Chapter Thirty-Four
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
They took Joan to see a specialist. Both Jamie and Lee came to the appointment. In the hospital, Joan walked the halls with purpose. She strode so fast she nearly left her children behind.
I created you, Joan thought bitterly. I raised you.
She had bathed them; she had wiped their little butts and held them when they cried.
There had been countless instances when she had wanted and gone without to make their lives as seamless as possible.
This she had done without complaint. But Lee and Jamie were grown, and she was her own person again.
And now they dared give orders about her body?
Joan was always fastidious about doctors’ appointments, and taped on her fridge was an AARP mailer that listed recommended tests by age.
She scheduled her mammograms, her colonoscopy, her physicals months in advance.
She was structured about medical visits because she did not like hospitals and otherwise would avoid them.
When her children were younger and asked if she would die, she said only that she hoped it wasn’t soon.
And when they asked if they themselves would die (Lee being the child most fearful of death), all Joan could offer was it wasn’t for them to worry about.
Either of them dying was unimaginable; it was the only event Joan could not bear to ponder.
And yet it seemed now her children were able to imagine her own death quite easily—in fact, they were bringing her to the hospital to learn even more about it.
Joan strode faster and faster. By the time she arrived at the specialist, both Lee and Jamie had to run, to catch the door she’d flung open before it slammed shut.
The fury lasted until Joan was seated in a blue felt chair, a nurse before her with a list of questions. The questions were insulting: what day it was, who was the president, what year she had been born. She answered them clearly and accurately. They asked her to draw a clock.
“Of course I can draw a clock,” Joan snapped.
She drew a perfect circle—if she had used a stencil, it could not have been more perfect.
Next she went to add the numbers but found she was stuck.
Suddenly the request seemed impossible. When was the last time she’d actually observed a clock, the manual sort with hands?
It was like being asked to draw a car engine!
But a little pulse began to beat: not normal not normal not normal.
After the test she waited, and at last the doctor arrived.
His name was Dr. Chin—Lee and Jamie had deliberately chosen a Chinese doctor.
Dr. Chin was around their age, with black hair which flopped evenly on both sides of his head.
He asked if Joan wanted him to speak Mandarin, though she declined as she could tell it wasn’t his first language. He inquired how she felt.
“I feel fine,” Joan said. She waited. “Do I have a disease?”
“At this point we don’t know. It could be anything. A bad day. We’ll do some more tests and ask you to come back.”
Joan said that was fine. He had an excellent bedside manner. She knew Dr. Chin’s parents were likely proud of him, of the work he was doing. She knew it wasn’t a bad day.
Even though it was her children who’d insisted she seek medical attention, the news that Joan was suffering from an actual disease of the brain—that she would continue to suffer, with no likely reversal—was stunning to Jamie and Lee.
They discussed it privately and then went and confronted Joan together; this way, she was less likely to intimidate them with the usual tools at her disposal.
“You shouldn’t live on your own,” Jamie said.
“One of us can stay with you,” Lee said. She had recently moved out, to her own apartment. “I can break my lease. Or we can both live with you,” she added heroically. She did not look at Jamie when she said this.
“I don’t want to live with anyone,” Joan said.
“Well, you’ve got to live with someone,” Jamie said.
Joan didn’t want either of her children staying with her.
It wasn’t how she’d envisioned getting older, it wasn’t the natural order.
Wasn’t that funny, though? Because of course people did get old; at a certain point adults needed to be taken care of, the same way as little babies.
People never questioned that children should be kept secure, safe, protected from loneliness, and yet it seemed unnatural that it might go the other way around.
And really, if you were divorced, or your spouse was dead, or you were simply alone, who else was supposed to take care of you?
Children, after all, usually owed you most; they were the ones you could guilt into listening to all your grievances and fixing the sound on your television.
But still. Still. It wasn’t right. Children weren’t supposed to take care of their parents, not in that way.
And Joan knew it wouldn’t work. If the disease kept going as she had read it would—if she kept degenerating until she needed help to eat and bathe and dress—she would require the sort of patience needed for a young child.
And that sort of love, that constant vigilance and lack of freedom should go only one direction, in her opinion.
Isn’t it funny, Joan thought.
Jamie and Lee didn’t move in. But they hovered.
They asked annoying questions (When did you last eat?
Is your vision clear?) and called. But after a few months the inquiries lessened; without an immediate catastrophe, the issue receded, and Jamie and Lee returned to their lives.
Though it didn’t fade for Joan. She knew what awaited her.
“I try not to think about it,” Joan told Patty.
Patty was the only employee Joan had informed of her diagnosis, as she wanted her to be alert for bookkeeping errors.
Patty was so understanding, so discreet, that Joan often thought of her as a well: you simply whispered to her all of your secrets, and they dropped into the dark.
The other employees also confided: Gina told Patty she was sick of baking carrot cake (“I know it’s a bestseller and that it keeps well, but I should be allowed my preferences”); Ellison complained about his ex-wife (“She keeps calling, and I know it’s only because she wants attention”).
On Patty’s suggestion, Joan went to a support group, held at a community center.
The speaker recommended that everyone record events in a notebook to have proof of what had been done and said.
“It’s better to have your own confirmation,” a woman commented, agreeing with this.
She was jittery and clutched a highlighter.
“My husband tells me when I’ve fallen. But how do I know he isn’t pushing me?
” The rest of the group nodded in sympathy.
The woman wept loudly the rest of the session.
That lady needs the Satisfaction Café, Joan thought, staring at her with compassion.
She believed quite a few in the group needed it, but they came from all over the Bay Area and she felt it would appear self-serving to suggest they drive out of their way for some coffee and conversation.
After all, they were receiving free conversation in the support group, though Patrick insisting his wife was stealing his boxers at night wasn’t really the same as tea and dumplings with Ellison, was it?
As the months passed, she began to forget more. She stared straight into the face of Patty one morning and introduced herself. “I’m Joan,” Joan said.
“Hi,” Patty said, extending her hand. She didn’t speak of it after.
The following month, Joan fell at home. All she’d been doing was walking in the kitchen, minding her own business, and then suddenly had fallen over, hard, as if she’d tripped on an unexpected object, but when she looked down there was nothing but smooth tile.
The entire left side of her torso was bruised, the darkest spots where her ribs met skin, and for the first time in a long while Joan wished she had a husband.
I’ve hurt myself, she could have shouted.
Come, honey—please help! She could always say such things to her children, but first she’d have to call, then wait for them to arrive, during which time she would have felt impatient and well enough to get up on her own, but would have to remain lying on the floor to justify Lee or Jamie driving over in the first place.
And they would want to move her somewhere; there would be talk of strokes and head injuries.
Of how her brain could no longer be trusted.
But Joan was loyal to her brain—it had served her so nicely!
She wanted someone to sympathize without consequence, who would respect her desire to remain home.
She went for a walk with Trevor. They still saw each other—she hadn’t told him about the diagnosis, as they didn’t have the sort of arrangement where she could call him if she fell.
Or rather: she could call, and he would come, but their relationship wouldn’t be the same.
He would be upset by her condition but could not be counted on to manage the care of it—they had not reached that place, there hadn’t been enough time.
The next week they visited a local winery.
The winery had a large patio, and there was a concert there that day, some band Trevor had followed for years.
Most of the music was fast, chipper, and folksy, but then they dropped to a ballad that the crowd seemed to know—quite a few sang along.
The song was nostalgic, stirring, the way the singer’s voice broke and warbled as she reached certain notes.
“Are you crying?” Trevor asked. “You are, aren’t you? I just realized I’ve never seen you cry.”
“It’s nothing,” Joan said. She searched her bag for a tissue.
“Is everything okay?” Trevor touched his hand to the back of her neck.