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ALL OF US AT THE SAME TIME

Chapter 13

ALL OF US AT THE SAME TIME

©Jo Dereske

Chapter 13




Mike's Search for Meaning


“Look!” Louise gestured upward. “It’s raining.”

We sat on the sunny patio, the sky was azure, no clouds in sight. But when I looked in the direction Louise pointed, my first thought was that we were witnessing a mysterious burst of raindrops from a cloudless sky.

Tens – no, hundreds, maybe thousands – of gossamer threads gently drifted downward and across the lawn, highlighted by the bright sunshine. So fine and sheer that if the sun hadn’t been shining, the minute glints would have been impossible to see.

“It’s a spider hatch,” I told Louise. “Baby spiders riding strands of web.”

I recalled the enchantment of E.B. White’s Charlotte’s Web. I’d read of spider hatches but never seen one. The baby spiders were miniscule dots clinging to their threads and venturing out into the world. Gently drifting and wisping on the slightest stir of air. It was a beautiful sight.


It was almost too late to plant the garden. Kipling had postponed the rototilling , encouraging Mike to become involved: parking the red tilling machine by the garden space and asking for a lesson in its operation, seeking Mike’s approval for the garden size and layout, trying to discuss seeds and starts. But Mike had shown no interest.

He carried a lawn chair from the patio and set it in the shade by the garden, then invited Mike to relax and supervise, but Mike responded with an explosive, “Hell, no!” and stomped into the house to take up position in his chair by the living room window. He sullenly watched and wrung his hands, softly cursing while Kipling ran the red rototiller through the garden space, turning square corners and stirring up the dirt.

“Are you mad at Kipling, Uncle Mike?” I asked.

But he was too distraught to keep his thoughts straight. Instead he pointed to a tree in the front yard. “See that dog up there?” he asked, and then added, “I think they took my brother’s body to Toledo.”

I sat down and we chatted for a few minutes. An eavesdropper would have thought we were both mad.

He picked at the air. "They've got all those . . .dots."

"I know. A lot of things are dots. Computers are hard to use sometimes."

"Is Johnny all alone?"

"Not anymore."

The sound of the rototiller faded into the distance. When I looked out the window, the garden was empty, no rototiller in sight, yet I could still hear it. I left Louise and Mike curiously peering out the windows trying to see where Kipling had disappeared to, and went searching for him. Where else could he be except in the garden? I found him rototilling a twenty-feet long by five-feet wide strip next to the woods, close to where my trail meandered.

"I'm going to plant a strip of corn for the deer," he shouted to my puzzled gestures. Sweat streaked his face and darkened his shirt as the rototiller bucked it way through the weedy earth. "Maybe it'll keep them out of the garden."

"You're bargaining with the deer?" I asked.

"Why not?" the man who’d spent most of his life in the city shrugged and asked.


1930 A registered letter came for Billy and he went back to Chicago, leaving me here. It’s getting so lonesome and tiresome here. A nice hanky from Tofelia – a late Christmas gift. She’s still with Gordon – a miracle, but none of my beeswax.
I washed for Mother today. A stormy windy day.



I entered Louise’s kitchen and discovered the house in chaos. Newspapers were strewn across the floor, the coffee makings spilled and jumbled together on the table. Knickknacks had been rearranged, cushions upended. Instead of being asleep, Mike paced through the kitchen, ebullient, chattering.

“Louise says there's no heat," he told me. I checked the thermometer. It read seventy degrees.

"I wonder where the helpers across the street are," he mused, meaning us. "Where's Ray? He's usually around keeping an eye on things."

"I'm Jo Anne, Uncle Mike," I told him.

He laughed. "I know who you are, where's . . ." and he waved a hand toward our little house.

"Kipling," I supplied.

"Yeah, Chip," he said but he couldn’t wait for my answer; he picked up a pair of wire-rimmed sunglasses that had been sitting on the windowsill since our arrival. A mischievous look crossed his face. "I wonder where these came from? I think I'll tease Louise. I’ll ask her if these work better than her other glasses," and off he trotted to Louise's bed, chortling to himself.

"What are you doing?" I heard Louise crabbily ask.

Mike was suddenly chastened. "Just cleaning these," he told her.

But he was so happy and busy and chattery that Louise finally rose from bed and joined us. As I expected, she bristled when she saw me making coffee. "You don't have to do that." Then she turned accusingly to Mike. "You can't even make coffee."

For a moment he appeared uncertain, poised to crash, but retorted, "Well, once upon a time you couldn't make coffee, either."

We were accustomed to vagueness and withdrawal, his quiet confusion, but this sudden, almost manic, activity was a behavior we hadn’t seen before, traits I couldn’t recall ever witnessing in all the years I’d known Mike.

We kept an attentive eye on the situation all day, not leaving them alone for more than a few minutes. Mike remained restless and agitated. He wandered up and down the driveway, and then back inside and out again. He brushed Kipling off when he tried to talk to him. "No, no, I'm just looking," he said.

"What are you looking for?" Kipling asked.

Mike shrugged.

Kipling cooked dinner and when I delivered it I heard Louise and Mike's raised voices as I stepped through the door. Mike sat at the table; Louise stood beside him, her handkerchief to her mouth. When she saw me she reached out her hand as if in supplication.

"Tell him, Jo Anne," she pleaded, "tell him that there's no election, that he didn't go vote."

"I did too," Mike insisted, "but I didn't have it. There was hardly anybody there." His face was contorted in distress. "If that's the way they're going to treat me, I'm not going to belong."

Before I could say a word, Mike jumped up from the table. "I have to check the tank," he said, his demeanor shifting to urgency, and he rushed out the door.

Aunt Louise began weeping. "What's wrong with him? What's wrong with him?" she repeated. "There's no election."

"I'll go get him," I told her, "then we'll eat. You sit down and we'll be right back."

Mike was striding up and down the driveway, breaking into a trot every few yards.

"Are you hungry, Uncle Mike?" I asked, trotting beside him to keep up. "I brought baked chicken for supper."

The evening was soft, nearly twilight. A few mosquitoes whined around our heads and the birds were rustling in the deep branches, dozily chirping.

"Why did they do that to me?" he asked, his voice shaking. "Did you see them?"

"There's nothing to worry about," I told him, touching his arm, slowing him down. "Come inside for chicken dinner."

He finally accompanied me into the house and sat down while I served up their plates.

"Do you still think there's an election, Mike?" Louise asked.

Mike didn't answer and Louise persisted, "Tell me why you thought there was an election." I couldn't distract her from grilling him.

Mike’s mouth worked. He pushed away his plate and stood, waving his arms. "I have to find it," he cried. He rummaged through the kitchen, picking up scissors and pins, a spoon, then the clock key, asking, "Is this it?" or announcing, "Here it is," then changing his mind and searching even more frantically.

"What are you looking for? Why can't you just say it?" Louise asked as Mike rattled through the forks in the silverware drawer. Her own voice escalated into panic.

“Let me help you find it,” I struggled to keep my voice mild, stepping between Louise and Mike.

"Maybe it's in the bedroom," he said and walked jerkily toward the bedroom, muttering to himself.

Louise rocked in her chair, crying. "What's the matter with him? He's acting crazy."

The air was thick with unreality and panic. Mike’s anguish tore into our fragile kingdom. I was afraid to leave them alone, even for a minute. I phoned Kipling and he was immediately at the door. Mike barely acknowledged his presence but held up a pencil and asked him, "Is this it?" Louise was at his heels, trying to straighten him out. “Mikey, you’re not acting right.”

We needed help but who to call? Surely not an ambulance. Ray and Barbara had taken their children to Grand Rapids for the day. And for that matter, what could anyone do to help us? We were floundering, drowning. We had no clue where Mike’s behavior was leading.

"I’ll call Susan," I told Kipling in a conversational tone. "You stay here with them."

I ran back to the little house and phoned Susan. It was after five but miraculously she was still in the office. She was quick, concise and clear.

"Go along with him," she told me. "Whatever it is, don't try to straighten him out. Just go along. If he thinks he has to vote maybe he's looking for his voter's registration card. If you can't find it, give him something similar and tell him that elections are always on Tuesdays and today is Monday. Let him win and he'll calm down and probably have forgotten it by tomorrow."

I returned and briefly told Kipling what Susan had suggested. Then I led Louise into the living room and tried to soothe her while Kipling sat at the kitchen table with Mike.

"Don't let them take him away," Louise begged me. "I couldn't stand to live without him."

"We won't let anyone take him, I promise," I told her, meaning it from the bottom of my soul but terrified that I was making a vain promise, that the situation had suddenly careened out of control, that we’d crossed a critical line. In the background I could hear Kipling agreeing to whatever Mike said, and Mike's voice settling into a calmer register. They were amiably talking nonsense.

But Louise couldn't stand being an entire room away from Mike. "I know Mike better than Kipling does," she said. "I’m the one who should be talking to him."

Aside from physically restraining her, I couldn't keep her away. She marched back to the kitchen, stood over Mike, and sternly announced, "There is no election and no one took anything from you."

Soon Mike was even more distraught. "Those jokers and crooks in the post office took my keys," He stood and began searching wildly through the papers on the counter, then dropped into his chair, his hands shaking.

He focused on Louise for a moment before lowering his head into his hands and breaking into sobs. It was too horrible; I couldn’t stop my own tears.

But at that moment Louise experienced a moment of clarity and showed her true colors. She put her arms around Mike and said softly, sweetly, "I love you, Mikey. Everything's going to be all right."

He lifted his head and searched her face. "Are you going? Should I go to the meeting?"

"I'm staying here all day long," she told him, "and you don't have to go anywhere you don't want to." And then she said the exact words we used when she became confused and couldn't remember. "You're just mixed up right now. It'll come back to you."

For five minutes, I thought Louise had turned the tide, but Mike jumped up and resumed his panicked searching. I followed him and remembering his accusation that the “jokers” at the post office had stolen his keys, I jerked the set of fake car keys from the key rack beside the door, holding them up triumphantly. "Here they are!" I shouted. "I found them!"

Mike grabbed the keys from me and gripped them tightly in his hand, his body relaxing, his face clearing, cradling the keys as if they were his rarest treasure. Kipling and I talked both Louise and Mike into sitting at the table while I fixed decaf coffee for all of us. Mike said he would call the FBI about the post office people, and Kipling agreed it was a good idea, “in the morning.” Mike insisted he saw flowers on the roof outside the window. He plucked at a strawberry from a grocery advertisement in the newspaper, trying to pick it up.

Without warning, he jumped up and bolted outside. Kipling followed after him and I took Louise’s hand, restraining her. “Kipling will bring him back,” I promised.

Mike crossed the driveway and rushed inside through the front door of the little house and when Kipling stepped inside behind him, Mike thrust the precious keys into Kipling’s hands.

"Here," he told Kipling, "you take these so you can open and close . . ." and he pointed all around the farm, his words abandoning him.

Kipling gentled him back to the kitchen and we all finished our coffee and talked about nothing until life once again regained a precarious kind of equilibrium.

"Do you know who I am?" Aunt Louise asked Mike, leaning her face close to his.

"Of course I do," he said. "You're Helen."

I didn't know who Helen was but fortunately Louise didn't hear him or didn’t register the name. Next he pointed to me. "And I know her, and that's Kippy." Never did he forget Kipling.

Kipling carried in Morris for a few minutes as a diversion. We stayed until Mike's eyes began to droop and Louise’s breathing returned to normal. Mike asked me, "Are you going to the meeting?"

"No," I told him. "I'm staying home tonight. We’re all staying home with you"

Back in the little house, after they were both in bed, Kipling and I collapsed, totally exhausted, not yet ready to discuss the evening and its implications. We skipped dinner, drank two glasses of whiskey each, watched a "Fawlty Towers" episode for comic relief, and went to bed. It was nine o’clock.

The next morning when I entered the house, they were both sound asleep and I spotted Louise's robe lying on Mike's bed.

No matter how much we wanted to we couldn't "fix" what was happening. It was a horrible lesson I was learning: the giving up of control, that neither I – nor anyone – could force life to be normal according to my own idea of normalcy, that we could only stand by and somehow try to soothe the dangers and horrors of deterioration. It was unfair and hateful and my helplessness filled me with despair.

At breakfast Louise said, "That was some commotion we had here last night, wasn't it?" I was surprised she remembered, but as happened with events she did remember, she couldn't let it go. "Do you think I should mention it to Mike?" she asked.

"It’s over now," I said, trying to be diplomatic, "and I’m glad, aren’t you? Now we can forget it."

So the second Mike entered the kitchen, bleary eyed, and husky-voiced, Aunt Louise said, "Mikey, do you remember what happened last night?"

"No, I don't." She let it rest for about ninety seconds and then asked, "Mike, you don't remember what happened last night?"

"No."

"You were all mixed up."

Mike looked at her for a few seconds, his eyes squinting like a far-sighted man trying to focus without glasses and answered, "Well, that was last night."

She dropped the subject again for a few minutes, not really listening to me trying to divert her with a story of the raccoons we saw hanging off the birdfeeder like circus performers, and asked the same question. “Do you remember what happened last night?”

When Mike responded in the negative she said in a disappointed voice, "If you don't remember, then forget it."

The conversation would be repeated in various forms all day long. Mike was distant and withdrawn, moving through the day like a sleepwalker. Louise gradually forgot, only recalling that "something" had gone on the night before.

Susan called later in the day to enquire after Mike and to arrange a visit the next day, reassuring us that Mike's exhaustion was a typical consequence of an Alzheimer's episode, as was the paranoia he’d experienced the night before. “This is your first experience with a full-blown episode,” she said when I couldn’t keep the dismay from my voice. “You have every right to find it overwhelming.”

I was reluctant to leave Louise and Mike alone, believing either Kipling or I needed to be with them at all times, but Susan told us, with a hint of sternness in her Tennessee twang: “You can’t become hostages to this situation. You have to take care of yourselves or you can’t competently take care of them.”


1930 New Year’s Eve. This was a hard year for employment and eating and renting and everything else that costs a hot nickel. We all hope 1931 will be better and I hope I can go back to Chicago SOON!




Next Tuesday, Chapter 14: We become Spies
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