32. A TURN IN THE ROAD

The residents of River Bend preferred the rooms with the river views. At low tide, their rooms overlooked mostly mudflats, but the residents preferred the mud to the golf course. Not my grandmother. “I rather like the mud, but I would prefer not to see the cows or even think about them,” Nana said. The long view, across the river or the mudflats, was of the black Angus farm. At such a distance from River Bend, it was pointed out to Mildred Brewster, the cattle would appear to be the size of small dogs. “I do not care what the cows appear to be—I know what they are,” my grandmother pointed out. “I would prefer not to see or think about cows, not even small ones.” There was Bartleby’s I would prefer not to, again—Nana remembered her Melville. She also remembered moments of her early childhood, unknown to us. Her life as a young woman had remained intact—most of all, her reading as a young woman.

“Her short-term memory is shot to shit,” Dottie pointed out. “She don’t know the difference between yesterday and fifty years ago.” This was true. My grandmother’s understanding of chronological order was shot to shit, too. Moby-Dick was clearer to her, and more real, than the births of her children or her children’s children. Nana knew who Dottie was, but she always seemed surprised when Dottie showed up—as if Dottie belonged somewhere else, or Dottie herself were somehow out of chronological order.

Near the end, even before she left the Front Street house for River Bend, my grandmother didn’t recognize Abigail and Martha—not until they spoke to her. “Oh, it’s you—you should have said something,” Nana told my aunts, as soon as she heard their harping voices.

Once, when Dottie was still taking care of her, my grandmother asked Dottie why she couldn’t smell the diaper man. “Did you just change Principal Brewster’s diaper, Dottie?” Nana asked.

“Wrong time, Mrs. Brewster—the diaper man is dead,” Dottie answered her.

“Oh, it’s that time—well, it’s all downhill from here,” my grandmother said.

It would have made my mother cry if Nana ever failed to remember her, but Rescue Ship Rachel didn’t need to worry. Little Ray had been named for “the devious-cruising Rachel.” Mildred Brewster, who could recite the rest of that last sentence of Moby-Dick, would always recognize her dearest Rachel.

Once, when my mom visited her aged mother at River Bend, she made sure she was recognized; she stomped into my grandmother’s room, doing her single-leg lunges. “Stop, Rachel—you’ll shake the chandelier!” Nana cried, but they weren’t in the dining room. There were no chandeliers at River Bend, where my grandmother chose a room overlooking the golf course.

“Well-to-do men with clubs,” Nana said, whenever she looked out her window and saw the golfers. “Are they all Republicans?” my grandmother asked me once, pointing to the golfers. They were a long way from the window; I could make out only the brighter colors of the golfers’ clothes.