“Eric. Our f-families.”
“Come on! We’ll be so gaga, they could put us in cardboard boxes and we wouldn’t know. They could call the family dog Anna, and you wouldn’t know the difference.”
Luke doesn’t laugh.
I groan. “You make me feel like such a black cloud, you know that? I’m a positive person! Around you I’m like … Negative Nora.”
I hope Luke is right, that we will know each other. But I’m not convinced. I’ve already forgotten so much. “When I stop remembering you, I want to go. To flick a switch and end it. Why stay any longer, you know?”
“N-never s-say—”
“Why not? Do you really want to keep going to the miserable end, when your entire body has forgotten how to function and you piss and shit your pants and some stranger has to clean it up? That’s what you want?”
He nods.
“Even if you don’t remember me?” I ask.
He gets that look in his eye like he’s looking right through me, past my skin and hair and bones and right through my chest, into my soul. “I w-will.”
“Were you always so sweet, or is it the dementia?”
He dips his head. “P-promise me we’ll be together in the end,” he says. “No switching a button, no ending it. Promise?”
I groan. But his face is determined. There’s no arguing.
“Fine,” I say.
“Say … it.”
I roll my eyes. “I promise. We’ll be together in the end. Batshit crazy. And together. I promise.”
*
In the morning, after Young Guy has stolen across the hall into his own room, I sit at my table. My notebook is in the drawer and I get it out. Briefly, my mind wanders to the last time I sat here to write. Things feel very different now. This time, I’m writing a letter to myself. My future self.
November 1, 2013
Dear Anna, Today you made a promise. You promised the young guy with the tea-colored eyes that you would stay with him until the end. No cutting out early, no taking the fast exit. It’s hard to believe you agreed to that, right? I can hardly believe it as I write this.
So why did you agree?
You agreed because this guy is the one you didn’t know you were waiting for. You agreed because, as it is, you’re not going to have long enough together. And you agreed because this guy is a pretty good reason to hang around.
Soon you won’t remember this promise—that’s why I’m writing this down. So if you are reading this now, there’s something else you should know: Anna Forster never breaks a promise.
Anna
22
None of the residents said anything the first time Young Guy held my hand in the big front room, but I know they noticed. Baldy flew into a coughing fit. Southern Lady’s eyes narrowed, then widened. Really Old Lady smiled, but then, she always smiles. (She probably wouldn’t smile if she knew what we got up to at night.) But after a while, they start to like it. I start to like it. And, it might be dementia, but I can’t actually remember a time before his hand rested on mine.
Today it’s the usual suspects in the big front room. And the guy who does the garden. Every now and then, he comes inside with flowers and hands them out. The ladies love that. But today the garden is covered in white stuff, so he must have gotten the flowers sent from somewhere warm.
“Gabriela!” he says when Latina Cook-Lady walks past. He hands her a special bunch of flowers wrapped in brown paper. “Congratulations.”
She gives him a big, happy smile. Today she announced that she has a baby in her belly, and everyone is really excited. I know I should feel excited, too.
Next he gives me a flower. “How are you this morning, Anna?” he asks.
“I’m okay.” I feel bad for not remembering his name. I do, however, remember the name of the flower. “Lovely alstroemeria.”
His face tells me he’s impressed, and I feel pleased.
“Well, well,” he says, “you know your stems. Let me guess, you used to be a florist?”
“Do I look like a florist?”
He considers that. “Now that you mention it, no. What did you do?”
“I was a paramedic.”
I may as well have said that I was the person in charge of the United States. Southern Lady’s mouth pops open, her husband’s eyes widen, Baldy even stops chatting to his imaginary wife.
“You know what a paramedic is, right?” I say, chuckling. “I didn’t say…” I try to conjure up the title for the person who goes to the moon, but it’s temporarily—or permanently?—just out of my reach, “you know, a space person.”
“It must have been exciting,” says Really Old Lady. “Speeding around in those buses with sirens and the lights flashing.”