by J D Ventura
“Jesus, Claire, you didn’t tell me you’re married to a creature from the feline family. My God, if computers don’t pan out for you, Sam, you have a bright future as a cat burglar. You scared us half to death!”
Sam walked out onto the patio, near-beer in hand, his blue Oxford shirt untucked in the back, his hair tousled, his stubble showing more silver than the last time he let it grow in. “I know I must look like shit from my four-hour drive, but is it really that frightening, ladies?” He pulled up a chair and sat between them, resting his burgundy leather slip-ons on the unlit stone fire pit, into which he threw the cap from his just-opened O’Doul’s. “Sorry if I interrupted some good girl talk. Stephanie, where is Marc today? Still at work?”
“Yes, he doesn’t get back to the Village until 7 usually.”
“I met some more neighbors today,” Claire offered.
“So, you met the Hershels?” Stephanie said matter-of-factly, but with just a hint of annoyance. “I kind of hate that bitch. She’s chair of the neighborhood association, and she’s let it go to her head.”
Sam looked somewhat bemused as he took a sip of his beer. “There’s a neighborhood association? And who are the Hershels again? Do they live on the other side of you and Marc? The house with that horrendous fountain?”
“That very one, yes,” said Stephanie. “Some people around here take the association a bit too seriously. There are lot of bylaws and rules. Marie and her followers-”
“She has followers?” Claire asked.
Sam laughed at this. “Is she running a cult?”
“More like a clique. Anyway, yes, the Hershels live next door. Marie, the wife, obviously, is very much opposing some of our efforts,” said Stephanie, suddenly seeming to choose her words carefully.
“What kind of efforts?” asked Sam.
“It’s complicated,” replied Stephanie dismissively, an expression on her face that Claire interpreted as regret for mentioning it.
“Stephanie, you obviously don’t like this woman,” Claire offered. “No offense, but how important could the issues the neighborhood association are wrestling with be? I mean, it’s obviously something contentious. You called her a bitch.”
Stephanie thought for a moment, a regretful frown on her face. “Umm, well, for example, if I and a few others had our way, the wall around the Village would be torn down. We’d integrate ourselves into the community. Get to know the locals, not wall ourselves away from them. Marie and her people believe in separation, between us and them.”
“Them?” asked Claire.
“Yes, them. The locals,” she said, suddenly on her feet and throwing her purse over her shoulders. “Anyway, I don’t mean to bore you with stories of neighborhood politics. You two haven’t seen each other in days. I’m overstaying my welcome.”
“When are these meetings? I’d love to attend,” Claire said. Stephanie’s face went white and she let out a nervous laugh. “Oh, they’re dreadfully boring, Claire. I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy.”
“Claire,” Sam offered. “Neighborhood politics were never your thing, babe. Remember when you were on the condo board, for like a week?”
“Sam, they argued for three meetings about whether to replace the broken garage door. It was insane.”
“Oh, God, well, you definitely don’t want to even consider this neighborhood association. It’s currently very divisive and, at times, if you’re at all thin-skinned, openly hostile.”
“Don’t worry,” Sam said to Stephanie while looking at Claire. “I’ll make sure she doesn’t.” While she didn’t like him speaking for her, he was probably right. They had agreed to talk about his memory problems in greater detail when he got home. Not knowing how bad things may be getting with Sam’s mental health, it probably wasn’t a good time to immerse herself in the Village’s assuredly quirky system of governance.
“Trust me, Claire, he’s doing you a favor. Anyway, I should be going,” Stephanie said, putting her coffee mug down on a glass café table and taking a few steps toward the house.
Claire sprung up and slipped her arm through Stephanie’s, interlocking the crooks of their elbows and pulling her toward the doors leading to the kitchen. “Let me walk you out.” At an arm’s length, Claire could appreciate more fully the architectural perfection in Stephanie Hall’s face. The bridge of her nose was long and sturdy, yet creamy white, and it exuded an almost earthy femininity. Her eyebrows were wispy, curving playfully upward, creating a permanent expression of intrigue on her impossibly symmetrical face. Her top lip was two glossy peaks, rising over the bottom like tiny mountains over a cinnamon red sea. Captivating was the only word Claire could find to describe this woman. How was she so perfect? Her clothes, her husband, her house…it all felt fake, like a movie set, and the star of the show, Stephanie, a sleek but scripted leading lady.
“Claire, back to what we were talking about. No judgement on the drinking. Your secret is safe with me. And whatever is bothering you, I am here for you. You know that, right?”
This was hard for Claire to hear. She had always prided herself on how strong Sam was, how capable he was in any situation. Together, they were an unstoppable team. Her weaknesses had always been complimented by his strengths, and vice versa. If he sensed she had forgotten someone’s name at a party, Sam would say, “Can we do names again?” When he started to get cranky, she would make him a snack. When she had a cold, he would go out in the snow and clear off her car. There were a million examples of how they cared for and loved each other. But she didn’t know the Sam who freaked out at the waiter and she didn’t know the Sam who had dragged her all the way out to West Virginia to live in a gated community full of strangers. She wondered what opposing strength of hers would stand up to Sam’s ultimate weakness. And, for whatever reason, she didn’t entirely trust this beguilingly beautiful woman. It’s none of her business, Claire. Tell her to go fuck herself.
“Stephanie, you are so sweet. We’re fine. But I appreciate your willingness to listen.”
“Totally understand,” Stephanie said, slipping back on her sunglasses. “Here if you need me.”
As she walked out onto the front porch, Stephanie turned abruptly and put her hand out, preventing Claire from shutting the door. “Oh, and Claire, stay away from Marie Hershel and that committee. She’s a complete bitch who really doesn’t like living here.”
“In West Virginia?” asked Claire.
Stephanie Hall smiled and ignored the question, walking down the front stairs and crossing the street, never once looking back.
She found him in their master bedroom, naked, lying in their bed, staring at the ceiling. The shades were drawn and it took her eyes several minutes to adjust. When they did, she saw he was crying. She sat at the end of the bed and caressed his bare foot with her hands. His skin was cold and she was filled with a sense of defenselessness and dread.
“I’m sorry. I don’t know what’s happening to me.”
“Babe, we do know what’s happening to you. There’s just a real difference from knowing it theoretically, intellectually, and then actually experiencing it. The forgetfulness is the disease. There is no need to apologize.”
“Did you tell Stephanie?”
“Tell her what?” Claire asked, although she knew what he was asking.
“Did you tell her that I am slowly losing my fucking marbles?”
“Slowly?” she said with a smile that made him laugh despite his tears.
“No, Sam, it’s none of her business. Get some rest, okay, and we can talk some more after you’ve had a chance to sleep off that drive. The details can wait until tomorrow.”
“I love you,” he said.
“I love you, too,” she said, before covering him with the comforter and walking out of their bedroom, shutting the door gently behind her.
Claire went downstairs and poured herself a glass o
f wine from a bottle she had stashed in her gym bag, which hung in the laundry room. Her head was spinning. She was convinced Stephanie thought she was a mental charity case and a total drunk. Smart lady. She didn’t know what to make of the animosity Stephanie had for Marie. Bitch. It wasn’t the word, but how she said it. She had practically sneered. Something was off, like a chord played out of tune, or a tire going slowly but surely flat, a slight wiggle in the wheel. Thump, thump, thump, thump.
She sat on a barstool and poured a generous second glass of wine. Otherwise known as half a bottle, Claire. You essentially poured yourself a carafe. Danger! Curves ahead! She went to hop off the stool, but her ankle caught in the foot rest and she fell forward, dragging the barstool with her, before catching herself with her free hand. Drunk, Bored Housewife Dead in Kitchen-Barstool Accident. Honestly, Claire, that cannot be the way you go out.
She needed to sober up. She returned the half-full wine bottle to the duffel bag in the laundry room, rinsed out her wine glass, dried it, returned it to the cupboard, and headed to the basement to retrieve a bottle of Pellegrino from the case Sam kept in the wine cellar. A bit wobbly on her feet, Claire made her way down the narrow staircase. The wine cellar was on the right, and a door to the left led to Sam’s locked office. There were times she hated the secrecy surrounding his work. It created a sense of unwelcomed detachment. He had said it was locked in case someone ever broke in, but she knew it was locked from her as well. With no effort or malice at all, his work introduced innumerable secrets into their marriage, some of them undoubtedly behind that damn door.
That’s when she noticed it. It hadn’t shut all the way. The always-locked door was slightly ajar.
What could it hurt? Just a peek. If your husband is losing his mind, Claire, you should know what he is working on to help him judge whether he is capable of dealing with it. If his judgement is slipping, maybe you need to convince him to give up his clearance and fully retire from NASA. This was for Sam’s benefit. This will lend clarity to an otherwise unclear time.
Claire pulled on the door and entered the darkened room, which was cold and smelled like copy toner and new carpet. Motion detectors activated the fluorescent overhead lights. The room had several large screen televisions and six computers – all with the same hand scanners Sam had to use with his laptop — lined up side by side on several plastic folding tables. The NASA logo bounced across the monitors. This is it? This is the top-secret computer lab? She turned to leave, feeling stupid for violating Sam’s trust in such a way. That’s when she saw the other door. Padlocked.
“Claire? Where are you?”
She left the office on tip toes, shutting the door silently behind her and crossing the hallway to the wine cellar before shouting back her reply, “Down here, getting some Pellegrino, babe.”
“Let’s go out for dinner tonight,” he said, still yelling as she entered the kitchen without him seeing her.
“Sam, I’m right here.”
He got up and took the bottle of sparkling water from her hand and placed it on the counter, before cupping his hands just above her hips. “We could head into Grover. I was looking on Yelp and there is this little Italian restaurant, Mama Mia’s or something like that. It got decent reviews.”
“You don’t think we’re going to be killed by the hordes of Appalachian opium addicts beyond the great wall?” she asked.
“Ok, I think they call them opioid addicts these days. ‘Opium addicts’ sounds very 1920s. And, no, I think we’re pretty safe. Something tells me the crime wave in Grover is a Tuesday afternoon in our old neighborhood in D.C.”
They drove along the winding mountain roads without speaking. Sam listened to classical music on the satellite radio. Claire tuned in to her thoughts.
Before, Sam’s disease was a concept, a theory some pill-pushing M.D. had floated to explain the inexplicable. But the recent real-life manifestations of the dementia would not be easy to dismiss, or minimize. She was struggling mightily to be positive, especially around Sam. But the condition’s unpredictable progression was maybe its most cruel characteristic.
Since his return from D.C., she had pressed him for specifics on what he had been forgetting. He seemed less willing to talk about it than he had before, as if he had thought better of it. “Passwords,” he mumbled, while getting ready for their night out. “I’ve sorted it out. Not to worry.”
But she was worried. He could live for 15 years, merely troubled by forgetfulness and emotional outbursts, or, five years from now, he could be unable to feed himself. The disease didn’t come with a GPS. Nothing could tell them when Sam would descend into total dementia, when his body would be completely abandoned by his mind. There was a tiny part of her, a place inside her she would let no one see, especially him, that emphatically urged her to leave him, to leave the coliseum before the lions tore the once-glorious gladiator from limb to limb. She couldn’t bear to see that. And this cowardice filled her with self-hatred and shame. God, I want a drink. One, two, three. Glasses. Bottles! Barrels!
The town of Grover consisted of a main street and five or six marginally significant cross streets, each with one or two viable storefronts, alongside just as many shuttered businesses. Fannie of Fannie’s Fashions was no longer helping the women of Grover pick out the perfect dress for a daughter’s wedding, or the most appropriate hat for a great aunt’s funeral. Whoever owned Grover Trading Cards and Collectables had probably taken to the Internet long ago, if they knew better, selling their most cherished players to the highest bidding screenname on eBay, rather than to the wide-eyed boys who, for generations, had pressed their noses against a fingerprint-smudged display case, hoping to one day own a Babe Ruth or a Ty Cobbs. Grover felt achingly familiar to Claire, a place that, at one time, had undoubtedly felt safe and impervious to the influences of the outside world. Until it simply wasn’t.
Given the silly debate her neighbors were having over the community’s wall, Claire half-expected a zombie apocalypse to be unfolding on the dimly lit downtown streets. But aside from a few scraggly looking teenagers and a stumbling man who she guessed was either homeless or drunk or both, Grover was hardly the kind of place that justified the fact they lived behind a giant, video-surveilled gate.
Mama Mia’s was actually called Mama Leah’s. The interior walls of the small shotgun-style building were covered in knotty pine, and the room was brightened considerably by the classic red-and-white checkered Italian-restaurant tablecloths, which Claire was disappointed to realize were plastic. Still, the place was packed with people and that lifted her spirits slightly, as the waiter gave them two menus and “a couple of minutes to look things over.”
“What are you getting?” Sam asked.
“I know this sounds like I’m a six-year-old, but I think I want spaghetti and meatballs. It’ll be a good test to see if this place is legit Italian or not. ‘Leah’ doesn’t sound very Italian.”
“Good plan. I know what you mean, you don’t want to start with linguine and clam sauce in a place like this.”
“Exactly,” she whispered, giving him a playful wink. “You feeling better? I hate to see you sad like that. And you don’t have to talk about it, but you can if you want.”
“Sorry, yes, I’m all right. It’s just frustrating and scary to actually experience symptoms. The forgetfulness is particularly unnerving, you know? I got up at work to go to the bathroom and I wandered our floor for 20 minutes looking for it. I was too freaked out to ask someone where it was. I almost pissed myself.”
“Oh, Sam, I’m sorry. I didn’t know it was already that…bad,” she said, suddenly feeling like she wasn’t getting enough air. She started ripping the edges off her napkin and wishing desperately she had taken a Xanax. He slid his hands over hers.
“Stop. I need you to not let my condition be a trigger for your condition.”
“Sam, it freaks me out. I don’t know what to do, so I
do nothing,” she said, looking directly into his eyes. “Did you go see Dr. Carlson again while you were in D.C.? Is it progressing faster than he originally predicted?”
“Maybe it’s time you stopped doing ‘nothing,’ your word. Maybe you could focus on getting your consultancy off the ground.”
“Don’t deflect. You didn’t see him,” she said, unable to hide her disappointment and frustration.
“No, I didn’t see him, Claire. But we must start accepting he doesn’t have a clue as to how slow or fast this thing is moving. For what it’s worth, it’s my body and I do think it’s moving faster than either of us hoped and….” He traced his index finger in figure eights on the table, something he did when he was stressed.
“Say it. And…” she prompted.
“There is a password I am going to give you, Claire. Something for my work. When the time comes, you may need to use it. A man named Ethan Fromholzer-”
“Ethan, yes, I met him once at Sarah’s dinner party. Right?”
“Yes, I forgot about that. That’s good. You’ll recognize him then. He may come looking for it. It’s okay to give it to Ethan. Only Ethan. He will know what to do with it. This may never happen, but if it does, do what he says.”
Claire’s head was spinning as the waiter returned and she numbly told him what she wanted, desperately wishing she could quit the ruse of sobriety and just order a bottle of Chianti.
“Sam, this is starting to sound insane.”
“The password is the word ‘Jeopardy,’” he whispered, leaning in to her, their noses practically touching. “Like the game show. Don’t repeat it to anyone, and don’t write it down anywhere. Just commit it to memory.”
The waiter appeared from the kitchen with their entrees, and they both waited in awkward silence as he ceremoniously poured tap water into their tumblers. Smelling the steaming plate of pasta in front of her only confirmed for her she had completely lost her appetite. Xanax, Xanax, Xanax, Xanax.