An Absent Mind(19)

He went over to see Father today without me or the kids. Just the two of them. That took a lot of guts, given how Father feels about him. What no one knows, except Father, Bernie, and me—not even Mother—is that I became pregnant while we were in college. We found out two weeks after our engagement. The wedding was to be the following year, after graduation. A big affair at the Windsor Hotel. Something Mother insisted on, even though Father could barely afford it.

I told Father, figuring he would be more understanding than Mother. Was I wrong! He was more upset than I have ever seen him. He insisted on my having an abortion. “What would my friends think of a good Jewish girl getting knocked up?” he screamed. “What would they think of your little princess having an abortion?” I retorted.

Once he realized I wasn’t going to end the pregnancy, he reluctantly helped us concoct a story in which we had decided to move the wedding up because I would be working right after graduation. That was after he had given the hotel a deposit, but before he had to pay the band a third of their fee in advance.

Naturally, he didn’t blame me—I was the innocent victim. Bernie, however, became persona non grata. And it has remained like that to this day. Bernie learned to live with it and still went out of his way to be kind to Father. But believe me, there was no reciprocation. The sad irony of it all is that I had a miscarriage two months later, and it took me almost ten more years to get pregnant with our first son, Howard.

So today, with Father slipping, but still having some semblance of comprehension, Bernie decided to sit down with him and try to make peace.

The way Bernie tells it, the visit didn’t start off very well, even though he went over in the morning, when Father is generally more lucid. Father accused him of raping me, being a pimp, and other niceties, which even though I’m no prude, I can’t repeat here. Bernie said he waited him out, letting him vent.

When Father finished, he slouched back in his chair. Bernie started to speak, but Father raised his hand to stop him. Then he stood up and went over to Bernie, motioning for him to get up. He put his arms out and hugged Bernie and said he was glad he had come, that Bernie was a good father and a good husband, and how sorry he was for his attitude all these years. Then Father returned to his seat, propped his feet up on the ottoman, and asked Bernie how the kids were. And that was it. A few seconds later, he got up and turned on the television, as if Bernie wasn’t in the room. But Bernie said he didn’t care, that it was one of the best days of his life.





Saul





My Last Place on Earth


It’s all unraveling.

Last night, I found myself somewhere on Monkland Avenue. I had no idea how I got there. I looked in a store window and saw my reflection. It took me a bit to figure it all out—like that the person in the window was a man, and that the man was me.

I didn’t know what to do. I glanced down at the bracelet on my wrist and everything—well, not everything, but the gist of it all came back to me. I am Saul Reimer, formerly a healthy, intelligent man, married to the same woman for many years, and the father of two children he loves more than anything in the world.

The key word is formerly, as I am sure you’ve already figured out. Because today—and I have no idea what day it is, other than it is really cold and I wish I had a jacket on—I am nothing, not a real man, that’s for sure. I mean, how can you be a real man when you don’t even know where you are half the time, and when you do know, more often than not, you can’t grasp the concept of your surroundings?

I felt in my pocket for my wallet, but it wasn’t there. All I had was my bank card. I spotted an ATM machine at the corner. But when I got there, I couldn’t figure out how to work it. A woman walked up from behind. I gestured for her to go in front of me. She smiled and said she was in no rush. I looked at the machine, with all the words flashing across the screen. My hands were getting slimy, and beads of that wet stuff covered my forehead. Why couldn’t she just go first?

Then suddenly, it all made sense. I followed the directions, but it took me a few tries to get the card into the machine with the strip the right way. I looked behind me again. The woman was fidgeting with her purse strap. Then the machine asked me for a personal identification number. The good news is, I knew I had one. The bad news is, I had no idea what it was. My brain is like a shortwave radio, mostly static that occasionally finds the station, but even then the sound isn’t always clear.

In a way, it will be a blessing when my mind is totally gone, when I am a vegetable, slouched in a wheelchair. Like many Alzheimer’s patients on Montreal’s West Side, I’ll probably make a pit stop at Manoir Laurier. Then, when Manoir Laurier can’t cope with me, or we can’t afford it anymore, they’ll ship me off to Belfrage Hospital, my final stop on this beloved earth. I’ll be there, incontinent, drooling, and incoherent—that is, if I can even manage to get a word through my blistered lips. And when it’s all over—when my heart finally gives out, or I contract pneumonia, and my family says, “Let Saul go; he deserves some peace”—when that happens, they’ll take me down to the autopsy room, cut my skull open, and find the tangles and plaques on my brain. Then they will be able to say with 100 percent certainty that Saul Reimer had Alzheimer’s.





Monique