Chapter 1 - The First Person
Andre asked me about Christmas while the game was still on.
I hadn't mentioned Christmas. I'd been complaining about the little basket Claire bought for our front hall. She'd decided all the keys belonged in it, including mine, although the whole reason I'd kept my keys on the dresser for eleven years was that I liked knowing where they were.
"And now every morning I have to ask where my keys are," I said.
"They're in the basket."
"That's not where I put them."
Andre picked up his drink. "Did you ask Claire?"
"What are we doing right now?"
"You said she keeps moving them. I'm asking if you asked her."
"Yes."
"And?"
"She said they're in the basket."
He watched the television for a minute. The quarterback was trying to scramble out of trouble and the men paid to stop him seemed delighted by the opportunity.
"Do you remember Christmas?" Andre asked.
"Which Christmas?"
He gave me a look.
"Last Christmas, Julian."
"Yeah. We had ham. You burned the macaroni."
"Ruth made the macaroni."
"Then tell her she burned it."
"Man."
"What?"
Andre leaned forward and turned down the television.
I'd come to his house to watch the game. He had invited me three days earlier, sent two reminders, and then called at noon to make sure I was still coming. I figured that was because he'd ordered too many wings again. He always ordered too many wings and sent me home with the leftovers in containers he wanted back.
Now he was sitting on the edge of his couch looking at me like we were waiting for the results of a test.
"You know Claire's worried about you," he said.
"Claire's worried about everybody."
"I'm serious."
"So am I. Last week she called your kid's school to make sure they got the cupcakes Ruth dropped off."
"They lost the cupcakes."
"And Claire found them. Everybody's happy."
He rubbed his forehead.
I stopped smiling.
"What's going on?"
"You and her talked about any of this?"
"Any of what?"
"Your memory."
I looked at him for a while. "What about it?"
"She's concerned."
"About my memory."
"Yeah."
"Why?"
Andre's mouth opened a little, then closed. I could see him deciding whether to repeat something he'd been told in confidence. It was an odd moment to discover my younger brother had been trusted with information about me that I hadn't been given.
"She hasn't said anything?" he asked.
"She said I need to put my keys in a basket."
"Come on."
"I'm trying. You're taking your time getting to the point."
He got up and walked toward the kitchen. I thought he'd given up until he came back carrying two bottles of water. He put one on the coffee table in front of me, took his own cap off and left the cap on the coaster. He did that all the time. His living room contained roughly fourteen water-bottle caps, all of them homeless.
"Claire thinks something might be happening," he said.
"Something like what?"
"I don't know, man. Something medical."
"Is this about me getting older? Because I'm three years older than you."
"Will you listen?"
"I'm listening."
He held my eyes long enough for me to get irritated.
"She mentioned early-onset dementia," he said.
From the kitchen came the sound of Zoe laughing at something her mother said. On television a referee was explaining a penalty to a stadium full of people, and I could read his lips because Andre still hadn't turned the volume up.
"Who mentioned it?" I asked.
"Claire."
"Those words?"
"She said she was worried it could be something like that. She doesn't know."
"Did she tell you a doctor said it?"
"No."
"Did she tell you I've been to a doctor?"
"I thought you had."
"Well, I haven't."
He nodded once, slowly, as though that information required a place to go.
"Andre, look at me."
"I am looking at you."
"Do I seem like I have dementia?"
"How am I supposed to answer that?"
"You could say no."
"I'm not a doctor."
"Neither is Claire."
"She's worked with people who have problems remembering things."
"She works with adults recovering from strokes and kids who have trouble communicating. That's a different thing."
"She sees all kinds of patients, Julian."
He sounded as if he'd been reading a brochure. My little brother, who once tried to fix an electrical outlet with a butter knife, was explaining my wife's profession to me.
"What did she tell you I've been forgetting?"
"Stuff."
"Excellent. What kind of stuff?"
"Appointments. Things y'all talked about. You missed that lunch with Mama."
"Mama canceled that lunch."
"She said you canceled."
"Well, one of us is wrong."
"That's what worries me."
I stood up. My knees made a noise I didn't appreciate.
"Don't do that," Andre said.
"Do what?"
"Act like I'm coming at you."
"You're sitting here telling me my wife thinks I'm losing my mind."
"I'm asking you if you're okay."
"I'm fine."
"All right."
He said it the way he had said it when we were teenagers and I insisted the old car wasn't leaking oil. It was leaking oil. We ended up a mile from the house with smoke coming out of the hood, and for the next fifteen years he mentioned it every time I criticized his driving.
I sat back down.
"What happened at Christmas?" I asked.
"You tell me."
"Don't."
He glanced at the kitchen doorway.
"You and Claire got into it."
"We argued."
"Zoe was scared."
I looked away from him. I remembered Zoe standing halfway down the hall in her socks, staring at the pieces of the serving dish on the floor. I'd apologized to her before I left. Andre knew that.
"I know that wasn't my best day," I said.
"Nobody said it was."
"So what's Christmas got to do with my memory?"
"Claire said you two talked about it later and you didn't remember getting so upset."
"I remember getting upset."
"That's what she told me."
"Then she's wrong."
Andre picked up the remote, turned the sound back on and watched a commercial about truck tires. He was giving me time to settle down. I hated that I could tell.
"Have you been drinking again?" he asked.
"No."
"I had to ask."
"Six years, Andre."
"I know how long."
He did. During the worst of it, he'd been the one who drove me to a meeting after I put my own car into a ditch. Sometimes I thought I could tell him anything because he'd seen me like that. Other times, knowing what he'd seen was the reason I kept my mouth shut.
"Did you ask Claire that?" I said.
"Yeah."
"What'd she say?"
"She said you've been doing good. She was proud of you."
My wife was proud of me, and my brother was reporting it to me as if he'd received a quarterly update.
Ruth came in carrying a folded poster board under one arm. My niece followed her with a glue stick in each hand. There was purple glitter on Zoe's cheek, and some of it had found its way onto Ruth's sleeve.
"Uncle Julian, do you know how to draw a lizard?" Zoe asked.
"Sure."
"A real one?"
"Define real."
"One that looks like a lizard."
"Then no."
She laughed, satisfied that we'd cleared that up, and Ruth said, "Andre, there's foil in the oven. Please remember to take it out before you turn the heat on."
"I remember," he said.
"You said that last time."
Ruth looked from him to me.
"Everything okay?"
"Ask my brother," I said.
Andre sat up. "Julian."
Ruth set down the poster board.
"You talked to him?" she asked.
There it was. Another person.
Zoe tugged her mother's shirt. "Can we still do the lizard?"
"Yes, baby. Go get the green paper."
As soon as Zoe left, Ruth said, "We should've talked to you directly."
"We?"
She was quiet for a second.
"I knew Claire had concerns," she said.
"And you?"
"I didn't know what to think."
"You could've called me."
"You're right."
I almost wished she'd argued.
I left before the game ended. Andre came out onto the porch behind me with a plastic container of wings.
"I didn't mean for it to come out like that," he said.
I took the food. "How'd you mean for it to come out?"
"I was going to see how you were doing first."
"You did a hell of a job."
He leaned against the porch rail.
"Call me when you get home."
"It's twenty minutes."
"Okay."
I stared at him.
"You never ask me to call you when I get home."
"Now I am."
"You think I'm gonna forget where I live?"
"I think you're pissed off enough to drive stupid."
That was at least an accusation I understood.
Claire was in the kitchen when I got home, standing barefoot at the counter with her hair tied up and our utility bill open beside her laptop. She'd put on the old shirt I'd bought at a concert in Charlotte. It had once been black. On her it hung low enough to cover her shorts.
"You're early," she said.
"Game was ugly."
"Did Andre lose money?"
"Probably."
"Then you've spared yourself a whole hour of him complaining." She pointed at the stove. "I made soup."
"What kind?"
"The kind you like."
"That narrows it down to one."
"I know." She kissed me as I walked past. "You bring the container back?"
I held up the wings.
"Julian."
"I didn't wash it yet."
"It's not even yours. You could've put the wings on a plate."
"He came outside with it. I was already in the car."
She took the container and looked at the bottom. Andre had written his initials there with a marker. Claire smiled.
"I'll take it over tomorrow."
I put my wallet on the counter.
"Why does Andre think I have dementia?"
Her hand stopped on the refrigerator door.
"What?"
"You heard me."
She closed the refrigerator. "What did he say?"
"That you've been telling him I'm having memory problems."
"I told him I was concerned."
"About dementia?"
Claire pulled a chair away from the table and sat down. She left the soup warming on the stove.
"I mentioned that possibility, yes."
"To my brother."
"He's your brother."
"I'm your husband."
"I know who you are, Julian."
"Why am I finding this out from him?"
"Because when I try to bring up anything that's wrong, you get angry."
"When did you try to tell me I had dementia?"
"I never told you that you had dementia."
"You know what I'm asking."
She watched me for a moment.
"You forgot lunch with your mother. You've asked me the same questions more than once. You put the insurance papers in the freezer. And on Christmas Day you got so upset that you scared Zoe."
"The insurance papers were in a grocery bag. I put the groceries away."
"You put the bag in the freezer."
"And then I found it."
"After I asked where the papers were."
I couldn't deny that. I'd stood in front of the open freezer holding a bag of peas and the envelope from our insurance company, feeling like an idiot. Claire had laughed when I found it. So had I.
"You've done things like that," I said.
"Of course I have."
"You told Evelyn to put the turkey in the garage fridge and it was still in the trunk the next morning."
"I remember."
"Nobody put you on a medical watch list."
"Is that what you think I'm doing?"
I didn't answer immediately. She stood, turned down the burner, and got out two bowls.
"I would go with you to a doctor," she said. "If you wanted me there."
"I can make my own appointment."
"I know."
She filled one bowl more than the other and put the fuller one in front of my usual chair. Chicken, white beans, spinach, the little pasta shapes that softened if you let them sit too long. She'd remembered to keep my portion separate because I hated mushy pasta.
I wished I hadn't noticed.
"How many people?" I asked.
"What?"
"How many people have you talked to about me?"
"Andre. Your mother."
"Ruth."
"Andre probably told Ruth. I didn't talk to Ruth about it."
"Anybody at your clinic?"
"Beth knows things have been stressful at home. I don't tell her your private business."
"You tell everybody else, apparently."
She set her spoon down. "I didn't tell everybody."
I took out my phone and found my mother's number. Claire watched me dial. When it went to voicemail, I tried again.
"She might be at church," Claire said.
"It's almost six."
"Evening service."
"I know what time church is."
I called a third time. Nothing.
Claire put the lid back on the soup pot. A minute later her own phone began to ring on the counter beside mine.
The screen said *Evelyn*.
Claire glanced at the phone, then at me.
"You want me to answer?" she asked.
"It's your phone," I said.
Claire let it ring one more time before she picked it up.
"Hi, Evie," she said, and pulled out the chair across from me.
