“She’s going to have a hard time topping that,” said Betty.
At times, my mother maintains her capacity to see much and often surprise. Especially in public, with others. But after the reading, she wavered, wandering into confusing territory. It is astounding to me how quickly Betty can fade from her normal self into the disorientation that upsets her, leaves her wringing her hands. If she is engrossed in something—a meal, a book, a poetic experience involving insects—she is okay, but without something to focus on, she gets a little crazy in the hours before bed. Dementia patients suffer from a phenomenon called sundowner’s syndrome, which worsens their symptoms at night.
In the car going home from the reading, Betty’s defenses fell; the act failed. “Stop, stop, stop,” she yelled out at every sign, slamming her right foot down as if hitting the brakes. “Slow down, slow down, slow down,” she commanded, though I was well within the speed limit. Her noises—the mutterings and whimpers, the troubled utterances—signaled the approach of high anxiety. “Are you okay?” I asked.
“I’m fine,” she said, as if she could will it so. “I’m fine.”
At home, panic crossed her face in tiny waves. A dropped pill led her to cry out, as if something sharp had stabbed her. When a toothpaste tube fell into the sink, she seemed to lose all hope but giggled as her face crumbled. Arriving in her room, I found her seated at the edge of her bed in her nightgown with her shoes still on and her good black pants fallen around her ankles. “Let’s get the shoes off,” I said, taking over and managing to get her ready to sleep. The sight of her bare feet was enough to suggest that life is just too tough, but they are survivors, these old codgers, and beautiful in their human way.
Finally she closed her eyes, but cried out several times as her mind, unwilling to rest, continued to fret. Early in the morning, I woke to go to the bathroom and found her in the family room, going over the bills she stacks and restacks. I lay down, though this made her angry. “I have things to do here,” she told me. “Things to do. Things to do!” She was mad at me for standing guard. That is what it is; I am the guard to her, the one who has taken over her castle. When I woke up at 5 a.m., she was gone, back in her bed, but not sleeping: There were the sounds, her little cries out.
. . .
Today, I am crazed. My head is full of voices: Everyone up there is talking, yelling. No one thinks I am dealing with Betty correctly. I hear the voice of a writer in Washington, D.C., telling me that my relationship with Betty is “codependent.” Friends in Manhattan yammer in the corners of my brain about me destroying my career by staying in Missouri. My relatives plead for Betty’s entry into assisted living. My father and Mammy join in the fray. In my head, the dead are pushy, opinionated, and easily offended. At Starbucks, they scream into my cerebellum about the price of venti lattes and the calorie content of chocolate graham crackers.
Suddenly, a voice I believe to be my mother’s joins the committee of commenters. She draws out every word, articulates seemingly every letter with extreme care. Wait a minute, this is not Betty. The God of Brain Waves has made an error. This is Meet the Press, I am almost certain. I am hearing Peggy Noonan. And she is concerned, very concerned. Shut up, Peggy. Shut up, shut up.
I am doing my best here. I will make it back to New York, but frankly, to spend some time in Paris, Missouri, is to come to question the city, where it is normal to work 24/7, tapping away on your BlackBerry for someone who will fire you in an instant, but crazy to pause to help someone you love when they are falling.
If I have a deadline to meet, I stay awake, working all night. Around 2:30 or 3:00, I take a break to get a bit of breeze, hit the twenty-four-hour convenience store for coffee and doughnuts, drive the loop around Paris, which takes me to the top of a hill, near the cemetery. From the four-way stop where I pause—aside from the occasional semi whooshing by, there is little other traffic at this hour—I look out at the town: the courthouse dome, Main Street, the loose scattering of lights, blue and yellow, twinkling around the hills that hold the houses on their shoulders. I like the feeling of being the only one awake for miles and miles.
. . .