I went back to the kitchen and returned with a cutting board, a knife, and two plates. I placed the mango on the board and sliced it down either side of its pit. Then I took the two sides, crisscrossed the flesh with the knife, and turned the skin inside out, the way she taught me when I was a child.
My mother looked on in wonder.
I passed her a half and waited for her to try it.
She held the mango half up to her mouth, juice streaming down one arm. I offered to cut the flesh away from the skin, but she refused.
“I can feed myself,” she said, returning the mango to the plate and using a fork.
She took a mouthful and closed her eyes.
“Oh, my. This is the most delicious thing I have ever tasted!”
I passed her the rest.
Somehow, we survived our lunch. Afterward my mother said she felt tired, and I emitted an audible sigh of relief and suggested that she should nap while I washed up and let myself out.
“No!” she said. “I like washing up.”
I yielded to her wishes and retrieved my belongings from the kitchen.
“Thank you,” she said. “It was a lovely lunch.”
I smiled, gave her a quick hug, summoned my dog, and left.
As soon as I stepped into the elevator, I knelt down and hugged Sofia.
“That was all your doing,” I said. “You are the best dog in the world.”
Sofia leaned against my leg and looked up at me lovingly. Your mother is hard work, she seemed to say.
“Tell me about it,” I said to no one in particular.
That evening the phone rang. It was my mother.
“I can’t find your phone number!” she said in a panic.
“Don’t worry. You’ve found it!” I answered.
“What?”
“You’re ringing me now.”
“Oh.” She laughed. “I suppose I am. I wanted to thank you for lunch.”
“My pleasure,” I said.
“And to say that I enjoyed meeting your dog . . .”
“Sofia.”
“Yes, Sofia!”
“Thank you,” I said. “Well, call me if you need anything. You have my number.”
It was the most cordial conversation I could recall us having in recent decades.
I put down the phone and squeezed onto the sofa between Scout and Ambrose. Sofia curled up on her dog bed to sleep off her Christmas lunch.
I had a fleeting hope that my relationship with my mother would improve as her dementia progressed. And I wondered how long I had left before I forgot what a mango was. Before my home was festooned with sticky notes. Before all my mother’s deficiencies became mine. Seized by panic, I got up, went to the fridge, and opened my emergency stash of beer. I poured two-thirds of a bottle into a glass and the rest down the sink. Then I turned on the TV and watched a blonde woman in a long dress sing “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas.”
14
SYNCHRONICITY
During my appointment with Peter the following February, I told him that 2015 was the loneliest year of my life—that since moving back to Australia, I often went weeks without talking to anyone other than my friends who lived overseas. Peter and I talked about my mother, whose health was slowly fading, and I told him that after each visit to her apartment, I longed to be dead.
He smiled and told me I could not keep living that way, that leading the life of a hermit was not helping my atrophied brain, and that it was time for me to start looking for a new partner.
“But I don’t want a partner! I’m fine on my own.”
“You’re not really fine,” he said. “The dogs are something, but they aren’t enough. You need someone in Sydney who loves you and you can love back. When your mother dies, you are going to need support.”
“I’ve lost every person I ever loved. They either died or left me.”
He waited for me to finish, a sad smile passing across his face.
“I’ve been alone so long, I don’t think I could adjust to life inside a relationship. I’d drive her crazy. She would drive me crazy too. I can tolerate human company for about forty minutes; then I need to be alone. To recover. I find people exhausting.”
“I honestly do believe there is someone out there for you,” he said.
“Truly, there isn’t.”
“But you have so much to offer! I have patients who frankly deserve to be alone. People who are not particularly nice or kind or attractive; people who don’t have a lot going for them. And they have someone who loves them. You deserve to have someone and you don’t. You shouldn’t be alone.”
I wasn’t convinced. Beyond my obvious challenges with rage and social propriety, I didn’t think I was capable of falling in love with another human again. I am fussy, intolerant, and judgmental, and I feared that no one would ever measure up. My list of requirements in a partner was long, with subsections and subclauses. If I did find someone who satisfied my exacting list of criteria, the chances of them liking me, I suspected, would be infinitesimal.
Let’s imagine that lesbians make up around 5 percent of the population, and introverts around one-third of the population.26 My ideal mate—the only one I was interested in pursuing—was an introverted lesbian who loved animals and was kind, clever, interesting, feisty, and serious and lighthearted in equal measure. And that list didn’t even take into account any of my deal breakers, like having bad table manners or being a noisy eater. My pool of possible partners was a puddle.
Slowly, over our monthly meetings, Peter wore me down, and I signed up for the hamster wheel of online dating for middle-aged lesbians.
It was worse than I imagined. I met a woman for coffee who bore no resemblance whatsoever to the photo she sent me. I had just sat down when she told me she never had sex with anyone until she knew them well. I assured her that sex was the last thing on my mind. Next she told me how wealthy she was, and how she needed to be careful because women only liked her for her money. I drank my coffee as quickly as I could, scalding my esophagus in the process, thanked her for her time, and left.
Another woman I met for coffee was a petite platinum blonde with a mouth that looked like it had been drawn on with a ballpoint pen. Despite clearly labeling her profile “gay,” she announced that she had never slept with a woman before and then added, “I don’t find you attractive at all.”
“Oh, well that’s, um, fine,” I said, feeling my face redden. I’m not sure she noticed. She immediately launched into details about her husband, who was at home dying from bowel cancer. Their house was in his name, so she couldn’t exactly kick him out, she said, but she’d decided it was time to put herself first. She was training to be a psychologist, she told me. I excused myself as soon as she drew breath.
At each appointment I regaled Peter with my latest horror story. “There is evil out there. That’s why I don’t like leaving the house.” He laughed and asked me if I would ever consider pursuing a relationship with a man.
“A man who satisfies an exacting set of criteria, I suppose.”
“It might be easier.”
I registered a new online dating profile—woman seeks man—but my heart wasn’t in it. I was surprised by the number of messages I received from interested men, but something about the whole endeavor smacked of desperation. I wanted someone who could love me but was also comfortable being alone. Someone who would be comfortable leaving me alone when I needed it. I removed both profiles days later.
In August a friend invited me to a drinks party for single women that her friends had arranged at a pub close to my home. Ever since the accident, the way I approached social gatherings with strangers was by either drinking a lot, which I had decided not to do any longer, or setting a clear time at which I’d allow myself to leave. I decided on the drive to the pub that I would stay one hour. When I arrived I bought a mineral water for myself and a beer for my friend, and proceeded to panic as soon as she left my side.
Scanning the room, I recog
nized some women from my single years in Sydney around twenty years earlier. We were older now, with slightly thicker waists and worry lines etched into our faces, and still trying to find partners from the same group of eligible women. I scoped out the exits; climbing out a window onto the street and disappearing started to feel like the best option. Or pretending to go to the bathroom like a normal person and never returning. A kind woman noticed my distress and introduced herself, and while we were in mid-conversation, someone I had never met before took me by the arm and deposited me in front of a beautiful woman with high cheekbones and a perfect mouth. She wore glasses and appeared slightly awkward.
Her name was Louise, and she told me right away that she dreaded these gatherings because they made her feel even more of a misfit. Two of her friends had dragged her along.
“I never fit in anywhere!” I laughed.
She told me that she had planned her departure before she arrived. She would give it one hour.
I asked her if she liked animals. “Absolutely! More than I like people,” she said enthusiastically before pausing for a moment. “I probably shouldn’t say that. I’m a doctor. I do love old people.”
“Old people are fine,” I said, realizing that her preference could work to my advantage since she appeared to be at least a decade younger than I was, “and babies. I love babies.”
Louise and I talked for more than an hour. I told her about the dogs and cats I had brought home from Hong Kong, and she told me about her own dog, her “soul wolf” that she had stolen from a neighbor’s balcony. The malamute had been locked out on the balcony all day and all night for months. Louise told me that one day, she’d knocked on the apartment door and begged the owners to let her take the dog for a walk. They agreed, and she took the dog out and never returned. A vet friend had changed the dog’s microchip. “You have no idea how sickly she was when I got her. They had locked her outside with no bed, no shelter from the sun or rain.” She dipped inside her handbag and pulled out her phone to show me a photo. “Isn’t she gorgeous? I had to have her put down three months ago. Cancer.” Her eyes welled up.
I touched her elbow. “Are you real?”
At ten the next morning I was wandering around a Cate Blanchett installation at the Art Gallery of New South Wales when my phone rang. It was Louise, asking me to dinner the following Saturday. She explained that her time was limited since she was traveling to Mexico in two weeks’ time to participate in the world triathlon championships, so she needed to spend all her spare time training. All her friends complained that they never saw her. It was one of the joys of being a doctor, she added.
“What kind of doctor are you?”
“A psycho-geriatrician.”
“A what?”
“I specialize in dementia. I split my time between a hospital and my own practice.”
“Dementia?”
“Yep.”
“Wow.”
I got off the phone and folded myself down on the steps outside the art gallery. My memory leapt back to the serendipitous meeting I had more than twenty years earlier with the woman in the park who told me about neuroplasticity. She was the reason I had picked myself up and applied for a job. And now in another baffling sleight of chance, I had met a woman I knew I could fall in love with, a woman who happened to specialize in dementia. I shook my head and laughed at the improbability of it all. Strange things happened when I left the house.
Louise and I had dinner at a Turkish restaurant that I’d suggested after reading the lackluster reviews of the restaurant she had suggested. Doctors, in my experience, will eat anything. As soon as our food arrived, she mentioned that her best friends hated the place I had chosen.
“They sound like philistines,” I said.
“One is Dutch and one is British,” she responded.
“Two nations well known for their fine food,” I said, and she laughed.
Louise took charge of the conversation, and I responded with gibberish. The food arrived. “It’s delicious!” she said.
I had never been so nervous on a date in my life. There was something about Louise I had never found in anyone before, and I wanted her to like me as much as I liked her.
“You have an anxiety disorder,” she said with a smile.
“That’s the very least of my problems.”
She laughed and told me she was nervous too.
To help matters I blurted out, “I’ve been single for more than five years! I haven’t even been on a date!”
I stopped just short of telling her I hadn’t had sex in six years, although I’m sure she worked that out for herself. She struck me as someone with a flair for numbers.
Assuming Louise might come home with me after dinner, I had spent the day cleaning my house, washing my dogs, and changing the sheets. But when dinner ended, I kissed her on the cheek and watched her drive away.
The next week she flew to Mexico. She had been training for the race for more than a year. She would be gone for three weeks.
On the day she left, I sent her a text message letting her know that I would judge her interest in me by the quality and quantity of her text messages.
Good! she answered. I like a challenge.
I saw Peter the second week she was gone and told him my news.
“You aren’t going to believe it,” I said. “It’s early days and it’s likely to be a disaster, but I met someone! Someone I really like! It’s almost as if she was conjured up from my imagination after our last meeting. She is the composite of my perfect person.”
Peter looked astonished. “Wonderful!”
“And you’ll love this. She’s a psycho-geriatrician! Who trained in neurosurgery!”
“How extraordinary! Are you sure she’s gay?”
“Seems so!”
He asked her name and for the hospital where she worked, and I was relieved to know he had never heard of her.
“How do you think she’ll feel when I tell her about you?” I asked. “Is there a protocol for telling the psychiatrist you want to date that you are seeing a psychiatrist?”
“I don’t think so, but it shouldn’t be a problem. Lots of people see psychiatrists.”
“Do they?”
He laughed. “Yes!”
“Then there’s the head injury, and all the fun things that come along with that.”
“She’ll be lucky to have you.”
“Let’s see.”
To avoid Louise discovering any nasty surprises about me in the future, I sent her a text message about my accident, my atrophying brain, my depression, my temper, and my problems with impulse control. It was a long text message. She read it but didn’t answer, and I spent the night feeling incredibly foolish.
I waited until it was morning in Mexico, then called her to explain. The silence on the other end of the line was excruciating. When we hung up, I was sure I had scared her away.
I phoned Helena in Hong Kong, whose judgment is impeccable and whose counsel I sought often.
“Are you insane? You’re trying to sabotage this before it’s even started! She is the only woman you have liked since Giulia. What is wrong with you?”
“I just thought she needed to know.”
“Why didn’t you tell her about the good things? Call her back and tell her you are kind and generous and funny and smart!”
“It’s too late!”
I lightened things up with my next text messages. I sent photos of my dogs and cats and a picture of a T-shirt I bought online that said, Sorry I’m late, I didn’t want to come.
Then, as if to leave her in no doubt at all that I was neurotic, I asked her the one question that bothered me most: Are you worried about my brain?
No. Your brain seems fine, she answered almost instantly. Relieved, I bombarded her with more dog photos. The next day she messaged me saying she wished I was there, and that if she had met me a few months earlier she would have bought me a ticket to Mexico.
We exchanged more than six hundr
ed text messages during the three weeks Louise was gone, and despite a mutual dislike for telephones, we spoke on the phone every other day. The similarities between us were astonishing. Impossible as it seemed, at the age of fifty-three I had found the first person who seemed to see the world through the same lens as me.
The day before she flew home, I sent her a message. I have no impulse control, I know, but I am falling in love with you.
For the hour it took until my phone pinged, I paced around my house like someone possessed. Finally my phone lit up. I think I am too. Moments later it pinged again. Have you ever felt so much for anyone so quickly?
Never, I answered.
Louise flew back to Sydney via San Francisco and arrived on a Sunday morning. We agreed that she would sleep for a few hours before I visited her.
On the drive to her place, I stopped and bought flowers. My hands trembled as I rang the doorbell. She opened her screen door, and I couldn’t bring myself to look at her. She was even more beautiful than I remembered. She laughed, kissed me for the first time, and told me she had never met anyone who was shier than she was. I followed her into the kitchen and watched as she took a bottle of champagne from the fridge. She filled two glasses and led me by the hand to her sofa. I drained my glass almost instantly and she refilled it.
“I shouldn’t drink. It’s bad for my brain.”
“A couple of glasses isn’t going to hurt. It’s not like you do it all the time.”
“I’m not good at stopping. That’s the problem.”
“I’ll make sure that you stop.”
After my third and final glass, we began to relax.
“You don’t just like me because I’m a doctor, do you?” she asked.
“What do you mean?”
“Some women like going out with doctors.”
“Do they? I like you in spite of that. I’m not a huge fan of the medical profession. If you were a vet, it would be different.”
She laughed.
“You don’t just like me because I’m an aspiring writer who hasn’t written much yet, do you?”
Prognosis Page 24