by Lev AC Rosen
“I had more room up here,” she says, turning to look at Dad and knocking a fist on her head. “It was empty from all the nonsense they’d taught me at home.” His parents lean in toward each other, smiling.
“Hey, Mom,” Nick interrupts. “Can I tell you about the game I’ve been playing?”
“Sure, Nicky,” Mom says, still smiling at Dad. They were both focusing on each other and ignoring Nick, but he’d seen them do this before—it was gross—and he knew it was a great time to get away with stuff they’d otherwise say no to.
“There’s a character in it, Reunne, and I don’t know if I should trust her, and I was wondering if you thought I should.”
“Nick,” his father says, breaking his gaze from his mother’s and looking now directly at Nick. “What does this have to do with the school project?”
“I was just asking. I miss Mom talking to me while I played the game.”
Dad smiles sympathetically. “Let’s finish up the school questions first. Then you can ask about the game.”
“Okay,” Nick says, frowning. He looks down and smoothes out the questionnaire and keeps asking questions—the safe ones, approved by Dad. This isn’t what he wants to know. They go on for about half an hour more, and Nick learns that Mom loved to sew and fixed all her own clothes, and that she used to cook for the whole family. Cooked, sewed, and went to school and studied hard enough to get good enough grades to move on in her schooling and one day get a job that would let her leave Berlin. That’s what she wanted more than anything else.
“I knew my life was outside, Nicky,” she says, resting her hand on Nick’s leg. “So I studied hard and did the best I could. Like you should. Study hard, and you can do whatever you want.”
“Yeah, Mom,” Nick says, rolling his eyes. Do whatever you want until they say you have Alzheimer’s and lock you up.
“It’s time for the movie,” Dad says, looking at his watch. “Come on, they’re showing this one especially for you, Sophie.”
“Right,” she says, standing. “This will be fun.” Nick and Dad stand, and they walk back around to the front of the building, but Nick takes Mom’s hand and walks slower so that Dad is a little way ahead of them. He doesn’t want Dad hearing these questions.
“Mom,” he says, “are you Reunne?” He watches her face carefully, looking for a wink, a smile, an arched eyebrow to let him in on the game.
“What do you mean?” she asks. He walks quickly in front of her and spins so he can look at her eyes. They’re soft waves, no froth, no sharpness. Mom stops short in front of him. “What are you doing, Nicky?”
“I just…,” he says. “Are you still in there?”
Mom’s eyes widen and water a little, and it takes a moment before Nick realizes she’s giving him PityFace. He’s never seen it from her before.
“I’m right here,” she says, hugging his head to her shoulder. “Okay?”
“Yeah, Mom,” he says into her skin. She squeezes him tightly, and he lets himself be hugged because it feels warm and safe and reminds him of something good, though he isn’t sure what. It’s Mom. Not all of her. Not the sharp, clever parts of her, not the brave parts that know she needs to break out of herself before the drugs they give her mess up her brain for good, but there’s still enough of her. The parts that love him are still here. And that’s good for right now.
Not good for finding out if she’s Reunne, though.
“What are you doing?” Dad asks, walking back to them. “I turned around and you were behind me.”
“It’s okay, Lamont,” Mom says. “Nick just needed a hug.”
Dad grins. “Okay,” he says. “Well, come on. You can hug him during the movie, too.”
“Okay,” Mom says, letting go. The cool air rushes in around Nick’s face, and he thinks he can almost feel his ears pop. And then Mom takes his hand and they walk into the building. They walk down the hall toward the office where they met the doctor. But this time they turn left and come into a large open room, with a mix of sofas, armchairs, and folding chairs scattered audience-style in front of a big TV. There’s a big window at one end, but Jess is closing curtains over it, and the room darkens.
“Hi,” Jess says, turning around and walking toward them. “Here for the movie?”
“We are,” Dad says.
“Do you have the tickets?” Mom asks.
“Oh, you don’t need tickets here, Sophie,” Jess says.
“I know,” Mom says, her face turning pointed for a moment. “I was making a joke.”
“Oh,” Jess says, then laughs in a way that Nick can tell is forced. “Sorry. Of course. I’m just a little out of it today.”
“Happens to all of us,” Mom says in a voice with a touch of edge to it. Nick looks at Mom and she looks at him for a moment and grins, then winks. She’s there for a moment, and Nick is about to ask about Reunne, but Jess speaks first.
“Why don’t you all sit down?” Jess says. “I’m going to remind a few people that it’s movie time.”
“Thank you,” Dad says. Jess smiles, and leaves them alone in the room. “Let’s get a front-row seat.” Dad steers them toward a sofa right in front of the TV. They sit down, Nick at one end, Dad at the other, and Mom between them again. The sofa is so plush, it seems to suck him into it.
He stares at Mom, wondering if she’s still sharp, but she smiles down at him and he can tell she isn’t. The edge that was there for a moment is gone again, but the moment when she’d joked with Jess, that had confirmed it. She’s still in there. Nick just has to figure out how to get her out. Or wait…if it is Mom playing, she’s clearly sharp when she’s playing. Cotton-candy-fluff Mom wouldn’t be able to play Reunne.
He looks at the TV. It’s huge, and hanging on the wall. Under it is a low table with remotes and electronics on it. Including, Nick notices, a game console. But he doesn’t see the game anywhere. In fact, he doesn’t see any games or DVDs around. There’s a big cabinet in the corner, but he thinks if he opens it and starts looking for the game, his parents will try to stop him.
“This was one of the first German movies I ever saw,” Dad says. “It was our third date, I think. I went to the video store and asked for something German, so I could impress her. Turned out she hadn’t seen it either, because it was made in West Germany a few years before the wall fell. You remember?”
“It’s not the most romantic movie,” Mom says with a laugh. “But it was so sweet of him.” She kisses him on the cheek. Luckily, at that moment Jess comes back in with a few of the other residents in tow. The women among them are all so much older than Mom, so frail, like handfuls of dried grass. They look like the women at the mall who clutch their purses tighter as he walks past them, and for a moment he has a vision of Mom doing that, of his mom looking at him like they do, but then he remembers Mom isn’t like them, which is why he needs to get her out. That look the women give him is the reason he made Severkin a gray elf in the first place. They’re always suspected of being thieves and criminals, too.
Mom waves at the old ladies, and they say hello, and she introduces him and Dad to them. Nick smiles as best he can. Mom doesn’t belong here, surrounded by grandmothers. Is this how he’s going to end up? One day is he going to spend twenty minutes wondering where his keys are till his wife says “Alzheimer’s” and locks him up? Is he going to be like Mom, so afraid of himself that he chooses to get locked up in a place like this, spending most of his life with people so much older—missing his kids’ lives? He crosses his arms and leans back into the sink of the sofa, letting it drown him. Jess has the DVD in her pocket, and she takes it out and leaves the case next to the player as she puts the DVD in. She presses a few buttons, and the menu screen comes on. Wings of Desire. Nick rolls his eyes. Jess hits Play and sits down in the back.
“Why is it in black-and-white?” he whispers to his parents. “You said it was made in the eighties.”
“You’ll see,” Dad whispers back. “Now be quiet.”
Nick
leans back again, but as soon as the subtitles come on, he feels himself unfocusing, and he doesn’t really care. He waits ten minutes, then whispers that he’s going to the bathroom and leaves the room.
Without his parents, the home seems creepier. The sounds of medical machines, like giants gasping, footsteps, cackling old people—it may as well be haunted. Nick’s not sure he believes in ghosts, but either way, these people, sort of already dead, their minds going, are pretty close to ghosts, and most definitely real. He walks down the long hallway. He doesn’t really have to use the bathroom. But he does want to see his mother’s room, and maybe search it for some evidence—of why she’s here, of her being Reunne. Maybe something in the paintings.
No one pays him much attention except a man in a wheelchair who glares at him, spittle dribbling down his mouth. Nick walks by him quickly. He remembers the way to Mom’s room, upstairs.
The door to Mom’s room is closed but unlocked. Nick takes a breath and goes inside. It’s meticulously neat. The bed is made; not one piece of clothing is on the floor. But what’s weird is all the Post-its. There are Post-its on the window that read Close before bed and two on the door that say Close when dressing and Close behind you. There are a few on the desk, labeling each of the drawers Makeup, Hair Stuff, and Papers. And one on the photo of him and Dad on her mantel that says Lamont—husband. Nick—son. Nick peels that one off, folds it in the middle, and puts it in his pocket. She doesn’t need a Post-it to remember him.
He’s torn about what to look for—the shoebox of German stuff or something linking her to Reunne? He starts with the watercolors she painted, which are now hanging on the wall. They’re absolutely of the game. Wellhall, Bridgefall, and a new one that looks like it could be the undercity—maybe the small garden in front of Reunne’s home. But no people. No portraits of Severkin, like he was secretly hoping.
He opens the closet and looks for the shoebox that used to be in her closet at home, but doesn’t see it. He opens cabinets and quietly closes them again when all he finds are books. Then he goes through all the drawers. They’re each labeled, but Nick knows that if Mom was trying to hide something, she’d put it someplace unexpected, like he would. He goes through drawers of blouses and sweaters carefully, even one with underwear. He looks through the closet, in each of the pairs of shoes. Nothing. He crouches on the floor to look under the bed, and in the dark, he sees something glint. He reaches for it and pulls it back into the light, still kneeling on the floor. It’s Mom’s old cameo necklace—the ivory-on-ivory woman’s profile. He stares at it—it looks like old parchment in the light. It has nothing to do with Germany, he knows, nothing to do with Alzheimer’s. She bought it when he was four or five. He hears the door open and stands up quickly, trying to look natural. He leaves the necklace on the floor.
“What are you doing in here?”
Nick turns. It’s Maria.
“My mom wanted something,” Nick says. “I came up here to get it, but I can’t find it.”
Maria’s eyes scan the room, stopping for just a moment on the framed photo of Nick and Dad. “Uh-huh,” she says, looking skeptical, but also on the edge of laughter. “What did she want?”
“A neck pillow,” Nick says with surprising ease. He’s never thought of himself as a good liar.
“She doesn’t have a neck pillow,” Maria says, now full-on grinning.
“Well, I guess she got confused,” Nick says, and feels dirty for using Mom’s not-Alzheimer’s as a part of his lie.
“You’d better get back to the movie,” Maria says, moving out of the doorway. “She’ll miss you if you’re gone too long. I’ll find a neck pillow and bring it down.”
Nick leaves without saying anything, though he doesn’t break eye contact with Maria until he’s out the door. Then he slowly walks back to the movie room. He creeps back in and takes his seat on the sofa. Mom is leaning on Dad now, her hands wrapped around his arm, her head on his shoulder, eyes focused on the movie and unmoving even when Nick walks in. Dad raises an eyebrow.
“Got lost,” Nick whispers.
He doesn’t pay much attention to the rest of the movie, not even when it’s suddenly in color. Instead, he tries to work out what it is that brings out his full mom—the sharp Mom who plays as Reunne and tries to tell him things with eye movements. Maybe he could convince her to stop taking her meds, or visit her at night—that’s when Mom seems to be playing, too. That might be when her mind’s keenest. Then they could sit together and go through all her symptoms, what it feels like, and Nick could google them all and figure out what’s really going on, and how to cure it. Maybe there’s something he’s missed that only she can tell him.
When the movie is over, Jess turns the lights back on, and the few residents who are still awake stand and stretch. Jess starts rousing the others.
“Ich hatte einen sehr schönen Abend mit dir,” Mom says to Dad. Nick only knows a few words in German, and he hates it when his parents use it like code. They don’t very often, though, ’cause Dad is so bad at it. Even to Nick, his accent sounds weird.
“Es ist noch Nachmittag,” Dad says.
“What are you guys talking about?” Nick asks. “Can we go back outside? I want to ask Mom some more questions.”
“Ist das deine Wohnung?” Mom says. “Hattest du nicht gesagt sie sei sehr klein?”
Nick wonders if “speaking in German” should be a box on the checklist or if they’re just doing this so he can’t understand them. Probably that. Maybe box 6, but that’s for new problems with words, not speaking a language you’ve known longer than the one you normally talk in. And she doesn’t seem to be having problems with German.
“Nein, dies ist deine Hause,” Dad says. Then to Nick: “She’s saying she wants to go sleep for a while. I think I’m going to take her to her room, okay?”
“That’s not what she said,” Nick says, folding his arms. “The word for sleep is schlaf. Mom used to tell it to me all the time when I was little.”
“She used the word for rest,” Dad says. Then he turns back to Mom. “Sag auf Wiedsersehen zu unsere Sohn, dann kannst du dir ausruhen.”
Mom looks down at Nick and strokes his hair lightly. “Er ist ja ein ganz Lieber,” she says. “Was macht er hier? Das ist doch nicht deine Wohnung, oder? So hatte ich mir unser Rendezvous aber nicht vorgestellt….” She squints, as if dizzy, and turns back to Dad. “Was ist los? Irgendetwas stimmt hier nicht.” Her voice is higher now. Maybe they’re fighting. Sometimes they fight in German in an attempt not to upset him.
“Can I ask Mom just one more question?” he says.
“No, Nicky,” Dad says. “I’m taking her to bed. Komm mit, Sophie. Ich bringe dich zum Bett. Dann kannst du schlafen.”
He takes her by the hand and almost pulls her out of the room, but the expression on her face is angry and confused, and Nick wonders if this isn’t a fight between Mom and Dad but between Mom and Mom—his keen Mom wanting to stay, to tell Nick everything now that it’s getting later, while the drugs cloud her mind and tell her to go to sleep. Figures Dad would side with the drugs. Nick kicks the foot of the sofa, hard, and sits back down in it. A few of the residents and Jess look over.
“You okay?” Jess asks.
“Yeah.” Nick’s voice is insincere and he knows it. “I just wanted to ask Mom something, but…” He raises his hand, pointing in the direction his parents went, unable to really explain what just happened.
Jess comes over and sits down next to him. “What did you want to ask her?”
Nick cocks his head. “Do you…that is. You know the game, right? Wellhall? That Ms. Knight and I were talking about?”
“Oh yeah,” Jess says. “She can’t stop talking about it.”
“Do they have it here?” Nick asks.
“Yeah,” Jess says without hesitation. “I ordered it. When I first started work here, all they had was a TV, but then I showed all the doctors these studies on how gaming actually helps with memory problems, not to mention o
verall health, and they gave me a budget. I’m in charge of all the games, and Hillary, um, Ms. Knight, I mean, said I had to order this one. Usually I go for the movement games, to keep the residents on their feet, but puzzle ones are good, too.”
“Does my mom play it, do you know?”
Jess shakes her head. “I don’t know for sure. I’m not in here all the time. Why?”
“It’s just something we used to do together,” Nick says. “I wanted to know if she still was.”
“If it reminds her of you, I’m sure she still is,” Jess says, resting a hand on his shoulder for a moment. “Even when they forget why they’re doing something, sometimes residents still do them because they know they’re important. If it’s important to your mom, I’m sure she’s playing.” She takes her hand off his shoulder. It suddenly feels like a wind has come through, or like he’s taken a health potion, and he feels his chest swell a little. Recovery.
“Yeah,” he says. “Thanks.”
“No problem,” Jess says, standing. “And I’ll tell Ms. Knight you say hi.”
“Yeah,” Nick says. “Thanks.”
Just then an old man with a walker starts banging on the window, asking why it won’t open. Jess flashes a grin at Nick, then runs over to help the man.
Nick stands and walks out of the room, wanting to get away from the man, who is now arguing with Jess. Nick wanders out to the front porch and sits down among the other residents. Some nod at him and smile. Most ignore him. He thinks about what Jess said about residents doing things they know are important without knowing why they’re important, but he knows Mom knows what she’s doing. It’s too conscious—the way Reunne talks about growing up in the undercity is like a lesson—and it’s so similar to what he’s heard about East Berlin. The food, the being watched. Maybe it’s Mom trying to show him what her life was like—answer his questions—the best way she can. He nods and scratches his chin. It makes sense, in a weird way. But that’s exactly how Mom would educate him—through the thing he loves most. It’s just like when she used to sit behind him, watching him play and telling him what all the stories came from—the history and mythology behind them. But now she’s making it her own history.