Chapter Nine
Notwithstanding an excellent evening of backgammon, I was still feeling queasy in the morning when the phone rang. Still queasy and still a little woolly in the head.
“Hello?” I answered tentatively.
“Hi,” said a strange voice. “How are you?”
“Fine?” I asked, “How are you?” because saying “Who are you?” seemed rude. Maybe if I kept the person talking, I’d figure it out.
“I’m not worried about me.” The voice sounded impatient. “I’m worried about you.”
“You are?” I said. “Why?”
“Well, for starters, you sound weird.”
“I do?” I tried to listen to myself. I thought I sounded normal.
“Yes,” said the voice.
I admired her certainty, whoever she was.
“You sound weird too.” I didn’t really know that this was true because I didn’t know to whom I was speaking so couldn’t say what she normally sounded like, but I figured this would give me plausible deniability if I needed it later.
It wasn’t because I was senile that I didn’t know whoever this was; it was because whoever this was sounded weird.
“I do not sound weird,” said whoever it was. “I sound worried. Because I am worried. Darcy said Maisie said you’re not eating.”
Aha! So whoever she was, she knew Darcy. Wait. “Darcy talked to Maisie?”
“She called her.” Who called whom? “Because she’s worried and so am I.” Even if I’d known who I was talking to, I’d have been hopelessly confused by now. “You can’t be mad. She only called because you were blowing her off.”
Who was I blowing off? Surely not Maisie who I’d had dinner with only last night. Was it last night? It must have been, because it was every night. “I’m not blowing you off,” I said carefully. “We were commiserating just yesterday.”
“Commiserating?”
“About whether or not you could trust your teenage daughter.”
“That was Darcy, Mom. And it was a week ago.”
Now I was really confused. Wasn’t this Darcy? Or who was this person calling me Mom? Finally, I just had to ask. “I’m sorry. Who is this?”
There was silence from whoever was on the other end of the line. Then she said, “Give me half an hour to send an email and reschedule three meetings. I’ll be over before lunch.”
I figured it out before she arrived. Alice.
It had to be Alice because only three people in the world called me Mom, and one was Max who was male, and one was Darcy who did not talk about herself in the third person, and that left Alice.
This made sense because it also explained the tone of surety (Alice had no doubts about anything) and the fact that she hadn’t been invited but was coming over anyway.
But instead of feeling relieved at having solved the puzzle, I felt worried because Alice was canceling three meetings.
Alice’s meetings were usually movable as mountains and just as significant.
Seeing Alice had to be scheduled, ideally with her assistant, weeks in advance and could generally only occur on Saturdays or special occasions.
As far as I could tell, it was an ordinary Wednesday, so maybe there really was something to worry about.
At least Oliver and Pierre would be at school. On the one hand, I’d miss seeing them, and life was much more interesting when they were around. On the other, they tended to divide, expand, and get all over everything, like Silly Putty, and I was just too tired to keep up with them at the moment.
Once, years ago, I asked Alice if she was gay, but she had only laughed. “Don’t be so narrow-minded, Mother.”
I had thought I was being the opposite. “It’s just that you never have a boyfriend, sweetheart.”
“Priorities,” said Alice. She was in law school at the time, and it was like watching a royal ascend the throne. She’d been waiting her whole life for her destiny to arrive, and finally it had.
“Are you homophobic?” I had asked gently. “You don’t need to be scared of lesbians. Or scared about what we’ll think if you are one. We’d love you no matter what.”
“I’m not scared of lesbians, Mother. I’m not scared of being gay either. I’m a little scared of men, but not the way you’re thinking.”
“How am I thinking?”
“You’re worried I won’t let myself love and be loved.” Alice put the back of one hand to her forehead and spread the other over her breasts. “You think I’m afraid to be vulnerable, subject to my passions, weak before a muscly, virile specimen of a man.”
It was true. That wasn’t how I’d have put it, but it was more or less what I’d thought.
She started ticking fears off on her fingers.
“I’m afraid to be with someone who claims to value my success as much as his own but, when it comes down to one or the other, thinks he should come first. I’m afraid to be with someone who goes in saying no kids and we’ll pay for a cleaning service together but then changes his mind a few years later and wants me to stay home with his bevy of babies and keep house.
I’m afraid of being saddled with someone whose laundry needs doing and bathroom needs cleaning and meals need cooking and clothes need shopping for and ego needs stroking, all the time and all by me. ”
“But what about love?” I said.
“I have you for that, Mom.” Alice had leaned over and kissed me on the cheek, and I’d welled up and thought: Yes, mother-love is big enough for a lifetime, and I thought: Yes, because no one else will ever love her like I do.
“What about sex?” I had ventured when I recovered my voice.
“Oh well sure, sex,” said Alice. “I get plenty of that.”
When Alice announced she was adopting twins, I had reminded her of this conversation. “Babies need their laundry washed and their meals cooked and their clothes shopped for and their egos stroked all the time, you know. You have to clean their bathroom sometimes several times a day.”
“But only for eighteen years,” said Alice. “Then they’re grown up and off your to-do list.”
I couldn’t tell her how untrue that was. Some things you just can’t know until they actually happen to you.
When I opened the door, my younger daughter put out her hand. “Alice Mills. Pleased to meet you.”
I batted it away. “I know who you are.”
“You didn’t on the phone.”
“I was kidding.”
“You were not.”
“I just didn’t recognize your voice.” I remembered my plan suddenly. “I told you you sounded weird.”
“Bullshit,” said Alice. “In addition to which, I hear you have a boyfriend.”
There was nothing for it. I was going to have to kill Maisie. “I do not have a boyfriend.”
“You haven’t met someone new?”
“New?”
“You haven’t met someone you didn’t know before last month?” You could not out-semantic Alice. Probably they taught this in law school.
“I suppose,” I admitted.
“This someone is male?”
“Agreed.”
“Is he more than a friend?”
Another saying I detest. Like there’s some continuum with “stranger” at one end and—what?
—“spouse”? “lover”? “dependent”? at the other with “friend” at the fulcrum.
I’m old enough to realize how warped that continuum is.
When the friend is good enough, there’s nothing more anyone could wish for.
When the lover isn’t also a friend, well, that’s how you ended up married to Roger.
“He is a friend as well as other things,” I allowed.
“That’s a boyfriend, Mom.”
“It’s not. He isn’t.” I may not be clear on everything these days, but I was clear on this. Moth wasn’t my boyfriend. A boyfriend is something you have in high school. Like a locker. Moth was something else altogether.
“Fine.” Alice rolled her eyes, which she’d been doing more or less nonstop for the last forty-five years. “You have a gentleman caller.”
“Get out,” I said.
“You can’t really imagine I’m going to drop this.”
“I don’t see how it’s any of your business.”
“You don’t? Among other things, how can I protect you if I don’t know what’s going on?”
“Protect me?”
“He might be a predator, Mom. He might be trying to hurt you, scam you, steal from you, trick you, take your money—”
“He’s not charging me for the sex,” I interrupted.
Alice swallowed. “You’re having sex with him?”
I smiled at my daughter pleasantly. It was a treat to see Alice ruffled.
“Like … actual sex?” she said.
“I’m afraid so.”
“Like with … you know …”
“I don’t, actually.” One could imagine any number of directions Alice might be taking this.
“I mean … do you mean you just … I don’t know … kissing and. Um.”
“Yes, dear, kissing and um.”
Alice swallowed again. “Why?” she managed.
“Why what?”
“Why are you having sex with this man?”
“I like him? It feels good?”
“Please don’t say that.”
“Okay,” I said agreeably.
“Seriously, Mom, this is so wrong.”
“Wrong?”
“Yes, wrong. You’re too old to be …” She trailed off.
“Feeling good?” I supplied.
“Well. Yeah.”
“I’m afraid not, dear.”
“Is it even safe at your age?”
“There’s no statute of limitations on sex,” I said.
“Statutes of limitation impose time limits on legal proceedings, Mother. You are not pursuing legal proceedings.” Alice looked relieved to be back on familiar ground. “We’ll take this up with Dr. Kim this afternoon. Your appointment’s at two.”
Had I forgotten an appointment? “My …?”
“I called Dr. Kim. They squeezed you in. I don’t want to fight about it.”
That was too bad because we were going to fight about it. “What gave you the right to call Dr. Kim?”
“You’re my mother, Mother.” I liked it when Alice called me Mother even less than when Darcy did. “And dementia is nothing to mess around with.”
“Dementia?”
“You didn’t even know who I was when I called this morning. The earlier we figure out what’s going on, the earlier we take control of it. Dementia is often a sign of more serious problems, so let’s find out what we’re dealing with.”
“More serious than dementia?” I thought of King Lear. O, let me not be mad, not mad, sweet heaven. Nothing was more serious than dementia.
“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves,” Alice softened, “but let’s not think it’s crazy to cancel a meeting and make a doctor’s appointment either.”
I had gotten lucky with Dr. Kim since I’d chosen her not for her skill, manner, or experience but for her name, which I’d thought was Kim Kim.
I know a kindred spirit when I find one listed on the internet.
In fact, her given name turned out to be Ji-yoon, and whoever had entered her into the medical center’s website had done a bad job.
“Happens all the time.” She rolled her eyes.
“Though it’s nice when mistakes bring in patients rather than driving them away. ”
She was, however, a very good doctor and, better still, a very kind soul.
She always listened before she did anything else.
Yes, sometimes you felt queasy and it was nothing to panic about.
Yes, gelatinous sweet-and-sour chicken every Thursday evening would put anyone off her food from time to time.
Yes, many people sounded alike on the phone and could probably save everyone a lot of drama if they’d just begin with something like “Hey, Mom. It’s Alice. ”
Dr. Kim leaned forward and put her hand on my knee. “I’m not alarmed. I think you’re probably entirely fine.”
“Thank you,” I said.
“And while I know that your daughters are just worried about you, I also know it must be frustrating to be treated like a child.”
“Exactly.”
“But I’d like to run some tests. Just to make sure. How does that sound?”
“Like an overreaction.”
“I agree,” said Dr. Kim, but she didn’t add that we therefore didn’t need to do it.
There were cognitive tests. There were blood and urine tests. There was a physical exam and a long questionnaire. Samples were sampled. Scans were scanned.
“Oh for heaven’s sake,” Maisie said at dinner when I blamed her for talking to Darcy and thereby causing all of it. “That shit happens to me practically every time I leave the building.”