Page 14

Nicole

When I got home Sunday evening, the girls were naked in the kitchen, and there were several open containers of Play-Doh on the floor.

I’d bought a twenty-pack from Walmart, and it appeared Kyle had given them all twenty, thinking that more containers would equate to more time they would be entertained on their own. I was already annoyed.

“Mommy!” they screamed when they saw me. That moment was probably the closest I’ll ever get to feeling like Mick Jagger taking the stage at a concert.

Their little naked bodies jumped up and down as I crouched next to them. Their hair smelled sweet, a familiar scent. After a moment, it clicked:

“Do you have yogurt in your hair?”

“Yogurt!” Liv shouted.

Just as I was about to ask where Daddy was, Kyle appeared in the kitchen wearing his softball shirt, the dumb team name—Bat Intentions—across the chest.

“There you are,” he said. “I’m sorry to have to run, but my team will have to forfeit if I don’t get there.”

Well, hello to you too! My drive was great, thanks for asking. It only took me seven hours, and I’ve had to pee for the last two, meaning I’ll probably get a UTI. Nobody knows what’s wrong with my dad, thanks for asking again. I’m so sorry I forgot about your stupid fucking softball game.

“Have the girls eaten?” I asked.

It was almost six. They usually eat around five.

“Not yet,” he said. “I’m sorry.”

He gave me a slapdash kiss on the cheek, grabbed his cleats and his stupid bat bag, and was out the door.

“Mommy, mommy, mommy,” Grace said, still hopping up and down.

“Just a minute, sweeties. I have to go potty.”

They followed me to the bathroom, their hands on my arms, my legs, whatever they could grab to reassure themselves of my presence. I was abruptly back to real life, a life in which my body is rarely not touched and I am rarely alone on the toilet.

Grace instructed me not to flush and then analyzed my pee like a chemist in a lab.

“Why is it so yellow?” she asked.

“I’m dehydrated,” I said, and immediately regretted the word choice.

Predictably, she asked me what that meant, and I had to spend three minutes explaining it.

I can’t help but wonder if there are mothers out there who relish these learning opportunities.

There probably are. They are the ones who are teaching their preschoolers Mandarin.

“What do you girls want for dinner?” I asked. The moment the question left my mouth, I wanted to take it back. Was I expecting them to come to a consensus like civilized human beings?

Grace yelled, “Pizza!” and Liv yelled, “Pasta!”

“Okay, what did you have last night?”

“Chips!” Grace said.

“Chips?”

“Chips!”

I sighed. When I looked in the pantry, the bag of potato chips was indeed gone. I, like many mothers, have an almost photographic memory of the contents of my pantry. There is a ticker always running in my brain, tracking food inventory.

“Let’s do pasta,” I told them. I tried to use my authoritative voice, hoped they wouldn’t pick up on my fear.

“I don’t want pasta,” Grace whined.

It was already six thirty, meaning I needed them to eat quickly and get in the damn bath.

With the yogurt in their hair and the pasta sauce about to be on their faces, we couldn’t skip the bath.

Bedtime is supposed to be seven thirty, but I knew we wouldn’t make it that night.

I resolved to get as close as possible, for my own sanity.

“Here, watch YouTube,” I said, thrusting the iPad at Grace.

She calmed immediately. The iPad is the new pacifier.

I started to text Kyle:

You could have at least fed them and started the bath.

I didn’t send it. Delete, delete, delete.

There was no point. I could already imagine the back-and-forth:

Me: You could have at least fed them and started the bath.

Kyle: You didn’t tell me to do that.

Me: I shouldn’t have to tell you. You know the routine.

Kyle: When you’re not here, I have my own routine.

Me: Okay, but you knew I was coming back.

Kyle: I actually thought you’d be back by five, which is why I wasn’t anticipating being late to my game.

“Mommy, is me done?” Grace asked after taking exactly one bite of her penne.

Thankfully, Liv was shoveling noodles into her face. If she followed in her sister’s footsteps, she wouldn’t start becoming a total pain in the ass about eating until her third birthday.

“No, Grace, you have to eat all your noodles.”

She collapsed, moaning, as if I’d just told her I’d systematically removed the heads of all her dolls, which seemed like it would be incredibly gratifying in that moment.

“How much do I have to eat?” she whined.

“All. Of. The. Noodles.”

“Nooooooo.”

“Grace, seriously. Mommy is really tired. Eat your noodles or no dessert.”

This led to more sobbing. I did my best to ignore it, which has always been Kyle’s advice: “You just have to ignore it.” It was advice we’d both been applying to our marriage.

I turned up the volume on the YouTube video—this one featuring a girl slowly unboxing a dollhouse—and poured myself a glass of wine. I texted Merry, told her I was home safe.

I wish you could have stayed. How am I going to deal with this alone?

I drank my wine like it was juice. I didn’t need this guilt trip from her.

We’d talked about this, about how Kyle works, about how I have the girls.

It had crossed my mind that I could bring the girls up there with me, stay indefinitely.

But I was sure I would end up institutionalized in those circumstances.

You’re not dealing with this alone. I’m here for you, even if I’m not physically there every day. Okay?

She sent a kissy-face emoji, and that was that.

When Merry and I had visited the hospital earlier that day, there were still no answers.

My dad seemed content, though confused as ever.

Every few minutes, he was surprised to realize he was in the hospital.

They were waiting to attempt a lumbar puncture.

Apparently, they had attempted the night before and could not get the needle in or something.

They were quite sure they would be successful the second time, had called in the Spinal Tap Big Guns.

“That test may give us more information,” the neurologist, a young Chinese woman, said. According to her badge, her name was Charlene Lee. She couldn’t have been more than five feet tall, swimming in her pale-green scrubs.

“What do you think is wrong with him?” Merry asked.

I looked at my dad, who was smiling absently, seemingly unbothered by us talking about him as if he wasn’t there.

Merry sat next to him on the hospital bed, held his hand.

They’d never been a physically affectionate couple, even in their early days (from what I can remember, at least).

It was strange to see Merry cling to him.

“The list of possibilities is long,” Dr. Lee said. “Cognitive decline in a subacute period is very concerning, especially for someone who is fairly young and healthy.”

Only in a hospital setting is a sixty-eight-year-old man considered “fairly young.”

“We’re looking for vitamin deficiencies, infections, toxins, seizures, autoimmune issues, tumors,” she said.

“Tumors?” Merry asked. She seemed alarmed. How had she not considered tumors?

Dr. Lee nodded.

“We’ve sent a paraneoplastic syndrome panel to the Mayo Clinic. Those results take a week.”

Merry said, “A week?”

I said, “A para ... what?”

“Paraneoplastic syndrome. It’s when the antibodies in the body go to fight a tumor somewhere else and mistakenly attack cells in the nervous system. And yes, it’s a very specialized test, so it takes a few days.”

Merry sighed her displeasure.

“What about his fall?” she asked.

It took a moment for the doctor to recall what she was talking about.

“With the golf ball?” Dr. Lee asked.

Merry nodded.

“That doesn’t have anything to do with what’s going on. A red herring, as we say.”

“A red herring,” Merry echoed.

“And the other tests haven’t shown anything?”

“The CT scan showed some calcification around his basal ganglia. It’s a little unusual in the location and pattern, but I can’t say it’s related to anything yet. His scan is normal for his age. There were no signs of Alzheimer’s.”

“Thank god,” Merry said.

“There are all kinds of dementias, though,” Dr. Lee said with a warning tone. “Dementia is as heterogeneous as cancer.”

“Is there a test for that?” I asked.

“We did the EEG. It didn’t show any seizure activity, but it did show encephalopathy.”

“What’s that?” I asked.

“Slowing of the brain.”

Merry and I nodded. At this point, my dad had fallen asleep.

“We saw in his records that he had an MRI done about a month ago. Is that right?”

Merry and I looked at each other. She said, “He did?”

Dr. Lee consulted her notes and said, “Yes. You didn’t know?”

Merry said, “No. I wonder if he did that after the fall.”

“And didn’t tell you?” I asked.

She shrugged. “He wouldn’t have wanted me to worry.”

“In any case, that MRI didn’t show a brain tumor or stroke. It was basically normal,” the doctor said. “We may run another for comparison depending on what the lumbar puncture shows.”

“What are you looking for with that?”

“Inflammatory cells. Signs of infection.”

We nodded. There are a lot of nodding and a lot of crying in hospitals.

“There are some incredibly rare neurodegenerative diseases that we’re checking for, just to cover all bases,” she said.

Merry let out another one of her sighs. I felt the need to counteract her negativity, so I said, “We really appreciate that you’re so thorough.”

“Of course,” Dr. Lee said with a tight smile. “I’m hoping we’ll have more information for you tomorrow.”

She left, likely to explain complex medical terms to other families who would either nod or cry.