“So you’re SAYING THAT MOM THINKS SHE’S WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE?” said Margot distractedly, twirling a piece of lettuce on her fork and glancing around the restaurant, a fashionable bistro on Rittenhouse Square near Margot’s apartment.
The restaurant had changed ownership recently and, with it, décor. Carla, who had eaten here when it had featured leather armchairs and heavy drapes, thought at first she was in the wrong place when she saw the spindly wrought-iron tables and Japanese lanterns. But then, all the restaurants on Rittenhouse Square were continually changing ownership and décor, rather in the way their patrons were continually changing boyfriends and wardrobes.
As usual, Margot had begun to draw attention. The waiter had already sent over a bottle of wine, courtesy of two businessmen at the next table, and a man in an ascot at the bar had been eyeing her since they came in.
“Margot!” Carla addressed her sister sharply in the tone she used when Stephanie got out of hand: “Mom doesn’t think she’s William Shakespeare; she thinks she had a relationship with William Shakespeare. Stop looking around please and listen!”
Margot responded sheepishly. “Sorry,” she said, banishing the
ascot from her consciousness and giving Carla her full attention. “So tell me again what’s going on.”
“Okay—remember how I mentioned she’d been acting strangely lately? Well, now it’s a full-blown delusion, very elaborate and detailed. She actually thinks she had an affair with William Shakespeare in another life—‘Will,’ she calls him, if you can believe it. She thinks she was the so-called Dark Lady of his sonnets.”
“That’s pretty amazing,” said Margot. “I wonder where she picked up that story.”
“I haven’t a clue. But, believe me, this is no small-time fantasy. She has loads of background material. More than I ever learned in my Shakespeare course at BU. Maybe she’s been reading on the sly—which seems unlikely, since you know she was never one for books. Or maybe she has all this stored memory based on movies—like you suggested last time—or things she heard in the past. You know how they say that sometimes people who have strokes or mental trauma can suddenly speak languages they never learned, just because they heard them spoken once or twice? It could be something like that.”
“Could be,” said Margot, chewing her lip.
“But I can’t imagine what triggered it,” continued Carla. “She didn’t hit her head or anything, and there’s no evidence of a stroke—Mark ruled that out. Dad’s death, of course, was painful—you remember how blue she was for a while—but I wouldn’t call it traumatic. Anyway, it’s been over two years since he died.”
“If it’s Dad’s death that’s behind it, it is strange,” mused Margot. “Not that they didn’t have a good life together. But given that she married Dad on the rebound …”
“What are you talking about?”
“She told me about it once when I was going out with that Harvard guy who was supposedly related to the Kennedys. He turned out to be sleeping with three girls in my dorm—which at least verified his pedigree. I got kind of sad when I found out, though, as
you can imagine, it was mostly my pride that was hurt. But Mom seemed to take it worse than I did. She said she’d been in love with someone once—a Saul something-or-other—and he two-timed her with one of her friends. That’s what made her decide to accept Dad so quickly—not, she said, that she ever regretted it. But obviously that other relationship made an impression. It must have happened at least thirty years before the time she mentioned it to me.”
“So mom has an authentic secret history as well as an imaginary one,” mused Carla.
“Yes—and maybe the latter is some odd manifestation of the former. You know: repressed desire, secret longing, that sort of thing.”
“Come on,” said Carla. “I’m the psychology major. Mom’s a doll, but complicated she’s not. Repressed desire—give me a break!”
“I don’t know,” considered Margot, “I think you’re just used to seeing her in a certain way. I’ll tell you what: Let me probe the situation a bit. I’ll speak to her and see if she gives me the same story. If there’s consistency to it, that at least tells us something about the tenacity of the delusion. It might help us get at the precipitating cause.”
Carla nodded. She found her sister’s detached and logical approach to the situation reassuring. Not for nothing was Margot Philadelphia magazine’s choice for the best criminal lawyer in the Delaware Valley, with a list of mobsters a mile long waiting for her to defend them.
“Then we can decide whether to do anything,” continued Margot.
“I’ve read there are antihallucinatory drugs.”
“But from what you say, she’s not hallucinating exactly; she’s—what does she call it?—remembering.”
Carla shrugged. “She’s remembering hallucinations. Or maybe hallucinating memories. I don’t see that it matters.”
“The question is whether or not it’s doing her harm.”
“It can’t be doing her good to live in a dream world.”
“I’m only saying that we have to weigh what’s best for her. You know how depressed she was before.”
Carla considered this. There was no denying that her mother’s spirits were much improved and that she appeared happy in her delusions. But that was part of what was so disturbing. It was as though Jessie had found an alternative world that suited her better than reality.
“You can’t imagine how upsetting it is to have Mom talking this way.” Carla sidestepped the issue of her mother’s mood. “You know how levelheaded she’s always been.”
Margot nodded sympathetically. “I could take her in for a while, if you want. A change of scene might do her good.”
“No,” said Carla quickly, “she needs the routine of the house. Besides, you’re at work during the day, which would leave her alone too much of the time.” (The idea of Jessie puttering around Margot’s Rittenhouse Square apartment, with its white-on-white minimalist décor and empty refrigerator, seemed like the worst possible idea.) “I can certainly handle having her. It’s just that with Mark so unhappy with his practice and the teachers saying that Jeffrey should go on Ritalin, it comes at a bad time. And there’s the bat mitzvah to worry about, and the fact that Stephanie can’t find a dress. It’s all I need to have Mom channeling Shakespeare’s girlfriend.”
“Well, one thing I can do,” Margot responded with relief. “I can help Stephanie find a dress. That can’t be too hard … .”