Chapter Seven
The home care service had assured Cassie that Mrs. Macuja was just what she needed. Patient, kind and willing to do some housekeeping. The elderly woman she’d been caring for had passed, and she was available full time, even live-in if Cassie wanted.
“Let’s start with three days a week,” Cassie said. “Provided it’s a good fit.” She’d checked Mrs. Macuja’s references, which were excellent, had a lovely conversation with her over coffee and scheduled a visit to the house. That would be the real test. If her father threw a fit, it wouldn’t work.
But on Tuesday when Mrs. Macuja showed up at the door, neatly dressed in gray slacks and sensible shoes, Cassie blinked in surprise. “Mrs. Macuja, I thought you were coming tomorrow.”
“You say Tuesday, right?”
“Tuesday?” Had Mrs. Macuja gotten it wrong? Had she? Cassie’s stomach did a slow slide. Mrs. Macuja was right. The appointment was for today. She’d forgotten all about it.
“Yes, yes. Of course today is Tuesday,” Cassie said, ushering her in.
She’d been planning this visit for a week.
How had she completely spaced? She’d put it on both calendars, she’d even prepped her dad, who hadn’t been enthusiastic but hadn’t said no either.
A finger of dread wormed its way into her gut.
Yes, she was waiting for Andrew to call, but how did you forget something this important?
Mrs. Macuja took in the entry. Years ago there’d been a vase with dried flowers in the corner and a small table with a bowl where her mother kept fresh oranges.
The table was still there, but these days her dad stowed his mud shoes underneath.
Cassie caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror.
Hair a mess, still hadn’t showered after her run.
What a way to greet someone. She had another worrisome thought: what if Glenn came to see about the bees?
She’d told him just to stop by, although that was five days ago and he still hadn’t shown.
Maybe she’d scared him off with all the talk of dementia.
She usually didn’t share that kind of thing with people she didn’t know well but he seemed trustworthy and it had just slipped out.
She gave up on her hair and showed Mrs. Macuja into the kitchen. She was a small, pleasant-looking woman, a widow with three grown daughters and a number of grandchildren. “Just so you know,” she’d told Cassie during the interview, “I not afraid to change diapers. Babies or old ones.”
“Oh, he’s not at that point yet,” Cassie had assured her but just thinking about it brought on a feeling of dismay. Dementia was so unpredictable, the slide so erratic. One day her father seemed fairly lucid, the next he didn’t know what month it was.
Her dad was at the kitchen table, studying the newspaper.
He had trouble making sense of the articles now, but he labored over them every morning anyway.
Breakfast leftovers were still scattered about, even though he’d finished an hour ago.
When she first arrived, Cassie had scooped up his dirty dishes right away but that upset him.
Now she left him alone in the morning, even though the mess made her twitch. Better for him to be unruffled.
“Dad, this is Mrs. Macuja. She’s going to help around the house. This is my father, Mr. Linden.”
Her dad looked up from his paper. “Who?”
“How do you do?” Mrs. Macuja crossed the kitchen briskly, holding out a hand.
Cassie’s dad took it grudgingly. “What’s all this about?”
“I need some help with the housework,” Cassie said. “Bathrooms, floors, everything’s getting away from me.” Shelly had suggested going about it this way, couching it as cleaning help. “He’ll never do it if you say he needs looking after,” Shelly said. “Trust me.”
He rustled the newspaper unhappily. “I told you, I can do all that. Been doing it for years just fine.”
“You had Elena, Dad, remember? She’s not coming anymore.”
“Hmmpf.” He looked suspiciously between Cassie and Mrs. Macuja, who’d bustled right into the kitchen.
“Would you like a little more coffee?” she said.
“No, I don’t want any more coffee.”
She appeared with the pot anyway. “How you take it?”
He looked confused. “What do you mean?”
“Oh, he drinks it black,” Cassie said.
“If I want more coffee I’ll get up and get it.
I don’t need someone following me around with the pot.
” Her father snapped the newspaper closed and pushed away from the table.
If he thought he was being managed, he would dig in.
Just like Andrew when he was little, always suspicious of anything new.
He used to hang back even when Cassie brought him to play with other kids.
She’d worried he would be a friendless, solitary child, but Phil scoffed, predicting he’d grow out of it.
And he had. Too well, judging by the trouble he was in at school.
She checked her watch. Ten-thirty already and the hearing was at ten.
How long could these things go? If she didn’t hear from him in half an hour, she would call.
“What you do to your foot?” Mrs. Macuja asked as her dad shuffled toward the den. Cassie hadn’t said anything about the sprained ankle. Or the bees.
Her dad didn’t answer, just flapped his hand like he was swatting them away.
“So,” Cassie said brightly as he stalked off, “want to see the rest of the house?”
She showed Mrs. Macuja the laundry and explained what her father liked to eat.
“Roast chicken is always good,” she said.
“He’ll complain about whatever you make, but he’ll eat it.
” With surprisingly little pushback from her dad, Cassie had taken over the grocery shopping along with the cooking and cleaning.
But she’d been here nearly two weeks and her own life, whatever that looked like now, was receding.
She missed the give and take of the office.
She missed her running club. They met in Central Park on Saturday mornings and lingered over coffee afterward.
She’d made good friends in that group; Phil had even liked some of the husbands.
She missed her weekly yoga class, although she supposed she could find yoga in Connecticut.
The thing was, she felt like she’d been pulled up by the roots and left dangling.
“You want me sit with him while he watch TV?” Mrs. Macuja asked when they finished the tour.
“Probably not, best to give him some space unless he wants company. But once he’s out of that boot, maybe you can get him out for a walk in the afternoons. I don’t like him sitting in front of the TV all day.”
“I clean up kitchen,” Mrs. Macuja said, pulling on rubber gloves, “then make lunch. He like an early lunch?”
“Noon is good. Let’s give him time to recover from breakfast.”
. . .
Cassie settled herself at the desk in her old bedroom with its lilac walls and boy band posters from high school.
Her ancient stuffed dog, Frederick, one ear chewed off by their real dog decades ago, slumped on the bed.
She opened the lease she’d been working on.
A redevelopment project, converting an old factory in Brooklyn into affordable housing.
The neighbors disliked the factory but didn’t want low-income housing either.
Always a fuss over change. Her childhood desk was narrow and the Wi-Fi spotty upstairs. Hard to work here.
She checked her watch again. Ten forty-five.
Andrew was surely done. She swiped open her phone, then thought better of it.
She should give him a chance to call. She needed to work on letting him be an adult.
But the not knowing was killing her. She stared at the screen, unable to concentrate, thinking of Andrew and the fact that she’d completely blanked on Mrs. Macuja.
She shut her computer, heart pounding. She had no confusion. She knew the day of the week for God’s sake. Just sometimes lately she forgot things. She was under stress. It could happen to anyone. She dropped her head into her hands, and a small, choked sound escaped her.
But she wasn’t just anyone. Not with her history.
She fished the paper from her wallet. Jeanette Torrington, Mount Sinai Hospital. The sight of it sent a spike of fear through her. If she didn’t have the mutation, it didn’t mean she would never get Alzheimer’s, but her chances were substantially lower—like a normal person’s.
But if she did have it, she would definitely develop early onset. One hundred percent.
And if she had the mutation, Andrew might have it too. Did she owe it to Andrew to get tested? If she was negative, Andrew had no elevated risk. He could live his life without worry. She needed at least to explain all this to him. He knew none of it.
A clammy sweat sprang up under her arms and between her breasts. She couldn’t live this way, terrified every time she forgot something, wondering if the end was starting. If the test came up clean, she could get on with her life and chalk all this up to stress.
If not, at least she’d know what she was dealing with, and Andrew could decide what he wanted to do. There would be time to put things in order. However you did that.
She ignored the thundering in her chest and picked up the phone.
Shelly was right. She needed to know.
. . .
She leaned back in the small chair, wrung out after making the appointment. The raw fear had given way to a depleted feeling, like she’d run eight miles and hadn’t eaten. This wasn’t something she could remedy with a granola bar, but at least she’d set things in motion.
She texted Shelly, who sent back a heart. I’ll fly out and go with you.
It’s not for six weeks.
Ugh so long?
First one she had.
Cassie was about to give her sister a call just to hear her voice when her phone rang.
Andrew. Finally.
“Sweetie!” she said. “How’d it go?”
“Grandpa FaceTimed me in the middle!”