The Memory Artists - Jeffrey Moore [32]
March 30. Today Mom took a computer driving assessment test with Danielle, one of Dr. Vorta’s assistants. She had to respond to various driving tasks and situations by touching the screen or pushing a button. Those who score in the top third, Danielle explained, are considered competent to drive; those in the middle have to take the test again; those in the bottom third should “get the hell off the road.”
“Madame Burun,” said Danielle when the test was over, “I want to emphasise that this evaluation does not reflect upon your intelligence, only on your ability to continue driving. Do you understand?”
Mom nodded. She placed in the bottom third.
March 31. Took Mom’s keys away. Painfully hard, on both of us. But I wouldn’t back down, even when tears as thick as glycerine beaded and fell from her eyes. Because I’m afraid she’ll forget the difference between red and green.
April 3. Tonight we watched one of Mom’s favourite shows, Jeopardy, which I suspect she always wanted to go on. She was certainly as good as any champion I’d ever seen. But ten years ago, when I encouraged her to audition, she said it was a silly show made ludicrous by having to put your answers in the form of a question. It made no sense, I remember her saying, to ask the question “Who is Abraham Lincoln?” to match the answer “He was assassinated on Good Friday.” Tonight, in any event, halfway through the show, more tears came, a regular occurrence these days. I knew why she was crying but asked her why anyway. “Because,” she answered convulsively, “I don’t … I can’t … not a single …”
And yet after dinner she was quite cheerful. We played cards, children’s games like Crazy Eights, until well after midnight. We got on a laughing jag at one point and couldn’t stop—we were shaking with laughter, crying with laughter. About nothing really.
April 4. Mom seems very fond of her new Australian Hunter’s Lamp, which she shines while roaming through the house in the middle of the night. She’s also starting to look in on me, while I’m sleeping, shining the 200-watt beam in my eyes like an interrogation lamp.
April 5. Bath time still looms up as a major project for me, almost like scaling Everest. If I don’t start the bath and practically rip her clothes off, Mom simply won’t take one. So I phoned Health Care and arranged for a Bath Lady to come in twice a week, on Tuesday and Friday. Maybe she’ll also sort out Mom’s closet and make sure she changes her clothes. And scrub the ink off her hand.
April 6. Dad’s birthday. Would he be alive today if he had taken one of the tricyclic or SSRI antidepressants like Prozac, which came out after his death? The question’s been haunting me for years. I know from sorting out his free samples that he must have taken phenelzine sulphate and tranylcypromine, which are real horror shows.
April 8. At bedtime Mom said, “Tell me a story, Noel dear. Tell me about my life.” So I told her about the time she and I went camping in Algonquin Park in ’85, when I was sixteen, and a cinnamon-coloured black bear came to our tent. As I shone a quivering flashlight at the bear, it calmly sifted through two garbage bags, sniffed at our tent as we held our breath, then nonchalantly left. We didn’t sleep for the rest of the night. When the sun came up, Mom discovered that the bear had taken something hanging from a tree branch: her bathing suit. She’d laughed and laughed at the time, perhaps picturing the bear in a bikini … But tonight she merely smiled at the story, which clearly didn’t register, then informed me it wasn’t proper for us to be living together. I told her it was fine, that we were mother and son. “No, my son’s name is Noel.” I told her that I was Noel; she asked for proof. I showed her my birth certificate. She said