The last time Elena had dated anyone was back in Syria. At the time, Elena had been outrageously obsessed with her career, hardly ever dropping out of the world of her computer to live a life. But one night, when she finished an article, she raised her head to see Timothy Linklater across the newsroom from her, closing his notebook and reaching for his bag. She respected Timothy, respected his way with Syrian locals and other journalists. He’d won an award last year for excellence in war correspondence. He mostly kept to himself, which intrigued her. Who was that guy?
And then, he’d glanced her way and said, “You don’t want to grab a drink, do you?”
Next to the newsroom was a little kiosk, where they bought beers and sat in the shade to drink them. Over the first beer, they exchanged the basics: where they were from (Elena, Millbrook; Timothy, Brooklyn). By the second drink, they were talking about their respective current, fiery stories. Timothy was writing about potential peace negotiations, and Elena was in the midst of interviewing three sources whom she suspected would help her break the biggest story of her career. She told Timothy this, but in vague terms. She knew better than to betray her sources, especially so early on in her relationship with them.
That first night, Timothy told her things that she’d always yearned to hear from a man, especially a journalist. He told her he thought she was fearless, that he’d read her articles and experienced a sort of floating sensation as a result of her prose.He told her that he’d never seen anyone better suited to war correspondence, save for himself.
It had seemed like they were a match made in heaven. Not that Syria was heaven. Not that war was heaven.
At the time, Elena had yearned to call her mother back in Millbrook and say, I met the one, Mom. I met him in the very place you said I didn’t belong. But at the time, her father had still been alive, and her mother had been angry but only passively so. She hadn’t called.
When Elena got back to her mother’s house this chilly night in late November, she found Carmen and Jemma stationed on the sofa in front of a film: When Harry Met Sally again. Now that Elena was doing “journalism,” one article about Christmas after another, she didn’t feel so bad seeing Sally as a journalist on-screen.
“Elena used to love this movie,” Carmen announced to Jemma when Elena walked in. “Back in the day, her father grounded her from watching it for two weeks, and she somehow convinced the librarian at her high school to show it to her during her free period.”
Elena had forgotten that story. How could her mother remember it?The rules of early-onset Alzheimer’s are strange and inconsistent, she thought, before asking her mother and Jemma what they wanted to eat. They announced that Mexican was the only option, so Elena went into the kitchen to order tacos, quesadillas, nachos, and salsa. When the food came, Elena, Carmen, and Jemma ate on the sofa together, watching as Billy Crystal and Meg Ryan argued on-screen. Elena still had nearly every word memorized and had to hold herself back from speaking to them aloud. When they were finished eating, she brought the leftovers into the kitchen and retired to her mother’s study—eager to get her mind around what her mother called“Christmas spirit.” If she was going to be a journalist forThe Millbrook Gazette, she wanted to do it right.
Chapter Seven
The Christmas feature, filed away in the folder Elena had brought home, was written by her grandmother, Rosa Tompkins, in 1958—the same year baby Carmen was born. Elena settled in on her mother’s office chair, cross-legged with a glass of wine on the desk. The papers spread out before her, and read: The Spirit of Millbrook, in which her young and beautiful grandmother (two years before her untimely death on Christmas Eve) wrote about the glorious snowfall, the cozy town’s streets, the quaint conversations at the grocery store, what Millbrook children wanted for Christmas that year, plus “how a town will come together against the next few months of ravaging winter.” The prose was poetic and thoughtful. Elena fell into it, finding herself laughing at times and close to tears at others.
This was the remarkable nature of writing, she thought when she finished, wiping her eyes. It could transcend time. It brought her back to 1958. It introduced her to a woman who felt very much a part of her and of her mother.
It was remarkable that she’d never read her grandmother’s writing before. Why hadn’t she bothered before? She’d always heard tell of her grandmother’s talents, but she’d never been privy to them till now. Elena was captivated. Suddenly, sheyearned to learn more about her Grandma Rosa, more than her mother had ever told her—which wasn’t much. She opened her laptop and googled her grandmother’s name. But because her grandmother had died in the year 1960—long before the age of the internet—there was no record of her online. There were a few Rosa Tompkins, but they’d all died either before or after 1960. They couldn’t be her.
It meant Elena would have to take things old-school and look her grandmother up in the paper’s archives. Her heart pounded. It almost felt as though she were chasing a story again, but this time, the story was her family’s heritage; it was everything she’d never been able to know, if only because her grandmother had died so tragically, long before her birth.
When Elena padded back downstairs, she found both Jemma and her mother fast asleep. It was later than Elena had accounted for, and when she glanced at her phone, she realized she’d missed a phone call from Maxine, the doctor. Fear shot through her. She texted her old best friend: Is it too late to call? Her friend called her immediately, reminding Elena of long ago, when they’d called each other about every mundane thing.
“Hey,” Elena said. “Thanks for calling me back.”
“Not a problem.” Something about her old friend’s voice was strained and made Elena take a sharp breath in.
From the doorway between the kitchen and living room, Elena watched her mother sleeping quietly, sweetly, as her ex-best friend told her the tests had come back positive. “Alzheimer’s,” she said. “It’s early days, and there are things to be done. Medicines to prescribe. She’ll live a long time, Elena. But it’s going to be a strange road. And I know your life isn’t here.”
Elena sank to her knees and put her head against the wall. It was the worst possible diagnosis, the worst possible thing to fathom when it came to her brilliant mother.
“It isn’t fair,” Elena muttered.
“It isn’t fair,” her friend echoed. “I’m going to do everything I can to help you both.”
Elena didn’t know what to say. The wind howled outside, threatening to tear her childhood home apart.
Suddenly, Jemma woke up with a start and got to her feet. “Carmen!” she cried. “Carmen, we’re missing it.”
Elena watched as Carmen shuddered awake, rubbing her eyes.
“I have to go,” Elena whispered to Maxine.
“Call to set up an appointment tomorrow,” Maxine told her. “The sooner we can get these meds going, the better.”
After Jemma retreated home for the night, Elena collapsed on the sofa next to her mother and watched the last few minutes ofWhen Harry Met Sally, the buildup to New Year’s Eve, when Harry scampered across the city to tell Sally he loved her. It was inconceivably romantic and like nothing that had ever happened to Elena in real life. Even during her most “beautiful” love, the one she’d shared with Timothy, the most romantic thing he’d ever done was help her edit her articles. (Admittedly, this was a rare thing from the likes of Timothy, who was so renowned and so cagey about his journalistic practices.)
When her mother slid her fingers through Elena’s, Elena’s eyes filled with tears. Such tenderness wasn’t her mother’s forte. It frightened her. Is this the disease? Elena wondered. Or is she getting soft in her old age?
Or did she miss me that much—like Natalie said?
“I read Grandma’s Christmas piece,” Elena said as the credits rolled.
