Page 23 of Gone Tonight
Those can be signs of Alzheimer’s.
If I’m carrying the gene, it won’t reveal itself for another fifteen to twenty years—longer if I’m lucky.
Still, it takes a minute for my pulse to slow to normal.
I brew some coffee and inhale the rich hazelnut aroma as it drips into the pot. It gives me energy even before I take a sip.
I hurry to my bedroom and grab a yellow legal pad out of my desk drawer. Then I go to the dining table with a mug of black coffee and sit down. I list the few facts I know about my mother and add my two new details to it.
I open my laptop and begin to search for Virginia high schools with panther mascots.
An hour later, my mug is empty and several more pages of my pad are filled with leads, all of which I’ve crossed out. I’ve been hopscotching around the internet, searching Facebook pages for different high schools and scrutinizing detailed maps of Virginia and even checking out sports websites that contain high school football team rankings.
If there’s a clear answer, it’s eluding me.
The urge to take out the trash nags at me. I need to get rid of the broken egg and bloody paper towels and the other pieces of evidence of everything that has transpired in the last twenty-four hours.
I tuck my legal pad into my bookshelf, sandwiching it between two oversized hardbacks, and head out the door. Mom took the car today, so I head for the bus stop.
My mother hates surprises, but I’m going to give her one.
I’m going to visit her at work.
Sam’s is a brightly lit diner with shiny chrome-and-red pleather stools and booths, a row of pies under glass domes on the long counter, and oversized laminated menus with pictures of the food offered. Breakfast and pie are served all day.
I once asked my mother who would eat pie early in the morning. “Truckers,” she told me. “For some of them, morning is the end of their shift and they like a little dessert before they go to bed.”
I sit on the city bus, moving physically forward while looking backward in time.
When I was smaller, the different restaurants where my mother worked seemed like magical places. I’d deliver stiff, shiny menus to tables—more than once a customer tipped me a dollar just for doing that small task—or sit on a stool, watching the cooks move with the speed of professional jugglers as they flipped burgers and decorated them with tomatoes and lettuce, and buttered pieces of toast with one perfect swoop of a knife. Sometimes the cooks would slip me a scoop of chocolate ice cream with a cloud of sweet whipped cream.
When the sugar kicked in, I’d spin around on a stool until I got dizzy or my mother noticed, whichever came first.
As her disease progresses, my mother will stop coming to Sam’s. A few months beyond that, she’ll forget she was once a waitress.
A few months past that, she’ll forget who I am.
I dig my nails into my palms. The burst of pain distracts my mind and pulls me out of the path of the dark, choppy wave.
A few minutes later, the bus stops a few storefronts down from Sam’s and I step onto the sidewalk.
I haven’t been to my mother’s workplace in at least a year, maybe even two.
It looks exactly the same. It’s humming with the noise of dozens of conversations, the clanking of silverware against china plates, and soft rock music playing over speakers. All the booths are full, but I find an empty stool at the end of the counter.
My mother doesn’t notice me right away. She’s taking an order from two women in the opposite corner of the restaurant. She isn’t using a pad and pen. My mother never does for parties of four or less.
That needs to change.
My mother steps away from the table and walks to the computer where the waitstaff inputs orders for the cooks. She presses a few buttons, then heads to the serving window and grabs what looks like a BLT and fries from the warming shelves. She delivers the plate to a guy at table six, then checks in on table eight. I can’t hear her, but since they’ve already received their food she’s probably asking if they’d like refills of water or hot sauce for their omelets.
My mother appears to be in command of her faculties. No one in the restaurant seems agitated. I can’t see any customers trying to get her attention or frowning at their bill.
During the early to mid-stages, some people with Alzheimer’s plateau for a while. Others have good days mixed with bad days, and I suspect my mother is having a good memory day now. But even though the progression can branch in different directions, the path always narrows to the same wretched, heartbreaking end.
“Catherine!”
I spin a quarter-circle to my right and come face-to-face with Melanie, another waitress, who is my mother’s closest friend.
