Stars Go Blue (2 page)

“Yes!” Carolyn zips and unzips her jacket. “You're exactly right. This ice. You would think it would be white, because of the snow. But no. It's all gray in parts, blue in parts, brown in parts. It's like an ocean. I can't get comfortable. It's too hot and too cold. Too something.”

Later she says, “Dad,” but she doesn't say more.

They walk in silence, listening to their feet crunch the ice. Walking is slow. Even young Carolyn has to watch her step, only she is not young anymore; she is not a girl, but a woman, but young relatively. When they get to the end of the property, they're at the first rise of the Rocky Mountains, with the startling red-orange cliffs that preface the blue-gray waves of mountains. Here the barbed wire fence stretches across this bulge in the earth, this fence that marks one man's land from another, and they will turn around.

But here is the cabin.

He walks up the steps and onto the porch and peers in the window. It is not locked, there is no reason to lock it, but still he would rather peer in. It looks just as he left it, kitchen table wiped clean except for a pile of slips of papers, a few dishes stacked in the drying rack by the sink. For one year now it has sat empty.

But he feels too tired to ask about that, and so he turns and they start back across the ranch, a two-mile walk. There is a river to their left and a ditch and a county road to their right and the long sprawl of his pastures in between, a long stretch of frozen sea. He loves the aspen trees, both the ones at the edge of the property and the ones he planted near the house. Right now they are bare white trunks with eyes, next to the streak of orange-red willow branches that throb out along the ditch. It is true that willows are the most beautiful thing in the winter. The willows and the backside of the foothills are the only orange-red
things out here; the rest is all the white and brown and blues of winter, and he loves that nature thrust in a little bit of strange color. There is a bald eagle roasting or resting or perching or roosting on a branch above the river, which he points to and his daughter says, “Yes, I see it. There are more of them now, aren't there? Some things heal.”

His daughter calls the dog whose name sounds like music. The not-retriever dog is rolling in another pile of horse manure and his daughter says, “At least it's frozen.” Then, “This is the stupidest winter ever. It's like one great glacier out here, and it's never going to melt.” And much later, “Dad? I love you no matter what. No matter what happens. Okay? You've still got some time. It will be hard to know when to . . .” And then later, under her breath, she says, “Ah, god. Fuck.” And then, finally, she holds the old wooden gate for him, and although he slows, she stands patiently, insisting that he go first.

RENNY

A
t the Early Stage Alzheimer Association's Support Group meeting in town, Renny is separated from Ben, which makes her sigh with irritation only because everything makes her sigh with irritation because she is in fact irritated. This is new, this parting of the waters. Ben goes off with the others to make Valentine cards for their caretakers, which is possibly the stupidest thing Renny can think of. Or not stupid, just plain pitiful. Embarrassing. This separation will give caregivers a chance to speak freely, says Esme, the leader, whom Renny really does like. (If only her daughter Carolyn would dress so smartly instead of wearing jeans and T-shirts and a ball cap with a ponytail pulled through the back. And Esme attends church, unlike her daughter. And Esme's name, which is short for Esmeralda, is very pretty; she should have named her daughter Esmeralda.)

Renny sighs and glances around at the other women and men, all white-haired, some fat and some thin, some smart and
some seemingly on the verge of the disease themselves. In front of each person at the table is a journal, presented each week so they can vent their frustrations and feelings on paper. She was supposed to decorate hers but instead she just wrote
THE SAD STORY OF RENNY AND BEN
in thick Sharpie marker on the front. Everyone else cut out pictures of flowers or old automobiles from old-timey newspapers and glued them on the front. She refuses to be reduced to childlike behavior.

Beyond the journals, in the middle of the table, is a plate of cookies. She is so tired of these cheap-brand cookies. No one likes them. Always Lipton tea, which no one likes either. She would like to issue a proclamation to the world: NO ONE IN THE UNIVERSE LIKES LIPTON TEA. Maybe people could stomach the Lipton tea if fresh mint leaves and honey were also provided, but they never are. She wishes she and humanity could both get it right for once. When this winter is over, and summer comes, and the mint springs up next to the farmhouse like weeds—even
then
she will forget the mint every week, and these idiots will still be putting it out, plain, even though no one wants it. She's sure of it, and she will drive Ben to this meeting and forget the mint because her life has always seemed too chaotic and busy to remember basic things like reaching down to grab mint that is right at your feet. She sighs, and then sighs again. She is so tired of the plates with the creased edges, like a pie, only not a pie, only a boring white paper plate. She is tired of this winter.

The truth. The truth. The truth is what Esme wants.

When it is her turn, Renny says one version of it, which is, “If I care for him well, if I stay patient, well, then whatever freak god is out there might let me into heaven. I am only nice because I believe He's watching. I'm afraid of hell. Otherwise I would have flown off to Greece some time ago.”

A few others chuckle but she isn't joking. God is a freak—must be, to allow people to suffer like this—and therefore must make freak decisions such as putting people in hell for letting their husbands die of a natural disease. Ben could have died a million times over by now, burning down his house or crashing his truck. Perhaps he would have rotted like a fence post, forgetting to eat. Although, no, he's always hungry, always wanting food, and it's his incessant whining about being hungry that makes her crazy. She wishes she could stay more patient but it's like dealing with a two-year-old, and she didn't even enjoy her daughters at that age—she liked kids when they were older and more self-sufficient and interesting.

At some point people have to die. Ben should just die. But the truth of the matter is that Ben's a good man who still loves his life. She looks around the room, quickly, to mitigate the closing sensation she is having in her throat. She's clarified this emotion with herself many times before: the simultaneous wish for him to die and never die makes her, at times, unable to breathe. The situation is, by its very nature, claustrophobic.

The group is waiting to see if she wants to say more. So she breathes in, acknowledges the panic attack that is threatening her, and smiles sweetly. She will comply to humor them. She says, “This disease is like a yo-yo. Or no, it's much like putting a toe in the river. It's too cold, so you back out, and you try again, you go deeper, you back out, then deeper, and then you are submerged and totally lost. For example, he forgets to fry bacon in a pan and instead puts it right on the stove. But I bet he doesn't do it again. He forgets how to zipper a coat. But then he remembers. Then he's angry for no reason, accusing me of stealing money from his wallet. Then he isn't. One day he couldn't tell time at all. But this week he can. He can't remember that he has four grandchildren, and then he
remembers them all, and he even remembers what they are doing. He even remembers to care that they're probably going to turn out rotten. In and out. Pulling in and out of water. Now that I think about it, I think his disease might have set in years ago, the same year our daughter died. Only I didn't notice for a while. But it's moving fast now. We're definitely leaving Stage I. We're moving into Stage II. There's a big difference lately. And he knows it, but he won't know it for much longer. He'll be too underwater to know.”

There are murmurs of approval and agreement and sorrow, which makes her feel like a schoolgirl that has gotten an A. She has described it well. “Submerged, yes,” someone says, and someone else adds, “Exactly,” and someone else apropos of nothing says, “Sometimes this disease reminds me of a Stellar's jay.” And Zach, sweet Zach, says, “That was well put, Renny,” and winks kindly at her. She tries to stop the smile but it's too late. She curled her hair this morning with pink plastic curlers and she's glad she did that because what- oh-what source of joy is there left for her in this world? She is not interested in men and their sexual needs (oh, what a relief, when she took Ben's hand off her breast decades ago and told him that she was just done with that stuff), but she could use a friend, maybe even a friend that would rub her stiff shoulders and hold her hand, and it might as well be a man since she can't picture wanting a woman to touch her.

Everyone is still smiling at her. Smiling extra hard. She is an honored martyr. She knows that they know. That she has already lost a daughter. And on top of this she has Ben, whose speech and thought has quite suddenly taken a turn for the worse. So she gets an especially high grade for her suffering. And that's what humans want. To feel special. Even for stupid reasons.

Bastards, all of them, she says to herself, to the friendly and smiling faces, all bastards except for maybe Zach. Maybe she hates them all.

She turns to the next person, indicating that it is now
her
turn to tell some freak version of the truth. The woman complies: something about how lonely she is now that she's lost her best friend, which is who her spouse was, and now there's simply no one to talk to over the news anymore . . . Renny sighs and looks out the window where she sees, unsurprisingly, that it is snowing again. This is like Minnesota plopped onto Colorado, and the reason she and Ben chose Colorado, back when such changes were possible and exciting and wonderful, was because Colorado wasn't Minnesota. And yet here they are, in a land of gray misery. This new snow on top of the ice will simply make the ice more dangerous.

She should be more generous but she can't muster the energy. She will not tell the real truth to these people. Or the deepest truth. For there are, of course, many versions, layering on one another like the snow. And the deepest layer is as dangerous as ice underneath. It can kill a person, in fact. The real truth, no. It must be covered with something slightly softer. She has seen the bottle of sodium pentobarbital that Ben no doubt stole from Ruben, when the vet came over to put down the old mother donkey. She's surprised Ben had the presence of mind to do such a thing, only not, because from time to time, his quiet, sharp mind sometimes flickers through. Sometimes his mind is working fine; it's just the words that are dammed up. And it's because of his deep intelligence—she fell in love with him in the first place because he was in fact so bright—that he's able to often find replacement words or different phrases that express what his mind still holds to be true.

Those moments make her so happy.

Ben had hid the bottle very well. But he had also left a note in the pocket of his jeans:
PINK JUICE ON TOP SHELF IN BACK ROOM BARN
. When she looked, there was in fact a clean bottle and two plastic-wrapped new syringes sitting on a dusty, dark shelf, right alongside coffee cans full of U-nails and dusty orange ear tags. It is breaking her heart. It is cracking her in two. But she must hold steady and strong. She simply will not tell that truth, no.

BEN

H
e's made Renny a soft pink card with a heart and he forgets why although he remembers that he takes a pill each morning for his heart. On the card he has written
THANK YOU
because the woman who helped them says that caregivers need that. Renny has thrown the card on the dash of the pickup after sighing and saying “That's nice,” and it rests there next to bits of hay and dust and old yellowed receipts from the feed store and curled-up slips of paper and one strand of orange bailing twine. Renny's driving him home now although this is not the right way. They pass a new church that has one of those signs outside, which says
COURAGE IS FEAR THAT HAS SAID ITS PRAYERS
.

“Stupid big new churches,” Renny says.

“Courage is fear . . .” Ben hears himself trailing off, hears his brain trying to make sense of what that means. Now that Renny does all the driving he has more time to look around, which is good. He needs the time. He repeats what the sign said to himself for many minutes before he gets the meaning. It is a bit like a math problem and he realizes that if you add
PRAYER
+
FEAR
, then on the other side of the = sign you get
COURAGE
. Only it is not exactly addition, it is more complicated than that. Maybe multiplication. He thinks he has it right. But he says, “Amen to that. Go slow. Take it easy. Make sure you know what you're doing, see.”

“What?” Renny is squinting, trying to see through the snow. It's a low-temperature snow, small and brittle, coming right at the glass, spitting at them.

“This isn't the way home, Renny.”

“We're going to the mall.”

“The mall.” He does a scan of his brain to remember what a mall is but all he sees is a lot of water. “Is that the remembering room?”

She glances at him. “What? No. I want to walk. It's too icy everywhere and I'm going to fall and break my hip. And then you'll be taking care of me. Or no, Carolyn will, and Carolyn has enough caretaking on her hands. That Jess is going to make her crazy. Jess is worse than any other eighteen-year-old because she isn't
like
an eighteen-year-old. Homeschooled and yet never around. Supposedly bright but never opens her mouth to say something intelligent. She's like a ghost. There is something
wrong
with her, I'm telling you. We're going to walk in the mall. Besides, I need to see some
color
.”