“No, sorry, Mr. Baker,” he says. “The stage manager should be by shortly to give you your ten-minute call. The theater is filling up quickly.”
My chest tightens. “Okay. Thanks for checking.”
There are a million buzzing thoughts clogging up my brain. I can’t imagine what could be keeping her and Dad. I send my email to CeeCee and then, with shaking hands, I tap into Mom’s contact.
It rings and rings and rings and then…
Chapter Thirty-Five
“Your father had a fall” was all Mom needed to say before I was escaping the theater, still in my show suit, hopping back into the limo and instructing the driver to take me to New Jersey, leaving behind the noisy theater and an even noisier life.
Now I sit in a scratchy, uncomfortable chair in the hospital waiting room, which is its own kind of noisy. Phone calls. Rolling wheels. Clipboards clanging into holders. Nurses chatting by their station.
I drown them all out and try praying to a god I don’t believe in while wondering how, in the intervening years, no one has thought to redesign hospitals so they aren’t the dingiest, most depressing places possible.
I would use my phone as a distraction for the sudden flooding of unwelcome thoughts, but I’ve shut it off. I know I’ve left behind a PR nightmare. Ticket refunds. Crew payments. An angry streamer. An angrier manager. This must be a breach of contract, and I’ve certainly blown the chance of a lifetime, but what does that matter when my family needs me? What does that matter when I’m finally showing up for the right reasons?
When Mom appears from around the corner, wringing her hands, wearing a lovely black dress that she saves for special occasions, I stand and rush to her. Holding her tight, I ask, “Are you okay? How’s Dad?”
“He’s stable.” She motions for me to walk beside her as she charts a course toward the vending machines, fishing for cash in her purse.
“Allow me,” I say, handing her some of my own, which might as well be Monopoly money.
Pulling a pair of readers from her bag, she cranes her neck closer to the smudgy glass, inspecting her choices. No one gets between Dana and her candy, so I let her make her decision before pressing her for answers. I’ve been in the dark over so much in the last seven weeks. What are a few more minutes in the scheme of things?
She tears into a bag of peanut butter M&M’s with her teeth before handing me the Sour Patch Kids. My absolute favorite. It’s warming that she remembered, even if they feel too relatable right now: sour, sweet, and too far gone.
“Dad’s going to need surgery. He’s fractured his hip.”
“Jesus, how did this happen?” I ask when the puckering sourness of the candy passes.
She takes a sharp inhale. “One of the medications he’s on has side effects, and he tried to get up too quickly without the home care aide…” Her hands fly up, as if she’s at a loss. “I was already on the train. I had to get off at the next stop and take a taxi here. My car is still at the train station.”
My mind gets stuck on three words: “Home care aide?”
Shaking out some more M&M’s into her palm, she says, “CeeCee convinced me. The Alzheimer’s dementia has only progressed.”
This news causes me to rock back on my heels. It seizes my chest. “What?” I never thought his occasional memory loss would evolve like this.
He’s Dad. Stoic. Stable. A builder. There’s no way a disease like Alzheimer’s could take someone so strong without warning. Though maybe the depression was a huge warning nobody wasproperly paying attention to. Ever since the jump, my hindsight has sharpened well past twenty-twenty.
“I’m not a professional,” Mom says, “so I can only handle so much, can only make him so comfortable. Love does not reverse the clock.”
Neither can crystals, apparently.
“It was a good fix for a while. I fought CeeCee’s original plan to consider a memory care facility because I wanted to keep him home where he’s comfortable, but this fall proves that’s not an option anymore,” she says. Sorrow causes her words to take on a breathless quality.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” I ask, even though I can think of at least two reasons. One, ever since I was little, Mom was a grade-A worrier. Helicopter parent of the highest order. But she never, not once, let CeeCee and me worry about her or Dad. That often meant keeping us in the dark about what went on when grown-ups talked after bedtime. Two, even if I’m missing seven years of memory, it’s clear I’ve been MIA when it comes to my family. I no longer hold a stake in their lives.
“You had a special to worry about. We were managing okay. He goes through bouts, and this is a bad one. There was a long wait list for any of the good memory care facilities and a deposit needed,” she says. It’s unspoken that the deposit is pricey. An expense that would impose a burden on them. “It was hard at first, finding the inner peace to let go a little, bringing him to adult day care so I could get a break. Then it was hiring the nurse. Now I have to accept that this is moving into late-stage.” I realize the therapy she mentioned when I visited wasn’t just for overcoming the way I chipped myself off the family block for good. It was for making peace with Dad’s illness. CeeCee’s distance. Learning how to be independent again.
That beautiful garden I saw her tending to was perhaps a project, a place to put the energy she used to give to parenting and being aloving, supportive spouse. That’s not to say that Dad’s gone; he’s obviously not. He’s down the hall being looked over by a team of top professionals. But she can’t be everything for everybody anymore.
Is that my problem? Trying to be someone for everyone exceptthe onefor the people that matter?
“This is life now. The house has been so quiet and still when he’s not in it. Even on his bad days, your father always makes me laugh. I think that’s why I was so overcome when I saw you the other day.”
It clicks. “And when I asked where Dad was…”
