Chapter 25
APRIL
CAMERON ASKS IF IT COULD be a misdiagnosis. Dad has always been absentminded. The year he turned forty-two, he swore up and down that he was turning forty-three. But, Cameron says, that type of thing is “hardly Alzheimer’s.”
We’re all gathered in the living room, even Sadie and Otto, who munch on crackers and a cheese ball Mom made.
She and Dad look at each other. They shake their heads no, they’re sorry but it’s not a misdiagnosis.
Cameron doesn’t know about Waco or the broken bowl.
He doesn’t know about the many months of signs or the spread of tests they’ve had done.
He rests his chin on folded hands, unsure what else to say.
I get elected to call Josie, who is eating lo mein with Zazu and Pumbaa.
I assure her that the situation isn’t urgent and she should enjoy Chicago.
Dad is still dominating the grill, tinkering in the garage, and sneaking gingersnaps to Sadie under the table.
For every one thing forgotten, there are dozens remembered.
The truth is that I don’t know whether it’s urgent or not. Dad remembers song lyrics from 1976, but then he puts his car keys on the back of the toilet or a cereal box in the microwave.
Over the next weeks, a veil falls over the house as we exist in that liminal space between naming an illness and experiencing it. We attune ourselves to Dad, jumping up like Whack-A-Moles to help him until he eventually mutters for us to stop it, saying that he can walk to his own dadgum mailbox.
He continues to get up in the night and wander.
To Mom’s relief, he agrees to stop driving and also to expedite his retirement.
Mostly though, he’s his usual self. He plays with his grandchildren, uses his new jeweler’s hammer, and gives an impromptu but reverent mini-lecture on the steady eruption of Otto’s teeth—the timing of canines and molars and how it all corresponds with when the body is ready for different foods.
He quotes lines verbatim from textbooks he hasn’t opened in thirty years.
Most mornings, Leo and I work in Argyle ahead of the heat of the day with the small crew we now have.
The kids stay with Mom, and then we all reconvene for dinner, Rachel sometimes joining us.
Rachel is as she appears: warm, flowery, and perfect for Cameron.
She will finish her last two summer classes and earn a hospitality management degree just before the wedding, which is set for late August. I would have expected Cameron to book a swanky Dallas venue, but Rachel’s parents live on five acres, and she wants something homespun.
She’s the kind of girl I admire but don’t relate to, in that she genuinely enjoys crafts.
Their wedding is a strange relief because instead of discussing the fire or forgettings, we can discuss flowers, centerpieces, desserts, and reception music.
Following the news of Dad’s diagnosis, Leo and I enter an unspoken truce.
I would never call it that, the concept sounding juvenile, like when Josie, Cameron, and I paused a feud the time Dad had a car accident, only to resume it three days later when he was feeling better.
Either way, Leo and I work mechanically to prioritize our kids—swim lessons and nap schedules and evening read-alouds.
We spend more time together than we have in years.
We oversee thank-you cards for the firefighters, per Sadie’s demand to let them know they saved Bear Bear.
We answer Dad whenever he stops mid-sentence and asks, “What do you call it?” And then in late June, progress on our house comes to a grinding standstill while we wait for an engineering report.
When that momentum slows, it’s like it needs somewhere to go.
Like without a hundred things demanding our attention, we will have to revisit the thing we haven’t talked about in weeks.
Divorce is a riptide looming just below the surface.
We’ve looked away from one pain to survive another, but that was always going to be temporary.
This house is a bubbled existence where meals are cooked, jazz is played on the stereo, and a sunrise couple makes wedding plans while a sunset couple makes funneled memories.
Love flanks us, and the whole family is teetering on a precipice.
When a summer wind does sweep through, it comes from an unexpected direction. My phone vibrates one evening during dinner, and I look down at the screen. “Hmm,” I say. “Josie.”
Mom is handing Otto a bite of cornbread, which he shovels past his plump little lips. Dad and Sadie are watching Leo and Cameron play Crazy Eights. Sadie is leaning on her grandfather’s arm while collecting cornbread crumbs with her fingertip. Dad is explaining which is a spade and which is a club.
I push the speaker button. “Hey, Jo. We’re all here.”
A chorus of “Hi, Josie” comes from around the table.
“Oh, perfect! Just what I was hoping for.” She clears her throat dramatically and starts belting the song “What’d I Miss” from Hamilton. I turn my phone volume down and widen my eyes at Cameron, who smirks.
Mom leans over the phone, holding her hair back as if my phone is a bowl of soup. I’ve told her a million times she doesn’t have to get that close for speakerphone. “Sweetheart, what’s going on?”
“I’m coming home for our Dallas run! I thought I might be staying with other cast members, but with everything happening—well, it’s perfect!”
I know this tone. It’s like when she got a part, or an A, or a boyfriend. She wants applause. But for this? She’ll be working in Dallas anyway. This is hardly a sacrifice; it’s the least she can do, joining us here in the cloud of diagnosis land.
The news settles. All three Russo siblings living under one roof again. Add to that the man I’m divorcing, our children, and regular appearances by my brother’s fiancée. It’s…a lot.
I watch Leo get out bowls for mango sorbet.
Still leaning far over, Mom looks at Dad as she says into the phone, “Oh, that’s great! When do you arrive?”
“Next week!”
At this, Sadie grants Josie her cheers. “Hooray, Aunt Josie’s coming!”
Jo will bring our tally to eight people. Eight people to three bathrooms and one kitchen. And she won’t be so easily pacified by Leo’s and my charade, pretending we’re fine until we almost believe it ourselves. Almost.
If I know Josie, she will ask needling questions about the little distances between us.
The clipped sentences and eye rolls. The resentful grumbles from Leo about how he’ll just take care of everything, then or from me about how I’m not a mind reader.
And then—quite damning for the two of us—the fact that we never touch anymore.
Leo used to do things like tug me onto his lap after dinner.
How can I explain to my footloose sister that it’s those little distances that erode a marriage? My explanation will crumble when it hits the air. The experience defies words when someone stands there frowning, wondering where things really went wrong.
Because I wonder that too.
I watch Dad now with his grandkids and spades and clubs. How can we tell a man who’s losing his mind that he’s also losing a son?
“Josephine’s coming ho-oh-ome!” Leo is singing, playing along, using Josie’s sibling name to welcome her with open arms, even though he knows the losses that are coming.
He eats a spoonful of sorbet, somehow finding it in himself to offer my family that crooked smile of his.
It pains me how much he stands to lose. But with Josie coming home, we won’t be able to avoid ourselves much longer.
And what will we tell everyone when they ask why it’s ending?