I check the outer pocket first. All it contains are my mother’s keys and the container of Mace she keeps handy when she walks alone at night. Tucked inside the main section is a small makeup pouch that holds a cherry ChapStick, unscented hand lotion, and an emery board. No surprises there. My mother has used cherry ChapStick for as long as I can remember, and she tries to take care of her hands since they get a beating at work.
I take out her wallet and begin pulling items from its folds, placing them on my bedspread. I look at her driver’s license first. In the photo, she is unsmiling. She has an ATM card for our joint account, a Visa credit card, and a few coupons. In the slot for cash are a lot of fives and ones. Tip money.
I feel around in the space behind the card slot panel and come across something else. I slide out two crisp fifty-dollar bills, which I guess my mom keeps for emergencies. But there’s one more item tucked behind them. It’s a different kind of card, one I didn’t know she possessed.
A library card.
I turn it over in my hand and recognize her faded, nearly illegible signature on the back: Ruth M. Sterling.
My mother used to take me to the library when I was younger. On my first visit, I got my very own card and felt so proud when the librarian slid that laminated rectangle over the counter to me.
As I grew older, I began visiting the library on my own. My mother never asked to accompany me. She has mild dyslexia and isn’t a big reader. She prefers TV and movies and listening to podcasts.
I had no idea she’d gotten her own card. And I can’t recall her ever once bringing home a library book. So why does she keep this in her wallet?
I grip it tightly, staring down at my mother’s signature, until I notice something about the two folded fifty-dollar bills. Now that they aren’t compressed, they’ve yawned opened, revealing something tucked in the center of the innermost bill: a small slip of paper.
It’s a receipt from a book my mother checked out from the library. The title is Understanding Alzheimer’s.
This makes sense. Even though my mother doesn’t want to discuss her disease with me yet, she must be making an effort to learn more about it.
Then I notice the date on the slip.
She checked out the book nearly five months ago.
My heart plummets. Did my mother’s symptoms start even sooner than she told Dr. Chen?
I stare at the library slip, not quite comprehending its meaning, until the letters and numbers on it grow blurry.
It’s an innocuous piece of paper. Why does it feel imbued with menace?
There’s something I’m missing, a series of little clues in these simple objects that add up to something greater than their parts.
A question nibbles at the corners of my mind, slowly forming, before it bursts into my consciousness: If my mother got a library card recently for the sole purpose of reading Understanding Alzheimer’s, why does her card look so old and worn, with the lamination peeling at one corner, as if she has used it hundreds of times?
Maybe she has secretly checked out other books through the years, keeping the volumes hidden from me.
But that doesn’t make sense, either.
Unless her reading history is the talisman I’ve been searching for. Maybe it’s related to her past if she’s trying to conceal it from me.
Through the thin wall, I hear my mother’s bed creak again. The noise propels me into motion. I stand up and tuck the library card into my sock drawer, then reassemble her wallet and tiptoe into the hallway, holding my breath until I’ve slid her purse back onto its hook.
I return to my room and climb into bed, pulling up the covers. My feet are icy and my head is beginning to ache. I keep turning over my strange discoveries in my mind, searching for their meaning.
It takes me a long time to fall asleep. When I finally do, my dreams are restless.
* * *
The next morning, I wait in bed, listening to my mother quietly go about her routine. Her footsteps pause in front of my door. I close my eyes quickly, prepared to feign sleep, but she doesn’t knock or try to come in.
A moment later, she leaves for work.
The second the door closes behind her, I get up and dress, then head to the bathroom to cover my twin blisters with Band-Aids. I force myself to eat a banana to settle my sour stomach.
When the closest library branch opens, I’m the first visitor to walk through its door. I haven’t been here in a while—my reading lately has been for school—and I’m relieved the first librarian I see is a middle-aged woman with dreadlocks and a nose ring. I’ve never seen her before, so hopefully she won’t know the name on my card is the wrong one.
I greet her with what I hope is a confident smile.
“Hi, this might sound strange, but I checked out a book a while ago and I wanted to recommend it to a friend, but I can’t recall the title.”
“Do you recall the topic of the book? Or what the cover looked like?”
I shake my head. “I don’t. Sorry.”
It sounds implausible. Why would I want to recommend a book I remember absolutely nothing about?
I press on quickly, “Is there any way to look up my borrowing history?”
I hand her my mother’s card, but she doesn’t reach for it.
“I’m sorry, but we don’t keep those records as long as the books are returned on time.”
My heart sinks.
“Let’s try another way,” she suggests. “Have you ever returned a book late—or lost one?”
“I, ah, can’t remember.”
The librarian’s smile is kind. “You would’ve received a fee.”
“Maybe? I’m sorry, I’m not sure.… Things have been a little confusing for me lately.”
She glances down at my mother’s card. “I’ll be happy to check.” Her fingers click across her computer’s keyboard.
She shakes her head. “No, I don’t see anything.”
I nod and thank her, my heart sinking. I’m about to leave when I impulsively spin back around.
“Do you have a book titled Understanding Alzheimer’s?”
Her fingers click again, and this time she nods. She comes out from behind the desk and leads me to the correct aisle, pulling the hardcover book off a shelf.
I thank her and walk to a nearby chair, sinking down into it as I open the cover. I don’t know what I’m looking for. But I feel compelled to hold the book my mother sought out.
I flip through it, my eyes skimming the pages.
Some of the information is academic, some anecdotal, but it’s all wrapped in clear language. One chapter is for caregivers, and it describes the turbulent emotions family members typically undergo when a loved one receives a diagnosis of Alzheimer’s. I know this to be true because I see it all the time at work. And I’ve experienced it myself.
There’s a paragraph about a daughter whose father forgot to turn off the gas stove, nearly burning down the house, and another one about a son who says he knew something was wrong when his mother left a carton of eggs in a kitchen cupboard.
I blink and reread that sentence.
My mother did the exact same thing recently.
I lean forward, my posture tightening, scanning the words faster.
Two pages later, there’s another eerily familiar anecdote: Family members could no longer deny the knowledge that something was terribly wrong when their beloved grandmother got lost on her way home from the neighborhood drugstore.