Alice LaPlante - Turn of Mind

Something is worrying at my ankles. A small furry thing. Dog. This is Dog. What is that joke. About the dyslexic atheist insomniac. I have turned into that joke.

I have managed not to swallow my pills this morning, so I am alert. Alive. Before depositing them under my mattress, I examine them. Two hundred milligrams of Wellbutrin. One hundred fifty milligrams of Seroquel. Hydrochlorothiazide, a diuretic. And one I do not recognize, oblong and pale beige. I make a point of crushing that one between my fingers and letting the dust fall onto the rug.

I do three laps around the great room, deliberately ignoring the brown line. I step over it, around it, never on it. Step on a crack . Around and around. I count the doors. One. Two. Three. Four. Only twenty in total, and four are unoccupied.

On my third pass I pause at the heavy metal doors at the far end of the long hallway. I can feel hot air wafting in through the crack, see the relentless sunshine beating onto the cement walkway outside through the small, thick windows. I remember those Chicago summers, heavy, oppressive, and stultifying, keeping you a prisoner in your house and your office as much as the bitter winters did.

James and I talked about escaping when we retired. Fantasized about a Mediterranean climate. Moderate temperatures, somewhere near the sea. Northern California. San Francisco. Or farther down the coast, Santa Cruz, San Luis Obispo. Lotus land. Or perhaps even the Mediterranean itself. James and I spent a month on the island of Mallorca after Fiona left for college. To forestall the empty nest blues that never came.

After that, there was idle talk of an eighteenth-century finca with a large garden. Growing our own tomatoes, peppers, beans. Living off the land. Solar panels on the roof, our own well. Out of sight. Our own desert island. Who were we fooling? We were going off the grid in any case, each in our own way.

A hand touches my elbow.

Hey, young lady! A man’s voice. He has a pleasant enough smile, but his face is marred by an eggplant-colored hemangioma in his right upper quadrant. Inoperable.

I am finishing up my lunch when someone pulls out the chair next to mine, sits down heavily. A face I recognize, but I am in a stubborn frame of mind today. I will not ask. I will not. This woman seems to understand that.

Detective Luton, she says. Just here for a short visit.

I am not going to make it easy for her. So I take my napkin off my lap, fold it, and place it across my empty plate. Push my chair back to rise.

No, wait. I won’t be here very long. Just sit with me for a moment. A young man in scrubs approaches, offers her the coffeepot, and she nods. He puts a cup in front of her and pours. She raises it to her lips and gulps it, neat, as if it were water.

I was on my way somewhere. My annual pilgrimage. And suddenly found myself driving here. One of those urges. I used to have more of them. I used to be more spontaneous. Here she smiles. One of the hazards of growing older.

I nod. I don’t understand, but my impatience is ebbing. This is someone in pain. A state I can recognize.

So how are you doing today? the woman asks.

We seem to have taken a step backward, I say. From words that mattered to socially appropriate but meaningless questions.

Instead of appearing upset by my rudeness, the woman looks pleased.

In good form, I see. Glad to see that.

So why are you here? I ask.

As I said, I was on a pilgrimage. I guess you could say this is part of it.

In what way?

I was on my way to the cemetery.

Anyone I knew?

No, not at all. You and I aren’t connected in that way. Our relationship is a . . . professional one. She motions for more coffee. Well, mostly.

Are you my doctor?

No, no. A member of the police. An investigator.

She stares at her hands, pressed tightly against her coffee cup. Seconds tick by. I find I am now curious rather than annoyed or impatient. So I wait.

She finally speaks, slowly.

My life partner had Alzheimer’s. Early onset. She was a lot younger than you—only forty-five.

I am having trouble following her now. But I sense the emotion and nod.

People think it’s just forgetting your keys , she says . Or the words for things. But there are the personality changes. The mood swings. The hostility and even violence. Even from the gentlest person in the world. You lose the person you love. And you are left with the shell.

She stops and pauses. Do you know what I’m talking about?

I nod. My mother.

The woman nods back. And you are expected to go on loving them even when they are no longer there. You are supposed to be loyal. It’s not that other people expect it. It’s that you expect it of yourself. And you long for it to be over soon.

She reaches over and takes hold of my wrist, gently raises my arm into the air a little. It is a sorry spectacle, no muscle tone, as thin and desiccated as a chicken’s leg. We both gaze at it for a moment, then, just as gently, she lowers it down into my lap again.

It broke my heart, she says. And, somehow, you’re breaking it again. Another pause.

Then, as suddenly as she had arrived, she is gone.

A dark night. Figures emerging and diverging from shadows, moving just out of my range of vision. A very dark night and I need to get up, to move, but I am restrained, my arms and legs tied down tightly to the bed.

I retreat into myself. I use all my will to get myself away from here to somewhere else. A dial spins in my head and I hold my breath and wait for what might happen. The pleasures and risks of a time traveler.

And so I find myself walking in the door to my house, greeted by the shrieks of a young infant in pain. I know immediately when and where I am. I am a mother for the second time. I am forty-one, she is one month old. She has been crying for half her life. Every day from 3 pm until midnight. Colic. The unexplainable screaming of a young child. The Chinese call it one hundred days of crying, and I have eighty-five days left.

A particularly bad case, the pediatrician says. The noise assaults me every night after a long day of surgeries. When I come home, the nanny, Ana, hands me the child and literally runs from the room. James and Mark are already hiding behind closed doors.

I am marking my calendar, as I did before my first child was born. We’ve tried all the latest drugs and theories of modern medicine. I have cut out dairy and wheat from my diet, filled her bottle with catnip and ginger teas, dissolved Hyland’s colic tablets in milk pumped from my breasts. But nothing has worked, nothing eases her and our pain.

To save my family, every night I put the baby in the car seat and drive. I stop for gas, for a cup of coffee, and when I enter the convenience store or the café with my wailing bundle, all conversation ceases, and I am hustled to the front of the line.

Tonight is typical. I pack a thermos of coffee, put the baby in the car, and head out. I prefer the expressways, the long thin ribbons of concrete that stretch out in all directions except east, turning Chicago into a great spider.

I take the Fullerton ramp onto the Kennedy heading north, past Diversey, past Irving Park, past the Edens split and north to O’Hare. All the while the baby screeches, taking no noticeable breaths.