“Stop right there,” I tell him. “It makes no sense to me! Why would she want to leave you right then, at the turning point of her life, when you could be there, by her side, fighting to hold her back, away from the brink?”
“This,” says my father, “is something I, too, do not understand. Up to that point Natasha has changed, quietly, and grown so much stronger than me, to the point that, no matter how hard I tried, there was no pleasing her. Then she got word, somehow, about my moment of weakness: my fling, this little, one-night thing—that was all it was, back then—with Anita.”
I look at him as if to say, Who cares about your moment of weakness? So far it has lasted ten years.
He looks away, saying, “Your mom, she was mad at me. She flared up in anger. It was painful. More painful than I had expected. Was she too proud to forgive me? Did she expect me to fight harder for her, so that she may take me back someday? There was no way to know. My God, she let me feel I was done, I was no longer needed.”
“But, dad,” I say, “did she believe she could face it alone, whatever it was? Was she willing to risk everything, and for what? For no better reason than pride?”
“God,” he says. “I wish I knew.”
“Enough,” I say. “I don’t want to hear it.”
“That’s just the thing, Ben. Natasha kept quiet, all these years, and so did I, for her sake. Gradually, her memory problems got worse and yet, no one knew: not our friends, not even her students, because she was so afraid, afraid to lose them. Teaching, for her, became more than a livelihood: it was the last token of her independence.”
“You should have told me, dad.”
“Well, how could I? There was no one here to whom I could talk.”
“So, since then, has mom been diagnosed?”
“Well, son, it took a long time,” he says, in a tired tone of voice, “Four years after she had left me, that was when they found out, at long last. And you, Ben, you were in Europe then, off to your medical studies, or something, with a light suitcase, and a heart heavy with anger, who knows why.”
I want to say, Because I had to go, to be some place else. Because I had no family, with you cheating and mom throwing her wedding ring away. That’s why. But without waiting for an explanation, my father moves on to say, “I just could not do it, could not bring myself to open up, to tell you about it.”
Suddenly his voice trembles, and he wraps his arms around me, which makes me unsure if this is to lean on me—or perhaps, to protect me.
“Ben,” he says, “this disease, unfortunately, it can strike in the prime of life. Natasha was forty-six when, after years of knowing that something was going terribly wrong, and not being able to put a finger on it, they finally diagnosed her.”
“And,” I hesitate to ask, “does it have a name?”
There is a sound by the entrance door, then a knock, once, twice, three times—but neither one of us moves. There is a somber expression on his face. His gaze is locked into mine, and something passes between us which I cannot express in words.
Meanwhile, between one knock and another there is a smaller sound: the click of the clock. Under the glass crystal, the black hand moves around the dial, from one minute mark to the next. It advances with a measured beat, the beat of loss, life, fear—until at long last, my father takes a long breath, and allows himself to say, “The doctors, they call it Early onset Familial Alzheimer’s disease.”
Then he passes by me on his way to open the door; which gives me a moment to think of mom.
I picture her staring at the black-and-white image of her brain, not quite understanding what they are telling her.
The doctors, they point out the overall loss of brain tissue, the enlargement of the ventricles, the abnormal clusters between nerve cells, some of which are already dying, shrouded eerily by a net of frayed, twisted strands. They tell her about the shriveling of the cortex, which controls brain functions such as remembering and planning.
And that is the moment when in a flash, mom can see clearly, in all shades of gray blooming there, on that image, how it happens, how her past and her future are slowly, irreversibly being wiped away—until she is a woman, forgotten.
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