And worse than that is the version of Beau I imagine leaving behind. The one who laughs at my absurd comments, invites me to hold nothing back, and, hell, just wants to be with me.
I feel like I’ve ruined everything precious about this day.
Maybe that was inevitable. Maybe it’s a good thing that we’re leaving those ideal versions of ourselves behind now before anything else has a chance to happen between us. Maybe—
“Why?” he asks, yanking me from my heavy-as-lead thoughts.
“Huh?” I’ve sunk so deep I’ve lost the tether to our conversation.
“You want to see me again, but you don’t think it’s a good idea. Why?” he asks, dividing his attention between me and the road, his gaze sharp but still not bitter. “Why isn’t it a good idea?”
As far as I’m concerned the answer is obvious. This can’t go anywhere, so why take the next step if the road ends just on the other side of the next rise? But this wouldn’t be the first time I’ve gone three, four, even ten steps ahead in my mind before other people—just because I can’t shut the thing off.
“Because things could get…” I try to choose my words carefully. I don’t want to seem presumptuous and say serious. “Complicated.”
He nods, and that same self-containment that makes him so beautiful—so alluring—rides on his shoulders like a mantle. When he looks at me, all I see is acceptance and understanding.
“I get that.” Then, as if he’s talking to himself, he says softly, “I don’t blame you.”
He accepts. He understands. He doesn’t blame me.
Great.
Good.
Okay, then.
Why the hell do I feel so disappointed?
Chapter Nineteen
BEAU
“We aren’t seeing the same positive results we were three months ago.” Sherry Trahan, Mom’s memory care therapist, slides a page covered in bar graphs across her desk. This is our fourth meeting since Mom moved into assisted living, and the results on the page are the worst yet.
“You can see that when Gina came to us, her cognitive functioning score on the MMSE was a fifteen, which is ten points below what we’d see in, say, a healthy fifty-year-old woman.” Sherry taps at the first blue bar on one of the charts before moving to the second. “In November, after three months of therapy, she was at a seventeen—still below that benchmark, but noticeably improved.”
I can read the graph in front of me, and I don’t need her to state the obvious, but she does.
“In February, she lost one point, but last week’s assessment has her back at fifteen,” she says, her tone professional, but compassionate.
I also know the answer to my next question, but I have to ask it. “And in her sessions, you’re doing everything? All of the cognitive exercises to help keep her mind…” Why is it so hard to say the next word? “...intact?”
She nods. “Yes, Mr. Landry. We’re giving her the full spectrum of treatment.” Her voice softens. “It’s just not keeping up with her deterioration.”
Deterioration. I fucking hate the word.
I nod and swallow, unable for the moment to do anything else. But I have more questions so I need to pull it together.
“Are you able to continue working with her? Even though she’s… declining?”
“Oh, of course. We’ll work with her as long as she’s tolerating the exercises well, but—” She looks at me with what I can only describe as gentle detachment. And I get it. She has to be detached to some degree. She must have this conversation with family members nearly every day. “As things progress, the sessions will be harder for her, more stressful and less beneficial.”
I shake my head. “I don’t want her to suffer any more than she’s already suffering,” I say, throat tight.
“Neither do we, I assure you,” she says, this time sounding less detached. Warmer. I take a deep breath and let it out slowly. “When we see that it’s becoming too much, we’ll reach out to you and make a recommendation on how to proceed, but it will be up to you.”
Not just me, I remind myself, Me and Val. Thinking of my older sister makes the panic ease a little. Even if she’s not in town, at least she’s another pair of shoulders these kind of shitty decisions can fall on. I’ll need to call her after my visit with Mom.
I thank her, but when I rise to leave and head to Mom’s room, she offers me a flyer. “Did you get one of these at the reception desk?”
I scan the heading: CAMELIA COURT: SEVERE WEATHER CONTINGENCY PLAN.
“No,” I say, taking the paper from her, and thinking about the weather report I caught on the radio this morning. A tropical depression is taking shape in the Gulf of Mexico, but it doesn’t even have a name yet, much less a predictable trajectory.
I run my eyes over the page. Everything on it is what I’d expect from the premium assisted living and nursing home facility: Tornado sheltering plan. Back-up generators. An M.D. on site at all times. Partnership with Acadian Ambulance for transportation to Lafayette General for medical emergencies.
The flier handout might be a little premature, but I guess prepared and proactive is better than the alternative.
“Thank you.” I fold the paper and tuck it into my back pocket and make my way to Mom’s room.
But when I get there, it’s empty. The door is open, and the TV is on, playing The King and I, but Mom’s nowhere to be found. Any thoughts about storms and severe weather plans go up in smoke.
Mom should be in here and she’s not.
I’m the only person in her long hallway, so if she stepped out to chat with a neighbor, they’re behind closed doors. But that’s not the norm. Most of the residents gather in the wide hallways or the common spaces like the two lounges or the cafeteria.
I retrace my steps, heading first to the caf. It’s just about time for lunch, and it’s possible Mom forgot that it’s Wednesday and I’m joining her. A handful of tables are already occupied, but she’s not sitting at any of them.
Which is a relief. I’d rather it just be the two of us, and Mom gravitates toward company. Everything about this is hard, but it’s harder still to see her at a table with someone twenty or thirty years older than she is. She’s one of the youngest residents here, and the reminder of that—of everything she’s lost and all the things she won’t ever have—is always painful.
I ask one of the attendants if he’s seen her.
“Not since breakfast,” he says, giving me a look of concern. “She’s not in her room? Maybe inside the restroom?”
“No,” I say with a shake of the head. “I checked.”
He reaches for a wall-mounted phone behind him and presses the keypad. “She gets turned around from time to time,” he mutters. When the person on the other end answers, it’s clear from his half of the conversation that Mom isn’t visible on any of Camelia Court’s security cameras, which aim down hallways, in the common spaces, and on the grounds.
He hangs up. “They’re sending an aid to look for her. Do you think she’d be in the chapel?” he offers. “Or getting her hair done?” These are two places on-site that don’t have cameras. But there’s another.
“No, but I think I know where she might be.”
Outside the cafeteria, I hang a left and move past the west lounge. When I reach the exercise room where Camelia Court offers yoga, Pilates, and dance classes, I find the lights off, but the door unlocked.
I open it and hear sobs before I spot her.
Mom is crouched on the floor in the shadows, her face in her hands, crying.
“Mom.” I drop to my knees beside her. My hands run over her limbs in search of injury. “What happened?”
She startles, wipes her eyes, and looks up at me. “B-Beau?” She studies my face before reaching for my cheek. “When did you... You have a beard?”
I’ve had the beard for two years, so I ignore the question and clasp her outstretched hand. “Mom, what are you doing here?”
She looks at me, her eyes fill, a
nd she sniffles. “No one came to ballet today. None of my dancers. Why?” Her voice breaks on the question, and I feel it like a sucker punch.
She’s not here. She’s not now. She’s somewhere else. Some time in her past.
A better time.
“It’s okay, Mom. You don’t have class today.”
She frowns, a sharp expression of disapproval she used to give me or Val when we’d talk back. “Of course I have class today. It’s Thursday. I have class every Thursday.”
“It’s Wednesday, Mom,” I say gently. No sense in telling her the month or the year. It would just upset her more.
“It is?” She looks both confused and relieved. She takes a deep breath and glances around, but I’d bet my salary that she’s seeing La Fête instead of Camelia Court’s exercise room. “I thought they’d all left me. That everyone had left me.”
She looks so lost, emotion blocks my throat. I fight to clear it. “No, Mom. I’m right here.”
Her eyes come back to me and the lines on her brow ease. I’m still holding her hand, and when she moves to bring it to my face, I let her. “This... makes you look so old,” she says, scratching the hair along my jaw. I do my best to smile at her. “What are you doing here, anyway?” she asks.
“I came to see you.”
Her look of concern returns. “But I have class. My dancers will be here any minute.”
I shake my head, debating if I should remind her where she is or let her stay in the past. Either choice is painful.
I take the easy way out.
“Not tonight,” I tell her, shaking my head. “I’m giving a private lesson.” It’s the truth, and the thought of seeing Iris in a few hours suddenly makes it easier to take a full breath.
Mom looks surprised, but not upset. “You do?”
“I do.” I clasp her hand again and get to my feet. “C’mon. Let’s go have lunch.”
She rises to her feet, graceful as ever, but it’s as though she hasn’t heard me. “Who’s your student?”
Warmth floods my chest at the thought of telling Mom about Iris. Even after she turned me down on Saturday, I haven’t been able to stop thinking about her. I worried that Monday night’s class would be uncomfortable. It was at first. Iris had trouble meeting my gaze at the beginning of the lesson. When we started dancing, I know I held her more loosely than I have been.
And she was all over the place. She must have tripped and knocked my knee half a dozen times.
But as soon as I gripped her hand and waist tighter, and told her to tell me a story, she got out of her head, out of the awkward moment. We were dancing to Beausoleil. She gripped my hand tightly right back, and told me about the first commercial she ever filmed. It was for prescription acne medicine. She told me how she was fifteen at the time and had a “for-real-monster-of-a-zit” on her forehead that makeup had to disguise so they could shoot the commercial.
All I could think of at the time while I laughed was that my ex, Rebecca, never would have told me a story like that. Not one where she poked fun at herself. Not one where she was so human.
“Her name is Iris,” I tell Mom, smiling. “She’s an actor. I’m teaching her how to Cajun dance for a movie she’s in.”
Mom gasps, eyes going wide with delight. “A Cajun dance movie?!”
I chuckle and shake my head. “Don’t get excited, Mom. It’s just one scene.”
“Still. You’ll have to take me... to the... to the... to see it.”
My heart squeezes. “I’d like that,” I tell her, hoping that when Iris’s movie is released, Mom is still able to sit through a film and follow along.
To tell the truth, I don’t know if she can do that now. All of the movies in her collection are ones she’s watched for years, and she knows them by heart. But even while she’s watching, she must drift in and out.
Mom squeezes my hand. “Would you show me the dance?”
Her request takes me by surprise. “The one from Iris’s movie?”
Mom nods.
I’ve signed an NDA that was twelve pages long, forbidding me from recording our lessons, posting about them on social media, identifying myself as Iris Adams’s dance instructor, divulging anything I know about the script—which is next to nothing—and on and on. But none of the stipulations forbade me from performing the choreography with someone else.
Even if it did, I’d still show one of the dances to my mom.
I take out my phone and find the song for the easier of Iris’s two numbers. As soon as the Two-Step rhythm starts, Mom puts her hands in position and follows my lead. She’s lighter on her feet than any one of our students.
Mom smiles as I lead her wordlessly through the first turn and then the second. She laughs when I twirl her in my hold and we sashay backward for the brush-off, a part of the dance I haven’t even tried with Iris yet.
The song finishes, and we each step back and bow to one another. Mom is beaming, the color high on her cheeks. If I didn’t know better, she looks just like her old self. It’s both agonizing and hopeful.
“Thank you, Beau,” she says, and even as she’s smiling, she begins to sniffle again, before tears spill from her eyes.
Fuck Alzheimer’s. Fuck its mood swings and its dementia. Fuck its indignities and its mercilessness.
Fuck it all to hell.
“Don’t mind me,” she says, sniffling, embarrassed.
I want to give her a way out. “You ready for lunch now, Mom?” I offer her my arm. She takes it lightly as though I’m escorting her into a ballroom.
“Of course,” she says, forgetting everything about me finding her crying, alone in this empty room ten minutes ago. “But I have to get back in time for class.”
After I teach Nonc’s afternoon classes, I go to the kitchen and knife into the chilled watermelon my neighbor Mrs. Thibodeaux gave me. It’s a hefty Millionaire seedless, and I cut the deep pink flesh into cubes. My guess is that if I cut it up this way, instead of slicing it, Iris will eat more of it, and that’s my goal. I put out a bowl of walnuts and another of pretzels, but I know she probably won’t touch the pretzels.
I check the clock on the microwave at least three times as it crawls toward six. Today, more than any other day yet, I just want to see her.
I tell myself it’s the visit with Mom, followed by the depressing phone call with Val, and then the equally depressing talk with Nonc. Seeing Iris always cheers me up. She’s funny and easy to be with.
But there’s no point in ignoring it.
I ache to see her.
The hour-and-thirty-minute lesson will go by too fast, but at least I’ll get a dose of her presence. I remember asking Ramon, bitterly, what Iris was like when she wasn’t on. He said she’s never on. Never putting on a show. Donning a persona. I know that now.
But she’s in. Iris’s presence is all-in. All the time.
I have no problem being in the moment. I’ve just never known what it’s felt like to be in the moment so fully with someone else. Not until I met Iris. Not until I started seeing her for who she really is, I mean. Open. Innocent. Good-hearted.
I’m thinking all of this when the crunch of gravel in the back lot grabs my attention. My heart ratchets itself into a restless beat in my chest, and I have to keep myself from going to the door and meeting her on the porch.
A moment later, the door swings open, and my patience is rewarded. Iris is the first one in, and she greets me with a full smile.
“Hi.” It’s just one word. Two letters, but the way she says it makes me feel like she’s been waiting all day to say it. To me.
“Iris.” I greet her with her name because I like it better than any hi, hey, or hello. And, yeah, saying it out loud feels like I’m claiming her.
I want to claim her.
Her gaze drops to the table and her mouth forms a soft O. “Watermelon,” she breathes, a little awestruck, “I love watermelon… But you know you don’t have to do this.”
I don’t think she expects it, but Ir
is isn’t surprised anymore when I put out a snack for her. She is grateful though. Every time. And she eats something every time. I love it.
“My neighbor grew the melon,” I say, purposefully ignoring her statement. “Picked it this morning.”
Her eyes go wide with appreciation, and she reaches forward and plucks a cube from the bowl. That’s another thing I love. When we share food, there’s almost never plates and utensils. It’s intimate. Hand to mouth with the occasional napkin.
She pops the dripping piece into her mouth and presses her lips together. “Mmm. So sweet.”
I glance at the door behind her. She’s left it open a crack, but I see no sign of Ramon and Sally.
“Where’s your crew?”
Iris picks up another piece and rolls her eyes. “Probably mugging on the back porch. They’ve been all over each other since they got back last weekend.”
She says this casually, but the mention of the weekend affects us both. Our eyes lock across the table. I don’t know if she can see it in my face, but I’d be all over her given half the chance.
Yet I won’t say that. Iris gave me a clear answer. She doesn’t want complicated. And, yeah, it stung. It still stings. But I understand.
Instead, I take a piece of watermelon and bite into it. And we’d get through this loaded moment just fine if she weren’t watching me like that.
Is that longing I see in her eyes?
It’s enough to shatter my composure. I’m imagining moving around the table and taking her in my arms when Ramon and Sally come through the door.
Yep. They were mugging on the back porch. Sally is smoothing her hair and Ramon is running a hand down his T-shirt. Both look a little glassy-eyed. Honestly, I don’t think this kitchen has ever seen so much sexual tension.
“Watermelon. Cool,” Ramon says, panting just a little.
We all descend on the chilled fruit. I think each of us could use a little cooling off.
But any kind of cool is lost when I start our warm up. No lie, I don’t know why I chose Sade for the routine. Subconscious masochism, maybe. As soon as the seductive beat begins, I regret it, but I talk over the opening lyrics to diffuse their power.
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