Chapter One Excerpt from THE THINGS WE KEEP!

[St. Martin's Press, Publisher]

1

Anna



Fifteen months ago …

No one trusts anything I say. If I point out, for example, that the toast is burning or that it’s time for the six o’clock news, people marvel. How about that? It is time for the six o’clock news. Well done, Anna. Maybe if I were eighty-eight instead of thirty-eight, I wouldn’t care. Then again, maybe I would. As a new resident of Rosalind House, an assisted-living facility for senior citizens, I’m having a new appreciation for the hardships of the elderly.

“Anna, this is Bert,” someone says as man slopes by on his walker. I’ve been introduced to half a dozen people who look more or less like Bert: old, ashen, hunched-over. We’re on wicker lawn chairs in the streaming sunshine, and I know Jack brought me out here to make us both feel better. Yes, you’re checking into an old folks’ home, but look, it has a garden!

I wave to Bert, but my gaze is fixed across the lawn, where my five-year-old nephew, Ethan, is having coins pulled out of his ears by a man in a navy and red striped dressing gown. My mood lifts. Ethan always jokes that he’s my favorite nephew, and even though I deny it in public, it’s true. He’s the youngest of Jack’s boys, and definitely the best one.

Once, when he was four, I took him for a spin on my motorcycle. I didn’t even bother asking Brayden or Hank; I knew they’d just say it was dangerous and then tattle to their mother. As far as I know, Ethan never tattled. Brayden and Hank know what’s wrong with me—I can tell from the way they constantly glance at their mother when they talk to me. But Ethan either doesn’t know or doesn’t care. I really don’t mind which one.

“And this is Clara.”

Clara wanders toward us with remarkable speed (compared to the others). She’s probably in her eighties—but portly, more robust looking than the rest. With a cloud of fluffy yellow-gray hair, she reminds me of a newborn chick.

“I’ve been looking forward to meetin’ you,” she says, then gives me a whiskery kiss. A burst of fragrance fills my airspace. Normally I don’t like to be kissed, yet from her, the gesture feels oddly natural. And these days, I make a point of respecting people who are natural around me. “If you need anything at all, you let me know, honey,” she says, then wanders off toward a huge oak tree. When she gets there, she kisses the man in the navy and red striped dressing gown full on the mouth in a way that feels vaguely territorial, like she’s staking her claim.

Beside me, Jack is talking to Eric, the center’s manager—a paunchy, red-faced man with a thick Tom Selleck mustache and a titter of a laugh that, by rights, should belong to a female in her eighties. Every time I hear it (which is a lot, he seems to chortle at the end of every sentence), I jerk around, looking for a ladies’ auxiliary group giggling over its knitting. He and Jack talk, and I listen without really hearing. “We do a lot of activities … we’ll keep her active … twenty-four-hour care and security … experience with dementia … the best possible place for her…”

Blah, blah, blah. Eric has a certain desperate-to-please manner about him that, a few years ago, Jack and I would have exchanged a look over, but today Jack is eating it up. He’s happily oblivious to Eric’s false laugh, his too-tight chinos, his gaze that wanders to the right (and vaguely near my chest), every few moments. Eric’s only redeeming quality so far is that when we arrived, he asked my advice on an old knee injury that had been giving him some trouble (probably because he hoped I’d offer to give it a rub). He needed a doctor not a paramedic, and I explained this, but I appreciated him asking. These days, the most interesting conversations I have are about my favorite color or type of food. I like it when people remember that I’m a person, not just a person with Alzheimer’s.

Jack seems to have forgotten that. Ever since I went to live with him and Helen, he’s stopped being my brother and started being my dad, which is beyond annoying. He thinks I don’t hear when he and Helen whisper about me in the kitchen. That I don’t notice they exchange a look whenever I offer to walk the boys to school. That I don’t see Helen trailing after me in the car, making sure I don’t become disoriented on the way there.

Jack’s been through this before—we both have—and I know he considers himself an expert. I have to keep reminding him that he’s an attorney, not a neurologist. Anyway, the situations are different. Mom was in denial about her disease. She fought to hang on to her independence right up to the point when she burned down the family home. But I have no plans to fight the inevitable. It’s why I’ve checked myself into residential care.

The upside of this place, if I’m choosing to be positive, is that not everyone is nuts. Jack and I looked at a few of those dementia-specific units, and they were like Zombie City, full of crazies and folks doing the seven-mile stare. This place, at least, is also for the general aging community—the ones who need their meals cooked and laundry done—kind of a hotel for the elderly (the wealthy elderly, judging by the zeros on the check Jack wrote this morning).

Still, I’m not exactly thrilled to be here. It was bad enough when Jack sent me to “day care.” Seriously, that’s what it’s called. A day program for people like me. Also for people not like me, because with only 5 percent of Alzheimer’s cases occurring in people under the age of sixty-five, there aren’t a lot of people like me. That’s what makes this situation all the more unusual. I’m not checking into just any residential care facility—no sirree. We’ve traveled all the way to Short Hills, New Jersey, from Philadelphia so I can live in a facility with someone like me. A guy, also with younger-onset dementia, someone Jack heard about through the Dementia Support Network. Since learning about the guy, Jack has been hell-bent on getting me into the very same care facility as him. It’s like he thinks having two young people in a place filled with oldies makes it spring break instead of residential care.

“Would you like to meet Luke, Anna?” Eric asks, and Jack nods enthusiastically. I guess Luke must be the guy. I wonder if he’s going to rappel down from a tree or something. It will have to be pretty impressive if they think it’s going to make a difference to my mood.

“I just want to go to my room,” I say.

Jack and Eric glance at each other, and I feel the wind leave their sails.

“Sure,” Jack says. “Do you want me to take you there?”

“Nope. I’m good.” I stand. I don’t want to look at Jack, but he stands, too, gets right in my face so I can’t look anywhere else. His eyes are full and wet, and I catch a glimpse of the softhearted man he used to be before his brushes with dementia and abandonment hardened him up.

“Anna,” he says, “I know you’re scared.”

“Scared?” I snort, but then my vision starts to blur. I am scared. The funny thing about being a twin is that all your life, someone is right by your side. But in a moment, Jack’s going to leave. And then I’m going to be alone.

“Get lost, would you?” I tell Jack finally. “I have a pedicure booked in half an hour. This place has a health spa, right?”

Jack laughs a little, shooing a drop from his cheek. When we were younger Jack sported a golden tan, but now his skin is vaguely grey, almost as white as my own. I suspect this has something to do with me. “Ethan! Come and say good-bye to Anna.”

Ethan thunders across the lawn to us and tosses himself into my arms. My little blond nephew, I notice, still has a tan. He strangles me in a hug. “Bye, Anna Banana.”

When he pulls away, I take a long hard look at the large white bandage covering his left cheek and try to remember the angry red burns and welts underneath. I need to remember them. They’re the reason I’m here.

[[deleted user]]

This looks like a fascinating read, mainly because it's written in first person and the writer is the person with Alzheimer's. I'm an author, and like other writers, I've written fictional books about people who suffer from Alzheimer's, but they're penned in third person and the narrators are not the people suffering from this affliction. I'll definitely need to put this on my bucket list. I'm eager to see what others think of this book. I can't imagine it will end well, but I surely could be wrong.

[Rebecca]

I just read this chapter last night and I'm really enjoying it! I love that the protagonist is so young, it really makes her point of view unique.

[Lisa]

Great Read. The protagonist's voice is spot on with an almost clinical detachment which is so intriguing as as a first person narrative about the rippling damage of early onset Alzheimer's. I cant wait to read the rest.