Trying the knob located in the regular position, you’ll assume the door is broken, and this will deter you from leaving. When things get worse, that is.
Today we marked handles and the light switches with red nail polish.
Today we separated everyone’s dark and white clothes, as though for an enormous load of laundry. All the darks, we donated to the Goodwill.
It was on the forum where I had read: dark colors can appear threatening to the patient with dementia. Black clothing can cause anxiety. If you put a black rug on the floor, an individual in the disease’s later stages will be afraid to step over it, for fear that it is a hole.
Today you held your open hand out and I shook the pills into it, same as every day. Fish oil. Magnesium. Vitamins D and C and A. Gingko biloba.
“Hello, water,” you said, holding the glass against the moonlight and shaking the pills, like they were dice you were ready to roll, in your other hand. “Goodbye, vitamin.”
We bought nightlights, because darkness—lack of sunlight—causes confusion and disorientation. The increased agitation and anxiety is called sundowning. Lung recommended that we keep a light on at all times.
I tried using the nightlight in my room but quit: I couldn’t fall asleep.
Someone on the online forum also said: Imagine you are preparing the home for an inquisitive child. We looked at a childproofing list. We put away anything you could choke on. You described the process of childproofing the house for me: how I would stagger around like a small drunk person, making loud and confident proclamations.
Today, buying refills of vitamins, I bought two of each type, so from now on, I can take them with you.
Today we cooked dinner. We baked a “hummingbird cake” for dessert: pecan halves on the top. Various spices. Why hummingbird? You asked the question, but we didn’t bother to look it up, just because.
We’ve locked away the scissors and the knives in a drawer using one of those plastic childproof locks.
No more poisonous plants, in case you decide, down the line, to eat them. We got rid of everything inedible. We posted emergency numbers to the refrigerator: doctor, police, fire department, the Poison Control Center.
Today I applied for sonography certification. It’s a two-year program. When it’s through I can be a cardiac sonographer.
Today I found an almond with a slight curve and I didn’t eat it. I found another nut with a curve. I put the two anomalous nuts into a jar. Because, well, what can I do?
October
Today I looked glum, I guess, and you told me it was perfectly normal. “It’s called ‘the fall,’ my love,” you said.
Today we ate grapes from a mug and met a white dog that looked like David Bowie.
Today we watched something on PBS about the evolution that’s happening right now, right under our noses. Cliff swallows in Nebraska are evolving shorter wings so as not to be hit and killed by cars. Otter penis bones are shrinking because of pollutants in English and Welsh rivers. Earlier I’d stepped on a coffee cup lid and liked it, then thought, What if, someday, we evolve to like the crunch of coffee cup tops more than leaves? And the streets just stay filled with them?
Today we went for a run together, at the high school track. Though it makes no sense, you’re in better shape than me. You lapped me handily, pumping your fist as you did.
Today Theo came over with a sixpack of root beer and chicken taquitos and Monopoly. We spent four hours as a hat, boot, terrier, and thimble, which Theo wanted but let me have. You bought Boardwalk and Park Place, and Theo accumulated property after inexpensive property, while I languished in jail, seemingly forever. It was Linus who won, in his quiet, diligent way.
After he left you said, I’m senile but I’m not blind.
What? I said.
That wasn’t so bad, was it? you said.
Today at the store you stole a chicken, by mistake. What happened was we lost each other at the store, and after I had paid for our things, I found you outside, clutching this chicken like it belonged to you—like it was your motorcycle helmet. I knew immediately it was theft: you hadn’t brought your wallet with you.
What do we do? I said, panicked, and you shushed me, and we walked, briskly, to the car.
We should bring it back, I said, at home later.
Don’t be ridiculous, you said, and we put it into our Ronco rotisserie.
Today we went to the Boomers! that used to be a Family Fun Center, that used to be a Bullwinkle’s. We played skee ball. We ate a funnel cake. We shook hands with a man in a dirty moose costume. We sat in a photo booth and a few minutes later it spat out a strip of photos of us.
Today we went to the pumpkin patch—the same patch where, when I was seven, a pumpkin farmer reprimanded me for picking one up by its stem. That same farmer was there today; he still looked dour.
All the pumpkins were $4.99, regardless of their size.
You picked out a small pale white pumpkin and I chose one in regular orange, with the longest, most twisted stem. At home we carved the faces, and you told me mine was familiar. That makes no sense, I argued with you.
Later you rummaged in a shoe box until you found it: a photo of me, seven years old, grinning stupidly with a pumpkin I’d just carved. It was this pumpkin’s twin, with an identical face.
Today I found an avocado skin on the dish rack, like a drying dish.
Today I saw you and Mom in the living room, reading, sitting very close. My foot fell asleep, you said to her. You took her hand and placed it on your foot and asked Mom, Can you feel it, tingling?
November
Today a court summons came in the mail for me. I don’t know how they managed to find me. On Monday, I’m supposed to show up for jury duty.
“The word testify,” you said, “comes from testicles. Men used to swear by their balls.”
Today Mom told me that she ate apples during both pregnancies because she heard it’d keep Linus and me from having asthma. You’d shave the wax off them with a butter knife, was what she told us when we asked about it—because earlier we had watched you diligently shave the wax off a Pippin apple.
I’d picked my phone up without noticing who it was, and the voice asked how you were, and the voice belonged to Joel. Now we were having a conversation. I was in the grocery store. I was staring at a pink pyramid of foreign tomatoes.
I said you were good and he said, That’s good.
He said, Tell him I say hi. Tell your mom hi, too.
(Joel says hi. This is how I’m telling you.)
The next thing he said was, I’m getting married.
Congratulations, I said, the way people do.
Kristin is actually pregnant, he admitted.
Congratulations! I said again, and asked how she was, and how far along.
It’s scary, he laughed. It’s exciting.
I had an idea of what was coming, what was inevitable: in no time at all I would feel bereft and intractable. Joel’s getting married, I could handle, but Joel’s making a new human with Kristin, for some reason, I couldn’t. Bonnie was on vacation, in Mexico, with her parents. I dialed Theo.
“Hello,” I said.
“Hi there,” he said.