Chapter 3
Three
Friday was my day off, so I took Swede on a long run around Haddonfield before looping home to regroup for my Elkins visit.
Per her calendar, Erica had lunch with friends, but I didn’t realize her plans were to host her fellow elementary school moms, rather than rendezvous at the Bistro in town.
Three extra cars were parked in our driveway, and I heard my stepmother’s voice almost as soon as I reached for the kitchen door’s knob.
Someone hadn’t closed it all the way, leaving it ajar.
“Yes, I don’t really know what to do with her,” Erica was saying.
“She seems to have lost all her drive and sense of direction.” Pause.
“It’s awful, but I’m sort of dreading everyone seeing her next month. ”
My pulse skipped a step. Was she talking about me?
Swede whined to go inside. I scratched behind his ears, as if to say, Shh, one second.
“But she’s wonderful at the bookstore,” one of her friends said—Hilary, who loved any and all novels set in London. “She might not be challenging herself, but at least she’s working hard and keeping busy.”
“What does Chris think?” a second friend asked.
Erica ignored her, seemingly lost in thought. “I mean, my sister still can’t believe we let her defer Northwestern…”
I gritted my teeth as Swede pawed at the door.
This time I took his cue, and while my dog dashed over to his water bowl, I zeroed in on Erica and her friends.
They looked like an aspirational stay-at-home foursome, sitting at our kitchen table together with a huge spread of food accessorized by Simon Pearce water goblets and blue-and-white MacKenzie-Childs plates.
(Erica had gotten the entire Royal Check dinnerware set in exchange for an Instagram promo Reel.) “Really, Erica?” I asked.
“You still don’t get it? You still don’t get me? ”
The ladies who lunched were silent.
I didn’t give a crap what they thought.
“The most important person in my life has dementia,” I emphasized.
“My grandmother is quite literally losing her mind.” My heart pounded.
“College is extremely important to me, but unlike Annie, it can wait.” The corners of my eyes prickled.
I’d only weathered losing my mom at seven and my dad starting a new family a couple years later because I had Annie.
I couldn’t imagine life without her. “Graduating a year after my friends sounds much more appealing than coming home for Christmas break and having my grandmother have no fucking clue who I am.”
Had deferring Northwestern been a no-brainer? Yes, but that didn’t mean it had been easy. One reason I hadn’t ever visited Gwen or Quincy at college was because I worried it’d bum me out—make me jealous, even. I wanted what they had, a life away from home.
But I thought gradually saying goodbye to Annie as I knew her would be marginally better than the sudden shock that her memory had been wiped. “Please let me spend next year with her,” I’d begged my dad last spring. “What if I leave and she remembers no one and nothing when I come back?”
Now, Erica took a deep breath. “Olivia—”
I couldn’t even look at her; instead, I turned to her friend. “Hilary, I set aside a new romance for you,” I said. “It’s waiting behind the register.”
And with that, I turned around, grabbed a Tupperware off the counter, snatched my keys off the hook, and left the house.
* * *
I drove to Elkins with white knuckles, and thanks to my sweat-soaked clothes and air-conditioning, I’d caught a chill by the time I parked.
Keep calm, I told myself as I waited to be buzzed into Finlay House.
Their inner double doors were always locked, to prevent Annie and other residents with memory issues from wandering off.
I tried not to compare it to a psychiatric ward, but sometimes it was hard.
“Hey, Tara,” I said when I reached the nurses’ station.
I summoned a smile and presented her with my Tupperware. “Chocolate chip cookies!”
I baked for the Finlay team as much as I could. They did so much.
“You’re too sweet, Olivia,” Tara said, accepting the cookies but not returning my forced smile. Instead, she gave me a solemn look. “We had a sundown yesterday.”
My squared shoulders slumped. “Oh.”
“Yes.” Tara nodded sympathetically. “We gave her something, but…”
I listened while the nurse told me how agitated Annie had been all afternoon, pacing the halls and then demanding to shower at 2:00 a.m. I’d learned that “sundowning” was common for those with Alzheimer’s and dementia; manifestations ranged from increased confusion to anxiety to wandering to insomnia to hallucinations.
“How is she now?” I asked Tara.
“Comfortable,” she answered, then hesitated a beat. “But you should prepare yourself to just be a friend today. She fought Kai every step of the way to breakfast.”
“Okay,” I said quietly. Kai was Annie’s all-time favorite aide. She was only awful to him when she wasn’t herself.
Suddenly, my bones felt weary.
It also wasn’t a good sign that another nurse took over the desk so Tara could walk me to Annie’s room. Her door had been propped open today, as if the staff agreed she needed extra monitoring. “Hello, Annette,” Tara said gently. “You have a visitor.”
My heart twisted when I saw Annie in bed, snuggled under the fluffy violet throw blanket I’d given her for Christmas.
(She loved anything and everything cozy.) Her bed back in her Elkins apartment and then assisted living had been queen-sized, but now she was tucked in to a twin.
Barely big enough for me to sit at its foot.
And it didn’t matter, anyway. I knew from the blank expression on her face that she didn’t recognize me. “Hello,” I said warmly, before she could aim a dagger at my heart by asking who I was. “I’m Olivia Lupo.”
Even my full name did not ring a bell. I was truly a stranger to her; she wouldn’t even recognize my laugh.
I willed myself to ignore the pang in my chest.
“Annette, Olivia is here to spend some time with you,” Tara helped, guiding me toward Annie’s armchair. “Doesn’t that sound nice?”
Annie finally blinked. “Company is always nice,” she said as she made direct eye contact with me. There was light there, thankfully. “You know my family never comes to visit me.”
A hard lump rose in my throat. Yes, they do! I wanted to cry. Dad visits; I visit; we visit all the time; I’m visiting right now!
But that was exactly what I wasn’t supposed to do.
There was no winning when you tried to convince someone with dementia that they were wrong.
It frustrated them. Erica limited her visits because she admitted she couldn’t wrap her head around it.
“Your Cartier watch is gone, remember?” she’d said back when Annie lived in assisted living, before her official diagnosis.
“You may have accidentally thrown it out.”
“No, I didn’t,” Annie disagreed. “I put it back in my jewelry box, as always.” Her eyes narrowed. “Why would I ever throw it out? It’s Cartier.”
They’d gone back and forth until Annie outright accused Erica of stealing the twenty-thousand-dollar watch.
Which, my issues with Erica aside, was really sad.
Because it was Annie who’d encouraged my dad to start dating after my mom had died, and it was Annie who reassured my dad that, despite Erica being a lot younger than him, they made a great couple.
Annie had loved my mom, but she also adored Erica.
“What brings you to prison?” Annie asked once Tara had left us alone.
“Tax evasion,” I replied smoothly. Elkins was always “prison” on Annie’s bad days. “What about you?”
She laughed, and I glanced around her room, so sparsely decorated compared to her previous homes.
There was one oil painting above her bed—of a woman standing in a meadow, her face obscured by a straw hat and yellow skirt blowing in the breeze—but the rest of her impressive art collection was split between my house and her storage unit.
Some family photos sat on her windowsill, and there was a world map hung over her nondescript wood dresser.
Blue pins were scattered across it. My dad had the map framed as a shadowbox for Annie’s birthday.
“Do you like to travel?” I asked.
“Oh, yes.” Annie visibly brightened. “Very much so.” She pointed to the map. “Each one of those pins is a trip I took.”
I smiled to myself. Travel was always a safe, reliable topic with Annie. She might not be able to remember me, but her decades of globe-trotting? Always.
They were carved so deeply into her brain that dementia had nothing on them.
Not once had she ever been at a loss for words when I asked about her adventures.
One of my favorites was the six-week cruise she took to Australia before the Queen Elizabeth 2 ocean liner had retired.
When I was little, I remembered Pops telling me he had to mark forty-two days off the calendar before she returned home.
As a kid, that sounded like an eternity.
“Why didn’t you go with her?” I’d asked him, to which he replied, “Someone had to feed the cat!”
I’d been ten when I found out about my grandfather’s anxiety; even on medication, he could not fathom going anywhere beyond state lines. But he and Annie had meticulously planned all her amazing adventures together before she went on them with her best friend.
“What was your favorite trip?” I asked now, knowing the real answer was Milan. There was no better place to shop than the Via Montenapoleone.
“Oh, there are so many,” she said excitedly. “Not to mention, my dear friend Kathy and I have been recently talking about going back to Milan next year…”
I nodded along, even though Kathy had died of pancreatic cancer three years ago. Her funeral had been one of Annie’s final public outings.
“…but Martha’s Vineyard has a special place in my heart.”