The Winter Wives

by Linden MacIntyre

  –Listen to me.

  He reached across the table, caught my wrist.

  –Nothing bad can happen to her, right? No matter what went down in the past, and what I think now, she always stuck by me. You look out for her.

  He held my wrist. He held my eyes. And I suddenly knew what it was like to be threatened by my dearest friend.

  22.

  That evening I found an e-mail message on my phone that was flagged Immediate attention required. It was from the genetic research outfit. I opened it to find that the analysis of my spit was now complete and my genetic secrets now available.

  I logged on.

  I scrolled through the information. I had a cousin in Prince Rupert, BC. I was 96 percent of Celtic origin and 4 percent “other.” I also had a marker that presented a strong possibility that, like my mother, I’d have Alzheimer’s disease before I died.

  It was a flat statement, cranked out by a computer. No evidence of human input.

  I stared at the jumbled explanation. High levels of ApoE4, whatever that was. Symptoms of dementia may appear abruptly or over time. And near the end, there was what seemed to be another alert, in boldface. A second assessment of my data had turned up a significant anomaly involving something called PSEN1.

  The existence of the mutant gene raised the probability that a disease pathogenesis was already under way and it could inevitably lead to a loss of PS1 function. I was advised to consult my doctor.

  I didn’t know what “PS1” stood for, and there was no further explanation in the e-mail. The word “mutation” was alarming. “Pathogenesis” was a word new to me. “Disease” was all too understandable.

  But the message quickly became clear to me. Reduced to its most bleak conclusion, and supported by my anxious Google searching, it was a notification that I was facing early-onset dementia and that it was possible, if not likely, the process had already started.

  I stood at the bedroom window. Rain in small rivulets trickled down the glass. I could hear an occasional car swish by on nearby streets. There was a tattered maple tree in their backyard, a few red leaves clinging, soon to be defeated by the inevitable snow.

  I didn’t sleep much. The cryptic diagnosis was almost too incredible to be distressing and was soon overtaken by a struggle to make sense of my recent conversations with my dying friend.

  Which of us is crazy? Or are we both?

  I got out of bed, turned on a bedside light and texted Annie. We need to talk. ASAP.

  I suppose that a doctor would know better, but even as a lawyer I can safely say that there is no typical reaction to news that life as we know it, and have come to take for granted, is about to end.

  A young lawyer told me once how he wept uncontrollably for days after he’d received a diagnosis of multiple sclerosis.

  I had a client, a 28-year-old construction worker, who found out he had leukemia just after he’d been screwed in a divorce. He would die without a marrow transplant. He told me he felt lost. Abandoned.

  The life trajectory we take for granted can slip into a decline we barely notice, if we register it at all. I know that. I’m not sentimental about existence. It’s like being on an airplane. Sooner or later, we feel the gentle nudge from a change in ambience. Or maybe it’s a jolt. We awaken from a slumber. We raise our eyes from the book or the computer screen. We have started our descent. It is predictable, but it is unexpected just the same.

  I remembered Mom’s sardonic comment about the arseholes she would no longer feel obliged to tolerate. She had a glass of wine. She laughed with us. She excused herself and went to bed, though it was still the middle of the afternoon. I don’t think she went to bed to grieve.

  But I can now imagine that she was weary, had no energy for the tiresome conversation that Annie and I would feel compelled to have. And maybe just a bit pissed off at those of us who would survive her.

  * * *

  —

  Annie’s condo was a place I didn’t recognize, though I’d stayed there occasionally on business trips before she took possession. It was an older building, perched on the lakeside, its back to the city. Relatively low-rise, it could ignore the cluster of newer towers that had grown up behind it, and it would probably outlive them all because of the location and the view and the quality of its original construction. Before my DNA analysis, I’d have noticed only that the layout of Annie’s unit was significantly different than I remembered it. Now, the unfamiliarity was ominous.

  She had extended the kitchen to accommodate a huge table and seating for eight people. What was once a living room and a den was now merged into an open space with three separate configurations of stylish furniture, unified by the one feature that I did clearly recognize: the stunning view of Lake Ontario.

  You don’t forget what you didn’t know, I told myself. As time passes, there is much that will feel unfamiliar.

  Annie made coffee. The way she went about it gave me the feeling that she was stalling.

  –So what’s up? she asked when she finally sat down across from me, a tiny coffee table between us.

  –Do you remember that DNA test I was thinking about?

  –Refresh my memory, she said.

  –I’ve had results.

  –Maybe a drink of something with the coffee? A cognac.

  I had prepared a reasonable briefing—serious disclosure without melodrama. I was thrown off by her tone. A drink? What’s up? Questions for a client.

  I thought of: Well, for openers, I think I’ve started dying.

  –Nothing to drink, I said.

  She sat there. Stared thoughtfully, waiting. It was her indifference, I think, that made me hesitate. What’s the point?

  It crossed my mind—I’m talking to the wrong Winter sister. I should just leave.

  I said,

  –You look well.

  –Thank you.

  –The place has changed a lot since I was here last.

  –That must have been a long time ago, because I really haven’t done much. So. Your DNA?

  When she raised her mug, I swear she checked her wristwatch.

  On a mantel just behind her, above her left shoulder, I noticed two framed photographs.

  One was a print of the surreptitious photo I had taken of the Russian, Nick, and mailed to her. The upscale taxi driver. The other was of Nick and two women, with Niagara Falls in the background. They were partly obscured by mist, but the two women were unmistakably Annie and her sister. They were all laughing, and standing very close together.

  The photos were directly in my line of sight. Nick’s young, smiling face. Peggy. Annie. Beaming in the fog.

  And then it was as if the mist was billowing around them, obscuring features. And then it seemed that they had vanished. And the mist was now descending around where I was sitting. And I became aware of my own voice commenting on the photographs, but it was as if the voice was coming out of someone else.

  I took a gulp of the coffee and it burned.

  I gagged and spat it out and heard myself say Goddam fuck and then the floor was rushing toward my face and it smashed against my forehead. Blood was boiling in my nose. And somewhere in the distance I could hear a woman’s voice calling out to me with a kind of urgency that sounded like…Could it really be?

  She was calling: Angus!

  * * *

  —

  There was the roaring of machinery.

  There was a cold wetness on my face. The woman was leaning close. There was rag-wrapped ice against my forehead. No. It was snow. Cold, refreshing. Melting. Wet. Snow.

  I was desperate to pee.

  I need to pee.

  And the man’s voice was saying, Let me help you with that snowsuit, sonny.

  Hands delicate on a sticky zipper.

  –Hurry.

  But suddenly the
nice man who was helping me was gone. Snatched away. And now he was struggling on the floor. An insect on its back. Legs flailing horribly. My father standing there, red-faced.

  And I am losing my pee. Losing it, and the warmth is spreading in my snowsuit and I will be in trouble with my mom…

  I was running now. Running toward the daylight that hurt my eyes. And the noise that hurt my ears.

  And someone was screaming: Angus!

  And falling down.

  * * *

  —

  Time folds around itself. Absorbs itself. I am confused. There is motion. There is a wailing sound. I am cold and I am warm, swaddled in a blanket, but I know that I am warm from having pissed myself. And there is the familiar flood of grief and fear and shame. There is so much trouble when I pee in my snowsuit or in my bed. So much trouble for my mom, who has to wash my clothes and bedding on a scrubbing board and hang them on the line outside, and it is winter when nothing dries without freezing first, but she is leaning over me and her face is terrified and her eyes are wet and red-rimmed as I have never seen them and she is not angry. She is afraid. And she is not my mom.

  Byron!

  She is Annie.

  * * *

  —

  I am in an ambulance. The oxygen mask. The hanging accessories around me, swaying with the motion. The ambulance is screaming and snarling, surging and halting through mid-afternoon gridlock. Annie is speaking, but the racket makes it impossible to hear what she is saying. I know where I am, but I don’t know how I got here. I remember the picture of the Russian. Even his name—Nick. I struggle to sit up, but now there is a man restraining me, and Annie is helping him.

  –Whoa, whoa, I say, I don’t need this. I want out of here.

  Then we lurch-stop and the back door swings open. People walking quickly, turning, curious, briefly glancing in, disappearing. Two men drag the gurney I am strapped to toward the light. And I am struggling again.

  –Let me go, for Christ’s sake! This is…

  Annie’s voice is no longer chilled, but gentle.

  –Hush now. Everything is under control.

  Glass doors whoosh and I am being wheeled inside, down a corridor, past hurrying people and stationary gurneys under searing fluorescent lighting, pale-green faces, indifferent loudspeaker squawking, into a quiet anteroom. Curtains all around. And a young man in a white coat. Friendly. Interested.

  –So, what’s your story? he asks.

  The question is important. The answer is important.

  I needed to pee. Somebody was helping me, but he fell down. And then I fell down. And everyone was mad…

  But Annie is telling another story.

  –He just, sort of, went quiet and pale, then he gagged on a mouthful of coffee and I’d jumped up to get a paper towel or something. And when I came back, he was on the floor.

  –You didn’t hear anything? Like a bang? A clunk?

  –I don’t think so.

  –We’ll need to check to make sure he didn’t strike his head on anything. Has he fainted before?

  –There was an accident when he was little. On a farm. It was fairly serious. It left his leg badly injured. He can be unsteady on his feet sometimes. He suffered a head injury then too, I think. He’s never spoken much about it.

  –You are his…?

  –Wife. Anne. Annie.

  –Okay, Anne. We need to keep him for a little while, do some tests. At his age and with the earlier injury, it’s worth exploring what’s going on in his brain. You’re unaware of anything like this happening recently?

  –This is new.

  –Well. We’ll check him out to make sure it’s nothing major. Let’s get him out of this wet stuff.

  –I think it’s just the coffee he spilled on himself.

  –No big deal. Nothing to explain. Any family history that you know of?

  –His dad died fairly young from what they believed was a stroke. His mom died of Alzheimer’s.

  The doctor frowns and makes a note.

  –Good to know. I’ll order an MRI.

  * * *

  —

  We were alone. I could feel her hand on my hands, which were folded on my chest. I opened my eyes.

  –There you are, she said.

  I smiled at her.

  –I want to go home, I said.

  –Soon.

  She patted my hand, kissed me lightly on the forehead and went away.

  23.

  It felt like such a long, long time, but it was only two or three days. Two or three days filed away in a generic folder with all the other days I’d spent in other hospitals. Two or three days that felt like weeks misplaced among the weeks that felt like months and years.

  On that last occasion in the hospital, I was ready to go home by noon the next day. And, mercifully, the doctor told me that I could be discharged the following morning, on day three. They were reasonably certain my little episode was an isolated event.

  –We just need to wait for test results confirming that.

  I told him I’d just had my DNA analyzed.

  He looked surprised.

  –People do it now for genealogy. But, because of my mother, I thought, who knows. There was a company offering to look for the risk of getting Alzheimer’s.

  He didn’t respond.

  –Actually, my test indicated I am at risk.

  He sighed.

  –If you have anything to worry about, we’ll spot it. What can you tell me about that accident, when you were five?

  –Not much. I was knocked unconscious, so there was obviously a head injury. But people were more interested in whether I would lose my leg. Whether I would ever walk again.

  –After we have all the results, we’ll talk. Okay?

  He stood up, shook my hand.

  Annie and Peggy must have been waiting just outside the door. The doctor was hardly gone when they came in.

  Peggy was the one to kiss me, while Annie stood back, arms folded.

  –You’re looking a whole lot better, Peggy said.

  –They’re saying I can leave tomorrow morning. I won’t bother you. I can manage it myself.

  –No, no, I’ll come and get you. They won’t let you leave on your own anyway, said Annie.

  –Where will I be going?

  They exchanged quick glances, then looked back at me.

  –We think you should stay with Peggy for another little while, Annie said.

  –Okay. Sure.

  Peggy was blinking rapidly.

  –It’s about Allan, Annie said.

  –What about Allan?

  –I should go, Peggy said. I left him on his own.

  –Before you go, is there something I don’t know?

  Annie said,

  –There’s a lot you don’t know, darling.

  –Like, who is this Nick?

  –Okay, I’m away, said Peggy.

  She kissed me again. She and Annie embraced. And then there was just the two of us in a silence broken only by the universal sounds of hospitals.

  –About Nick…

  She ignored me.

  –Allan is slipping, she said.

  –How bad?

  She hesitated for what felt like a long time.

  –You can see for yourself tomorrow.

  –I meant to tell you something the other day, before this happened.

  I tried to stop myself. This wasn’t something that I wanted anyone to know. But I couldn’t help it. Couldn’t help this shameful reaching out. I needed something. I was desperate for something.

  –I mentioned that I was having my DNA checked for the possibility of Alzheimer’s or whatever.

  She was looking everywhere but at me.

  –I wouldn’t want to hold you up if yo
u have more important things to do, I said.

  –Let’s not play games, Byron.

  –Well. My DNA analysis indicates early-onset Alzheimer’s.

  She sighed, stared toward a window.

  –I think we need a more scientific opinion than a mail-order test before we panic, she said.

  –Yes, you’re right.

  –Meanwhile. There’s Allan. There’s no pretty way to put this, Byron. I’m afraid our Allan’s done.

  –Allan is not done. Allan is a long way from done.

  –Face the reality, Byron, and believe me…We’re all under stress. Not just you. Focus on the here and now, and what we have ahead of us.

  * * *

  —

  I was ready to go, sitting on the side of the hospital bed in sweats, a T-shirt and my leather jacket. Running shoes. No socks. Shaving gear, toothbrush and a book in a backpack on the floor. Annie had taken away the clothes I had been wearing when I fell.

  Did I really piss my pants?

  There was a quick rap at the door and two doctors came in—the one who had been treating me and one who was considerably younger. I missed the name of the younger one but caught the fact that he was a medical geneticist. He explained that he was part of a very large international investigation of dementia. The causes. How it advances in a patient. How it changes people.

  The study involved thousands of individuals. Men and woman. People of various ethnic and cultural and geographic backgrounds. Ages, physical abilities, intelligence.

  –So you want to study me.

  –We’re not sure yet. But given the family history, your symptoms and the childhood concussion, maybe. You say you’ve had this ancestry test. We don’t consider those tests conclusive, but they often give reliable indicators. So, we’ll put you down as a possible participant. Okay?

  I made a comment about making lemonade from lemons, and nodded.

  As a first step, the younger doctor said, I was to come back to the hospital in a week or so for more tests, to establish a scientific baseline.

  Fine with me.