“Are you kidding me? Sir, you’re an inspiration to all of us. All of us in my class, anyway. I mean, c’mon, the Schist vaccine? It’s practically Tylenol these days. Probably every resident in this facility has had the Schist vac.”
Gabriel smiled. “Not every resident.”
Harry looked confused. “You haven’t? Really?”
“It’s a long story.” Gabriel shrugged. “But anyhow, you’re a microbiology student? What brings you here?”
“I guess, um… I like helping people. I feel like the older generation, all you folks, you really deserve good help. And jeez, even though the military covers all my class expenses, I still need to pay the bills on my apartment.” Harry swallowed. “Sorry if I’m being awkward. It’s just… I can’t believe I have this opportunity to talk to you. I want to find out everything I can, y’know? Like I can’t imagine what it must be like being as brilliant as you are, if you don’t mind me saying, and then to suddenly get the diagnosis of Alzhei—oh. Oh, jeez. I’m sorry. I mean to say, uh…”
Gabriel chuckled, hoping to allay the boy’s embarrassment. In his high school years, the poor kid had probably had a million awkward encounters with girls. “It’s okay,” Gabriel said. “I can explain it this way. Can you get me a piece of paper, a pair of scissors, and some tape? Top drawer of the bureau.”
Harry complied, finding all three items rather easily. Gabriel cut a long, thin rectangle out of the paper. Pathetic as it seemed, he was actually surprised by the dexterity of his own hands. Next, Gabriel held the two ends of the paper, gave the strip a half-twist, and taped the short ends together.
“I’m sure you recognize a Möbius strip,” Gabriel said. “A loop. It has only one side. I know that an educated young man like you has seen it before, but humor me for a moment.” He put the tip of the pen to the paper and slowly drew a line down the middle of the strip. “Imagine that my pen is a child aging into adulthood.”
Harry watched intently. Gabriel continued the line down, all the way until it reached the end, which was also the starting point. His line had gone all the way around on both sides of the loop, even though he never lifted his pen or crossed the edge.
“Harry, life is a Möbius strip. I began as a drooling mess in diapers, unable to talk, unable to feed myself, unable to think. As the story continues, I progress. I advance further. My life twists around, and then, at the end, I return to the beginning. After everything I’ve been through, after that long, long walk, I slowly devolve back into a drooling mess in diapers. An infant, once again.”
“That’s… oh, gosh.”
“The only thing I haven’t yet figured out,” Gabriel said, “is what the twist in my life was, exactly. Was it the Schist vaccine? The terrific irony of me getting Alzheimer’s? I don’t think so. Personally, I like to believe that I still haven’t hit the twist yet.”
Harry nodded, looking a bit meek and traumatized. He turned to study Gabriel’s notes on the wall, digging his hands into his pockets.
“Harry, can I ask you for a favor? Can I take your photo? Since you’re new, I mean. If you look up there on the wall, you can see that I take photos of everyone who works here. You know, just so that I can remember their faces. It makes it easier for me.”
That was only partly true. The photos were also Gabriel’s weak attempt at socialization, his silly way of trying to make friends, a skill he’d never quite mastered. But Harry didn’t need to know that.
“Sure. Wow, that’d be cool!” Harry replied.
Gabriel took out his Polaroid camera and snapped the photo. A flash then Harry’s beaming smile was frozen in time forever. With a flourish, Gabriel took out his pen and wrote “Harry” on the white strip at the bottom of the picture. “What was your last name again, Harry? Bartlett? Bernard? No. Barnett?”
“Brenton, sir.”
Gabriel wrote it down before he could forget it again. As soon as he finished, he heard a loud knock. He looked up at Harry, who responded by nervously gesturing toward the door.
A young redheaded woman stood in the doorway, biting her lip. It was probably another nurse or a new employee, perhaps.
Gabriel shook his head. “Yes? What is it, more goddamn pills?”
“No,” the woman whispered. “It’s me.”
Gabriel stared at the woman’s attractive features. She had an intelligent face of long, sharp edges and smooth contours, complemented by dynamic brown eyes. Her mother’s eyes. Her grim expression was enough to break him in two, but seeing her again lifted his spirits. He stood up, shivering, and took the girl into his arms, squeezing her bony little body, never wanting to let her go, never wanting to let her escape again into a harsh world he couldn’t protect her from.
He smiled. “It’s great to see you, Melanie.”
Chapter 4:
Stranded
Gabriel went to the nursing home’s front lobby and sat down on the leather couch. His daughter, Melanie Schist, sat on the identical couch across from him. No, wait…was it Melanie Schist, or was she still Melanie Tompkins? He seemed to remember that she and Bill had divorced, but he wasn’t certain.
Yes. Yes, they had. She was Melanie Schist again. He was pretty sure.
The lobby was beautiful with bay windows overlooking the Atlantic Ocean, Michelangelo paintings on the walls, and an abstract wave-shaped fountain sculpture standing in the entrance hall to the three chessboards in the back. The lobby was one of his favored daily hangouts, though he preferred the smoking area. The windows tortured him with their presentation of the ocean’s face but not its smell. Though he could see the waves lapping at the beach, they didn’t seem real, and that rendered the window view as little more than a moving painting. Even the sound of the waves was blocked out by the jazz music that played from the lobby’s overhead speaker twenty-four hours a day. All in all, both areas were terrible teases of what he couldn’t have.
The couches were positioned next to a spectacular wall-sized aquarium filled with all manner of brilliantly colored swimming creatures. Gabriel stared into the blank eyes and flapping tail of a particularly active goldfish.
“Dad? Uh, Dad? Are you there?”
Gabriel smiled at his daughter. She looked so much like Yvonne at that age. When he’d first met Yvonne on that California beach, with her devilishly flirty smile and her bag full of Santa Barbara oranges, he never could have predicted that they would someday create such a beautiful daughter together.
Melanie sighed, those sharp cheekbones of hers pulled taut, her mouth a thin line. Still, the stung vulnerability in her chocolate-brown eyes was unhidden; her eyes were always flickering, always moving, always thinking. The whites looked a little bloodshot, but he imagined that she wasn’t sleeping much, considering the long hours she spent between the orphanage, the local homeless shelter, and her two kids. He’d always suspected that she had sleep apnea, as well.
“Dad.” She snapped her fingers.
“Oh, hello,” Gabriel said. “Sorry, Melanie. I was a bit distracted.” Distracted. For how long?
“It’s okay. For a sec, I thought your mind had gone skiing in the White Mountains or something.”
“No, not quite. I’m not that far gone. Not yet.”
“Good.”
They sat there, staring at each other, the void between them jammed full of non-words and unspecified feelings. She crossed her arms, digging her fingernails into her biceps. Several times, Gabriel moved his mouth to speak and then stopped, made nervous by the intensity of her gaze.
He remembered when she was little. He remembered her zeal, her compassion, her love of life, the way that she’d cry and ask him for help, ask him for advice, ask him for guidance. The beautifully uninhibited smile she used to give him—a Christmas present he was once lucky enough to receive as freely as oxygen—a smile that he never saw anymore.
She was no longer that little girl. To him, that was the greatest trial of parenthood: watching a loving, helpless little creature become a new, independent person before his eyes. A person who didn’t need him anymore.
He was proud of Melanie. She’d become a strong-willed, kind woman who helped abandoned little kids find new families and the homeless find new homes. She was a terrific mother, a better parent than he’d ever been. But on some level, he still missed the little girl, and he hated the weight that his condition put upon her shoulders. He supposed he probably always would.
“It’s truly wonderful to see you.” Gabriel leaned forward, hunched over his cane. “I miss you, Melanie. It’s been so long since you’ve visited. Why don’t you come here more often?”
Melanie shifted uncomfortably. She sucked in air, revealing her breathing to be ragged and choked up. Swiping at her eyes, she gazed at the fish tank. “I… I miss you too. But, Dad, it… hey, it hasn’t been that long. Only three weeks.”
Three weeks? Gabriel nodded. A few seconds elapsed, and he realized his allotted space for a timely reply had passed. Any reply would seem out of place, awkward, demented. So he remained silent, stroking his cane’s molded plastic handle for comfort. The cane was becoming less of a tool and more of a friend.
A tear escaped from Melanie’s eye. She wiped it away and looked over at the clock as if arguing with herself about how much longer she needed to stay. Gabriel quickly glanced away. He needed a distraction, just for a moment, to regain his bearings.
There were always a few other residents in the lobby, especially in the afternoons. Edna Foster was sitting by the bay windows, talking to her three sons. Her face was pulled back in her familiar scowl. One son leaned closer to her, and with a hostile expression, she loudly whispered about how evil everyone in the nursing home was. Everything was terrible. Everything was the worst ever.
Bob Baker rolled his wheelchair up to one of the tables, where he was presented with a plate full of his hotdog cubes. He glared at them.
All the way in the back, a new resident was sitting behind one of the chessboards, playing a game against himself. Well, maybe he wasn’t a new resident but definitely one Gabriel had never noticed. He was a tall, thin old man with long bony fingers. He looked so emaciated that the slightest breeze might break him into pieces. His three-piece tuxedo was ridiculously pristine and out of place. Big buggy eyes rested in dark hollowed-out sockets, and his perfectly combed-back hair was silver, as was his goatee. He looked noble, distinguished, like a lawyer or a politician. A long, gnarly scar crossed his left cheek, extending upward in a ragged trail then abruptly splitting off to the right and terminating in a shape that resembled the number 7.
“Dad? I’m talking to you.”
