Chapter Twenty-Four
I’ve been replaying the kiss in my head all day. How did that happen ? What were we thinking? What was I thinking?
Every time I picture it, I’m struck with the feeling of shame and embarrassment at my boldness, but then, dichotomously, with the excited thrill of how good it felt. I want more. I want more badly .
Every time my mind wanders to desire, it comes crashing back down with the guilt again.
How had I been willing to risk everything? What was wrong with me? I must control myself. I must. My phone dings with a text alert. It’s from him.
I’d like to pay for your grandmother’s care. Please send me the name of the facility. Xx
Oh my god. My thoughts are racing. I can’t believe he’s doing that. I think I just fell for him more and also he didn’t mention the kiss. Ugh, I can’t help but think he must regret it.
I distract myself with other things, first thing being that I call Mimi. It’s been too long since I’ve talked to her.
I set up an appointment to talk to her, so an aide is going to set up FaceTime for her on an iPad. I sit, anxiously waiting for the call to go through.
I breathe in deeply. It always makes me nervous.
Mimi is sitting in a large, plush armchair in a warmly decorated room. She’s reading a magazine and listening to Louis Prima.
“Mimi,” I say, smiling as I see her.
She looks up, her face lighting up when she sees mine, but then her eyes dim a little as I see that she does not recognize me. I feel even worse for the few and far between calls I’ve done with her and the fact that I moved so far from her. I know her memory loss is degenerative and not necessarily attached to how much or little I interact with her, but I have to believe that if I saw her more, she’d know me more.
The truth is, it scares me and upsets me to see her without the strong sense of self she had for my entire life. It feels unkind of me to protect myself in this way, feeling like after a lifetime of her being so devoted to me, it was only fair that I give her the kindness of engaging with her now even if it’s uncomfortable. But it’s easy for me to rationalize it away since she doesn’t know if I do or not. If she was merely ill, then I would have kept in closer contact.
“It’s me, Jocelyn,” I say, struck as always with the incorrect feeling that I am condescending to a grown woman. “Your granddaughter.”
She nods. “Of course, of course.”
I know she doesn’t quite remember, but it’s clear she knows she should know me.
“Your room is looking nice today,” I say.
“Oh, I’m only staying here for a little while, I’ll go back home soon.”
“Right,” I say.
“I talked to a friend of yours today,” says Mimi.
“You did?”
“Yes, I did. Handsome boy. I can’t remember his name—Morgan or…or something like that.”
“Alistair?” I ask, thinking this makes some sense. But not a lot.
“No, no, no,” she says.
I tilt my head, not believing my next guess. “Jordan?”
“That’s right. Oh, he’s such a nice boy, darling, you two would make such a nice couple.”
“He’s—I think you might be confused, Mimi. Jordan and I broke up. I don’t think—”
“No, no, I’m sure of it,” she says.
“Okay,” I say, going with it even though I don’t believe it. “What did you two talk about?”
“Who?”
“You and Jordan?”
“Who, dear? I’m sorry, my memory is just—” She makes a squiggly hand gesture and then looks at me to fill her in.
“It’s not important,” I say. “What are you reading?”
For the next hour, we have some version of the same conversation over and over. Her memory comes and goes, fleeting and thin. I don’t mind, I can be patient with this cyclical nature.
My mom had been impatient with her, but in a warm, familiar way. She would say, Ma, I just told you!
At some point, I ask Mimi to show me the pictures on the wall behind her. Even through the shitty quality of the international call, I can see that they’re mostly of me and my mom. More of me.
I lean closer to puzzle out one of them, one I’ve never seen before.
“What’s that picture behind you, Mimi?”
She turns and looks and I instruct her to which one I mean. She takes it off the wall and holds it in front of the camera.
Her hands shake a little, but I can tell that it’s my mom in a classic ballerina outfit. The pink leotard and tutu, pale stockings, pink satin shoes, her hair in a bun tied with a pink ribbon. She’s in Mimi’s backyard.
I know it’s my mom, but it’s hard to believe. I never knew my mom to have had any interest in ballet besides through me.
“Is that my mom?” I ask.
“No, no, that’s Brandy,” she says, confirming that it is, indeed, my mom.
“Did she want to be a ballerina?” I ask.
She furrows her brow in thought. “I think that was Halloween.”
“Oh, I see.”
“But she always wanted to be a ballerina. She went as one for Halloween almost every year. She was always too tall for it, and we didn’t know how much she wanted it until she was too old to get started.”
She looks lucid enough as she says it, but I have to believe she’s got something wrong. Maybe conflating her memories of me with the scattered remains of movies or something.
I realize with a sad drop in my stomach that I’ll never know for sure. The three of us were all we had. And now…well, now it’s really just me.
“Listen, Mimi, I’ve got to go, but I’m going to call you in a few days, okay?”
She smiles. “Okay, honey.”
Sensing the end of the call, the aide comes into frame, saying, “Thanks for calling!”
“Yeah, thanks—hey, I have a question. Did someone named—” I feel ridiculous even saying it. “Did someone named Jordan speak with my grandmother today?”
She looks quizzical and then says, “Let me check the call log. We always keep track in an app, here, it’s somewhere…”
She puts the camera at an unflattering angle as she goes through the iPad.
Finally, she says, “Looks like someone named Jordan Morales called around nine. Now that I see his name, I remember he calls fairly often. Checking in.”
“Huh.”
“Is that all right, miss?”
“I’m sorry, it’s fine,” I say.
“Do you want me to remove him from the list of callers?”
“No, it’s okay. I was just surprised he called,” I say. “It’s good.”
She nods. “If you change your mind, you just let me know. You’re the secondary contact on the account and have been given full privileges, so anything you need.”
“Secondary? So the primary would be…”
She checks her computer. “Alistair Cavendish.”
I let out a humorless “Ha.”
After Alistair’s offer, I sent the information to him, but part of me didn’t actually believe he would do it.
When she sees the expression on my face, she says, “Is everything all right, Ms.Banks?”
No. And yes. I don’t know.
“Of course,” I say, pleasantly. “Thank you so much, I’ll see you next time.”
I hang up.
I need a drink.
I put on my shoes and leave the apartment feeling more unsettled than anything else. It’s like finding out there’s a camera in your home, that someone could be or has been watching you for longer than you knew.
I talk myself into feeling better as I walk against the cold wind, pulling my knitted hat down over my ears.
Alistair just did what he thought I wanted. And it is what I wanted. As for Jordan, well, he loved Mimi. He hadn’t known her long, but the two of them really connected. The first time he met her, I saw tears in his eyes when we left her, and when I asked him why, he just said that he wished he’d known her when there was more of her to know.
My heart threatens to break, and I remind myself of Manon , and how the bills are paid, and how nothing is actually wrong.
Everything is just fine. Totally, completely, absolutely…fine.
Definitely.
I have gravitated toward the theater, which is the area I know the best, and decide to dip into Gravitas, the little wine bar where the dancers often go after rehearsal if they’re being bad and not just going home to have water and herbal tea.
I just need a drink and maybe a carb. I can tell that the reality of all the things I have to deal with is simmering under the surface, threatening to reach a boil and to spill over. I know that if I go home, I’ll just feel worse.
I wish Sylvie was here. Or any friend.
And that’s when I walk in and see the perfect, most ideal distraction in the world.