I had to come up with an alternate plan to this blockbuster idea of hers. After all, this was something that would affect my whole life. I hadn’t thought we were going to have to make any decisions about Grandpa so soon. He had been getting worse, more muddled and forgetful, but it had been happening gradually. Now here was Mom springing this plan on me right out of the blue.
“You were the one who told me something had to be done when your grandfather showed up here in his pyjamas again the other day,” Mom went on.
“I know. But not this. Not us having to go and live with him!”
“We’re the only family he has, Mark. If not us, who else?”
“How much would it cost anyway, to have someone stay with him at night? Someone like Mrs. Fuller.”
“Too much, let me tell you.” She scraped chili out onto my plate, but I just pushed the beans around on it, not feeling much like eating. Jason’s favourite meal. We ate it a lot at our place because it was fast and cheap.
“You can’t expect me to move away over there. This is where all my friends are.”
“You make friends easily, Mark.” Mom set the plastic bag with the bread in it on the table and sat down herself. “Your grandfather’s house is small, I know, but it’s big enough for three.”
“Make that two. Because I’m not going.”
Mom didn’t say anything for a while and we both kept our eyes on our plates. Somebody had to have a better idea than this. My mind was churning.
“Well, what about school?” I demanded. I knew how much my education meant to my mother. “I’d have to change schools. Again. That can’t be good.”
“I know, and it won’t be easy for you, either. I’d really like to be able to hang on until you graduate, but this disease of Grandpa’s won’t wait.”
Alzheimer’s. I knew all about it, and that there was no cure. I just hadn’t thought it was going to affect me.
Mom put her hand over mine; I drew back quickly to reach for a slice of bread that I really didn’t want.
“Try to see the bind I’m in, Mark,” she begged. “Please.”
“What about me? Is anyone thinking about me?”
“Of course I am. But you’re young, Mark. You’ll adjust.”
This wasn’t one bit fair. Just because I was young. In the past two years I’d done just about all the adjusting anyone should be expected to do. It had been bad enough moving here, leaving behind everything I’d grown up with. Even my dog.
Mom must have been reading my thoughts. “Maybe you could have another dog, Mark. Your grandfather’s got a little back yard.” I recognize bribery when I hear it.
In our other place, before Dad left, I’d had a dog. But there were no pets allowed in this apartment, so when Mom and I had moved here, I’d left Chelsea behind with my best friend, David.
Leaving Chelsea had been the worst part about moving two years ago. I knew, even though I was just a little kid, that Mom was hurting over the separation, and I was feeling mad at my dad. I’d have gone anywhere if I’d thought it could make my mom happy.
But things were different now. Mom liked her work, I had Jason and Travis to hang around with, and I had my own after-school job. I was even on better terms with Dad, ‘though I didn’t see much of him now that he’d moved away from the city.
I couldn’t ever have Chelsea back. She’d been hit by a car last summer, and when David called to tell me, I hadn’t even recognized my old friend’s voice.
I went to bed feeling mean inside about Grandpa. It didn’t feel good. Why did things have to be this way? My great-grandfather on my father’s side was 90 and still driving his own car. And my Grandma Joyce, my father’s mother, had started university after she was 65.
It didn’t seem so long ago that my Grandpa Luigi had been just as normal as everyone else. It had started with his being a little forgetful. Now he couldn’t remember if he’d already done something simple. Like getting dressed. We found him wearing two pairs of pants one day. He’d forgotten he’d put on the underneath pair.
It had been kind of funny at first. Mom stuck little reminders around his house for a while, so that Grandpa’d know to turn off the stove and put things back in the fridge. The worst part was when he’d cry. That’s what he did sometimes when he didn’t get things right. I think inside his head he knew what he wanted to say, but sometimes the words came out all wrong. That was my theory, anyway. I was glad my grandmother couldn’t see the way her Luigi was now.
Grandpa had run a fruit and vegetable business in this city until he retired. For years, he’d left his house before the sun was up. Every morning, he’d gone downtown to the big market to buy produce from the growers who trucked it in from outside the city.
Then he’d gone back to his store in time to open up. Every day the same thing, long hard hours of work, but he usedto say he could never do anything else. Back home in Italy, his ancestors had run the same type of business.
It seemed like hours that I tossed from one side to the other that night, the bed sheets underneath me getting twisted and digging tracks into my back. I knew that, although my grandfather didn’t act much like the person I used to love to visit when my grandmother was alive, he was the same person underneath. That was what Alzheimer’s disease did.
In the morning, I could tell by the worn look on her face that Mom hadn’t slept well either. The phone rang and she talked softly to someone on the other end. When she hung up she told me that a friend of hers had agreed to take over our apartment if we decided to go. “That would let us out of the lease, Mark.” As if that were the only problem.
But before she left for work, I gave in. What else could I do? “Look, Mom, if there’s no other way to look after Grandpa, then I guess we should move to his place.” There, I’d said it.
“Oh, Mark. Thank you.” She put her arms around me and gave me a tight hug. “I know it’s a sacrifice you’re making. I’m so proud of you.” She dabbed at her eyes and tucked the tissue into her purse.
I felt a little like a hypocrite. It wasn’t all sacrifice. I was sparing myself the humiliation of having my grandfather show up here again in his pyjamas. Or worse.
My friends were waiting for me outside the school when I got off the bus. Jason had already told Travis about what had been happening at our place last night.
“So? What did you decide?” they both wanted to know.
“We’re going, I guess.”
“Jeez, Mark. That’s a rip-off!” Travis declared.
“Naw. Not really. My grandfather’s too sick now to live alone.”
“So you guys have to move? Why don’t you just put him in a nursing home? My great-grandmother’s in one. It’s not so bad.”
“Mom thinks that’s what’ll happen when he gets too sick for us to look after,” I said.
Jason must have been remembering the times we’d visited my grandfather’s together. “That would be too bad,” he said. “Remember the time he took us to the carnival after we’d helped him close the store for the night? Remember all the stuff we won? Could he ever throw those darts!”
I swung my book bag over my shoulder, remembering too. “Well, Mom and I are going to see that he stays in his own house just as long as he can.”
“Too much!” said Travis, and the bell rang for us to go inside.