Aimee LaBrie

Aimee LaBrie

Memory Care

My best friend Jen invited me to a party in the artsy district of North Philadelphia. I was about to turn thirty-five, so I figured it was a surprise birthday party for me. I was wrong.

When I walked into the warehouse, it took me a moment to pull the room into focus. The space was dark and echoey with just a single strobe light on the rafters. A crowd of boys and men mingled near a food station, and another bunch was shooting hoops at the far end of the room, the squeak of their sneakers cutting through dance music from a DJ wearing giant headphones. Blue and white balloons bumped up against the high rafters, intertwining with streamers. I squinted up at the writing on a nearby streamer. It read “Welcome to Memory Lane PartyTM️.”

I had heard rumors of these parties from other friends going through a hard time. They were meant to cheer you up, like that old version of my mom’s favorite game show, This is Your Life, but with dancing and cake. I turned to sprint out of there. Jen jumped in front of me.

She held a clipboard and wore a headset like an air traffic controller. She said, “Carrie, I’m so happy you made it.” She took my arm in an iron grip and moved me back into the room. She smiled. Except for a slight overbite, her teeth were perfect. She was married to a periodontist named Brad who told long and gruesome stories about dental mishaps.

She told me I could leave after fifteen minutes if I didn’t like it.

A guy whizzed by on a skateboard. He looked just like Mark Boon, the guy I chased from Pittsburgh to Philadelphia. In another corner of the warehouse, I spied a little red-haired boy practicing piano. Then there was a man in the center of the room haloed under a bright spotlight, dressed in full Shakespearean clothes, reciting lines from Romeo and Juliet. It fell into place then. The boys and men were my exes. I spotted them in quick succession after that: the Daves, Jake, Thomas, Tommy, the two Dans, Alan from IT—too many to count. I even saw my last Tinder date, a rangy man who had a tattoo of his boa constrictor coiled around his wrist like a bracelet.

Mark Boon executed a fancy skateboarding move and nearly skidded into Steve Crossett, who shuffled his piano music and began playing “The Blue Danube.” Steve Crossett was still the same age as when I had a crush on him (twelve), and so was Mark (thirty-one).

Mark said, “You look fantastic. I’d like to have my way with you.” He always talked like that, like a guy from an old movie. He had a wide, beautiful smile, what my mom would have called a shit-eating grin, and he was good in bed. Too good.

Jen consulted her clipboard, “Mark, you get to talk to her at 9:15, if she stays.” She gave him a firm push, and he rolled away toward the DJ booth. I knew she was worried because I had been skipping our monthly coffee dates. I had also stopped showering regularly, but she didn’t know that. I worked at home, and time moved at a glacial pace. I now understood why it was hard for my mom to keep track of her days. When nothing changed and you stayed in your pajamas, what difference did it make if it was Thursday or Monday?

I was no longer interested in crossword puzzles or cat reels or disaster videos of people falling off ski lifts. I even tried getting out of that night, but Jen tricked me. She said the party was on Friday, and when I said, “Darn, I’m busy that night,” she said, “I mean Saturday.”

When Jen and I met in second grade, I liked her right away because she knew how to tap dance and twirl a baton. I was jealous of her pink leotards and tights and black Mary Janes that made clackity-clack noises when she walked. My mom, meanwhile, put me in Music Appreciation and made me learn the French horn.

We were different, Jen and me. She had been married for ten years, for one thing. For her wedding, she let the bridesmaids pick out the dresses and didn’t yell at me when I drank too much at the co-ed bridal shower, made a pass at her cousin who was a cop, and then threw up in the wine bucket, oh, so discreetly in the kitchen.

I recalled being led up the stairs by her sweet mother who had tiny hands and still wore headbands, even in her sixties. She helped me get into Jen’s twin bed and brought me a glass of ginger ale. I laid up there, with the room gently spinning and listened to the murmur and occasional burst of laughter from downstairs. I felt very, very sorry for myself in a way that was almost like joy.

We stayed connected, even in high school when she was on the yearbook staff while Jen and I participated in Model UN, representing Australia because I had a crush on a boy from that country, Lachlan Pike. He had a mustache at age fifteen and spoke with an irresistible accent.

Jen was who I called to update on the wreckage of my dating life and my mom’s rapid decline. She knew I had just broken up with the man I thought would propose. He wasn’t the greatest guy. He couldn’t hold down a job. He was depressed because of people’s apathy about recycling, but he wouldn’t see a therapist. He didn’t like to spend the night at my place because he needed a bigger bed. I bought a king-sized one, and he said he needed an even bigger bed. I said, “This is the hugest one I can fit into my room and still walk around.” He replied, “I need some time apart.”

I noticed that he was nowhere to be found.

“Take a look around.” Jen made a sweeping gesture like a game show host.

The warehouse had high ceilings. At the top of one wall was a gigantic round clock with black hands tracking the minutes and the seconds. A few sparrows fluttered around, swooping down from the rafters to steal popcorn from the bowls on the snack table. The walls were exposed brick, and the floors cement.

Tall, wobbly cocktail tables were set up with red candle centerpieces wrapped in white mesh like from the pizza place we used to go to after band rehearsal.

“Do you love it?” Jen asked.

“I love it.” I used as much enthusiasm as possible, which wasn’t much.

I had just come from visiting my mom in Reflections, the memory care ward.

That day, my mom had on someone else’s shirt and two mismatched socks: one with a collie on it and the other with daisies. I greeted her with, “Hi, mommy dearest.”

When I visited, I tried to make everything into a joke so she would laugh instead of cry.

Her brows knitted together. She said, “Do I know you from church?”

It was the first time she forgot who I was.

I found Jen and gestured to my outfit. I had opted for comfort over glamour.

“I wish you would have told me I was going to see my exes.” I wore a thrift store sweatshirt with faded letters on it from a college I never attended, and mom jeans that gathered at the waist.

Jen snapped her fingers and Todd Steely popped up out of the darkness. I had a crush on him in tenth grade because he could sing and dance and got the lead in the mainstage musicals like Bye Bye Birdie. It took me well into my college years before I realized he was gay.

Todd was taller than I remembered and had the lithe body of a dancer and the same sparkly blue eyes of his sixteen-year-old self.

He whisked me through a paneled door and into a dressing room where he revealed an assortment of dresses on a rack. When I flipped through them, I realized they were gowns I had worn for special occasions throughout my life, including my Laura Ingalls Wilder phase when I favored petticoats with ruffles.

My mother sewed pretty much any pattern I could find until I rebelled and started shopping at consignment shops. “This is the one.” He pulled out a neon blue dress with faux diamonds sprinkled across the bodice. It had a drop waist, and a bow at the shoulder.

“Is this from my senior prom?” My mom had labored over this dress, the sewing machine zinging away late into the night to make sure the hem was straight and the sequins stayed put. “This will never, ever fit me.”

“We’ll see.” He let me change out of my sweatshirt and jeans, handed me the dress, and zipped up the side. Then he pushed me into a chair and crimped my hair, so it cascaded around my face like a waterfall. He used a Q-tip to add brightener to my puffy eyes. “Voilà!” he said. “You’re glam. Now go out there and have the grandest time.” He gave me a kiss on the cheek and then reached for an atomizer and spritzed me with Windsong, a scent I love because my mom used to wear it.

I stepped back out into the room, dazzled by the disco lights. A wave of applause erupted. The exes were gathered in a group to welcome me back to the party. “Woo-hoo!” That was Christopher Chateaux, the one guy I dated who watched football.

The guys were clustered together in groups of three or four, talking, swinging their arms, sipping drinks, popping mini cupcakes into their faces. I didn’t remember saying goodbye to any of them. The only goodbye I recalled with any clarity was with Anthony Dimino.

Anthony chased me down the street after I stuffed all my clothes I’d left at his apartment in a backpack and ran out. I didn’t even know he was behind me until he grabbed my arm.

It was like a scene from a movie. I was crying and worried I was being melodramatic. He had on his blue striped shirt, the rumpled one from Banana Republic with the ink stain on the pocket. “Don’t go.” He tried to get me to look at him straight on, but I wouldn’t.

“No, I have to leave.” I raced down the sidewalk, away from him.

He will find me again, I thought. Except he didn’t, and then I moved away and fell in love with someone else. And someone else after that.

That’s who I most wanted to see. Anthony, who never went by Tony. He was the one I should have stayed with.

I found him sitting at the bar drinking a martini. Behind us, a bunch of guys were doing the Electric Slide. Anthony was Italian, compact, and self-conscious about his height. I walked over, feeling awkward, and gave him a hug. I had forgotten how he smelled—clean and soapy with a hint of vodka, which was supposed to be odorless but isn’t if you drink enough of it.

“How are you? I worried something happened to you.”

He took a sip of his drink. When I knew him in my early twenties, he was a bartender, and I was a waitress. We worked at a themed restaurant where we had to wear colorful buttons to show how fun we were. My favorite button asked, “Oh, mother is it worth it?”

He had one that simply read, “No, thank you.”

Anthony was the most serious bartender I had ever met. “You look the same,” he said, eyes sliding over me and then away.

“Are you still running the Boston marathon?”

“No, not anymore.” He gave a nod to someone, and I noticed Dave Krenshaw and another guy from the restaurant. I felt weird because I’d “dated” at least five different men there including a married chef from Ireland. Mark took another sip of his drink. “I died.”

My throat tightened. “What happened?”

He knew me well enough to understand what I was really asking. “You couldn’t have saved me,” he said.

“I could have made you go to AA.”

“You did make me go to AA.”

“Oh, yeah, that’s right.” We went to a few meetings together, and he got a sponsor named Josep. It seemed to be working, until I caught him drinking again late at night after he thought I had gone to bed. Vodka in a heavy juice glass. When I confronted him, he pretended it was water. I made him kiss me. He smelled like ethanol.

“Still, I’m sorry,” I said, and I was.

He shrugged like, It is what it is. Except he never would have said that because he hated idioms.

There were other mysteries to solve. Brendon P: why did he write poems about me but vanish after sex like an alley cat? Armen opened up about his sister who died of leukemia, and the next day, told everyone I’d given him a hand job under the bleachers. The medical student with the vanity plates (DR2B) said I was his sweetheart and then got back together with his ex, also named Carrie. As I remembered it, there were countless times when I thought the relationship was going one way, only to have it swerve off in the opposite direction.

I asked Jen then, “Was I so terrible?”

“You’re asking the wrong question.” Jen said.

“Thanks, well, what’s the right question?”

“Why did you tolerate these dummies?”

It’s true, she could see through them right away, but I always thought it was because she was jealous. She never got to have a slutty phase like I did. She had met exactly three penises in her life, whereas I could write a long book about the penises I have known and not loved.

As the night wore on, I remembered why each relationship didn’t work out. Jeff Hartley loved the outdoors. He made his own canoe and owned a mess kit with tin plates and a kerosene lantern. He wanted a woman who didn’t shave her legs and listened to alt country, played a ukulele and knew how to start a fire with pieces of flint, not a person who smoked cigarettes and ate cheeseburgers and would rather be at a dental appointment than sleep in a tent. But he was also funny and had three golden retrievers. Three happy, delirious, feather-tailed dogs.

Dan Silver wanted a woman he could chase, and I was too easy to catch. Paul Gruff, the bespectacled philosopher, thought commitment was pointless since we were all going to die. I agreed with him (about the dying part), but I thought we could make a go of it. He cried on my sofa and told me that he wanted to love me but thought of me more like a best friend. Some of the others: the sculptor, the musician, the lawyer who asked me to strangle him so he could have a more intense orgasm or die trying—none were ready for commitment.

The room lit up with the sparkling overhead lights. Derek Dunbar whirled by on a scooter, all of fourteen years old. “Would you want to race me?” he yelled, as he sped by. I had a crush on him because he looked like Pacey from Dawson’s Creek and he played baseball. He was also smart-alecky and conceited. His dad held a public office, I forget for what. We kissed one time, and he tasted sweet, like peppermint.

Or maybe I was getting it wrong, and it was Jeff Dobbins whose dad was a politician. I yelled to Jen. “Can you get these guys to fill out name tags? I am confusing the Matts with the Marks and the Jeffs with the Jasons.”

In memory care, the residents no longer knew what they had forgotten, but they still held on to their worry. The women especially worried with their hands, holding a bit of cloth, folding it again. My mother did the same. I would hand her a towel, just to give her something to do and she would match the corners and shake it out and then match the corners again and shake it out again and fold it down and then match the corners again in an endless, useless cycle.

When I was younger, she would set the ironing board up in the living room in front of Guiding Light and iron my stepdad’s shirts and handkerchiefs, an ashtray perched at the end of the board and cigarette smoke mingling with the wet steam of the iron. When she was too busy, she would run around saying, “Chicken Little, Chicken Little,” to illustrate how it felt like the sky was falling. In the beginning of her dementia, I would correct her when she made mistakes.

“You don’t work here, Mom. You live here. You don’t have a driver’s license, remember?” It took me a while to learn to be chill about it while gritting my teeth. Yes, your car is out in the parking lot. Her memory span was about five seconds, which meant she would forget the worry and then return to it later.

I headed for the snacks. I felt the beginning of a pressure headache. The table was filled with all the things I loved, both as a kid and as an adult. A veggie and cheese platter, plates of nut-less brownies and tiny cupcakes with swirled frosting like little hats. Carrot sticks with peanut butter down the center, warmed chocolate croissants, donuts oozing with delicious yellow creme, Spam on toast with American cheese and ketchup, tapioca pudding.

After stuffing my face, I wandered over to the balcony. Some of the guys were starting a pick-up basketball game, even the non-athletic ones. Once I stepped outside, I felt relieved from the pressure of having to make small talk. The night air was cool, and the warehouse looked out on the bay where I could see a dark outline of a giant boat docked on shore, like the Titanic before it sank forever.

My ears rang with the suddenness of no sound, except for the whoosh of cars along the street below, speeding through puddles.

The balcony door opened, and Michael Preston appeared. My body always hurt around him, and I don’t mean that metaphorically. Every time I spoke to him, I felt like I had swallowed gasoline.

He was dressed in full Renaissance costume. He played Romeo in college. I was the understudy to Juliet. His talent was rare. It made me nervous. But I wouldn’t be intimidated by him now, would I? Ten years had passed, or more.

More actually.

I still felt tongue-tied, like my mouth was filled with cotton. “Are you having a good time?”

He leaned against the wall, staring at me. His pupils were big round circles.

“I am now.” He had a bow mouth that I don’t remember kissing.

He reached over and touched my cheek, then pulled me in for a kiss. He smelled like smoke, and honestly, fresh cut grass, like he was made up of something from a forest. The kiss was perfect. I hummed with longing for more, more, more.

If not from him, then from someone.

He said, “I don’t know who I’m supposed to be today.”

Then I remembered the reason for leaving him too. He always seemed to be talking to someone else, like a scene partner in a play.

He crouched low, as if looking up at the balcony where Juliet is supposed to be. “Parting is such sweet sorrow.”

That was Juliet’s line. I knew that because in my fantasy, the girl playing Juliet died and I got to step in as the understudy. Except that never happened. Jen pulled me off the balcony and moved me into the center of the room. She clapped her hands together. The boyfriends gathered around me in a circle. I felt like I should spin like Julie Andrews in The Sound of Music when she’s on the mountaintop at the end.

Dan Silver stepped forward, “We’d like to let you know how much you meant to all of us. We each have prepared a speech or a poem.”

“That’s okay,” I said. I don’t even like people to sing happy birthday to me, and I certainly didn’t want a bunch of guys stumbling over their words and offering generic praise.

Steve Crossett said, “You are a natural leader.”

Michael Preston said, “I like the way your mind works.”

Mark Boon said, “You are eminently doable.”

The compliments pinged off me. Nothing stuck. “Jen, it’s so nice of you to throw this party, but I need to leave.”

Jen raised an eyebrow. That was something she was good at. She could do either brow, or both at once if she wanted to look surprised. She said, “I didn’t arrange the party. Your mom did. She set money aside before the dementia got too bad.”

“When?”

“After your thirtieth birthday.” This was before her great decline, or rather, during her great decline that she kept hidden until it was impossible, until she forgot to pay her electric bill. Until she started feeding the cat pieces of toast instead of Meow Mix. Until she forgot to take her blood pressure medication and had a mini stroke. Until she stopped bathing and began to smell like a moldy dishrag.

It happened slowly, and then all at once.

Jen patted my arm. “Your mom had one more surprise for you.” She gestured to Mark Boon and Steve Crossett, who went over to open the doors near the exit.

My mom appeared. It was my mom from ten years ago, right after my stepdad died when she was still able to drive and would not leave the house without lipstick on. The ex-boyfriends roared and shouted. One of them yelled, “You rock, Mrs. Simcoe!”

The boys always liked my mom. She made popcorn with real butter and sugar and cinnamon and knew a lot about music. She could talk about eight-track tapes from her childhood or the time she saw the Grateful Dead at Grant Park.

There she was, the mom I knew most of my life.

She wore a t-shirt with an illustration of the Cheshire Cat on it. “Hi, I’m here. Did you miss me?”

My palm suddenly hurt like it did when I felt truly sad. When I allowed myself to feel truly sad, which was hardly ever. “Wow, Mom, you look great.”

“It’s nothing really,” she said, patting her hair and tilting her head. “Mom, do you know who I am?”

“Of course I do. You’re my daughter who I love as big as the world.” She gave me a hug. She did not smell like pee or badly dried clothes. She smelled like Windsong.

Jen said, “Go get your mom a piece of cake. It’s ice cream with lots of chocolate sprinkles. Your favorite.”

I walked over to the buffet table. I had forgotten what my mom was like before she declined. It was like I was meeting her again after a long journey. The icing on the top of the cake read “Celebrating YOU” except it had been cut already so it said, “Celebrating Y.” I ate the “cel” even though my vision was blurry and I was mostly eating frosting.

Seeing my mom again was too much. I would cry later, when she finally died. My memory of her bad days would vanish, and I would remember her as she used to be. But I didn’t know that then.

Jen brought me back to the spotlight. “Ask her anything you’d like.” The first thing that popped into my head: “Mom, why did you marry such an asshole?”

My mom laughed. “He was all right, wasn’t he?”

“At Christmas time, he only let us open one present every hour. We had to turn the hot water off in the shower when we weren’t directly rinsing. He never called me by my real name. Remember that? How he referred to me as Bertha?”

She said, “Oh, look at those birds!” She pointed to two sparrows fighting over a pretzel twist in the rafters above.

“Mom.”

“He was a good provider. We took some fun trips, and he paid for your braces.”

It occurred to me that none of our memories were accurate. What I remembered about her or these guys was only one version of the truth.

Jen leaned in. “I can confirm that your stepdad was a nightmare. I saw it.” She turned to my mom. “Mrs. Simcoe, do you want a moment at the microphone?”

“Don’t mind if I do.” She went to the center the room. I had forgotten how she walked, head tilted slightly up so she wouldn’t miss anything, using small steps, leading with her head. She hadn’t walked then for two years without assistance. She took the microphone with astounding confidence, as if she were a seasoned stand-up comedian. “Carrie, you are a good daughter, but you’ve had way too many boyfriends. Am I right, guys?” The guys cheered and somebody whistled. Any minute, they might pick her up and carry her around like they had just won a football game. “All you need to know is that I love you and have always loved you. And don’t worry, I’m not going to break into a Whitney Houston song or anything.” The guys roared again. “You don’t have to find anyone, honey.

We all love you just the way you are and if you live as long as I have well, maybe by then, they’ll have cured old age.”

It was my turn at the microphone. “You guys are all great, but I see the pattern now. I do not know if I can change, because it’s interesting to date guys who can’t commit.”

“Preach!” Christopher Chateaux yelled. As usual, he had too much to drink. “And now I will likely die alone with dementia, and no one to take care of me,” I said.

Jen wrestled the microphone from my hands. “You have me,” she said. The clock above the dance floor moved toward midnight. Jen said, “You’ve still got fifteen minutes, and I have one last surprise for you. This was extra, but I paid for it. You’re welcome.”

She opened yet another little side door where I had imagined they stored kegs. Instead, out leapt the ex-boyfriends’ dogs: Jeff Hartley’s three golden retrievers, Christopher Chateaux’s black lab, Chunkster the French bulldog, Bandit the mutt, and Shep the Shepherd. The dogs ran out onto the dance floor, the golden retrievers’ tails waving like wheat stalks. They were all spry and zippy, none of them had eye cataracts or bad joints from old age.

Bandit scissored open his leg and peed on the speaker before I could stop him.

“It’s fine,” Jen said.

“Come here. Come here, cuties.” I patted my knees. All the dogs and a few of the men trotted over to me. “Hey, guys, I missed you.”

Jen spoke into her headset. “Cue the music.” Steve Crossett began to play piano, his notes amplified by a speaker. It was a song I learned to perform on the French horn because Steve liked it so much. I think it was “Dance of the Sugarplum Fairy.”

I realized that I would never see the men again after this night. They would vanish, or be faces in circles on social media, updates that appeared sporadically: a child being born, an anniversary, a sudden death of a family member.

Lachlan Pike appeared at my side. He was the exchange student from the Model UN Club. His blond hair was slicked back like someone from a black and white movie from the fifties, the kind of movie my mother grew up watching and taught me to love. “Let us dance,” he said.

I looked for my mom. She was in the arms of Shawn Riley, my most recent ex-boyfriend with the hoarding and bed space problem. He might have been a bad boyfriend, but he was a fantastic dancer, and he was always nice to my mom. The dogs chased each other around the dance floor, wearing bow ties or bandanas. Millie, Todd Steely’s shih tzu, wore a tiny top hat on her head. She barked at me, her front feet bouncing off the floor like she might fly away.

“I can’t dance in these.” I gestured to my flat Keds.

Todd Steely presented a pair of shoes with a flourish. Not tap shoes but character shoes, sparkly gold with a chunky heel. These were my mom’s shoes from a wedding she attended years ago. Three of the ex-boyfriends swarmed around to help me put on the heels, two holding my arms while the third buckled the straps with expert fingers (Reggie, the chiropractor).

The music changed to “Waltz of the Flowers,” by Tchaikovsky. Steve Crossett was back at the piano. He played it flawlessly.

Lachlan and I were bathed in the white spotlight now. My mother was next to me, telling Shawn a story about the car she just bought.

She was good. She was okay. For that moment, she was there with me. Lachlan whirled me out to the dance floor, one hand on my back, the other holding mine in a loose grip.

With the remaining time we had left together, we danced.

Aimee LaBrie has two award-winning short story collections, Wonderful Girl and Rage & Other Cages. She teaches at Rutgers University.