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It didn’t happen every night. The new medication seemed to help some. Arlene could go for days or even weeks seeming almost like her old self and then, without warning, the erratic behavior would begin again. Being in a strange place could cause it; he’d noticed that. Any change in routine seemed to upset the precarious balance of her reason and send her tumbling into confusion once more, but he was there to protect her. He wanted to keep her in the world as long as he could, because he didn’t want to live without her.

She had slept well last night, perhaps tired out by the plane ride and the excitement of the race. The trip had exhausted him as well, so he was thankful to have had an easy night with her.

“We’re leaving bright and early!” the bus driver had announced.

Jim looked at his watch and sighed. Early. Nine o’clock-early? Why, by that time back home in Ohio he’d have had breakfast, read the paper, and done half a day’s work. Well, at least the late departure would give Arlene a chance to catch up on her rest. He glanced over at the other double bed to make sure that she was still sleeping. Yes. The lump under the blankets stirred a little in sleep, but there was no sound from her. He smiled as he watched her sleep. He supposed that other people looking at Arlene would see a vague and frail old woman, but he just saw-Arlene. Most of the time he didn’t register the changes that time had wrought in the pretty golden-haired girl he’d married back in 1955. When you live with someone every day the changes of age come so gradually that you scarcely notice them unless you happen to come across an old photo album, and then the shock is so great that you wonder how it slipped your mind. Slipped your mind. Everything was slipping Arlene’s mind, and that he could no longer ignore. It was the same with the mental changes, too, at first. Even now it was hard to separate ordinary carelessness from the earliest symptoms of the disease. The time she’d burned her hand getting the cornbread out of the oven? Was that the first sign or not?

Martinsville. That brought back memories. He wished that when the bus headed off up I-81 that the road would roll up behind them, erasing all the years between this room, this day, and the last time they had been together at Martinsville.

Arlene had been so excited to be at the race. Her hair was still more honey-colored than gray back then, and her eyes had sparkled with delight as they walked together through the campground, greeting old friends and looking at all the banners and handicrafts celebrating the fans’ favorite drivers. Arlene was wearing her Earnhardt vest, the one she had quilted together into a patchwork composed of threes, black Monte Carlos, and checkered flags. It had been much admired by passersby as they strolled hand-in-hand past the rows of campers, and Jim remembered how proud he had been, how happy.

The word among the longtime fans was that Dale Earnhardt was going to be available for twenty minutes that afternoon to sign autographs at a sponsor’s booth behind the Speedway, and he had suggested that they go early before the line got too long. But Arlene just shook her head and looked up at Jim with a smile tinged with mischief. “Let’s go back to the camper instead, Jim,” she said. “I believe I’d rather spend the afternoon with you.”

“But why are you taking mother on this bus tour?” his oldest daughter had asked. Jean lived in Seattle, was married to some software baron, and she was always after her parents to come out and visit with her. Jim suspected that she saw their visits as a grown-up form of Show-and-Tell, an opportunity for her to display her tasteful gray Escalade, her angular modern house with its geometric furnishings of steel and glass. Jean seemed to think that good taste meant emaciation in all things. They would go out and visit her, perhaps for Christmas if Arlene was feeling up to it, but a trip to Seattle wasn’t what he wanted for their anniversary journey.

“I understand your wanting to travel with her while she’s still able, Dad, but surely there are things she’d rather do? She’s always wanted to go to Ireland.”

Jean hadn’t spent much time around her parents in the past decade. Jim realized that her image of her mother was frozen in some past era, perhaps when Jean had been in high school. No matter how many times he talked about Arlene’s deteriorating mental condition, it didn’t quite register with Jean. Perhaps denial was in itself an incurable form of dementia.

Ireland. Arlene couldn’t even recognize their own home some of the time. He’d explained to Jean that going to a foreign country would be a little more difficult than he could manage. Suppose Arlene became ill while they were abroad. Would they be able to get medical treatment? He didn’t want to risk it.

“Or you could come out and see us,” Jean had said. “It’s lovely here in Seattle in August.”

He thought, but did not say, that Jean was unprepared for a visit from them, given her roseate picture of her mother. Let her keep her memories intact, at least. Or perhaps he was being selfish. Visiting grown children was not the holiday he had in mind. He loved his daughter, but he wasn’t altogether sure that he liked her anymore. These days she seemed to talk like one of those upscale lifestyle magazines. When she and her husband were building their house, it seemed like every other sentence out of her mouth was our architect says this and our architect says that, as if he were a priest of Yuppiedom issuing commandments.

Besides, seeing their little Jean, now an exercise-trim matron with reading glasses perpetually perched on top of her head, would only remind him how old they were and how little time was left. He wanted to escape the narrowing present. To go back to a happier time.

“But-a Dale Earnhardt tour, Dad?” Jean had said in tones of icy condescension. “I thought racing was your thing. Did mother even care about auto racing?” Jean wasn’t worried about her mother’s interests. She never could see the world from any point of view except her own, and now she was thinking How will this affect me? He suspected that she was a little embarrassed by her parents’ interest in motor sports. Jean had been on the West Coast nearly a decade now, and she had managed to get rid of any lingering trace of a Southern accent. He imagined her making slighting references to her friends about her down-home parents, but he doubted that she would mention the NASCAR tour to anyone she knew. She would think that she could never live that down. Useless for him to point out that there are more NASCAR drivers from California than from anywhere else. He had ignored Jean’s self-serving concern for her mother’s interests, and had promised to send her a copy of the itinerary with the telephone numbers of the hotels in case she needed to reach them. That would satisfy Jean’s sense of duty. She wouldn’t call, but she’d be able to tell herself that she was “on top of things,” one of her pet phrases. Jim resolved to send her a postcard of a speedway or a stock car from somewhere along the way, just for the pleasure it would afford him to picture her dismay at receiving it.