We Are Not Ourselves (46 page)

Whenever she called the McGuires and Frank answered, he handed it right to Ruth. Once, about a month after the dinner at which they’d told Ruth and Frank and the others about Ed, Frank annoyed her with the way he rushed off, and she asked Ruth to hand the phone back to him.

“Where the hell did you go?” she asked. “Why haven’t you called? Why hasn’t he seen you? Why haven’t you taken him out for a beer? Why haven’t any of you goddamned guys taken him out? He’s in that study night after night.”

“I’m having a hard time dealing with it.”

“He knows that. Just call him and say hello.”

“I will,” Frank said.

Frank didn’t call, though, and a week later she got Ruth to put him on. She pretended Frank had called and handed the phone to Ed. She was
afraid Ed would notice that the phone hadn’t rung, but he just took the phone and started talking to Frank like a teenager, his excitement palpable. She listened to Ed’s end of the conversation, which lasted an hour. Nothing about the disease came up. That was one difference between men and women. Men got along fine without revealing anything. She almost admired them for it. The downside was that they retreated to their islands.

When she took the phone back from Ed, she made Frank promise to call Ed again soon, but Frank didn’t call, and the next time they went to the McGuires’, Frank hardly spoke at dinner, and they left right after dessert.

•  •  •

Eileen had been telling Ruth about the anxiety dreams she was having about all her teeth falling out and her skin peeling off her body, when Ruth surprised her by suggesting she see a psychologist. She was amazed to hear Ruth speak of the positive experience she’d had in therapy. She didn’t even know Ruth had ever
been
in therapy. It was nearly impossible to imagine. It wasn’t that Ruth was a stone; she was in fact tirelessly empathetic when listening to the troubles and pains of others, and she always made time for her friends. It was just that she herself never gave anything away. You wouldn’t catch her crying if you tied her up and strangled her cats before her eyes one at a time. For years, Eileen had taken at face value Ruth’s assertion that, having more or less raised her younger siblings, she’d decided she was done bringing children up. Then, late one night when the men were asleep, Ruth admitted she’d been terrified to wreck a kid’s life with drink the way her mother had done. Ever since, when Eileen saw Ruth looking at Connell with affection, she knew there was more in Ruth’s heart than she’d admit to anyone, including Frank.

Eileen had dismissed therapy as an indulgence for those with too much time and money and too few friends. Besides, Catholics didn’t go to shrinks; that was what the confessional booth was for. What were you supposed to do, though, when you hadn’t been to confession since your early twenties? She pictured herself enumerating her sins for an hour and a half, being handed an inexhaustible list of prayers to recite, and leaving with no more clarity than she’d had going in.

Ruth’s therapist was named Dr. Jeremy Brill, and his office was near
Ruth’s, a block from the Flatiron Building. He greeted Eileen at the door and directed her to an armchair. Eileen looked around for the couch she’d been expecting, but there was only a mahogany desk, two armchairs, and a trio of reassuring diplomas—Harvard, Cornell, Yale—on the wall above a little bookcase. The room was dark except for a floor lamp and the little light that came through the slatted blinds.

Dr. Brill sat in an armchair and asked her to speak. She found it easier to begin than she had expected. She was talking about her mother and father, her youth in Woodside, her life in Jackson Heights, her career, even Mr. Kehoe, and after she’d been speaking for a while, she felt the first sprigs of unburdening bloom in her chest. After she’d subsided into silence, it gratified her to hear Dr. Brill—he insisted that she call him Jeremy, but that wasn’t going to happen, even though he was at least ten years younger than her—say that Ed must possess superior intelligence to preserve outward normalcy for as long as he had.

“A less intelligent man might have given himself up long ago,” Dr. Brill said. “Who knows how long he’s been keeping this hidden?”

He prodded her to speak about the way Ed’s illness made her feel, and though she’d vaguely decided beforehand to parry such questions, she began to speak with a pointedness and clarity that surprised her, until, many minutes later—it amazed her how silent Dr. Brill remained, how he seemed to draw the words out of her as though hypnotizing her with his eyes, which narrowed and widened to some hidden rhythm—she felt the engine of her thoughts wind down, midsentence. He told her their time for that session was up.

The next time, she didn’t feel comfortable talking. After an initial greeting, Dr. Brill didn’t say anything either. A long silence settled into the Oriental rug. It put her in mind of the silent treatment Ed sometimes gave her, or the standoffs Connell would enact as a little boy, when he stubbornly refused to speak.

“What’s your biggest fear?” Dr. Brill asked after a while.

“I’m not quite sure,” she said. “Probably being alone.”

Another silence.

“And why is that?”

“Who wants to be alone?”

“Some people might.”

“I don’t,” she said.

“Do you feel that your husband is leaving you alone?”

“Sometimes I do, I suppose. Yes. I guess I do.”

“I understand,” he said. “This is a disease where you never win. It doesn’t just take down the sufferer. It takes down the spouse, the children, the friends. It can feel tremendously isolating.”

It was feast or famine with him; either he didn’t say a word or else he said more than she wanted to hear.

She understood that she wasn’t going to win, that she couldn’t beat Ed’s illness, and yet she wasn’t about to sit there and let someone tell her she was going to lose. She decided right then that she was never coming back. That made it easier to speak, and she spent the next half hour holding forth on all sorts of things she had no idea she was thinking about. In the end she felt relieved for having had a chance to get them out. It was almost a shame to have to cut this experiment short, because she was beginning to see value in it, though only in small doses, and for someone very different from herself.

•  •  •

She could see the day coming when Ed would have to stop working, and she wanted to be smart. She went to the Alzheimer’s Association to find out what kind of resources might be available. The social worker told her to wait until she was impoverished and they’d be able to help her get assistance.

“
Impoverished?
”

“Medicaid only kicks in once you’ve spent down to the threshold. You can keep your salary, up to a certain dollar amount. Not your husband’s. That goes straight to Medicaid. You’ll have to liquidate investments. You can put your money into home improvements, even update your wardrobe. Buy medicines in advance, staples for the house. Set aside burial expense money for both of you. Necessary things. Not jewelry. Definitely not jewelry. Except for your wedding ring and your engagement ring, and his wedding ring. You can keep those. If you spend the money down quickly,
the government can come in and ask where it went, and you might not get Medicaid. You can keep the house no matter what. And the car. The upside is, when you’re nearly broke, there will be assistance available.”

“You’re telling me that short of—going
broke
, as you put it—there’s nothing I can do to defray the cost of a nurse—or a home, if it comes to that?”

“At this point, no.”

“Everything in my savings account goes?”

“Yes.”

“All the stocks?”

“Indeed.”

“The retirement accounts?”

“Them too.”

“Let me tell you something,” she said gruffly, feeling pride rise in her like a fever. “I worked hard my entire life.”

“I’m sorry.”

The costs would be enormous; their savings would dwindle quickly. The cost of at-home nursing care (she refused to consider a nursing home until she absolutely had to) would be the equivalent of taking out a second mortgage, which would be expensive enough on two incomes, but when Ed’s pension kicked in at about 40 percent of his salary, it would be virtually impossible for her to pay it without dipping into their retirement money, which would shrink quickly.

“I should have done the cabinets in cherry,” she said.

“Come again?”

“I was too prudent. I should have had the bricks ripped up and marble tiles put down. I should have bought three mink coats instead of one on sale. I should have gone to Europe every year. I should have spent my money like a drunken sailor in my twenties and thirties when everyone around me was doing it. This all would have been a lot easier to swallow if I were poor.”

•  •  •

She went to see Bruce Epstein, a tax lawyer and the husband of her friend Sunny from work.

She sat across from Bruce in his Upper West Side office. Law books
lined the shelves, as well as classic works of literature. “The best thing you can do is divorce him,” he said, offering her a bowl of chocolates. “Strictly financially speaking, of course. Separate your finances. Put everything in your name. Take all the money.”

Eileen fiddled with a loose string on the hem of her suit jacket.

“I know you don’t want to hear it,” Bruce continued, “but that’s the best thing you can do. If you divorce him, he gets Medicaid right away. It might be better to be unsentimental about it. You don’t have to actually divorce him in your heart. You can take care of him. Just get a different place.”

“What would I tell my son?”

“Your son doesn’t have to know until later.”

“What do I tell Ed?”

“Tell him you’re trying to be smart. Tell him you’re doing this for all of you. Nothing will fundamentally change, except that you’ll get assistance from the state.”

“I’m supposed to divorce my husband because he has Alzheimer’s?”

“I know it sounds bad,” he said, “but you wanted to know. From a financial perspective, divorce is the best thing. I’d be remiss if I didn’t apprise you of your options.”

“How exactly would this happen? How would I divorce him and get all the money?”

“You’ve got a minor child, so that helps. Make up something about infidelity. There are a lot of ways to get this done. You’ll get the house, so that’s taken care of.”

“I don’t think I could do it.”

“I’m not surprised,” he said warmly. “But I think you should give it serious consideration. My concern here—so that you avoid regret later—is that you make a deliberate decision and not let your emotions get the best of you. Or if you’re going to make an emotional decision, do that in a rational way. Decide that you want to weigh the emotions as greater in value than the financial particulars. If you were able to overcome some of the mental obstacles to proceeding in the way I’ve advised you, it would be the most sensible alternative. But then pure rationality isn’t always the compass we’re guided by. I can tell you this much: I would want Sunny to
do this if she were in your situation. It would help both you and your husband. And remember: in the eyes of God you are married forever.”

What he was advocating was the exertion of radical control over one’s own life, even if it meant flouting cherished ideals. She had long prized the notion that she would have made a good lawyer if given the opportunity, but she realized now, as she listened to Bruce’s dispassionate appeal to the facts, that she lacked the ability to see things in the unstintingly logical way he did. She didn’t think she could divorce Ed just to preserve their stake. She’d rather spend the money down. She was going to have to work forever anyway.

50

C
onnell was in his girlfriend Regina’s basement. He wanted to lay her down on the soft carpet and get on top of her, but the best he could do was squeeze close to her on the couch, which sat flush against the paneled wall. He picked at one of the grooves between panels, preparing to make his move and drape an arm over her. He’d done it twice already that day, but it still made him nervous. The first time, after they’d made out for a while, the door at the top of the stairs opened and her mother shouted down, “Everything okay?” They sat at opposite ends of the couch after that, until he worked his way back over to her, inch by inch. Just when he got there, her mother—as if she had a special sense—called him upstairs to reach a serving platter from the top of the cabinet. Regina had said her mother only let them stay down there alone because she’d heard boys from his school were nice boys.

Regina’s family was Lebanese. Her father was so intimidating that Connell could barely speak to him. Connell didn’t like to be alone with Regina when her father was home; it wasn’t worth the anxiety.

He couldn’t remember the name of the movie they were watching. He couldn’t concentrate on anything but the way her hair brushed against him when she flipped it, or the way she pushed against him slightly with every intake of breath. She had kissed him dutifully for a few minutes, and now she was insisting on watching this movie, with an annoyed air that suggested she was trying to seem disciplined and mature and beyond petty lust, but really he could tell that she was just as nervous as he was.

He put his arm around her and let his hand settle on the knobby ball of her shoulder. He let it move a little lower, so that it rested on her collarbone.
She was wearing a polo shirt, munching from a bowl of popcorn in her lap. He moved his hand to the triangle of skin her collar exposed and let it rest there. It was good that he had long arms, because the position was awkward. After a few seconds she shifted closer to him, leaning into his flannel shirt, but he knew it was only to move his hand away.

He had never put his hand up her shirt. He’d felt her over her shirt, but she’d always stopped him after a few seconds. One time he’d put his hand on her thigh and she’d picked it up and moved it away.

He’d told her about his father once because he hadn’t had anything else to say. As soon as he saw the sympathetic look that came over her, he knew he would have that topic to return to when he needed it. It might be useful for more than filling silences.