Family Affair

by Caprice Crane

  “About an hour ago, to answer the first question, and I did just now. And remember that lady with Rex the cat? Um, turns out she’s a bank manager.”

  “Dad cheated on Mom,” Scott mutters slowly and quietly, still stunned.

  “I did not, Scott,” Dad says. “We can talk later.”

  The confused and horrified April finally speaks up. “Are you all where you’d like to be for this photo? I have some other people coming and—”

  “We’re perfect right where we are,” Trish says.

  “Okay. On three, then, everyone say ‘Holly-Days’!” April exhorts. This wipes the smile off even Trish’s face. We stare at our teenage photographer as one seething mob. “They make us say that,” she explains sheepishly. “One … two …”

  “Wait—where are Mom and Pop?” my mom asks suddenly and frantically, for some reason using the names by which her own parents went. All of us turn our attention to her.

  “Three!” Click.

  Not exactly a keepsake portrait.

  “Is that an existential question?” Trish asks. But the way our mom is looking around isn’t lost on any of us. This wasn’t a charming attempt to lighten the mood, break the tension, or change the subject. She was serious. She’s looking for her parents, my grandparents. But they’re not coming. They’ve been dead for ten years.

  “If we’ve come all the way downtown for a portrait, we really should wait for Mom and Pop,” she says anxiously.

  My dad just puts his arm around her and walks her outside.

  layla

  After that, um, atypical photography session I wasn’t sure what was going on with the Fosters, but later that night, when no one else is home, Bill calls me to come over. He has me follow him upstairs to what has become an office of sorts, full of boxes and magazines in stacks, papers piled neatly around a desk.

  Behind the tallest pile he finds a box with metal edge protectors. He sits me down, pops the top, then pulls out a stack of letters.

  I thumb through them, not getting it at first but then noticing they all have Return to Sender stamps. And the addressee? Brett’s Aunt Evelyn, Ginny’s sister.

  “Check the postmarks,” Bill says. A year ago, nine months, six months, a few weeks. “Go ahead and read one,” he suggests.

  I pull out the top letter. It’s an invitation to Thanksgiving.

  That’d have been a hell of a stretch for Aunt Ev. She’s been dead for eight years.

  brett

  I had to run a few errands, but I call Dad as soon as I get home, and it keeps going to voice mail—meaning he’s probably avoiding the whole thing for a while. Or maybe he’s on the phone with someone else who wants to know what the hell is going on but doesn’t want to hold a group discussion. That’d definitely be my style.

  I finally reach him after an hour. “Alzheimer’s?” I ask after a very long pause.

  “I don’t know,” he replies. “The woman in question, whom your sister mistakenly believed I was having an affair with, is June, a college friend of mine—a married woman whose sister-in-law is suffering from Alzheimer’s. She agreed to meet me for coffee, to talk me through some of Mom’s symptoms and see if it all added up. Trish saw her giving me a supportive hug and made all the wrong assumptions. You know Trish. She can get a little overprotective, and she jumps to conclusions. I didn’t want to say anything to you kids about the Alzheimer’s until I knew more, so I just put up with your sister’s nonsense while I sorted it out. I made an appointment for Mom to see our doctor later this week, but she seems to be worsening, so I’ve pushed it up to tomorrow. You can come if you want.”

  The rest of what he says sounds like Charlie Brown’s teacher to me, that waa-waa language that’s undecipherable. I hear my dad say things like “forgetful” and “disoriented,” and they hit me like a Mack truck. You hear statistics—“fourteen percent, one in seven, 1.7 million”—and it seems remote. Like tsunamis hitting faraway islands. As if you’re somehow immune. It’s like they say: Nothing really happens in the world until it happens to you. He’s talking, but none of it makes sense. And strangely, the person I avoided throughout the entire Sears photo shoot is the only person I really want to talk to right now. Not Heather, not Doug. Layla.

  After hanging up with my dad, I stare at my broken toaster for about five minutes then lift the phone to call. I hang up before I even dial. I hold the phone in my hand and just stare at it while it gurgles out a new dial tone. How is it, I ask myself, in my moment of greatest need, that my go-to person is her? And how did I lose that?

  I know how, and it’s my own doing. Worse—I’m not sure if I want to reach out to her because she’s the only one I’m used to confiding in or because I really miss her. I’ve been having these pangs lately, but I just don’t know what the right move is. Do I call her? Is that totally selfish? She’s going through this, too, though. My mom is just as much a mom to her as she is to me, minus the first fourteen years. And Layla’s already lost one mom. Not that my mom’s going anywhere. If she was going somewhere, she’d never know how to get there. Fuck.

  “So this totally wack-a-doo family walks into a Sears …” I say, when I hear Layla answer the call.

  “Is this a joke?” she says.

  “I wish it was,” I admit. “How are you?”

  “Shitty. How are you?”

  “Same.”

  We both hold the phone in silence. Somehow I feel comforted knowing that she’s on the other end, but somehow I don’t think she feels the same.

  “What do you want, Brett?” she asks.

  “I just wanted to talk to you.”

  “About?” she asks.

  “Everything.”

  “Everything ‘us’? Or everything ‘your mom’?”

  I think for a minute, because I want to be honest, and in probably half that time she knows the answer. She probably knew the answer before she asked the question.

  “My mom,” I say.

  “Yeah,” she says. “That’s what I thought.”

  “I’m sorry,” I say.

  “Me, too.” And we sit in silence for another long while. She finally breaks it. “Nothing’s for sure. Your dad will take her in for tests, so before we get all of the information, let’s not think the worst.”

  “Always the optimist,” I say.

  Layla is. Always has been. When I was young and thought I was some brooding Jack Kerouac type, she’d call me on my pessimism. She’d say, “Always the pessimist,” and I’d correct her and say, “I’m a realist, man,” and she’d laugh at me because she recognized that I wasn’t nearly as cool as I thought I was but would never dare tell me.

  More silence sets in. Naturally, the first thing that comes to mind never should have left my mouth: “Well, at least Dad’s temporarily in the clear on the whole affair thing.”

  “Huh,” is all she says.

  Huh.

  I feel so confused by this new information about my mom. I probably shouldn’t be reaching out to Layla, but I don’t know any better. I don’t know any different. She’s always been there. And in a true testament to her character, she hasn’t hung up on me yet. Which I damn well know I deserve. She’s not talking, though. She’s letting me lead the conversation. And I don’t know what to say.

  I hear her sigh, and I press the phone closer to my ear. Then the reason behind the sigh sinks in and I step outside my self-centeredness and speak up. “I should let you go.”

  “Okay,” she says, and that hurts worse than I thought. Did I want her to say, “No, I’m here, we can stay on the phone”? Probably. But she doesn’t owe me that. I’ve totally destroyed her reality, and here I am trying to lean on her when she’s got no one to lean on herself.

  “Okay,” I say. “Thanks for… Just thanks,” I say, and I hang up.

  layla

  I’m not sure what he expects from me. When I saw his name on my phone’s caller ID, I desperately wanted to ignore it yet couldn’t answer fast enough. And then I couldn’t get off the
call fast enough.

  I don’t know my place in the family anymore, but they’ve been my whole world for so many years that it doesn’t seem like now, in this time of possible crisis, that I should back off. At the same time, I can’t watch another mother disintegrate. Ginny stepped up and for all intents and purposes has been a mother to me since I lost my own, and the thought of losing Ginny to another horrendous disease is too much to bear.

  I know it’s the natural order of things to lose one’s parents eventually. They always say what a tragedy it is for a parent to outlive their child—but what about the child who is still a child? That doesn’t feel natural. And certainly not in this lightning-strikes-twice scenario. Not that Ginny is dying, but the mere thought of her being sick or in pain in any way ties me in knots. I find my eyes tearing up at regular intervals for irregular reasons. Like when I’m looking at an inscription on the side of a Starbucks coffee cup. Or when I’m catching up on news stories. Or when I’m breathing.

  There’s no acceptable reason for this. The fact that this news is happening around the holidays makes it that much more difficult.

  brett

  On the way to the doctor’s office with my dad and mom, I look out the window at the restaurants, dry cleaners, tire stores, banks, and juice places. For a moment, it seems to me that they are all different now. I’m not sure how, but the world has tilted.

  And because of it, I feel that no one should be going about life as though nothing’s happened. Maybe the stores should all close so I don’t see content, disinterested people wandering about. It’s a self-centered thought, that they all should be as bewildered and anxious as we are, somehow. But they’re not. It’s a strange scene to my mind, which now wants time to stop for a while—and perhaps start going backward. But that’s not going to happen, obviously.

  I said I wanted to tag along, and as hard as it will be to hear whatever the doctor has to say, it would be even harder not to be there.

  Scott and Trish are already waiting when we arrive. The room is tiny. We all cram in, which makes the situation that much more uncomfortable.

  “I’m sorry, honey,” my mom says to me.

  “What? Don’t be. This is nothing to be sorry about. It’s not your fault.”

  “I’m just sorry you have to go through this,” she says. “I know you’re frightened.”

  “Don’t worry about me, Mom,” I say. “I’m fine.”

  I’m not fine. I’m anything but fine. I wish Layla was here right now.

  The doctor walks in and introduces himself. Dr. Frankel. He asks us all to take a seat and says that he’ll go over everything, but if we have any questions while he’s explaining how the testing will go, we should feel free to ask.

  “The first thing we’re going to do is a CT scan and an MRI,” Dr. Frankel says. “We’ll do this to rule out tumors, hemorrhages—maybe she had a mild stroke and nobody knew—and hydrocephalus, which can masquerade as Alzheimer’s disease.”

  There. He said it. The dreaded A-word. I heard my mom catch her breath when he said it, which made it that much worse.

  He goes on. “These scans can also show the loss of brain mass associated with Alzheimer’s disease and other dementias. In Alzheimer’s, the region of the brain known as the hippocampus may be disproportionately atrophied. If we see this, then it’s pretty straightforward.”

  “Okay,” my mother says.

  “We’ll do an EEG to detect abnormal brain-wave activity. Typically, an EEG is normal in people with mild Alzheimer’s disease. The EEG is, again, meant to rule out other types and causes of dementia, Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, for instance.”

  “Okay,” she says again.

  “Your symptoms do match up with early-onset Alzheimer’s. I’ll know better when we’ve examined your scans and administered some tests.” He goes on to explain the neuropsychological tests they’ll do both as interviews and as paper-and-pencil tests. He tells us these tests will take several hours, and they might agitate my mom. He warns us that she may get frustrated having to answer what seem like obvious questions but that we should reassure her and help keep her calm if anything should arise. These tests are used to determine which areas of cognitive function are impaired and which areas are still intact. They assess memory, reasoning, writing, vision-motor coordination, comprehension, and her ability to express ideas.

  There’s one thing I notice throughout the visit. It’s that my mother says “okay” to everything. That’s not who she is. Before now she’d have asked for a second, a third, a seventeenth opinion, called the doctor a fine young man (but a little goofy), and told him the carpet was fine and not at all the problem—but the window treatments were another matter. But she’s just accepting of everything the doctor tells her. This is what kills me. Because for every “okay” she utters, the look on her face says otherwise.

  For some reason my mom doesn’t grasp the severity of the situation. It becomes very apparent to me that until this moment she thought there was another option. That maybe she could just take a bunch of ginkgo and she’d be okay. And yet once she hears everything the doctor says, she’s just so resigned.

  I feel helpless. I feel scared for her. I’m never comfortable in doctors’ offices to begin with, but when I see my mom this vulnerable, it’s just too much to take. I notice my dad keeps looking at me to make sure I’m okay, when really the only person we should be concerned about is Mom.

  When all is said and done the doctor asks if we have any questions. The only question I can think to ask is Why? But I don’t ask.

  • • •

  The tests come back positive. Which sounds so misleading. Positive. She has Alzheimer’s. The doctor explains the different medicines. He tells us the one he’s leaning toward doesn’t cure it—nothing does—but it will improve her thinking, memory, attention span, and ability to do simple tasks.

  We’re all crowded into the same tiny room again as we listen to the doctor give us the results of her memory screening and diagnostic workup. He tells us about her orientation, attention, cognitive skills, and recall. He tells us again that her test results are all consistent with Alzheimer’s. Every time he says it I flinch. They can’t stop the disease, but they can slow the progression in some people. He tells us of the emotional, physical, and financial challenges of caring for someone with Alzheimer’s, and mentions that caregivers are subject to high levels of stress and that we should all do as much research on the subject as possible, which will not only help my mom but will also help us understand and cope.

  Then he starts talking about her diet. Says he’d also like her to take vitamin E and vitamin C twice a day, and tells us that a diet rich in omega-3 fatty acids could positively impact cognitive decline. I notice that everything he says is directed at us. Not her. It dawns on me that my mom can no longer take care of herself. And I want to cry.

  Instead I storm out. Then I cry.

  layla

  Trish tells me that Ginny has Alzheimer’s, and I sob. I sob for Ginny, for Trish, for Brett, for Scott, for Bill, for me. Trish and I cancel all our appointments that day and cry together. Then we resolve not to be a couple of sad sacks … and then cry some more.

  brett

  Christmas shopping. I fuckin’ hate it. It’s the one time of year when people bug me, stores with people in them bug me, and parking lots bug me. (Okay, parking’s a year-round pain in the ass, but the holidays make it even more fun.) I do feel that people are a little friendlier around Christmastime, but the trade-off isn’t worth it. Where do these people hide for the rest of the year, and can they please go back there? And do they really need to bring their screaming kids shopping with them?

  I have to buy presents for the family, of course, but a new conundrum has reared its ugly head: What about Heather? Are she and I at Christmas-gift-giving-level seriousness? And if so, wouldn’t any gift further emphasize how serious we are? I’ve heard friends talk about it, and now I can see why they hate when a birthday or gift-giving holida
y comes at the beginning stage of a relationship. There’s so much pressure. Well, I guess it depends. It can be cool if you’re really into the person and want to show how much you dig them. But what if you’re tentative? At your own peril, it’s wise to avoid at all costs the gift that screams, “I’m feeling really tentative about this!”

  And what about Layla? I know under normal circumstances a divorcing couple wouldn’t buy gifts for each other, but these aren’t normal circumstances, and Layla is positively not normal. I know she’s going to be at our house. She’s at pretty much every event we have, holiday or otherwise. So do I get her a present? Coal? Do I not bring Heather around? Or do I bring her along to give Layla a strong hint: You should get one of these, too—and while you’re at it, get your own family.

  It’s in this throwaway notion—the idea of her finding her own family—that I get a sort of twisted inspiration to go out and do just that. She does have a family. I mean, she has a dad out there. Somewhere. Who’s to say that if I track her father down and bring him to her it won’t be a tearful reunion—the stuff Oprah episodes are made of? It’ll be a bonus for me if he takes her off my hands. I mean, deep down I know she’d like to have a relationship with the guy. Who wouldn’t want a relationship with their father?

  Somehow I have it in my mind that this is going to be an epic search, tracking down this long-lost father. But it turns out that pride was the only thing ever really in the way of finding the guy. After a little Internet-aided detective work, and some guesswork about what you’d call yourself if your stage name was Nicky Foxx, I find Nicholas Foxx still living in the area: Hollywood Blvd., Apt. 4G, Hollywood, CA 90028. It angers me when I find this listing. How do you spend your whole life—or at least the last twenty-seven years of it—living twelve minutes from your only daughter and not ever attempt a reconciliation? Sure, Layla didn’t hunt him down, either, but one of them was supposed to be the adult. It’s probably hard for an already-rejected daughter to imagine anything has changed and to retain that kind of hope.