heart. Sick in mind. “Well, I guess I should go. Lexi has a ball game tonight.”
Ken scratched at his mustache. “Can’t miss that.”
“You coming?”
“This time of year is really busy, the hay and all.” His eyes slid away from hers. “You know how it is.”
A beat passed while Fran studied his beloved burnished face. He was afraid. So was she. Maybe he just needed time to think, to process the news.
Lord, losing my mind is hard. Don’t let me lose my friends, too.
“Yes,” she said finally. “I know how it is.”
Heart heavy, Fran walked away.
* * *
Hands deep in suds, squeezing Woolite in and out of her favorite sweaters, Carrie heard a car pull up. Wednesday was her day off from the library, and she’d determined to get all her winter things cleaned and organized into clear storage boxes today. Using her shoulder to scratch the inevitable nose itch, she stuck her head between the snow-white Cape Cod swags.
Frannie popped out of The Tanker and slammed the door, the metallic echo coming right through the walls. Dressed in snug blue capris that turned her hips to anvils and a bluer baseball cap, her short legs pumped across Dan’s manicured lawn like squatty pistons.
As happened every time she saw her mother since that awful day at the neurologist’s office, Carrie’s stomach nose-dived. The more she tried not to consider what was to come, the worse her imaginings.
Mother tried to put on a happy face and pretend all was well, an obvious act that angered Carrie. Not that she was angry with her mother, but she was most definitely angry.
She squinted into the sunlight. What was Mother carrying? Papers?
The question was answered before she could rinse her hands and reach for a paper towel. Frannie breezed in and slapped a thick stack of eight and a half-by-fourteen documents onto the granite bar. Legal documents.
“All done,” she announced, jaw unusually set in a face normally as mobile as a child’s.
Carrie crossed the kitchen and rounded the bar to peer over her mother’s shoulder. “What is all this?”
“My house is officially in order,” she said, as matter-of-fact as if announcing she’d bought a bunch of broccoli for dinner. “Power of attorney goes to you, of course. Robby lives too far away. Everything is done so you won’t have to make the decisions—right down to my funeral. I want a trumpet to play ‘When the Saints Go Marching In,’ lots of laughs and hallelujahs, a real joy-of-the-Lord send-off. None of that whining, snot-slinging business.”
“Mother, what are you talking about?” She would love to have blamed the onset of dementia for her mother’s chatter, but Fran Adler had been this way as long as Carrie could remember.
“While I still have my senses about me, I want to make the decisions. So I did. The papers are here. Put them up somewhere until you need them. You’ll know when. The copies are in my safe-deposit box, which is now in your name as well as mine, along with my house, car, and the little dab of money stuck away in savings.”
“Oh.” The cold chill of reality seeped deep into Carrie’s bones as she flipped through the stack of papers. Mother had left no stone unturned, including a do-not-resuscitate order. Carrie jerked her hand away from that one. “You didn’t need to do this yet, Mother. For goodness’ sake! You’re still in command of your faculties.”
“For the most part, yes, but I’m slipping.”
“You are not. Stop talking about it.” Carrie whirled away from the bar and started opening and shutting cabinet doors with more force than necessary. Throat tight and thick, she fought down the fury that hovered on the edge of her emotions all the time lately. This whole Alzheimer’s thing was wrong. Unfair.
Life stunk. No matter how hard a person worked and tried, there was always something lurking around the corner to knock the wind out of you.
Reaching inside a cabinet, she yanked at a Tupperware bowl. A flood of plastic lids tumbled out, splatting all over the floor and counter and even into the sink where one floated atop her pink silk twin set.
“Carrie Ann, listen to me, honey.” Mother’s voice came from behind. “Quit flitting around the kitchen like a housefly afraid of getting swatted. I’m trying to be sensible while I can. Neither of us can escape the truth.”
Carrie gripped the countertop with both hands and stared at the diamond pattern of the tiled backsplash. The grout needed cleaning. She bent to the cabinet below and reached for the Tilex. “We don’t have to talk about it all the time.”
Mother’s hands, strong from a lifetime of busyness, gripped her shoulders and forced her up. “Your grout is fine, Carrie Ann, as spotless as everything in your life except me. And Tilex will not fix what’s happening in my brain. Sit down. Every time I try to bring up the subject, you start cleaning something. Today we’re talking. No cleaning. Do you have any Mountain Dew?”
“No.” Carrie slumped into one of the Queen Anne side chairs.
“No Mountain Dew?” Mother huffed as if insulted. “Iced tea then.”
She retrieved the filled pitcher Carrie kept available in case of company, poured two glasses, plunked them down and then sat, too.
“I’ve known something was wrong for a long time,” Mother said without preamble. “Now the problem has a name. We can plan for it and deal with it.”
Carrie stared into the amber-colored tea and absently slid a finger and thumb up and down the damp glass. She didn’t want to hear this, but she was too old to run away and hide in the back of the closet to avoid facing unpleasantness. Hiding hadn’t worked for her at ten, and it wouldn’t work at forty-two.
“You never said a word.”
“What could I say? I hoped I was experiencing normal forgetfulness. Where were my keys, my reading glasses, that kind of thing. Then I started getting confused at work, mixing up files and phone numbers. One day I was talking on the telephone and got so confused, I hung up. I knew what I wanted to say but the words wouldn’t come out right.”
“I didn’t know,” Carrie said past the ache in her throat. Her mother had been in trouble and she hadn’t even noticed. “I thought you were being your usual goofy yourself.”
Frannie’s eyes widened in mirth. “It helps being crazy in advance.”
“Don’t, Mother. Please don’t.”
Fannie patted the back of her hand. “Okay, if it makes you feel better. Laughter’s good medicine, though. That’s Bible. Wise old King Solomon himself said that. Anyway, back to this forgetting thing. I thought I was overdoing, tired, whatever, so I tried getting more sleep, taking vitamins. I even started taking cod-liver oil because it’s supposed to be brain food. Can you imagine?”
Carrie squinched her eyes and shuddered. “Yuck.”
“Yuck is right, and the nasty stuff didn’t do anything but make the cat want to lick my face.” Frannie grinned, but the emotion didn’t reach her eyes. Her lipstick had faded with the day, leaving the rim of red liner.
Carrie had a horrible thought that her mother would be like this. All the color and vibrance fading away with only the outer shadow left behind.
She took a sip of the cold drink in an effort to wash down the dark taste of sorrow. Mother may be putting on a happy face but Carrie couldn’t.
The ice maker rumbled and the clock on the stove ticked once. Her mother took a deep breath, held it, held it, held it and then slowly exhaled.
“I was in the hardware store yesterday and not only forgot why I was there but what kind of store it was. I kept looking around at tools and light fixtures and wondering if someone was having a garage