We Are Not Ourselves(125)

“It seems,” Stan said, “from what we’ve been able to reconstruct, that Ed was assigning the wrong grades to students. I saw the papers. Something was definitely going on. His fall grades were a mess.”

She didn’t know how the semester grades could have been a mess, because she’d supervised their tabulation. Maybe Ed had lost the sheet with the grades and had made a new one up at the last minute.

“I’m calling you,” Stan said, “because, well, did you know anything about problems he was having? Did Ed say anything?”

She felt cornered. “No,” she said. “I had no idea.”

“I need to know, Eileen. We’ve been colleagues, Ed and I, for over ten years. You know that Ed’s like family to me. What’s going on with him?”

He might have thought himself a friend, but he was calling as the department chair. “He’s had some headaches lately,” she said instinctively. “Migraines. He’s going in for a brain scan next week. They want to check for a tumor.”

“A tumor? Jesus, Eileen. I’m so sorry.”

“Thank you,” she said. “We’re hoping for the best.”

After she hung up the phone, she called Jasper Tate. Jasper was Ed’s protégé and partner on the grant research. His four-year-old daughter was Ed’s goddaughter. She told Jasper about her conversation with Stan but left out the part about the brain tumor.

“You must be shaken up,” he said.

“Can I trust you with something, Jasper? I mean, can I trust you not to speak to anyone about something?”

“Of course.”

“Ed loves you like a son,” she said.

“I feel the same way about him.”

She left a long pause on the line. “He’s got Alzheimer’s.”

“My God.”

“We don’t want anyone in the department to know.”

“Okay.”

“We want to keep him going a little longer. He wants to keep teaching.”

“Of course.”

“I lied to Stan.”

“What about?”

“I told him Ed’s being tested for a brain tumor.”

Jasper chuckled warmly. She felt the compression in her chest lift.

“I don’t mean to laugh,” he said, trying to pull the gravity back into his voice. “It’s just—Stan. He’s so . . . Stan.”

“No,” she said. “I needed that. This whole thing has been so unreal, so crazy.”

“I can cover for him,” Jasper said. “I’ll help him prepare for class. I’ll grade his things. His students can come to me for help.”

She knew what Ed would say to Jasper’s offer: I can’t do that to you, Tatey. You have important work to do. She felt at times as if she was on a long trek and had lost her compass many miles back. She knew she should probably not involve this lovely man in the dissembling.

“Maybe you can help for a little while,” she said.

“Yes. Great.”

“Do me one favor,” she said.

“Anything.”

“Play dumb. Don’t tell Ed we spoke. Just help him. He won’t notice the difference. With the grading, yes, you may have to say something. Let him feel like he’s doing you a favor. Maybe you want to compare the quality of work in different sections, I don’t know. I don’t need to explain Ed to you. So far as he knows, this conversation never happened.”

? ? ?

A week later, she called Stan and told him they had ruled out a tumor but had no lead yet about what else might be causing Ed’s sluggishness. She said she would get back to him as soon as she had a better sense of what was going on.

The next morning, she grabbed Ed as he was headed to work. “You leave there as soon as you’re done teaching,” she said. “You understand?”

He nodded.

“Don’t get into conversations with anyone. Not your students, no one. Only Jasper Tate.”

He nodded again.

“If you do find yourself in a conversation,” she said, “under no circumstances are you to tell anyone that you’ve been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s.”

“What’s Alzheimer’s?” he asked, and she felt her spirit breaking, until she looked at him and saw the outline of an impish grin forming on his face.

“Don’t you start with me,” she said, but she was thinking, Lord, don’t let this part of his personality die just yet. If you need ideas for other parts to take away first, I can make a list.





55


Ed was already asleep when the phone rang. She’d been dreading the call for a month.

“Things have gotten worse,” Stan said. “He’s got to come out of the classroom. For his sake, for the students.”

She put a pot of water on to try to calm herself down. The wind howled and rattled against the kitchen window.

“If you think that’s best,” she said. “What’s the administrative protocol? Do you have some rubber room you’ll put him in?”

“I was thinking he’d retire.”

“He has no interest in retiring,” she said. “He has fifteen years before he even thinks about retiring.”