The Things We Keep(49)

I rub my eyes and look at a bowl of fruit on the counter, trying to remember what I’m supposed to do with it. After a few minutes, I yank open the refrigerator and bury my head, hoping the cool air will snap me awake.

“I hear there was some commotion last night.”

I grab a carton of milk and reverse out of the refrigerator. Eric is leaning against the doorjamb.

“Morning,” I say. “Yes. Rosie told you?”

Eric nods. “I’m sorry Anna disturbed you.”

“Don’t be.” I set the milk on the counter. “Actually, I can’t stop thinking about it. She was quite upset.”

“It’s very sad,” Eric says. “A tragic disease, Alzheimer’s.”

“It is. Last night Anna asked for her mother. She also kept asking, ‘Where is he?’”

“She did?”

I nod. “Clearly she was talking about Luke. And I wondered, I mean, is there any reason why she can’t at least visit him?”

“Why do you think she was talking about Luke?” Eric asks.

“I don’t,” I admit, “but who else would she mean?”

Eric shrugs. “You said yourself that she asked for her mother, who is long dead. ‘He’ could have been her father, her brother. Anyone. Anyway, it’s the families’ decision to keep the doors locked at night. There’s nothing we can do.”

“Yes, but—” A thought rushes at me. Eric said Anna tried to kill herself and then they started locking the doors, but what if that wasn’t the sequence of events? What if the suicide attempt was because they locked the doors? “Was Anna’s suicide attempt before or after you started locking the doors?” I ask. I pause only a second before continuing, so certain I’m right. “It was after, wasn’t it?”

“No,” Eric says, frowning. “I don’t think so.”

“Oh.” I pluck a pear and an apple from the fruit bowl and begin slicing them, trying to hide my disappointment. “I just thought it might have explained things. I mean, if I were separated from the one I loved, I’d probably—”

“Loved?” Eric exhales. “Eve, falling in love requires memory, communication, reason, decision making. It’s very unlikely that people with dementia have these capabilities.”

I think about Rodney and Betty, the couple Rosie told me had held hands every day. They didn’t need memory to have a connection.

“But—”

“Look,” Eric says, “this job can be difficult. These people are at the end of their lives, and it’s sad. Particularly for Luke and Anna, being so young. But in order to do this job, you need to keep a certain distance. You are, first and foremost, a staff member here. And while it’s wonderful that you care so much about the residents, your job is to cook and clean. So leave things to the night nurse from now on, eh? After all, that’s what she’s paid for.”

“Okay.” It’s hard, but I force myself to meet his eye. “I will.”

Eric claps his hands, indicating a change of topic. “Anyway, I should get my day started.” He turns toward the door, then pauses. I have an almost overpowering urge to give him an almighty shove to get him out of my sight.

“So we’re clear about Luke and Anna, then?” he says.

“Perfectly clear,” I say, even though the one thing I am not clear on is Luke and Anna.





21

Anna

Twelve months ago …

“P-promise me something,” Young Guy says as I pull a sheet over my chest. We’re in my bed, a squeeze for two grown bodies, but we are managing pretty well. I don’t know what time of day it is, and I don’t care. I don’t have anywhere to be. I have Alzheimer’s disease.

“Sure.”

He watches me carefully, his face becoming hard-lined. “Promise we’ll … be together. R-right until the end?”

I smile, because I can’t help it when I look at him. “I can’t promise that. And neither can you.”

“I c-can.”

“Okay, you can. But just because you say it doesn’t make it so. When we get worse, they could separate us very easily and we’d have no idea.”

“We would.” He props himself onto an elbow. “We’ll … make an order. Do not s-separate.”

“Like ‘do not resuscitate’?”

“Y-yes.”

I laugh. “Who will we leave the orders with?”

“Eric. Our f-families.”

“Come on! We’ll be so gaga, they could put us in cardboard boxes and we wouldn’t know. They could call the family dog Anna, and you wouldn’t know the difference.”

Luke doesn’t laugh.

I groan. “You make me feel like such a black cloud, you know that? I’m a positive person! Around you I’m like … Negative Nora.”

I hope Luke is right, that we will know each other. But I’m not convinced. I’ve already forgotten so much. “When I stop remembering you, I want to go. To flick a switch and end it. Why stay any longer, you know?”

“N-never s-say—”

“Why not? Do you really want to keep going to the miserable end, when your entire body has forgotten how to function and you piss and shit your pants and some stranger has to clean it up? That’s what you want?”