“My dad.”
“Memory loss or just can’t get around?”
“He’s got Alzheimer’s.”
“Oh, sweetie. I’m sorry.” Pat, pat, pat went the wrinkled little hand. It felt surprisingly nice. Both of my grandmothers were long gone—my mother’s mother had died of breast cancer before I was born, and my father’s mother, Grandma Sadie, had gone to Heaven’s screened-in porch when I was in college. I liked to imagine her sometimes, sitting in a rocking chair, listening to the Sox and yelling at my grandfather. “They’ll take good care of him here.”
My throat felt thick as I swallowed. “You think so?”
“I see things. I watch. They’ll make sure he’s safe. Do you have children?”
“A little girl.”
“Pictures?”
I pulled my phone out of my purse. Ellie, in her favorite maxidress, was my wallpaper. In the picture, she stood on the beach in a broad-brimmed sun hat, with waves foaming at her feet. My new friend peered at the screen, then sighed. “It goes so fast,” she told me. “One minute you’re putting diaper cream on their tushies, the next thing you know, you’re walking them down the aisle. Then they’re putting you in a place like this.” She sighed again, and I thought I saw the glimmer of moisture on one seamed cheek. “And you sit here and wonder where the time went, and how you never wanted to live long enough that someone should be changing your diapers.” Another sigh. “Still. I wouldn’t have missed a day of it.” She poked at my phone. “You got Candy Crush on here?”
“Oh. No. Sorry.”
Kathleen Young was heading toward us, her pleasant smile still in place, but I noticed the creases around her eyes had deepened.
“Mrs. Lefkowitz, you’re not scaring away prospectives, are you?”
My new friend gave Ms. Young a sunny smile. “You mean I shouldn’t tell them about the rats in the showers?”
“She’s kidding,” said Ms. Young. Mrs. Lefkowitz gave me another smile of surpassing sweetness.
“I hope I’ll see you again,” she said. “And that pretty little girl!”
“Nice to meet you,” I said, and gave her little paw another squeeze.
“Right this way,” said Kathleen Young. “This is the Manor,” she said, walking at a swift clip past opened doors with nameplates on them. “Our residents who require the most care stay here. This,” she said, opening a door, “is a typical double room.”
I stepped inside. The room wasn’t large, with most of the space taken up by adjustable hospital beds with side rails that could be raised or dropped. There were two oak dressers; two bookcases; two armchairs, one on each side of the room, each upholstered in blue plastic, dyed and patterned to make it look like cloth. The bathroom had all of the stainless steel rails you’d expect, with a metal-and-plastic chair in the oversized walk-in shower cubicle, and grippy mats on the floor. Back in the room, I let my fingertips drift along the armrest of one chair and tried not to wince at the feeling of plastic. Would my dad see the difference between the furniture in his house and this stuff? How could he not? Noticing my expression, Kathleen said, “Of course, our residents are welcome to bring their own furniture. Most do. We find it helps with their sense of dislocation.” I nodded, mentally erasing the hospital bed, the cheap bureau and bookcase, and the plasticized armchair, and replacing them with things from my parents’ home. Better.
“Are there single rooms available?”
“Of course. They’re significantly more expensive . . .”
“That shouldn’t be a problem,” I said, and watched Kathleen’s pupils expand. Years ago my father, in a tacit admission that my mother was equipped to handle precisely nothing that his golden years might entail, had bought himself a life-insurance policy and all kinds of disability and extended-care policies, too. There was money to pay for everything he’d need, and to pay for the help my mother might eventually require, now that my father was unable to arrange her days. “Tell me about the, uh, level of care.” I’d done all kinds of research about the questions I was supposed to ask, even if the answers were all on the website. As Kathleen recited statistics about physician’s assistants, physicians on call, and nurse-practitioners, LPNs, and nurse’s aides, and how it was a goal at Eastwood to encourage as much independence as was feasible and safe, I thought of when I was twelve, and my father had taken me to New York City.
The whole thing was an accident. He’d gotten the tickets for South Pacific as my mother’s birthday present. For weeks, she’d gone around playing the cast recording, singing “Younger than Springtime,” making appointments for a haircut and color, trying on and returning different dresses. I had come home on the Friday afternoon of their proposed trip and found her sick in bed. Some kind of twenty-four-hour bug, I’d thought, remembering the sounds of retching, murmuring behind closed doors, my dad asking if she wanted a doctor and my mother, shrill and weepy, saying she’d be fine, just fine, she just needed to sleep. My father had emerged tight-lipped, visibly unhappy. He’d already paid for the tickets, made plans for dinner, reserved the hotel room. If there’d been time he would have found a way to cancel the whole thing. Instead, he’d mustered up a smile and said, “How’d you like to go to the Big Apple with your dear old dad?”