Life changed then. A few days later you asked her to marry you, and at first she said no, that she didn’t want to marry you just because she was pregnant, but you convinced her that wasn’t why you were asking. Having her in your life was the most amazing thing, and any day without her would be full of heartache and despair. She said yes. You didn’t get married until after Eva was born—Eva was eighteen months old when you walked down the aisle. By then you were also no longer studying, but were renovating houses. Sandra was a stay-at-home mother until Eva started school, at which time she then went back to university and got her law degree, focusing on civil rights. By then you had written A Christmas Murder, which a year later would go on to become a bestseller and open up the world for you. Sandra got a job at a law firm, and then all these years later you got Alzheimer’s and had a big fight with her.
Sandra is concerned, of course, because you spent yesterday moping around in your office, but you told her you weren’t moping, but working on next year’s book that your editor has just sent the notes for. Of course there were no notes—but you did call your editor this morning and she made the mistake of saying Nice to hear from you, Jerry. I trust you are well? which was like trusting politicians to have your best interests at heart. So you laid it out for her. Not like the journal, mind you—just the CliffsNotes. Actually, Mandy, no, you weren’t all right—you were five days into becoming somebody else, and your current project was a madness journal. She was very upset when you told her, and you were upset too, and why not? It’s something worth being upset about.
That would explain all the mistakes in the manuscript, Mandy said, and you pretended that didn’t hit a nerve. I should’ve known. . . . I should have.
Instead you just thought I’d become a horrible writer, you told her, and you laughed to let her know it was a joke, and she laughed too, but it wasn’t very funny.
Day five and Sandra is mad at you. The truth is if you were counting the days she had ever been mad at you, you’d be up somewhere around five thousand by now (that’s a joke, Jerry—I hope you’re laughing!). The truth is you never fight. Never, ever! Of course you argue a little, but what couple doesn’t?
So here’s the thing—you just can’t face a support group. Meeting all these folks who are going to forget you at the same rate you forget them—the rate of forgetting twice as fast in reality, like two trains speeding in opposite directions. You’re actually scared that any new fact is going to push out an old one to make room. What if you meet these people and forget your family? This is Blair—now who is Sandra again?
You didn’t explain it like that to Sandra because she wouldn’t get it even though she gets you. Nobody gets it, unless they’re like you, but it’s not as if you can just go and find a bunch of people who . . .
Ha—looks like you may have to apologize to Sandra after all! But whether you go along is another matter. You’ve never been a social person at the best of times, and this is not the best of times. Hell, it’s not even the worst—that’s on its way. This is somewhere near the beginning. A certain kind of limbo with a touch of hope and a touch of madness, all balanced just so.
You’re still trying to get used to the idea of what’s happening. You have another appointment later in the week, not with Doctor Goodstory, but with a counselor who is going to give you an idea of what to expect. They’ll no doubt tell you about the seven stages of grief—wait, no, it’s seven deadly sins, seven dwarfs, seven reindeer—grief only has five stages. Denial, Anger, Blitzen, Dopey, and Bargaining. The last few days you’ve mostly been in shock, to tell you the truth. You still can’t believe any of this is happening. Shock, plus some good old-fashioned anger. And . . . some pretty strong gin and tonics. If nothing else, mixing the G&Ts is one skill you have to hang on to, Future Jerry. That’s probably why you fought with Sandra. Not the G&Ts, but the rest of it, the nitty-gritty-shitty as your grandfather used to say, back when . . .
Ah, hell. Back when he was navigating his way into Batshit County.
Your grandfather was old school—he took the sickness and twisted it into something cruel and bitter. He’d mutter things like how women shouldn’t be allowed to work and those who did were stealing all the men’s jobs, or how “the gays” were the reason for earthquakes and floods in this world. Alzheimer’s gave him the freedom to become an uncensored version of himself. He would pat the nurses on the ass in the nursing home and ask them to fix him a sandwich. He seemed like the kind of guy to pour himself a neat glass of scotch, sit in a leather chair, adjust his tie, and blow out his brains with a pistol rather than die slowly, but ultimately he rode the Alzheimer’s train too long, passing the station where that option had been available to him.
The same option is available to you.
Sandra doesn’t know about the gun. You knew she would never approve. You bought it for research. Writers are always saying write what you know, and now you know what to expect when you pull a trigger. You know the sound that will tear into your eardrums if you’re not wearing ear protection. You know the weight and the feel, and the smell. You fired it at a range years ago, and since then it’s been under a floorboard under the desk, waiting in the dark maybe just for this very thing. You bought it illegally from Hans. You remember Hans? You’ll get the update on him later when I tell you about Henry, but if a guy covered in tattoos comes to see you saying you owe him money, that’ll be Hans. You don’t really owe him money, but it’d be such a Hans thing to try. You’ll know that if you remember him.
Eva still hasn’t been told about the Big A. She was over again this morning. She’s taking a couple of days off work, and Sandra is taking a few weeks off for me, and today they spent their time talking nonstop about the wedding. Dancing, cakes, flowers, dresses, bridesmaids—that’s the future. But for you it may now all be in the past. Eva is marrying a guy called Rick. You like him. You fired up the barbecue when Eva was over and the three of you had a nice lunch together and you’re glad you didn’t tell her. Soon, though.
Let me tell you about Eva. She is, without a doubt, the best thing that has ever happened in your life. The day you found out Sandra was pregnant, you almost collapsed. In fact, you didn’t ask Sandra immediately to marry you because you spent two days on the couch barely able to function. You were going to be a dad, and that scared the hell out of you. You used to think children didn’t come with manuals, but the fact is they do. There are a million books out there, and Sandra would buy them then hardly read them. The bookcase would be stacked full of parenting books that didn’t even have the spine cracked because you didn’t read them either, you didn’t need to, because everything just happened naturally. Everything you’ve done in your life, nothing comes close to those days when you would spend hours putting together a brand-new toy for Eva. That look on her face when she would see it, that smile, Jesus, that smile and those big blue eyes of her mother’s . . . that sense of wonder at something new . . . if the Big A left you with one memory, pray that it’s one of those. You kept thinking the magic would disappear as she got older, but no, it only got better. The day she broke her arm . . . she was seven years old. She used to love watching reruns of the shows you grew up with, and she ran up to the car and tried to slide across the hood like they do in The Dukes of Hazzard, and slid right off the other side into the driveway and twisted her arm beneath her. You were calm and collected and got her to the hospital, but that night neither you nor Sandra could sleep, and you knew, each of you knew, if anything bad ever happened, if you ever lost Eva, the world would end. You still feel that way. But this . . . this is telling you more about you, not about her. How to sum up Eva? She’s warm. She’s empathetic. She’s intelligent. At school she was a straight-A student, she excelled in volleyball, on the track, in the pool. By the time she was nine she could sing along to any Rolling Stones song you had playing on the stereo. When she was ten she dressed up for Halloween as a police officer from the TV show CHiPs because she knew you used to watch it when you were a kid. When she was eleven she would visit your mother and read to her during those final few months. She used to chase after the neighbor’s cat every time she saw it catch a bird, free the bird, and bring it home to try and nurse it back to health. Sometimes it’d work, sometimes it wouldn’t, and when it wouldn’t she’d make you dig a hole and stand with her as she held a small funeral. She begged you to buy her a guitar for her thirteenth birthday, then taught herself to play. She lived at home when she started university. She studied art, and politics, and law. But it was travel . . . there was something about travel that pulled her away from her studies. At nineteen she went to Europe by herself for a year. She learned French. She lived in Paris for a while. One year turned into two. She learned Spanish. She backpacked her way across a dozen countries. She was gone almost three years, but you’d see her when you were in Europe promoting the books. Travel made her want to show the world to people. When she came home she became a travel consultant. She met Rick. She’s in love, Future Jerry. She’s happy. That’s Eva. Your daughter. And if the Big A is the balance for this amazing life, then so be it. It might take away your memories, but it cannot take away the fact that you have an amazing daughter. A daughter, who at this moment, has no idea her father is sick.