“My daughter.”
“Right here, Ma.”
“My daughter.”
Distract. Redirect. Put a stick in the spokes.
“Hey, Ma? I came to tell you that I’m going to get it fixed,” I said. “My heart.”
I expected her to frown and shake her head, to look down the hall and set the walker in motion again. But my mother surprised me. She reached up and touched my collarbone, traced it down to my heart.
“Good,” she said.
* * *
Talk to Chris, Sunshine and Brown said. Stop trying to imagine your way into his head. Stop trying to predict the way he’ll react. You’re not him, are you? Your name is Clara, not Chris. Stop trying to think your way through all the scenarios, all the what-if-thises and what-if-thats. He’s a grown-ass man; let him think and talk for himself. Stop putting off the conversation. Whether you have the gene or not, it’s a conversation that has to happen.
Variations on sentences spoken by them on various days or nights when my fear of the PSEN1 gene spiderwebbed itself into my thoughts about Chris.
Did they urge me to get the test or not get the test? No. What they urged me to do was talk to him.
Get in the goddamn car and drive up to Inlet and get out of the goddamn car and walk into that bar and Talk. To. Him.
That last one was me. Hell and damn were as far as Sunshine and Brown would go. I breathed in and breathed out and breathed in and breathed out and then into the car I got and up to Inlet I went. It was early evening but the bar was nigh-on deserted. That was what happened in the land of winter, this north country land of dark-at-five-p.m. Chris was making his way around the room with a bucket and a sponge and a towel, scrubbing the tables and drying them. Gayle must have left early. He looked up and smiled when the door scraped open. He never seemed surprised to see me.
“Can I help?” I said, and he handed me the towel. I copycatted his movements, compensating for lack of arm length by leaning over farther. Talk to him, Clara.
“So here’s the thing,” I said. We were on the third table now, and in a rhythm. It was like a dance. “I don’t just have a weird heart condition. It’s more complicated than that. Because my mother was officially diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer’s, there is a fifty-percent chance that I carry one of the four genetic mutations that cause it, with PSEN1, which stands for presenilin-1, being by far the most common of the four.”
I sounded like the audio version of a layperson’s textbook on Alzheimer’s. My voice was disembodied from my insides. I kept going.
“If I do carry one of the mutations, then there is a very strong probability that I too will develop early-onset Alzheimer’s. And while a test that would determine whether or not I carry the gene exists, I am not sure that I want to find out.”
My voice was steady and calm, imparting important information, information that I had learned long ago and that the bartender needed to know. Did he, though? Did he really need to know this information? Too late, Clara. Keep going.
“I’m telling you this, so, like, you know,” I said, and he laughed.
“That sounded so unlike you,” he said. “Like, you know, you don’t usually use ‘like’ like that.”
“But did you hear what I said?”
“Yes.”
“Okay, but do you understand what it means?” My voice did not sound disembodied from me anymore. It was not steady or calm. He kept washing the table—we were on table six by now—but he glanced up at me.
“I do.”
“Tell me, then. Tell me what it means.”
“It means that there’s a fifty-fifty chance that you will get Alzheimer’s disease, and if you do, you will likely get it much earlier than most Alzheimer’s patients, who get it in old age.”
He stood up and stretched, the sponge dripping soapy water down his arm, and nodded at the towel I was holding. “Do you need a fresh towel?”
“Is that all you have to say?”
“About the towel?” He was smiling again. “Yeah.”
“Chris.”
“Clara.”
Why had they told me to talk to him? Why had I gotten in the car and driven up here? Why was I standing here crushing a damp towel to death between my hands? None of this mattered to him. The bartender didn’t lie awake at night doing the fifty-fifty gene mutation math the way I did. You’re an idiot, Clara. You’re a fool.
“I’m going to go,” I said.
“No you’re not. Sit down.”
He dropped his sponge in the bucket, pulled the crushed towel from my hands and dropped that in the bucket too. He pulled out a chair and waited until I sat. Then he sat too.
“I’m sorry I laughed,” he said. He wasn’t smiling anymore. “But I already knew everything you just told me. I’ve already thought about it.”
“About what, though? You’ve already thought about what?”
“About if you have the PSEN1 gene, or one of the others. Don’t look so surprised. I’m as good at Google as you are. And I already know how I feel, which is that I could walk out of this bar and get hit by a bus and die instantly.”
“Oh, for God’s sake! Why does everyone always say that! Why is getting hit by a bus always the example!” I said. The exclamation marks emboldened themselves, growing larger with each sentence, along with the words themselves. “Also! You are not going to walk out of this bar and get hit by a bus, Chris! There are no buses here!”
“Point taken. Here’s a better example. I could walk into Foley Lumber tomorrow and be wandering around the plywood display and a sheet of plywood could come tumbling off the stack and hit me on the head and break my neck so that I die instantly.”
“Plywood? Please.”
“Plywood’s heavier than you think, Clara.”
“You’re willfully missing the point.”
“I’m not missing any point.” He reached across the table and put his hands over mine. “Clara. I’m signed on for the duration. Whatever the odds are.”
“The odds are fifty-fifty, Chris.”
“And I accept them.”
“Well, that makes one of us.”
I did not accept the bus odds, I did not accept the plywood odds, I did not accept the Sunshine cancer odds, I did not accept the PSEN1 odds. None of these were odds I accepted. But I was stuck with them anyway.
We all were.
* * *
A letter addressed to Tamar from a Frank Dutton at the Dairylea plant up in Plattsburgh came to the cabin on Turnip Hill. The yellow forwarding address label was affixed to it at an angle, the way they usually were, as if whoever slapped it on there did it in a hurry. Maybe it was a machine. A rebel machine. A machine constantly sent to detention. I slid my finger under the flap and opened it up.
Dear Tamar, We miss you up here and hope you’re doing well these days. Things aren’t the same without you. Wish you’d reconsider! Any chance lol? If not just wanted you to know that your sneakers and Dairylea jacket are in the locker—want me to send them to you? If so let me know. Hope you’re well, oh I already said that didn’t I? Well you know me, can’t keep my head on straight. Your friend, Frank
I didn’t remember a Frank Dutton or the mention of a Frank Dutton, but that was no surprise. Tamar never talked about work and I had never pictured her as having friends at Dairylea. Annabelle appeared in my head, rolling her eyes, her voice its usual impatient tone: Of course your mother had friends at Dairylea, Clara. She worked there for almost thirty years, Utica, Watertown, Plattsburgh, all over for God’s sake. Pick up the phone and call this Frank person, whoever the hell he is.
I picked up my phone and called the number scribbled at the bottom of this Frank person’s note, whoever the hell he was, politely not pointing out to Annabelle, even in my head, that Annabelle clearly didn’t know who this Frank person was either, and wasn’t she the one who called herself my mother’s best friend?
“Frank Dutton.”
“Hi, Frank. This is Clara Winter. I�
��m Tamar’s daughter.”
“You don’t say!” His voice transformed from business to warmth and welcome, words full of exclamation marks. “Tamar’s daughter! How is that mother of yours!”
“Doing okay,” I said, which was what I said every time someone asked me that question. “Hanging in there.”
“Where’s she living now? With you? Or with the boyfriend?”
The boyfriend? The boyfriend. The boyfriend? I pulled the phone away from my ear, then pressed it close again. The boyfriend. The boyfriend. The boyfriend the boyfriend the boyfriend the boyfriend the boyfriend, scrolling along the bottom of my brain. Out the window the sky was turning itself to navy; the light was gone by four-thirty these days. The boyfriend.
“What’s his name again?” Frank said. “I always called him Woodsman, for that Woodsmen’s Field Days cap he always wore, but I’ll be damned if I can remember his real name.”
When you weren’t looking for answers, not thinking about answers, answers appeared. Like now. There was only one man who wore a Woodsmen’s Field Days cap, and to my knowledge he had never taken it off.
“Eli,” I said. “Eli is his name.”
I listened to my voice saying his name and I listened as Frank Dutton kept talking in exclamation marks—Of course that was his name! How the hell is Eli, anyway! Is he coping with the whole thing okay? I’ll admit to you I was worried about Tamar when she drove up with him because, you know, she’s a hell of a woman, which of course YOU know because she’s your mother! But hell if she didn’t end up with a hell of a guy even if I only saw him just those few times all those years ago! Sorry for all these hells but you’re Tamar’s daughter, you can probably handle them!—but my brain hadn’t caught up to the information yet. Yes, it’d be great if you sent me the sneakers and her Dairylea jacket, and no, she isn’t with me or Eli at this point, she’s living in a care facility, actually, and yes, I sure will tell her, and yes, I will for sure stop by if I ever find myself up in that neck of the woods, and thank you so much. My voice kept speaking answers to his questions but my brain was on autopilot.
“She sure did talk about you, Clara,” was the last thing Frank Dutton said before we hung up, the exclamation marks gone from his voice. “Talked about you all the time, all those years. That spelling bee you won, that fancy college you got into, that book you wrote. I never saw a woman so proud of her kid.”
* * *
If the day ever came when I got the test and found out if I had or did not have the gene mutation, maybe it would feel the way this did, as if you were standing at the top of a peak that had been shrouded in clouds, and the clouds had broken suddenly. Behind you, all the way that you’d climbed, was your past. Ahead of you was your future. Here at the summit you held the jigsaw puzzle piece that placed pattern to chaos. The puzzle piece that gave you the information you needed to figure out certain things: A child or not. A spouse or not. A future that stretched out or didn’t.
Eli Chamberlain and Tamar Winter.
I sat on my chair on the porch, wrapped up in the quilt, and held the puzzle piece in my hand and looked back. Not thinking so much as reconfiguring. The times Eli had stopped by our house to bring Asa something he needed, the times the four of us had sat at the kitchen table and played blackjack or rummy. The times when, after Martha left, Tamar had given me a ride to Asa’s house and stopped in for a while. The times we had run into Eli at the gas station or the post office or the bank or the grocery store. The times we had been sitting in a booth at Crystal’s Diner and watched him push the door open and smile and wave.
All this time.
How long?
I did not know. There was no way to tell from the conversation with Frank Dutton.
I tried to imagine my way back into the way we were then. Asa and me. It had been a long time, and at first the same memories that conjured themselves up in my brain were the same ones that always did: Looking up from the pits below the bleacher to see Asa looking at me from the concession stand. Driving around the back roads late on summer nights, all the windows open and my hair blowing back in the breeze, him driving one-handed with the other hand holding mine. The notes that, before he graduated, he used to stick through the slats in my locker, each one a heart. A heart in crayon, a heart in pencil, a heart in pen, a heart made of tiny pieces of duct tape carefully angled together to form the necessary curving swoops.
All those images came to me the way they always did. They had long ago worn grooves into the pathways and circuitry of my brain. They would be with me forever, and even if I had the gene mutation they would be among the last to go, because the disease tended to rob your memories backward.
Knowing what I knew about Asa, what did he go through when he found out about his father and my mother? I tried to imagine my way into his mind and his heart. It was like a Words by Winter assignment x 1,000. Go back in time, to a time that was filled with so much confusion and hurt that you can’t bear to think about it, and think about it. Put yourself in your own place and then put yourself in another’s. This was when being the Winter of Words by Winter became unbearable.
I did it anyway. I sat on the porch and felt my way back into the darkness. High school. Asa had graduated. His mother had moved out. I conjured him in the rooms of the house he lived in with Eli, that house I knew so well, moving from kitchen to living room to bathroom to bedroom. I conjured up plates of food, the hiss of beer cans popped open, Eli watching over him, cooking for him, saying goodnight to him. How many days or weeks or months went by before Asa found out about his father and my mother? Feel your way back, Clara.
Someone looking at me on the porch might have seen a woman sitting still as wood in a chair in the night, but that would be only the chalk outline of the beaten body. Because when you go back, back, back down the back roads of your own time on earth, it takes all your energy. It takes all your focus. It takes almost more than you can bear, to feel your way into the heart of someone you loved and still love.
It was when I had made my way fully back into the heart of those conjured-up years that I knew when he had found out, and what he had done. The last of the missing puzzle pieces came to me on a lidded platter carried by a sorrowful servant, who set it silently down.
Asa would have blamed his father and Tamar for his bitter mother’s departure. He would have been furious and bewildered and filled with desperation. He would have seen no way out—his girlfriend’s mother? His own father? His mother? With me, his girlfriend, entirely in the dark?—and he would have cut himself out of the picture. What Asa would have done was exactly what he did: break up with me, enlist in the army, leave the next week for basic training and years as an army mechanic, and then, after the Twin Towers fell, go to Afghanistan.
* * *
And Tamar?
I went back in time with her too. I imagined my mother the way she had looked fifteen years ago. Not much different from now, if now had not traded so much balance and clarity for bewilderment. I imagined her in the kitchen of that house in the foothills, that house she had lived in all her life. Looking up from the work schedule she was trying to plot out for the week, her every-Sunday task, trying to keep to her normal routine even though earlier that night Asa had come by and told her he knew, he knew what was going on with her and his father, and how could she, what was she thinking, what about his mother, so what if she and his father had always had problems, and what about Clara, what about Clara, what about Clara, what about me and Clara, did you ever stop to think about us?
Asa.
Next day Asa was back, standing in the driveway with her daughter. Something was happening. I pictured my mother pulling the curtain aside with one finger, just enough to see out. A cool fall day, a hint of winter to come on the edges of the breeze. She had watched me stand in front of Asa, arms out, saying, “Why? Why, Asa, why?” She had watched Asa shake his head. Back and forth and back and forth. “Why, Asa?” Back and forth. “Why, Asa?” Back and forth.
My mot
her had watched Asa break up with me. Worlds were coming apart, and so was her child.
This was where it got harder. I had to be my mother, imagine myself into her with the knowledge that I now had, the knowledge that she and Eli Chamberlain had loved each other. What happened inside her, when she pulled that curtain aside and knew that Asa and I were no more?
Correction: This was where it should get harder. This was where I should go back and forth in my mind, trying to imagine exactly what went on inside my mother, the trying to figure out what to do now because Clara and Asa weren’t but she and Eli were. Could she and Eli keep seeing each other? Martha had moved out by then, a divorce was in the offing or soon would be; would somehow the children be okay if she and Eli, at some point in the future, were in the open? Could it all work, somehow? That scenario was what I should be trying to conjure up, what I should by way of imagination and empathy be ferreting my way into, except that there was no such scenario.
I already knew what had happened that day. What happened was that my mother witnessed the breakup, watched Asa try but fail to start his car, called Eli to come get his boy, and then called it off with Eli.
At that moment my heart clawed at itself the way Eli’s heart must have when my mother told him it was over. The sense of a man bent over his kitchen table, fingers clutching it for dear life, kept coming to me and I couldn’t shake it. He lost so much. His son. My mother. And me, too, the girl who, he told me once after he and Asa and I took the brewery tour and he had drunk the two beers they give you for free in the old-time parlor afterward, was like a daughter to him.
I got up from the porch and loaded my quilt-wrapped self into the Subaru, the way Annabelle Lee loaded herself into her ancient Impala, and I drove to Annabelle’s trailer. I told her what I thought I knew and I watched her eyes shift away from mine, up to the ceiling, then finally back to me.
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