SAG HARBOR
Summer 2014
B. gets sort of childlike these days, I guess you could say. If I correct her, or ask if she’s forgotten a plan we discussed just minutes ago, she’ll break into tears. She feels a child’s sense of shame, and guilt. Harsh words are spoken on either side, until we dribble into silence again.
Yet sometimes, just as I’m gripped by despair, a glimpse of the old B. shines through. The other day I couldn’t think of someone’s name, and I asked if she recalled it. She did! The fog can lift, and when it does, the intensity of those moments takes my breath away. We look at each other, and it’s like she’s in a rowboat at the end of a pier where I’m sitting, and we’re close enough to touch. Then the tide starts to pull the rowboat away, and again the fog rolls in, until the boat disappears and there’s only the sound of rowing, somewhere out there, past where I can see.
With B., time heals all wounds, emotional ones anyway. The healing process lasts maybe twenty minutes, an hour at most. She forgets; the day goes on. I’m the one who remembers the fight, and nurses his hurt, even as I realize I have no cause to feel upset at all—not when she is going through what she is, and not when the wife inflicting it on me is someone else. No, that’s not true: when she’s my wife and someone else that this awful disease has created.
Along with that handbag, the mess is what gets me. Remember that Dr. Seuss book about Oobleck, the stuff that just gets everywhere? B.’s clothes and shoes, and yes, her bags and other belongings are like that. They spread from the closet across the living room and down into the basement. Sometimes I make her go down there with me and see what I’m talking about. “We have twenty comforters down here! Why six duvets? Why not give them to people who need them?”
I see now that these things began to accumulate four, maybe five years ago, along with the first, unnoticed symptoms of her disease. Some people with Alzheimer’s become hoarders; I’d say B. is pretty close to being one herself now. They forget they bought a new comforter, say, and buy another each time they go shopping. Some hoarders collect items of no particular value: newspapers or magazines. They lose the capacity to judge what’s worth saving and what should be thrown away. Sometimes they hide the items, afraid their treasures will be taken by their caregivers. For now I just try to contain my frustration, and when B. refuses to throw out those extra comforters, I give up after the first or second attempt to talk her around.
There is no talking her around. More and more I’m coming to terms with that. In some ways she’s the same old B. In other ways that B. is almost gone. I’ve come to feel that Alzheimer’s is like a tornado moving through a town. It destroys some buildings and leaves others untouched. You can thank God for the ones that were spared, or you can shake your fist at fate. As far as I’m concerned, it’s the luck of the neurological draw, brain cell by brain cell, plaque by plaque.
Often, these scenes end a new way now. After one or two angry exchanges, B. just walks away. She goes into our room, or one of the guest rooms, and slams the door shut. That’s even worse than arguing: it’s the sound of one hand clapping. I want to engage; I want to resolve. But now the door is closed, and if I barge in, I’ll just provoke a new round of angry accusations. So I let the door stay closed, and the hours pass. When she finally reappears, she’s forgotten what led her there. Chances are she’s cheerful again. Gently, I ask her what she does in that room with the closed door, hour after hour.
“I just like it,” B. will say. “I like being alone.”
This, too, is classic Alzheimer’s behavior, I’ve learned. B. is retreating, not only from me but from everybody she knows. When Dana first came home, she noticed that B.’s phone message box was full. She had about forty missed calls and a whole lot of unanswered texts. Dana tried getting B. to call back some of those friends. B. refused to do it. When we brought it up with Dr. Goldstein and Dr. Gandy, they told us being sociable was like exercise for the brain—absolutely essential, especially for someone with Alzheimer’s.
Who was better at socializing than B.? She’d built her brand by socializing. That was what she did, as well or better than anyone. No longer. The way Dana put it, back when we had our high apartment on Central Park South, is that B. had become like Rapunzel. Friends on the sidewalk thirty-five flights below wanted her to let down her hair, but B. just wouldn’t do it. She’s only more that way now. I think she’s embarrassed because she knows she’s different, and she sees the pity in her old friends’ eyes. Maybe, too, the sheer effort of trying to follow a conversation is too much for her now. Rather than try to keep up, she just backs off.
One night long ago, I got up to go to the bathroom, walked right down the hallway and—BLAM! I ran right into the closed bathroom door. B. had gotten up sometime before me—and pulled the door shut as she came back to bed. That’s a new twist in door closing. I started cursing, then just shut it down. It was futile to keep ranting and raging. Instead I went out on the deck in the dead of night and just listened to the water lapping the shore. When I’d calmed down, I came back to bed and looked at my wife in the near darkness. There she was, sound asleep, with Bishop snoring beside her. All I felt, at that moment, was love.
Another night we fell into a furious argument about her closet—the fiftieth closet argument. Finally I threw up my hands and took Bishop down to the beach for a moonlit walk. When I came back, the sliding glass door to the deck was locked. So was every door! I went around the house four or five times, knocking on the doors. Was she angry, and punishing me? Had she hurt herself? Or had she locked up the house and taken off?
Finally I went to the garage. Thank God both cars were there: no midnight drive to Everson, Pennsylvania. But now I was really worried. Had she closed some door in the dark and then banged into it hard? I went back out to the deck, debating which way to break into the house. Then I saw a distant figure down the beach. I’d gone one way; she’d gone the other, maybe to find me, maybe to get away from me.
All I knew is that when she got close, she gave me that dazzling B. Smith smile, and waved. And once again, my anger melted away.
Often these days, when incidents occur and I’m trying to keep my temper in check, I turn to the sanest one in the room: Bishop. If B. is venting, as she does tend to do now, I’ll look at Bishop, and he’ll look at me. It’s almost as if he’s saying “Just chill out, it’s not that bad, you know she doesn’t mean it.”
I’ll raise an eyebrow. Really, Bishop? You think this isn’t so bad?
“That’s right,” Bishop’s gaze will say. “I got challenges, too. And by the way, I want some more food.”