After that, things started happening all the time. Usually, I could explain the incidents away. Sure, I forgot a lot of appointments, but I was a busy paramedic. Getting lost on the way home from work was a little stressful, but directions had never been my strong suit. Unfortunately, there were things that were harder to explain. Like the time I smashed my car window with a ski pole when I couldn’t get the keys to open the door (and then found out the car belonged to the family across the road). And the time I showed up to work on my rostered day off (for the fourth time in a row).
It was the time I forgot the word “twin” when introducing Jack to my buddy Tyrone, from work, that I really started to worry. It was a year after the parking lot incident. I remember staring at Jack, wondering if there was indeed a word for what we were. I searched the dark, dusty corners of my brain, but it was useless. Eventually I called him a person who my mother carried in her uterus at the same time as me. I know, I remember “uterus” but not “twin.” Tyrone laughed; he’d always thought I was nutty. But Jack didn’t laugh. And I knew the jig was up.
I quit my job that day. If I couldn’t remember the word “twin,” what would happen when I couldn’t remember how to resuscitate someone or when I decided it was a good idea to move a patient with a possible neck injury? I had a feeling I’d already been off my game. And when I know something’s going to happen, I don’t see the point in dragging it out.
The same theory applies to life. Life’s going slowly in one direction. I can stay in the slow lane, just keep rollin’ on down that hill, gathering moss and cobwebs until finally, when I come to a stop, I’m so covered in crap, I’m unrecognizable. That’s what Mom did. That’s what most people do. But that’s never been my style.
*
At Rosalind House, there are a lot of drugs. Enough that everyone has their own basket. Every morning and afternoon, the nurse rolls her table-on-wheels through the halls with the baskets, a veritable candy woman of pharmaceuticals. In my basket is Aricept, a round peach-colored tablet responsible for slowing the breakdown of a compound that transmits messages between the nerve cells. Also in the basket is vitamin E, clear and yellow, long and thin. Lastly there is Celexa, a powerful antidepressant responsible for making all of this feel like no big deal. That’s the one I know for sure isn’t working.
I don’t get dressed until my second week at Rosalind House. When I do, I wonder why I bothered. All I do here is lie in bed, scribble in my journal, and stare out the window. Any visitors I might have had (Jack notwithstanding) have been told, at my request, that I’m at a facility on the other side of the country (Hey, I’m not likely to remember them anyway, and I need a “pity visit” like I need a hole in the head). Eric, the manager guy, stops by continually, trying to cajole me into bingo. (Yeah. Like that’s gonna happen.) Various nurses and staff have popped in. But I’ve been out of my room only once, and when I did leave it, I got so twisted around that I couldn’t find my way back. As far as blips went, this one wasn’t so bad. At least I knew I was at Rosalind House. I knew I had a room. But the only thing my little trip out of my room taught me is that I’m in the right place. Residential care.
Today, outside my window, a handsome gardener prunes the boxwood. It’s warm out, and he’s stripped to a thin white T-shirt, which allows me to enjoy his ripped physique. A few years ago, I’d have leaned out and asked for a sprig of something, or even asked if he needed any help. (When I was a kid, Jack and I used to spend a lot of time in the garden with Mom, planting and weeding and mulching.) But now I can’t even be bothered to return the gardener’s smile. I’m too busy thinking about Ethan. About the incident.
It happened at night. I get restless at night, one of many joyous side effects of “the disease.” I was in the living room, trying to figure out how to use the Xbox when I heard his little footsteps behind me.
“Let’s make fongoo.”
“Fongoo” was a loose derivative of fondue, and it was our word for melting candy bars on the stove and then dipping cookies, marshmallows, or whatever else we had handy into the melted goo. I said yes for several reasons: One, I love fongoo. Two, I’m not his mother—it is not my job to worry about his teeth or his lack of sleep. Three, my life is hurtling toward a point where I’m not going to know myself anymore, and while I do know myself, I sure as hell want to be making fongoo with my nephew.
We’d finished the fongoo and were playing Xbox when we smelled the burning. Ethan and I locked eyes.
“Shi—oot!” I said. “The fongoo.”
I bolted for the kitchen, cursing. Burning the house down would do nothing to assure Jack I was a competent adult. I threw the door open, ready to reach for the fire extinguisher, but instead of finding it, I found the bathroom. I turned, opened another door. A cupboard filled with towels. I spun again. Where, in God’s name, was the kitchen?
It wasn’t the first time this had happened. I knew all I had to do was stay calm and wait for a few moments, and everything would come back to me. But the burning smell was getting stronger, and I couldn’t see Ethan anywhere. And I couldn’t even find my way out of the fucking bathroom!