My palms feel sweaty and my thoughts are racing.
The coffeemaker’s gurgling helps pull me into the present moment. I grab a mug and walk over to it. Then I almost drop my mug.
The liquid in the pot is clear.
I forgot to put the grounds into the filter.
My heart feels as if it’s exploding, even as my mind searches for an explanation. I was obviously distracted, who wouldn’t be? There’s no significance to what just happened. My mistake with the coffee isn’t an echo of the one my mother made with the eggs.
We all misplace cell phones and lose words and forget items we’ve made a mental list to pick up at the grocery store, especially when we have a lot on our minds. Those aren’t signs of Alzheimer’s.
If we forget we even have a cell phone after we’ve been using it daily for years and get lost on the one-mile drive home from the drugstore even though we’ve driven the route countless times, like my mother did?
Those can be signs of Alzheimer’s.
If I’m carrying the gene, it won’t reveal itself for another fifteen to twenty years—longer if I’m lucky.
Still, it takes a minute for my pulse to slow to normal.
I brew some coffee and inhale the rich hazelnut aroma as it drips into the pot. It gives me energy even before I take a sip.
I hurry to my bedroom and grab a yellow legal pad out of my desk drawer. Then I go to the dining table with a mug of black coffee and sit down. I list the few facts I know about my mother and add my two new details to it.
I open my laptop and begin to search for Virginia high schools with panther mascots.
An hour later, my mug is empty and several more pages of my pad are filled with leads, all of which I’ve crossed out. I’ve been hopscotching around the internet, searching Facebook pages for different high schools and scrutinizing detailed maps of Virginia and even checking out sports websites that contain high school football team rankings.
If there’s a clear answer, it’s eluding me.
The urge to take out the trash nags at me. I need to get rid of the broken egg and bloody paper towels and the other pieces of evidence of everything that has transpired in the last twenty-four hours.
I tuck my legal pad into my bookshelf, sandwiching it between two oversized hardbacks, and head out the door. Mom took the car today, so I head for the bus stop.
My mother hates surprises, but I’m going to give her one.
I’m going to visit her at work.
* * *
Sam’s is a brightly lit diner with shiny chrome-and-red pleather stools and booths, a row of pies under glass domes on the long counter, and oversized laminated menus with pictures of the food offered. Breakfast and pie are served all day.
I once asked my mother who would eat pie early in the morning. “Truckers,” she told me. “For some of them, morning is the end of their shift and they like a little dessert before they go to bed.”
I sit on the city bus, moving physically forward while looking backward in time.
When I was smaller, the different restaurants where my mother worked seemed like magical places. I’d deliver stiff, shiny menus to tables—more than once a customer tipped me a dollar just for doing that small task—or sit on a stool, watching the cooks move with the speed of professional jugglers as they flipped burgers and decorated them with tomatoes and lettuce, and buttered pieces of toast with one perfect swoop of a knife. Sometimes the cooks would slip me a scoop of chocolate ice cream with a cloud of sweet whipped cream.
When the sugar kicked in, I’d spin around on a stool until I got dizzy or my mother noticed, whichever came first.
As her disease progresses, my mother will stop coming to Sam’s. A few months beyond that, she’ll forget she was once a waitress.
A few months past that, she’ll forget who I am.
I dig my nails into my palms. The burst of pain distracts my mind and pulls me out of the path of the dark, choppy wave.
A few minutes later, the bus stops a few storefronts down from Sam’s and I step onto the sidewalk.
I haven’t been to my mother’s workplace in at least a year, maybe even two.
It looks exactly the same. It’s humming with the noise of dozens of conversations, the clanking of silverware against china plates, and soft rock music playing over speakers. All the booths are full, but I find an empty stool at the end of the counter.
My mother doesn’t notice me right away. She’s taking an order from two women in the opposite corner of the restaurant. She isn’t using a pad and pen. My mother never does for parties of four or less.
That needs to change.
My mother steps away from the table and walks to the computer where the waitstaff inputs orders for the cooks. She presses a few buttons, then heads to the serving window and grabs what looks like a BLT and fries from the warming shelves. She delivers the plate to a guy at table six, then checks in on table eight. I can’t hear her, but since they’ve already received their food she’s probably asking if they’d like refills of water or hot sauce for their omelets.
My mother appears to be in command of her faculties. No one in the restaurant seems agitated. I can’t see any customers trying to get her attention or frowning at their bill.
During the early to mid-stages, some people with Alzheimer’s plateau for a while. Others have good days mixed with bad days, and I suspect my mother is having a good memory day now. But even though the progression can branch in different directions, the path always narrows to the same wretched, heartbreaking end.
“Catherine!”
I spin a quarter-circle to my right and come face-to-face with Melanie, another waitress, who is my mother’s closest friend.
She leans in and gives me a hug. Melanie smells like my mother always does when she comes home from work. Her skin is perfumed with the scent of the kitchen grill.
I’ve always liked Melanie. She has a gap between her front teeth that makes her big smile seem even more genuine, and her voice holds the gentle lilt of her Southern roots.
“It’s been forever, girl.” Melanie pulls back, beaming. “Congrats on graduating. Your mom is so proud.”
I thank her, and as we chat an idea floats into my mind. My mother is fiercely private. She won’t tell Sam or Melanie about her diagnosis, at least not until she absolutely must. When work gets to be too much for my mom—when she can’t find her way to the diner and wanders the streets, or starts a grease fire, or makes so many mistakes customers are in an uproar—she’ll get fired.
I’m not going to let things reach that point.
I need eyes on my mom when I’m not around. I’d planned to ask Sam, but he can be a little grumpy. Even though I don’t know Melanie terribly well since she lives across town, and she and my mom socialize every month or so at a bar midway between their places, she’s my best bet.
I’m about to ask Melanie if I can have her cell phone number so I can call her about a private matter when I feel a hand on my shoulder.
I twist around and see my mom.
Her reaction is the opposite of Melanie’s. She’s frowning.
“What are you doing here?”
I keep my tone light. “I had a craving for French fries.”
Mom’s expression tells me that if Melanie weren’t witnessing this, we’d be having a different conversation.