of marital bliss for you.”
“It wasn’t you, Dad,” I said. “You were a great father to me. I couldn’t have asked for a better example of how to be a husband.”
“For all the good it did me,” he said ruefully. “Look at me. I’m an old man with no wife.” He laughed, but there wasn’t a lot of regret in that laughter. “No wife, no life.”
“Sometimes things just don’t work out the way we want them to, Dad.” I shrugged. “It happens. As far as I’m concerned, Mom threw away the best thing that ever happened to her. She was a gadder. I don’t think she knew what she wanted.”
“What did you say?” He sounded shocked, but then he laughed out loud. “Good Lord, Jameson. Where on earth did you hear that word?”
“Something I heard Mrs. Alban say one night when you and she were talking, when I was a kid. After Mom left. She said Mom was ‘a gadder.’ I didn’t know what she meant at the time. At first I thought she said ‘gander.’ I thought that was funny. But you know, I think Mrs. Alban was right. Mom didn’t leave you for another man, she left us because she didn’t like herself very much and she thought that by leaving us, she could figure out why.”
“I don’t think she ever did,” my father said. “Poor Alice.”
“And by the way, you may not have a wife, but you do have a life. So don’t say that. And you have a son who loves you more than anything.”
“That I do,” he said gently. “That I do, Jamie. And I’m so proud of you. But I still don’t want you to move in with me. I’m far too old, and you’ve gotten far too bossy.”
By the time I moved in with him in May of that year, I had been concerned for some time that things were not entirely right with my father.
It had started off with small things, him repeating himself in conversation with no subsequent memory of having just said what he’d said. At first, he thought I was teasing him when I told him I’d just responded to that very statement a few minutes earlier. When he realized I was genuinely startled, he rubbed his eyes and said, “Well, I guess I’m just getting old-timers.”
We both laughed at that. For my part, my laughter was genuine, but my father’s carried a trace of something that caused me to look twice. By the second or third time it happened, I was the only one laughing. My father’s face had taken on a haunted aspect.
In the weeks and months that followed, my father’s memory began to slip slowly, but with what I now realize had been inexorable, murderous determination.
Frequently he would ask me to speak more slowly, though I habitually spoke more slowly than he did. He became enraged at the sound of a radio, or a television, telling me that it was impossible for him to think with all the noise in the house. His confusion became constant, though he did his best to hide it from me. For a while, he managed to do so successfully. But then eventually it became impossible to hide. I begged him to see a doctor about it, but he was adamantly opposed to what he called “a lot of fuss over just getting old.”
“This is my house,” he shouted. “This is why I didn’t want you to move in with me. I hate all the fussing!” Then, my father, whom I’d never heard swear a day in his life said, “It’s one of the reasons I was so glad your bitch of a mother moved the fuck out of that bastard house in Ottawa. Fucking cold bitch.”
I was shocked. “Dad?” I reached out to touch him, but he slapped my hand away. “Dad, you’re not yourself. This isn’t how you talk. This isn’t the language you use. You need to see someone. You’re scaring me.”
“What? WHAT? What does everyone want from me? You and that bitch of a mother of yours! Pushy, pushy, pushy! Just leave me alone so I can get ready for work, damn you! I’m going to be late for the office. It’s late!”
It was eleven at night. I stared at him with blank horror, then said the only words that came to mind: “Dad, you’re retired. You don’t have to get ready for work. Your work is done. And it’s late at night.” I pointed to the grandfather clock against the wall. “Look, Dad. It’s eleven.”
My father turned and left the room. I heard his bedroom door slam behind him. When I knocked fifteen minutes later, there was no answer. I pushed it open quietly, taking care not to startle him. My father had fallen asleep across his bed, fully clothed. Only when I pulled a blanket over him did I notice that he was wearing a nylon windbreaker next to his skin, underneath his button-down plaid Viyella sport shirt, and rubber snow galoshes on his feet. Careful not to wake him, I removed the galoshes and put them away in the hall closet.
We tiptoed around each other all the next day in a way we had not since my mother had walked out thirty-odd years before. That evening I was unable to bear the tension any longer and asked my father why he had been so quiet all day.
At first he denied that he had been unusually quiet. He denied it brusquely, but then with increased desperation. When he finally confessed to me that he was afraid to speak because he didn’t trust his ability to use the right words to convey what he meant, he broke down and wept tears that sounded like they’d been cut out of his throat with an awl.
The next morning, we made an appointment with Dr. O’Neill, my father’s longtime physician, for a full battery of tests. When the results came back, they were exactly what both of us dreaded: mid-stage, progressive Alzheimer’s.
“Well,” said my father. “Well. My God.”
“This is treatable, though, Dr. O’Neill, isn’t it?” I was desperate for him to tell me it was, even though everything I had already read on the topic had indicated it wasn’t. I’d never wanted more to be wrong about something in my life. “What’s the treatment? What do we do? How do we beat this?”
Dr. O’Neill looked pained. “Well, those are two questions, Jamie, I’m sorry to say. For treatment, I’m going to prescribe memantine hydrochloride—Ebixa, it’s called. It’s an NMDA receptor antagonist, which means it blocks some of the chemicals in the brain that trigger the symptoms of Alzheimer’s. It’ll help with the memory loss and the confusion. But it’s a treatment, not a cure. It’s important that you know that. We’ll start with twenty milligrams a day—two doses of ten milligrams twice a day. He can take them with or without food, but they have to be swallowed. He can’t chew them. It’s very important that he swallow them.”
My father muttered something under his breath.
“What did you say, Dad? I’m sorry, we didn’t hear you.”
My father spoke sharply this time. “I said, ‘Stop talking about me as though I’m not here.’ I’m an old man with an illness, not a child. I’m still your father, Jameson. I’m still an adult.”
“I’m sorry, Peter, of course you’re right,” Dr. O’Neill said. “Please forgive me. That was very insensitive of us.”
“Don’t condescend to me, either, Dr. O’Neill. Please. I sincerely mean no disrespect, but this is something I’m facing. I need to be spoken to clearly and honestly about it.”
“Will the drugs . . . will they cure him?” I couldn’t stop asking, even though the doctor had already said no. I wanted there do be a different answer. At that moment, I believed that by asking it again, perhaps there was one the doctor hadn’t thought of. “I mean, will they cure my dad?”
Dr. O’Neill took a deep breath. “No, Jamie, they won’t. Your father has expressed an understandable desire that I not sugarcoat this for either of you, so I won’t. There is no cure for this particular disease. It can be managed with drugs, possibly for a long time. But after a certain point . . .”
he trailed off. “Well, after a certain point your lives will be very different than they are now. There will be any number of options at that point. We can discuss them as the situation develops.”
My father’s laugh was a sharp, dry bark. “I think you mean deteriorates, Dr. O’Neill. You should have been an airline pilot, sir. I could easily picture you addressing the passengers of a perpendicular 747 about to crash nose-first into the Atlantic. ‘Plea
se listen for further announcements as the situation develops.’”
Dr. O’Neill smiled thinly, but with what appeared to be sincere sadness. He had been my father’s doctor for ten extraordinarily healthy years. “I’m sorry, Peter,” he said. “I wish there was a better prognosis. But staying as positive as possible is essential.”
“I’ll work on that, Dr. O’Neill,” my father said dryly. “I promise I’ll work at staying positive.”
My father’s downward progression was swift, likely swifter than any of the three of us expected it would be when we left the office that day.
He barely slept at night. Instead, he roamed the house, opening drawers and cupboards and upending the contents. After a while, I stopped turning on the burglar alarm because he set it off every night past midnight when he dropped cutlery and plates on the floor, convinced that it was morning, and I was fifteen years old, and he had to cook me breakfast before I went to wrestling practice.
He was also occasionally convinced that he and my mother were still married, and that we were all living in the old house in Ottawa, and it was still the early 1970s.
He furrowed his brow. “What was the name of that little girl you used to play with, Jamie? What was her name?” Before his illness, my father remembered every detail of my childhood with a sense of recall that was almost eidetic.
“You mean Hank, Dad? Are you talking about Hank?”
He thought about it. “No, that wasn’t her name. That’s a boy’s name, anyway. It was something else. What was her name? You used to spend a lot of time together playing in your room. Come on, damn it. You remember.”
“Well, her real name was Lucinda, but no one called her that except Mom. Well, and Hank’s mother—she never called her Hank. She was my best friend, remember? She came to my wedding. She was my best man.”
He mulled this over. “Lucinda.” He tasted the word, closing his eyes, trying to place it in some sort of recollective context. “No, that wasn’t her name. I’m sure of it. Damn it. Some other girl.”