“I want to go home,” Mom repeated.
Patty said: “But Mom, you keep forgetting things, you can’t take care of yourself anymore.”
“Of course I can, don’t you
Jeannie bit her lip. Looking at the wreck that used to be her mother, she wanted to cry. Mom had strong features: black eyebrows, dark eyes, a straight nose, a wide mouth, and a strong chin. The same pattern was repeated in both Jeannie and Patty, although Mom was small and they were both tall like Daddy. All three of them were as strong-minded as their looks suggested: “formidable” was the word usually used to describe the Ferrami women. But Mom would never be formidable again. She had Alzheimer’s.
She was not yet sixty. Jeannie, who was twenty-nine, and Patty, twenty-six, had hoped she could take care of herself for a few more years, but that hope had been shattered this morning at five A.M.., when a Washington cop had called to say he had found Mom walking along 18th Street in a grubby nightgown, crying and saying she could not remember where she lived.
Jeannie had got in her car and driven to Washington, an hour from Baltimore on a quiet Sunday morning. She had picked Mom up from the precinct house, taken her home, gotten her washed and dressed, then called Patty. Together the two sisters had made arrangements for Mom to check into Bella Vista. It was in the town of Columbia, between Washington and Baltimore. Their aunt Rosa had spent her declining years here. Aunt Rosa had had the same insurance policy as Mom.
“I don’t like this place,” Mom said.
Jeannie said: “We don’t either, but right now it’s all we can afford.” She intended to sound matter-of-fact and reasonable, but it came out harsh.
Patty shot her a reproving look and said: “Come on, Mom, we’ve lived in worse places.”
It was true. After their father went to jail the second time, the two girls and Mom had lived in one room with a hotplate on the dresser and a water tap in the corridor. Those were the welfare years. But Mom had been a lioness in adversity. As soon as both Jeannie and Patty were in school she found a trustworthy older woman to mind the girls when they came home, she got a job—she had been a hairdresser, and she was still good, if old- fashioned—and she moved them to a small apartment with two bedrooms in Adams-Morgan, which was then a respectable working-class neighborhood.
She would fix French toast for breakfast and send Jeannie and Patty to school in clean dresses, then do her hair and make up her face—you had to look smart, working in a salon—and always leave a spotless kitchen with a plate of cookies on the table for the girls when they came back. On Sundays the three of them cleaned the apartment and did the laundry together. Mom had always been so capable, so reliable, so tireless, it was heartbreaking to see the forgetful, complaining woman on the bed.
Now she frowned, as if puzzled, and said: “Jeannie, why have you got a ring in your nose?”
Jeannie touched the delicate silver band and gave a wan smile. “Mom, I had my nostril pierced when I was a kid. Don’t you remember how mad you got about it? I thought you were going to throw me out on the street.”
“I forget things,” Mom said.
“I sure remember,” said Patty. “I thought it was the greatest thing ever. But I was eleven and you were fourteen, and to me everything you did was bold and stylish and clever.”
“Maybe it was,” Jeannie said with mock vanity.
Patty giggled. “The orange jacket sure wasn’t.”
“Oh, God, that jacket. Mom finally burned it after I slept in it in an abandoned building and got fleas.”
“I remember that,” Mom said. “Fleas! A child of mine!” She was still indignant about it, fifteen years later.
Suddenly the mood was lighter. Reminiscing had reminded them of how close they were. It was a good moment to leave. “I’d better go,” Jeannie said, standing up.
“Me too,” said Patty. “I have to make dinner.”
However, neither woman moved toward the door. Jeannie felt she was abandoning her mother, deserting her in a time of need. Nobody here loved her. She should have family to look after her. Jeannie and Patty should stay with her, and cook for her, and iron her nightgowns, and turn the TV to her favorite show.
Mom said: “When will I see you?”
Jeannie hesitated. She wanted to say, “Tomorrow, I’ll bring you your breakfast and stay with you all day.” But it was impossible: she had a busy week at work. Guilt flooded her.
Patty rescued her, saying: “I’ll come tomorrow, and bring the kids to see you, you’ll like that.”
Mom was not going to let Jeannie get off that easily. “Will you come too, Jeannie?”
Jeannie could hardly speak. “As soon as I can.” Choking with grief, she leaned over the bed and kissed her mother. “I love you, Mom. Try to remember that.”
The moment they were outside the door, Patty burst into tears.
Jeannie felt like crying too, but she was the older sister, and she had long ago gotten into the habit of controlling her own emotions while she took care of Patty. She put an arm around her sister’s shoulders as they walked along the antiseptic corridor. Patty was not weak, but she was more accepting than Jeannie, who was combative and willful. Mom always criticized Jeannie and said she should be more like Patty.
“I wish I could have her at home with me, but I can’t,” Patty said woefully.
Jeannie agreed. Patty was married to a carpenter called Zip. They lived in a small row house with two bedrooms. The second bedroom was shared by her three boys. Davey was six, Mel four, and Tom two. There was nowhere to put a grandma.
Jeannie was single. As an assistant professor at Jones Falls University she earned thirty thousand dollars a year—a lot less than Patty’s husband, she guessed—and she had just taken out her first mortgage and bought a two-room apartment and furnished it on credit. One room was a living room with a kitchen nook, the other a bedroom with a closet and a tiny bathroom. If she gave Mom her bed she would have to sleep on the couch every night; and there was no one at home during the day to keep an eye on a woman with Alzheimer’s. “I can’t take her either,” she said.
Patty showed anger through her tears. “So why did you tell her we would get her out of there? We can’t!”
They stepped outside into the torrid heat. Jeannie said: “Tomorrow I’ll go to the bank and get a loan. We’ll put her in a better place and I’ll add to the insurance money.”
“But how will you ever pay it back?” said Patty practically.
“I’ll get promoted to associate professor, then full professor, and I’ll be commissioned to write a textbook and get hired as a consultant by three international conglomerates.”
Patty smiled through her tears. “I believe you, but will the bank?”
Patty had always believed in Jeannie. Patty herself had never been ambitious. She had been below average at school and had married at nineteen and settled down to raise children without any apparent regrets. Jeannie was the opposite. Top of the class and captain of all sports teams, she had been a tennis champion and had put herself through college on sports scholarships. Whatever she said she was going to do, Patty never doubted her.
But Patty was right, the bank would not make another loan so soon after financing the purchase of her apartment. And she had only just started as assistant professor: it would be three years before she was considered for promotion. As they reached the parking lot Jeannie said desperately: “Okay, I’ll sell my car.”
She loved her car. It was a twenty-year-old Mercedes 230C, a red two-door sedan with black leather seats. She had bought it eight years ago, with her prize money for winning the May-fair Lites College Tennis Challenge, five thousand dollars. That was before it became chic to own an old Mercedes. “It’s probably worth double what I paid for it,” she said.
“But you’d have to buy another car,” Patty said, still remorselessly realistic.
“You’re right.” Jeannie sighed. “Well, I can do some private tutoring. It’s against JFU’s rules, but I can probably get forty dollars an hour teaching remedial statistics one-on-one with rich students who have flunked the exam at other universities. I could pick up three hundred dollars a week, maybe; tax-free if I don’t declare it.” She looked her sister in the eye. “Can you spare anything?”
Patty looked away. “I don’t know.”
“Zip makes more than I do.”
“He’ll kill me for saying this, but we might be able to chip in seventy-five or eighty a week,” Patty said at last.
