The Visitor

Chad was here last week for four days and it was great having him here-I’m not quite sure if I can say the same for our guest. I mean, I’m sure he had a perfectly lovely time but the trip was not without a few missteps.

Before he got here I started to wonder what he’d make of this little “Baby Jane” act we’ve got going on here-although sometimes I think we veer awfully close to performing George and Martha in “Who’s afraid of Virginia Woolf?”…….”I am George, I am”, Martha says as she gazes absently out of the window, spent from a night of accusations, recriminations, disappointments and disgust (yepper-that’s us!).

Anyway, we don’t get many visitors, well, not many that can stay for any significant amount of time anyway. Once a week or so Marcia (the cat lady from downstairs) might come up for a visit or the relatives of unknown relation might stop by but then that’s only for a few hours, too. Adele comes around and my friend, William has been here several times and most recently my friends Brian and Mark were in town and stopped by to meet Miss Cathy.

It’s easy to keep up the pretext of civility and harmony for a few hours-who can’t do that?! It’s letting someone behind the curtain for days on end that can be vexing, having someone around, “witnessing” it all.

I wondered what he was thinking…was he watching how we relate? How I interacted and cared for her? Was he judging what I was doing and how I was doing it? And if he was, what should I care but I did, I do. Maybe it’s not that I care what he thinks so much as I noticed how he was around Miss Cathy and I wondered, ”Should I be more like him?”

It’s not like I was trying to hide that I serve her rats for dinner under a silver cloche or dispose of the empty whiskey bottles after she’s long passed out form some sedative I’ve given her to shut her up, no, its more likely that I’m making her a late night snack of chicken salad or peanut butter and jelly, making sure she’s taken her night time meds and then creeping out late at night to dispose of empty cans of Fresca and roasted chicken containers.

Chad’s visit passed pleasantly enough, he brought her gifts, paid attention to her, listened to her, he even cooked her a meal and best of all he was a new audience for her shtick-a guaranteed good time for her. And there was the afternoon that Chad and I taught Miss Cathy how to play 3-13, a card game that Chad introduced me to back in Kansas City, that was a fun afternoon.

I got to have some grown up time, too. Chad and I spent a lot of time alone together, and we even went into DC for dinner with William at a hot new Cuban restaurant, Cuba Libre-so, fun was had by all. But, not all the time, he did witness a “moment” or two, one of which was the incident after he and I returned from a movie on what was the first snow-day of the season. Chad and Miss Cathy were in the living room and I overheard her talking to him about my driving skills (in snow and in general). Instead of ignoring what I was hearing, I went into the living room and proceeded to lecture her on the dangers of being a “back seat driver”, she (in typical Miss Cathy fashion) didn’t back down from her position that SHE was doing the driver (me, or anybody else who happened to be behind the wheel) a favor by pointing out what she thought the driver might have missed or needed to know.

It was less Baby Jane and Blanche Hudson and classic Miss Cathy and me, locked in our resolve that each was right and as usual neither giving an inch, oblivious of our guest and how boring it must all have been for him.

Chad had only met Miss Cathy last year, briefly, when he and William brought me by the apartment as part of my 50th birthday “Amazing Race” trip across four states. They didn’t get to spend much time together so he’s only getting to know her now, after her diagnosis. So, he doesn’t have much (or any history) knowing her “before” so he tells me that his observations are more of someone who’s getting to know an elderly person, with the usual limitations and fascinations that the septuagenarian possesses.

He’s very aware of all that’s transpired and everything that’s happened this year. He’s been very supportive of me and all that I (and Miss Cathy) have been through.

If anything, he swears that the conflicts that I’m dealing with are less Alzheimer’s (right now anyway) and more that Miss Cathy is me-in a dress. If that’s the case then I just need to get a rock and beat myself to death right now.