It's Complicated (30 page)

And damn if he wasn’t going.

Chapter Eleven

Alex pulled into the parking spot in front of his grandfather’s apartment building, turned off his trusty ten-year-old Honda Civic and rolled his tongue between his teeth and his cheek. Unlike the last few trips to take Grandpa to the Alzheimer’s trial, this one he dreaded.

Never one to chase a woman to the point of ridicule, he had taken Josie’s hint after phone messages and texts went unanswered. Her sudden Ice Queen behavior—especially after the heat between the two of them—made absolutely no sense. Sure, it had only been a week, but a week without her felt like a lifetime, and it was killing him.

Time to act. Not wait.

As he climbed out of the car, the door creaked, a reminder to put some WD-40 on there. He stopped and sized up Grandpa’s apartment complex. It was small—only sixteen units—and income subsidized, which was a great help to Ed. Grandpa was the son of immigrants who had come to the Boston area seeking something better. Alex knew that the eighth-grade education that Ed had managed was a triumph—not something to be ashamed of—but five years ago, when Grandma had died and Ed found himself alone at the end of a long line of bills for her care, the best solution had seemed to be an apartment in a complex with other senior citizens.

His Social Security check and meager savings allowed Grandpa to live a
comfortable
life; when Alex had his own finances under control, the six-figure student loans were tamed to a number that didn’t make him gag every time he thought about it, he hoped to be able to help out Grandpa and his mom.

The building itself looked like just about any other building in Cambridge—brown paint, white trim, a long and narrow triple-decker, spanning far more of the backyard than you would expect. The front door bisected the entire building, splitting it down a long, narrow hallway with two front staircases at the entryway. Ed had scored a first-floor apartment, something that was hard to get. An old knee injury from fighting in Korea still plagued him occasionally, making everyone glad that he didn’t have to battle stairs on top of his other obstacles.

It was Grandma’s death that actually had made them all figure out just how mentally deteriorated Ed had become. What had been laughed off as his forgetfulness, while Grandma was still alive to compensate, had turned into whispered conversations between his mom and her sisters as they huddled around the kitchen table, looking at piles of bills that had gone unpaid, evaluating everything from the status of Ed’s wardrobe to the spoiled cartons of milk sitting between cans of penny nails at his workbench.

Alex had been an intern then, too busy with his own world and sheltered by his mother and the aunts who wanted to keep him on the fast track to physician success. It wasn’t until two years ago that anyone had bothered to bring him into the secret of Grandpa’s Alzheimer’s. Even then, it wasn’t until he called Grandpa’s property manager to get the front stairs fixed, citing ADA requirements with authority, that his mom and aunts had really realized he wasn’t Little Alex, needing to be sheltered, anymore.

Med school had taught him one important skill that had absolutely nothing to do with medicine itself—be the squeaky wheel. If a patient could not advocate for himself, it fell on a family member to do it. And for most patients, that was at least sometimes the case. Most family members, though, weren’t bold enough to ask for everything the patient needed. Grandpa’s family was no different—until Alex took control.

Alex had no problem being bold—he’d gone immediately into medical databases, found advanced research trials, made phone calls, shamelessly used his credentials. Funny how the title “Doctor” in front of his name led to instant respect on the phone. He had totally manipulated whomever, whatever, however, any system needed, to get Ed into his current research trial. And also to find a primary care physician who would do something more than prescribe what had become a brown bag full of conflicting medications that actually added to Ed’s addled state.

Seeing what everyone had thought was early-onset dementia partly reverse itself, little by little, as the med confusion had lifted, reinforced Alex’s boldness and further emboldened him to step into the role as family patriarch. His aunts had all had girls—everyone had called him Little Alex, the youngest of the cousins, his mom’s only child—so far. Only eighteen years older than himself, she was young enough to still manage another child if she wanted to.

The thought made him chuckle
.
Mom was forty-six, happily married to a man who had no interest in any more children. He’d been kind and pleasant when he’d entered Alex’s life his senior year of high school but the two had little in common. They were cocktail party guests at best, competitors for his mom’s attention at worst.

Ed’s door was painted China red, with a little sign that said
Welcome.
Rapping three times on the door, Alex waited, knowing Ed, clean shaven, freshly showered, and dressed, was sitting with his hands folded in his lap at the kitchen table. All ready for what had become one of his favorite events. You would never know that Ed Derjian had Alzheimer’s—but Alex did know, and that was why every month this trial became more and more important, as they hoped to unlock some kind of secret that would make them hang on to who Grandpa was.

The door opened slowly and Alex saw himself, about forty-six years in the future. Grandpa was about three inches shorter than Alex, with a full head of pure white hair. It was perfectly coiffed; a little bit of hair grease at the temples and around the ears to tame the little curls to smooth waves. Alex’s own chocolate brown eyes peered back at him, buried behind layers of wrinkles around the eyelids.

Ed’s practiced smile cracked into a wide natural grin upon seeing someone familiar. At the recommendation of one of the nurses, Alex wore the same outfit every time he came to pick Ed up. It had turned out to be an extraordinary tip. Now May was turning to summer, he was beginning to wish he hadn’t chosen his merino wool burgundy sweater—but he’d find a way to deal with it.

“Alex!” Ed shouted, arms out, welcoming his grandson into a hug.

Alex accepted the old-world embrace happily, a kiss planted on his cheek, the feel of Ed’s smooth skin loose and soft like a baby’s arm. Sandalwood and lavender mixed in with a light peppermint scent greeted Alex along with Ed.

As they pulled apart, Ed said the same words he said every time. “Let me take a good look at you. Boy, have you grown! Where’s your mother? Where is Judy?” he asked, looking behind Alex into the hallway as if genuinely expecting to find her.

“Grandpa, she doesn’t pick you up for this appointment.”

“Oh.” His eyes clouded and Alex felt the bottom of his stomach drop. It was rare, but once in a while Ed could go into that place where only his daughters, in the flesh, could anchor him. Alex was one generation removed, just enough to make Ed hesitate. And once that line had been crossed, getting him back was extremely difficult and generally required a call to his mom or one of his aunts.

The cloud lifted and Ed’s smile widened even more. “Of course. It’s just us boys. There aren’t many of us, are there, Alex?”

“No, sir,” he said, smiling.

“Just those lousy sons-in-law of mine and my delightful granddaughters. It’s you and me Alex, all the way.”

“That’s right, Grandpa.”

Ed shut the door, carefully sliding a key into the deadbolt, clicking it shut, turning it back and sliding it out, slipping the key on a thin string under his shirt. They had taught him to do this about three years ago and he took it as deeply serious as a big, overgrown latchkey kid. But no more lost keys, no more frantic phone calls from a neighbor who found him wandering.

As they walked back to the parking lot, Alex glanced at Ed’s old Dodge Omni, forlorn and rusting out at the wheel wells. No matter how many times they explained to him that his license was expired, Ed would still try to get in the car. A handful of times he had managed to drive somewhere; the farthest he had managed to go was from Watertown to Greenfield, a good hundred-mile jaunt that no one could really figure out. He must have just gotten on Route 2 and kept driving until he stopped at a Dunkin’ Donuts. He had munched happily on about a half-dozen chocolate glazed before an employee had figured out that he was lost. It wasn’t the first call from a kind Samaritan, but it was the last. Since then, Alex had disabled the car’s engine and his mother, aunts, and uncles took turns about every third or fourth day, surreptitiously reconnecting the battery terminals and driving it around a bit. Just enough to keep it functional.

“My car is broken, you know,” Ed said, pointing to the old gray clunker. “Damn engine—probably cost more to fix it than it’s worth.”

“Yeah, Grandpa, sorry about that.” That, too, was another conversation that they had over and over. If he let him ruminate on the car’s broken status, they could end up in an endless loop. Instead, Alex diverted the conversation by blurting out, “So, I met a new girl.”

“Your mother lets you date?”

Oh, boy. This was one of those days when Grandpa thought he was fourteen.

“Grandpa, I’m twenty-eight years old.”

Ed frowned. “I guess that means you can drive then today, right?”

Ed reached Alex’s car and he slapped the top of his green Honda.

“Yes, sir.” The less said, the better.

Ed took the fact that Alex was twenty-eight in stride, which meant that he was in a pretty good place today.

They both climbed into the car. Alex started it up and they wended their way a handful of miles through the Cambridge streets, past coffee shops, Alex’s favorite Eritrean restaurant, and finally Ed’s favorite hang-out in Harvard Square—the chess tables.

When the study appointment was done, he would take Grandpa to his favorite diner for lunch and then over to Harvard Square for a few games of friendly chess. If Alex deviated from
that
routine he would never hear the end of it. Ed may float back to 1953 sometimes, and even as far back as the early 1940s, but there was one thing that he
knew
about 2013—and that was that he was going to get his piece of pie at the diner and he was going to play three or four rounds of well-matched chess.

“So, this girl,” Ed asked, “she cute?” He held his hands out in front of his chest and mimicked a set of breasts, ogling his own creation.

Alex bit his lower lip and tried not to laugh. “She’s… pretty, Grandpa. She’s pretty.”

“Did you… y’know?” Ed leaned over and nudged him with his elbow.

“Did we…?”
Oh, God,
he thought.
Please. Not this conversation
. It was easier to lie. “Uh, no.”

“Not yet,” Ed teased. “So, there’s another date?”

“That’s up to her.”

As they made the left turn to go into the parking lot at the nondescript medical building where the research trial was held, Alex felt his body flush. It had been one thing in the abstract to decide that he was still going to bring Ed for their monthly routine, that he would catch her and leave her no choice but to face him. It was quite another to slide into the parking garage, press the button for the ticket, and move slowly through the dark concrete jungle.

Josie did a double-take when Ed Derjian walked in to the room because there, standing behind him, was his two-generations-younger double. Taller, broader in the shoulder, and with a touch of something
different,
an ethnicity she couldn’t put her finger on but a body she wanted to put all her fingers on.

Dammit!

Of all the people in her life to be Ed’s grandson, how had she missed it? Somehow she had compartmentalized her life enough that work was work and everything else was everything else so Alex’s last name hadn’t rung a bell. Alexander Edward Derjian. She’d been blinded by lust.
He’d
blinded her with
his
lust. The easy familiarity in his eyes should have been a clue.

He knew her—or at least, knew
of
her when they met at Laura’s birth. Or did he? Maybe he really hadn’t recognized her and she was just making this all up in her mind as she looked him square in the eyes while Ed introduced them

“Oh, hey, Jackie. So, this is—”

“Josie, Grandpa. Her name is Josie,” Alex whispered. It was a stage whisper with a quick little look of amusement that Alex intended only for her.

“Josie!” Ed said, slapping his forehead. “That’s right. Josie. I knew that,” he chided Alex. “Josie, let me introduce you to my
single
, eligible, bachelor grandson. He’s a doctor,” Ed added, waggling his eyebrows suggestively.

Josie couldn’t help herself and laughed and extended her hand as if she had never met Dr. Alex Derjian before. “Josie Mendham. Pleased to meet you,” she said, her palm pressed against his, sending an electric current through her body that made her back stand at attention, her body filled with ice and heat, her breathing steady and slow in contrast to her heart, which sped up as if it were sprinting to the finish line of some race she didn’t even know she was running.