Betty, who I recently discovered sorting through the contents of my suitcase, turns on the overhead light in my room, wrinkles her brow, and peers in like a camp counselor on an inspection tour, as if she suspects I might be entertaining someone who has paddled in from across the lake. She must keep an eye out. I am a schemer. There are things going on behind her back, plans afoot, she fears. She has no intention of cooperating with any of them. When the phone rings, she listens to every word, not sure if she can trust me with her independence. I don’t blame her. I am an unlikely guardian. A month ago I thought the Medicare doughnut hole was a breakfast special for seniors. I am a care inflictor.
She’s not easy to corral. Her will remains at blast-force strength. “It’s a hot day, but I’m going to that sale,” she murmured last week in her sleep as outside the temperature soared past a hundred and, in her dream, she jabbed her finger up to place a bid. She is testier with me than anyone, sometimes slapping the air if I come too close. There are days I cannot please her. Carol, who has worked in nursing homes, says that old people who are failing get the angriest with those they are most attached to, the people who make them realize they are no longer themselves. But Betty’s crankiness is an act, I think, a way to conceal her embarrassment at having to ask anything of anyone. When I do something for her, she looks away. Accustomed to fending for herself, she hates all this.
. . .
“I was worried,” Betty says. “You said last night you couldn’t sleep. I was worried you wouldn’t sleep tonight.” She stares at me.
“No, I’m sleeping. I’m asleep. Right now I’m talking in my sleep.”
“You’re in bed in your clothes again.”
“I dozed off reading.”
(Actually, I go to bed in clothes because I am waiting to be called into action, anticipating a fall, or stroke, or shout out. She seems so frail when I tuck her in. I keep the ambulance number, along with the one for the emergency room, on my bedside table.)
“It isn’t a good thing for people to go to bed in their clothes . . . The Appeal didn’t come today,” she complains.
Our little town’s newspaper, which reports civic events, charitable campaigns, and church news—including the “Movement of the Spirit” at the Full Gospel Church—has appeared erratically recently, possibly because of the increasingly short-staffed post office. This is the kind of lag that can throw my mother into crisis mode. She wants what she wants when she wants it.
“Did someone call today? From the church? I can’t find my other shoe, the Mephisto.”
I say we will look in the morning, and my mother, somewhat satisfied, almost smiles. For a second, there is the old Betty, who does not often appear now, my old friend.
In St. Louis, when we turn off Skinker onto Delmar, not far from the University City gates, Betty always points out the place where, as a young woman, working as a secretary at Union Electric, she waited for the streetcar. She seldom mentions the past, but loves to return to that old streetcar stop. Back in the 1940s, after the war, she was a pretty girl with wavy light brown hair, fresh from the “Miss Legs” contest at the university. Listening to her memories, I see her in a cast-off coat, not long after the war, looking down the tracks toward Webster Groves where she stayed with her aunt, called Nona. There is innocence in her expression, excitement at her new city life as she stands by other women in expensive dresses, the sort that Mammy never allowed her to buy. Sometimes I wonder whether she wishes she had gotten on that streetcar and ridden it to some other life.
By the time my mother realized that she was smart or saw she had the kind of looks that open doors, she had already closed too many to go back. “I just wanted a house with a few nice things,” she told me once. “That was my little dream.”
. . .
Betty—actually Elizabeth, or, on her best stationery, Elizabeth Baker Hodgman—doesn’t see well at all. Certain corners of the world are blurred. Her hearing sometimes fails her, but it is often difficult to determine whether she is missing something or simply choosing not to respond. Also, she is suffering from dementia or maybe worse.
Some days she is just about fine, barking orders at Earleen, our cleaning lady, sharp enough to play bridge with her longtime partners. Other times, though, she is a lost girl with sad eyes. I am scared I am going to break her. I am new at all this.
We have hunts for liquid tears, or checks, or hearing aids, or the blouse Earleen was supposed to have ironed for church. The mind of my mother has often drifted away from peripheral matters. She has always been busy on the inside, a little far away.
Now more than ever, she is in and out, more likely to drift off into her own world for a minute or two. Or sit staring for long spells with a vacant look. Or forget the name of someone she knew, back then, before she had to worry about not remembering. In the afternoons, her whimpers and moans, her little chats with herself are all I hear in the house. The nights, especially just before bed, are the worst. She knows something is happening to her, but would never say so. We circle around her sadness, but she will not let me share it. Acknowledging anything would make it real. These, I fear, are her last days as herself.