by Cronk, LN
She’d been retired for exactly three weeks.
That had been a hard phone call to get . . . and now I knew that it had been a hard phone call for my dad to make. Funny how I’d never thought about that until now.
Laci came out of the bathroom, disturbing my thoughts. She had her sweatshirt on now and was pulling her hair into a ponytail.
“Get up!” she said when she saw that I was still in bed.
“Why?”
“Because – I told you we need to go to the grocery store.”
“Why do I have to go?”
She stopped winding the ponytail holder around her hair and stared at me.
“I . . . I just think we should both go,” she said hesitantly.
“I’ll be fine here by myself,” I told her.
“I know,” she stammered. “That’s not it . . .”
“What is it then?” I asked.
She stared at me for another moment and then finally said, “Are you sure you’ll be alright?”
“I’ll be fine,” I promised. “I’ll wash some dishes while you’re gone.” (Last night she’d dropped a plate when she’d pulled it down from the cupboard and discovered a dead spider lying on top of it.)
She hesitated for another moment, but then finally agreed and – giving her hair a final twist – walked over to me and kissed me on the cheek. “I love you.”
“I love you, too,” I said, and then, when she didn’t move, I told her, “I’ll be fine. Now go.”
She gave me one last reluctant look and finally left. When I heard the car pull out of the driveway, I reached over to the night stand and picked up my phone.
I called Tanner, knowing that he was teaching and wouldn’t answer, but I left what I hoped was a nonchalant message on his voicemail, asking him to give me a call when he had the chance. After that, I swung my legs out of bed and then made my way downstairs.
When I reached the kitchen I flipped on the light, surveyed the room, and sighed.
What a disaster . . . no wonder the house hadn’t sold yet.
After Mom had died, Dad had decided not to retire. I think the idea of spending his days alone in the house that he and Mom had worked so hard on was more than he could bear. Apparently he also couldn’t muster up enough energy or desire to complete any of the projects the two of them had started, but never finished.
After Mom’s funeral, Laci and the kids had gone back to Mexico, but I had stayed around for a few weeks to try to help out. Eventually, of course, I’d needed to get back to work and to my family, but – before I left – Chris and Jessica and I had all tried to get him motivated to fix stuff up.
Jessica had offered to paint, but Dad claimed he didn’t know what colors he wanted to go with. The lawn never got seeded so weeds grew up instead (and in the years that followed he mowed them down only about once a month if Chris didn’t come over and do it for him first). I said I’d pay someone to tile the kitchen floor, but Dad insisted that he was going to do it himself and one day he bought some cheap, vinyl flooring and put that down instead.
Once it had become obvious that he wasn’t going to take care of the place, we had gently suggested that he might want to consider moving into something that didn’t require quite as much upkeep, but he wouldn’t hear of it, and things had been going steadily downhill ever since.
Now – as I stood staring into the kitchen – I noticed that the vinyl flooring was loose and curling on the edges where it met the hardwood floor of the dining room. Three boxes of ceramic tile were stacked in front of the cupboards to the right of the fridge (the countertops were still just bare particle board). I took down some plates and bowls from the cupboard to wash and thought I saw a mouse dropping in one of the bowls. I decided not to look too closely, sighed again, and I turned the faucet on.
I had cleaned only one cup when the doorbell rang. I dried my hands, threw the dishtowel over my shoulder and walked into the living room. Then I opened the front door and looked onto the porch . . . it was Mrs. White.
Like my dad, Mrs. White had also moved into an assisted living facility about a year earlier. Hers, however, was quite different from the place where my dad lived. At Mrs. White’s, there were several levels of care available, including one for people who (like my dad) needed constant supervision. But there was also an independent-living section. This is where Mrs. White lived and she was provided with one meal each day in the main dining room, light housekeeping once a week (including fresh linens) and little call buttons throughout her apartment that she could push if she ever had any trouble. She cooked almost every day, walked for at least an hour when the weather was nice, and drove herself to the YMCA three times a week to do water aerobics and use the exercise machines. She also still drove five hours at least once a month to visit Charlotte and Jordan in Chicago and she had a cat and two finches (which, personally, I thought was a poor combination).
As soon as I saw Mrs. White’s face I could tell immediately that she already knew.
“Hi,” I said, trying to smile at her.
“Hi, honey,” she answered as she gave me a long, tight hug. “How are you doing?”
“Lovely.”
“I’m so sorry,” she whispered, rubbing my back. I nodded against her.
“Who told you?” I asked when we pulled apart from one another. “Jess?”
“No,” she answered, shaking her head. “Charlotte called me about ten o’clock last night.”
I knew Lily was going to call Jordan. I closed my eyes at the thought of Charlotte finding out.
“Can I come in?”
“Oh!” I said, opening my eyes and stepping aside. “Sorry.”
“Am I catching you at a bad time?” she asked, eying the dish towel.
“No,” I said, following behind her. “I was just trying to clean up a bit.”
“Ahhhh,” she said, knowingly.
We sat down on the couch.
“How . . . how’s Charlotte doing with it?” I asked.
“About like you’d expect.” (Which meant not good.)
“I’m sorry,” I said, shaking my head. “I was going to call both of you today.”
“It’s alright,” Mrs. White assured me, then, “How are you doing with it?” She spoke gently, putting her hand on top of mine.
“I don’t know,” I said, shaking my head again. I gave her a small shrug.
She gave me another knowing look.
“Where’s Laci?” she asked after a moment.
“Grocery store.”
Mrs. White nodded.
“How’s she handling it?”
I started to answer, but couldn’t. Instead I covered my eyes with my hand and shook my head one last time. Mrs. White put her arm around me and pulled me close and I felt the tears coming.
Resting against Mrs. White like that, being comforted by her, was familiar to me, and I let her hold me for a minute.
But then, my phone rang and I pulled away, wiping my eyes so that I could see the screen.
“It’s Tanner,” I said. She nodded at me and I took a deep breath before I answered it.
“Hi,” I said, managing to sound (in my opinion) fairly normal.
“What’s up?” he asked. I could tell just by the tone of his voice that he didn’t already know.
“I wondered if you wanted to grab a bite to eat tonight?” I asked, standing up and beginning to pace around the living room.
“You’re in town?”
“Yep.”
“I thought you guys weren’t gonna be back until summer . . .”
“We had some stuff to take care of,” I explained vaguely, glancing at Mrs. White.
“Is your dad okay?”
“Yeah . . . well, you know. About the same.”
“I saw him a few days ago,” Tanner said.
“You did?” I asked. “Where?”
“At the nur-sing-home?” Tanner suggested slowly as if he were speaking to a demented three-year old.
“You went t
o see my dad at the nursing home?”
“No,” he said, wryly. “I went to the nursing home to grab some puréed steak. I just happened to see your dad while I was there.”
He visited my dad at the nursing home . . .
I closed my eyes again.
“So do you want to have dinner tonight,” I finally asked, “or are you already busy?”
“Let’s see,” he said, more to himself than to me. “The girls play at home tonight and the JV game starts at six . . . but as long as everybody shows up like they’re supposed to I can probably get away by six-thirty or so. Then if I could get back by eight-thirty or nine to make sure everything gets locked up and the refs get paid . . . Yeah, that’ll work alright.”
“You sure?”
“Yeah, I’m sure,” he said. “Where ya wanna meet?”
“I don’t care.”
“There’s this new Italian-American place across from the Y, where the bowling alley used to be . . . wanna try there?”
“Sure,” I agreed. “I’ll meet you there a little after six-thirty.”
We hung up and Mrs. White and I looked at each other.
“This is going to be another great day,” I told her.
She looked at me understandingly.
“Are you doing anything for dinner tonight?” I asked.
“You don’t want me there,” she said, shaking her head.
“No,” I agreed. “But I was thinking it would really be good for Laci if you two spent some time together.”
“I’d love to have dinner with her,” she nodded.
“Thanks.” I looked at Mrs. White for a moment and then said, in almost a whisper, “I’m so worried about her.”
“I know you are.”
“This is going to be so hard on her.”
“God is going to take care of her, David,” she said softly. “You have to believe that.”
“I don’t want her to have to go through this,” I said, my voice breaking.
She put her hand on mine again and looked into my eyes. “He’s not going to give her anything that she can’t handle.”
“I don’t want her to have to handle anything!”
“He loves her even more than you do,” she reminded me gently.
I looked away, not really wanting to cry again.
“I made a living will,” I finally said after a long while, changing the subject slightly.
“That’s good,” Mrs. White nodded.
“And I’m going to make a file for her of all the things she needs to know about our accounts and stuff. Everything’s pretty automated,” I went on, “but she doesn’t even know where half our money is or what bills we pay every month or anything. I always take care of all that kind of stuff.”
“That’s a good idea,” she agreed.
“She’s finally going to have to learn to use a computer.”
Mrs. White smiled.
“I’m just . . . I’m just going to try and do whatever I can to make things as easy for her as possible.”
She nodded again.
“I told her I wanted to go into a nursing home as soon as I started to get bad,” I went on, “but she threw a fit.”
“You what?”
“I told her I wanted to go into a nursing home as soon as–”
“A nursing home?” Mrs. White interrupted. “You honestly thought that somehow you were going to be able to talk Laci into putting you into a nursing home?”
“What’s wrong with a nursing home?” I asked defensively. “You’re the one who talked me into convincing Jessica that we should put Dad into a nursing home!”
“I know,” she answered.
“And you’re practically living in one yourself!”
“I know,” she said again, patiently.
“So why can’t I go into one?”
She looked at me incredulously for a moment.
“Do you even know Laci?” she finally asked. I had a feeling it was a rhetorical question, so I didn’t answer.
“What has she spent her whole life doing?” she went on.
“Uhhh . . . working at the orphanage?”
“No,” Mrs. White said. “Her whole life. What has her whole life been about?”
“Uhhh . . .” I tried again. “God?”
She rolled her eyes at me.
“Honestly,” she muttered, “how can someone as smart as you are be so stupid?”
I figured this was another rhetorical question.
“Yes, God,” she went on, “but that’s not what I’m talking about. What makes Laci happier than anything else in the world?”
Not the orphanage . . . not God . . .
She rolled her eyes at me a second time and shook her head, giving me a look that was full of something between disbelief and disgust.
“It’s not rocket science, David . . . it’s Laci.” She stared at me earnestly and then finally said quietly, “Hasn’t Laci’s whole life been about helping other people?”
Oh.
I nodded slowly.
“And so,” she continued, “instead of putting you into a nursing home and letting other people take care of you, doesn’t it stand to reason that Laci would want to be the one to take care of you herself?”
I nodded a little more emphatically. That actually did make a whole lot of sense.
We heard the front door open and Mrs. White looked at me intently. Then she gave my hand a squeeze.
“And you need to let her,” she added quietly. She patted my hand and then went to greet Laci at the front door.
Getting up off of the couch I followed after her, taking both of the bags from Laci that she was carrying (so that she and Mrs. White could hug each other). Then I carried the bags into the kitchen (so that I wouldn’t have to see Laci’s eyes filling with tears as Mrs. White whispered words of encouragement to her).
Setting them down on the counter, I started unloading the groceries. The first thing I pulled out of one of the bags was a package of powdered sugar mini-doughnuts (my favorite) and immediately after that I found a six-pack of Coke in glass bottles (another favorite).
I couldn’t help but smile. Both of these things were – in Laci’s opinion – all but toxic. It went against every fiber of her being to buy them for me, but (just like Mrs. White had said) Laci wanted nothing more than to help other people.
It might seem paradoxical to think that her buying me something she considered practically poisonous could be considered “helping” me, but I knew that Laci wasn’t worried about my nutritional intake right now. Laci just wanted to see me smile.
I tried to remember the last time that I had smiled and I realized immediately that it had been two days earlier – at the pancake house in Rochester.
Although I’d just been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s less than an hour before, I had been in a surprisingly good mood at that point because I was still feeling pretty happy to know that I didn’t have brain cancer. While we’d been waiting for our food, I’d joked around with Laci about the side effects of my new medicine (and had even gotten a smile from her, too).
But after that, my mood had gone downhill rather quickly once we’d gotten back to Mike and Danica’s and I’d seen how upset they were about my diagnosis. And the next day we’d had to tell Jessica and the kids about it and that, of course, had only made things worse. I definitely hadn’t smiled since my joke about groin rashes at the restaurant.
And, I realized, Laci hadn’t smiled since then either.
I looked at the doughnuts again and was suddenly struck with a thought.
I wonder . . .
I heard Laci and Mrs. White coming into the kitchen and I glanced at the doughnuts one more time.
Was it really that simple?
“Would you like to have some breakfast with us?” Laci was offering to Mrs. White as they reached the kitchen.
“Well . . .” she hedged.
“I’ve got plenty of food,” Laci assured her. “I bought cereal and bagels and baco
n and eggs and dough–”
“And that’s it,” I interrupted, snatching the doughnuts off of the counter and hiding them behind my back.
Laci looked at me, surprised.
“That’s it,” I said again, ignoring Laci’s stare and looking at Mrs. White. “We’ve got cereal and bagels and bacon and eggs and if you don’t like any of that then you can go to McDonalds and get something.”
“David!” Laci cried.
“What?” I asked innocently.
“You are not going to eat all sixteen of those by yourself!”
“All sixteen of what?”
She put one hand on her hip and held out her other one. “Give those here!”
“I don’t have anything,” I said, backing away. With my free hand I grabbed the Coke and pulled that behind my back too.
“David!” she cried again.
“What?” I asked again.
“You have to share those!”
“No, I don’t!”
“David!” Laci scolded. “Give Mrs. White a doughnut!”
“I don’t have any doughnuts,” I insisted, taking another step away from her. I was backed up against the counter when Mrs. White’s phone rang
“It’s okay,” she assured Laci, looking at her phone. “I really don’t need any doughnuts.”
“There,” I said, as Mrs. White stepped into the living room to answer her call. “She doesn’t want any anyway.”
“I didn’t buy them just for you!”
“Yes, you did,” I smiled, taking a step toward her. She looked at me, perplexed, and I went on. “You bought them for me because you love me.”
She opened her mouth as if to say something, but then closed it again. She appeared to be taken aback.
“And,” I continued, stepping even closer and putting my arms around her waist, “you wanted to make me happy.”
I think she was completely baffled by the way I was acting, but when I lowered my lips to hers she let me kiss them. I squeezed her gently because I was still holding the doughnuts and the Coke and when I pulled away I smiled at her again.