Seven months ago …
I’m lying on my sleeping-bench, daydreaming, when Jack appears in my room. His face is all wrinkled and lined and his hands are out in front like he doesn’t know what to do with them.
“Anna, we need to talk.”
“Okay.”
“It’s private. Let’s go to your room.”
“This is my room.”
Jack wipes his face in his hand and presses his eyelids together. “This is the parlor, Anna.”
“Oh.” I glance around. Yeah. I’m lying on the long chair-thing. “Okay. Let’s go.”
I’m glad Jack is here because I don’t think I’d have found my way back. Everything looks the same. White walls, pale green furniture, hallways leading to doors. Doors to where? I wonder. Where oh where do all these doors lead?
Inside my room, we sit.
“Dr. Li called this morning to tell me the results of your blood test,” Jack says. He’s wearing a black thing, sliced in the middle with a white bit and a pink stripe. A tie! This is what he wears to work. Jack doesn’t usually visit me on a workday. I wonder what he’s doing here now?
“So?” I ask.
“You really have no idea what I’m about to tell you?”
“No.”
Jack sinks to his knees in front of me. I take his face in my hands. “You look like Mom,” I say.
Jack smiles weakly. “You look like Dad.”
“Remember when you told me that if I cut off all my hair, it would grow back straight?”
A small, surprised laugh explodes from Jack. “You remember that?”
“What girl doesn’t remember being bald?”
Jack looks at me for a long while. “When it started to grow back, you had an Afro that would have made the Jackson Five proud. That was actually pretty cool.” He keeps looking at me, but his gaze slides toward my stomach, and his eyes grow sad. “You’re pregnant, Anna.” Jack puts his hand on my stomach, smoothing my clothes so they sit flat.
My belly looks round, like an upside-down bowl. Jack looks at it for another moment, then drops his head onto my knees. When he lifts it again, his cheeks are wet.
“You mean … there’s a baby in there?” I point at the upside-down bowl.
He nods. I curve my hands around my belly, the way Jack did a moment ago. “A baby?”
Jack closes his eyes. “Oh God.”
I watch him. He looks upset. It makes me upset. “You’re worried because of the Alzheimer’s.”
“Yes, Anna.” Jack can’t even look at me. His brow is heavy and he keeps wiping it. It takes a moment for me to realize what he’s worried about. I’m not going to be around for long. Who will look after my baby when I’m gone?
“You’ll look after my baby, won’t you?” My voice rises and cracks. “After I’m gone. Will you bring it to live with you?”
Jack removes his hand and looks at me. For a moment, I think he’s going to say something important; then he just sighs. “Of course I’ll look after the baby, Anna.”
“Okay,” I say.
“I need to talk to Eric,” he says after what feels like a long time.
“Okay,” I say again, because I also have someone I need to talk to.
Jack sighs a few more times and looks at me a lot. Then he shakes his head and leaves, using that power walk he has. It’s pretty good, that walk. Intimidating. I want to tell him so, but he’s gone. And anyway, I have somewhere to be.
*
And then, I’m out in the hallway again. White walls. White doors. Green sitting things. I pass a Latina carrying a pot of red food. The cook, I guess. She smiles on her way to wherever she’s going. I whirl in circles, looking for him, trying to get my bearings. On my second turn around, I don’t even know which door I came out of. When a bald man walks past, I sigh in relief.
“You okay, Anna?” he asks.
Anna! I give a little fist-pump. He knows me. “Yep. Have you seen … um…?”
“Luke?” he suggests.
I grin. That must be his name. Luke.
“No,” the man says. I decide to call him Baldy. “He’s not in his room?”
“Not sure,” I say. “Can you take me there?”
Baldy is infuriatingly slow, but I tap along beside him because it’s bound to be faster than finding his room myself. Anyway, I’m too happy to be by myself. A baby. I repeat it in my mind a few times. A baby. Don’t forget this, Anna. You have a baby inside your belly.
But when we get to his room, it’s empty. “Crap.”
“Language,” the man tuts. “I’m headed to the parlor. Would you like to come and look for him there?”
I’m about to say yes—after all, it has to be a better idea than stumbling around by myself with all these white doors—when it dawns on me. I know exactly where he is.
“Can you take me to the … stepping-blocks that take you to the next floor?”
He’s grumpy, this old dude. He sighs, loud and inconvenienced, and then starts walking. After a couple of clanks of his walker, he turns and says, “Well? You coming or not?”
Geez.
He takes me as far as the stepping-blocks and then says, “You okay?”
“Sure am,” I say cheerily. “Thanks!”