"Grow up to be good men like your father."
19
Tuesday, December 21
Marlene was looking forward to an afternoon alone. The twins had run out of the house, headed for the basketball court; they'd be going on from there to bar mitzvah class with Butch so she'd probably have the evening, too.
Lucy and John Jojola were still staying at the loft, but they'd been spending a lot of time out at night on some mysterious mission they wouldn't talk about. She figured that it had something to do with Jojola's notion that David Grale was still alive, although the evidence indicated that it wasn't very likely. John, who'd offered to stay in a hotel but Marlene wouldn't hear of it, said he wasn't sure either. He seemed almost embarrassed to admit that the only thing he was going on was a recurring dream.
"My old friend Charlie Many Horses came to me and said I needed to find David Grale," he told her. "When I told him Grale was dead, he turned his back and walked away. I could be misinterpreting-sometimes the spirits are not very clear about what they're trying to say-but I thought I should come and at least try to do what Charlie asked. It can be a mistake to ignore the spirits, too."
Marlene had not dismissed Jojola's dream as metaphysical nonsense. She knew that he was a deeply spiritual man-a member of the Gray Coyote, a spiritual clan-and that he believed that the spirits talked to those who listened.
Then again, when you're the mother of Lucy Karp, who regularly claimed to converse with a martyred saint, you get used to the people around you having strange invisible companions. And Lucy said she'd been having a dream similar to Jojola's. Neither would go into any detail about what the dream entailed, but Marlene could sense that it greatly disturbed them both, and if she hadn't known Jojola's courageous spirit, she would have thought he was afraid.
Whatever their reasons were, ever since their arrival Lucy and Jojola left in the morning and often did not return until late at night, long after the "old folks" had gone to bed. So Marlene had found a good book and was looking forward to her first concentrated and quiet hours of pure reading in months, when the telephone rang.
"Marlene!" said the nearly hysterical voice of her father. "Your mother is missing again!" He started sobbing.
"Calm down, Dad, I'm sure everything's all right," she said, seeing her dream of an evening alone with a book pop like a soap bubble. "Have you looked everywhere? Remember, she was in the basement the last time."
"Everywhere, everywhere," he cried. "She even left a note on the refrigerator. 'Gone to walk Barney.' She's crazy, Marlene."
Marlene sighed. Barney was the family beagle, dead for more than forty years. Her mother had been his favorite person in the family, and she'd returned the love, letting him sit on her lap while she watched television and sleep on the bed. "She's not crazy, Pops, she has Alzheimer's…it's a disease," she said, trying to sound convincing.
"Marlene…she left her clothes at the front door."
"I'll be right over."
Marlene drove as quickly as she could to her parents' home. So quickly that she nearly missed seeing the elderly naked woman strolling along the sidewalk four blocks from her house, dragging an old dog leash. Her mother appeared to be looking for something but apparently couldn't see or didn't care about the two young boys who danced around her, pointing and laughing.
Screeching to a stop at the curb, Marlene jumped out of her car. "Get the hell out of here, you little bastards," she yelled. The boys took one look at her face and ran off, yelling "crazy old bag lady" over their shoulder.
Marlene flipped the boys off, then turned to her mother. "Mom, Mom, what are you doing?" she said, whipping off her coat to cover her mother.
The old woman was shivering from the cold but brightened when she looked up and recognized her daughter. "Marlene," she said. "How nice of you to come help me look for Barney. That rascal got out, and I'm afraid he's going to dig up Mrs. Johansen's rose garden again."
Mrs. Johansen, like Barney, had departed the earth decades earlier, but Marlene took it as a hopeful sign that her mother had called her by name.
"But what are you doing home, dear?" her mother said, a look of concern crossing her face. "Is something wrong? Why are you out of school already?"
Marlene put her arm around her mother's shoulders and guided her to the car. "Come on, Mom, let's go home," she said. "Pops is worried."
"Oh, that man," her mother said. "He's impossible. 'Do this. Do that.' Who does he think he is, my husband?"
When Marlene arrived home with her mother, her father was standing at the door. He tromped out of the house, and before Marlene, who was coming around from the driver's side, could intervene, grabbed her mother by the shoulders and shook her. "Where the hell have you been, Concetta?" he shouted. "Walking around the neighborhood without your clothes. I'm ashamed of you."
"Help me," her mother screamed.
"Pops!" Marlene shouted, jumping between her parents. "What are you doing?"
Her father backed off, panting, with a wild look in his eyes. He pointed at his wife. "She's just doing this to torment me," he said. "There's nothing wrong with her. She just wants to give me a heart attack." He turned and fled into the house.
"I don't know that man," her mother said. "That's not Mariano. I don't know what they did with my poor husband but that's not him." She started to cry. "Oh, I just want to die."
"Don't talk like that, Mom," Marlene said.
"I don't care. I don't care," the old woman yelled and fled upstairs to her bedroom, where she closed and locked the door. Marlene followed and knocked but her mother responded, "Go away. Just go away."
Marlene left and went downstairs, where she found her father kneeling in front of the small family shrine to the Virgin Mary. He'd lit a candle and was praying fervently but so low that she couldn't hear him. When he finished, he looked up at his daughter.
"I'm sorry Marlene…I…I don't know what came over me," he said. "I'm just tired. And ashamed. Ashamed that I go to confession and have to tell the priest that I sometimes wish that the woman I love was dead. But I don't, you know…I don't want her to die, I just want her back."
Marlene knelt beside her father. "I know, Dad," she said. "But you heard the doctor when we took her in for her checkup the last time. She's not going to get better. In fact, she's going to get worse, until she doesn't know anyone…not you…not even herself. It's the disease, Dad, and no amount of praying is going to bring Mom back. If you can't deal with that then you need to let me look into putting her into a nursing facility where they can take care of her."
Her father had resisted all efforts to remove her mother from the home they'd shared for fifty years. Nor would he listen now. "It would kill her to be in such a horrible place. Like a prison they are," he said. "At least here, she recognizes her things and seems happy most of the time, even if she's on another planet. And those nursing homes…you hear stories about what they do to old people…sometimes alone at night…I can't let that happen to her."
"Dad, I know you want to keep looking after her," Marlene said. "But there's going to be a day when she's going to be better off in the hands of professionals who know this disease and know how to minimize the impact on her. I have plenty of money, and you've never let me help with anything, so let me help with this. We can find the best there is where those bad things don't happen. You can visit her anytime you want. But she'll get the care she needs, and you won't have to worry about her so much."
But her father shook his head. "I'm not ready," he said. "Sixty-six years we've been married. Sixty-six years of sleeping in the bed next to the same person. What would I do without her? No, Marlene…we do okay most of the time. Maybe later. You go home now; sorry you had to come all the way out here to deal with your crazy old parents."