Habit (24 page)

—Susan Susan Susan. I want you to get your son to drive you to Abington's Emergency Room because women your age have heart attacks.

—But that's such a hassle, it'll take hours and I'm finally lying down now and eating and I feel so much better.

—Listen to me, Susan. You know that if I told you to drive one of your children or David or his mother or yours to the ER you would not pause.

—Yeah . . .

—Get your son and have him take you to the emergency room right away.

David's mother lives nearby. She'll come over to get dinner for Sam and stay in case I'm gone all night. Now Ben gets to have another relaxing driving lesson. Walking out to the car, I find I have to lean on him, so it's probably just as well we're going.

Ben's driving is heroic if understandably white-knuckled. He needs some practice parking—we take up several spaces and toss the keys to the valet (ER valets are a welcome perk of suburb living). They put me in a cubicle hooked up to a bunch of things. As Ben sits beside me and the beeping monitor, I realize I'm right back where everything started about a year ago. The casting has been subtly adjusted: Now I'm the incapacitated mother in the bed who may be facing a major health crisis, and Ben is the dutiful offspring wondering what the heck he's in for.

They ask Ben if I've seemed okay lately. This interests me.
Have
I seemed okay lately?

(
Are they going to send social services to protect my kids from me, what if I'm cracking up and Ben has to become the caretaker like I did, what's going to happen about the play. Oh God.
)

Yes, apparently I have seemed okay although pretty stressed. I have an x-ray and an EKG and some more sympathy. We go home with a prescription for something and strict instructions to breathe deeply and eat more.

It was an anxiety attack. My heart is okay. The show will go on.

How embarrassing. Do I have to tell Felix?

Apparently anxiety due to an “extreme but temporary period of stress” means you are not supposed to have to worry about becoming dependent on the highly addictive substance they give me. Famous last words, I think, and lock it up, to be used only if the symptoms come back (they haven't).

Amazing what happened to Ben's driving log today. It's this cool “unusually challenging conditions” loophole we spotted. When you have to drive your crazed hyperventilating and possibly dying mother around, you get to double your time.

Q
UICK, EVERYONE:
Act like you know what you're doing. Colette's coming!!!

There's an old military saying (British in origin, or so she tells me):

PPPPPPP!

or:

Prior Planning and Preparation Prevents Piss-Poor Performance!

This was Colette's motto as head of marketing for a world-famous garden plant nursery in East Anglia. International clients, high stress. It means get all your ducks lined up or you'll be spinning your wheels, everything will go to hell in a handbasket, the sh— will hit the fan, and you will be your own worst enemy.

I think I am about to be whipped into shape. Actually, I can't wait. I've been bustling around putting papers into orderly piles and repotting my African violets (they seem to have thrived on my recent neglect and are conveniently bursting with blossoms). This will make me look really competent; I just know it.

Ma has announced that she's definitely decided to give up her apartment, so Colette has emailed me a strict agenda for Operation Ma over the next twelve days:

• Tour retirement places, both in the Philadelphia area and Carlisle.
  
• Interview moving and storage companies.
  
• Figure out what Ma can sell—bring in appraisers and auctioneers.
  
• Meet with the geriatric psychologist about all ramifications.
  
• Visit Ma to discuss.
  

So the calls have been made and we have appointments up the wazoo. I also know Colette's secret agenda (I'm no dummy):

• Figure out if Susie's about to totally crack up.
  
• If she is, come up with a way to handle it. Options:
  
  1. Stay indefinitely. (
     I wish. Not going to happen
     .)
     
  2. Try to make Susie laugh a lot.
     
  3. If that doesn't work, at least get Susie to take that medication they gave her. (
     She wishes. Not going to happen.
     )
     

One-legged Hopper delivers Colette from the airport. Squeals and hugs, with Ben and Sam trying to decide whether to hang around or dive for cover. Colette looks great as always, but different somehow. We are the only two blondes in our generation. She's five years older than I, but in my late teens I grew taller. For years, people used to assume Colette was my little sister. She says I'm prettier, which is flattering, and that I dress more stylishly because she's really a country girl and I've had the L.A./New York exposure. But at the moment, I'm not so sure. I'm pretty slovenly these days, and Colette's got this groovy understated-rock-star look going. It's subtle, but there's something about the skinny black jeans, the flat brown jodhpur-type half boots and the way her loose black cashmere sweater drapes sort of effortlessly that inspires admiration, and, I must admit, a twinge of sister envy. This dissipates when she makes just the right amount of fuss over the African violets and oohs gratifyingly at all my piles of papers.

Colette recovers from jet lag. Susan, Ben and Sam leave for New York. (Oops—months ago, when life was simpler, I bought theatre tickets for
Macbeth
. The boys are studying this play and a mother/sons field trip seemed like a good idea at the time. So Saturday is a bit of a wash.)

We spend the day at Ma's apartment to get the lay of the land. An antiques dealer comes to make an offer on some furniture. Opening drawers and cupboards, we become increasingly dismayed by the layers of stuff everywhere—some useless, some possibly vital and precious. The walk-in hall closet is particularly disturbing, so we make an executive decision to keep that door shut. What will Ma want me to do with all the art supplies?

Eliza is home from college on break, working on her first résumé. She's got a chance for a great summer internship. I have no clue how to make a résumé, never had to do one other than for acting, so it's a challenge but we find a sample online and try to figure out a way to make a freshman who comes to work, cost-free for the summer, look like a catch.

Colette calls Ma, who is feeling neglected. It's been hard to describe what's going on around here, why Colette can't make the long drive up to see her until Wednesday and why I haven't been there for a couple of weeks. Even though there's nothing we can do about it, it's hard to revel in this rare gift of one-on-one sister time, knowing Ma is waiting.

Over breakfast, I whip out my collection of brochures for retirement places. During the last few weeks, Ma and I have narrowed it down to four in Philadelphia and two in Carlisle, with varying degrees of affordability. Ma's been torn about which area to settle in—lately, it's been Carlisle because of the spiritual nourishment. Her geriatric shrink says the rule of thumb is
keep the older parent near the family
, but in this case we have extenuating nun-circumstances. The place she's staying at now in Carlisle is working financially for the moment, but living with a roommate wears on her. Plus if she stays, there'd be less contact with me because of the two-hour commute. We're going to have to keep our options open.

It's like a college search—you look at what you've got and figure out your Likelies, your Targets, and your Reaches. Likelies are state schools or community colleges: definite fallbacks barring a fluky disaster. Targets are within range but require a little more effort and fingers crossed. Reaches are Oxford or Harvard or MIT—dream institutions that you try for fun if you have the nerve. It helps if you look at it like a game: Keep your cards close to your chest and see what kind of deal comes your way.

We're covering the Philadelphia places first, and this morning is Barnard, a Likely. It's a standard pay-by-the-week place with an assisted-living section and a nursing wing—you can move back and forth between the two, depending on your needs. Ma's not interested because she doesn't have any friends there, but it's the one we have the best shot at paying for, so we've got to consider it.

Barnard was founded by Lutherans. This is part of our criteria: I've figured out that nonprofit religious-based places may be willing to take more of a gamble financially. Most important, you can trust their hearts are in the right place; they generally care. Also, they often have an endowment of some kind, which means they won't kick you out if you beat the odds and outlive your savings account. (Ma doesn't have a savings account, but she has her children. This makes the process even more stressful because if we let her go through our money as well as her own, we won't have Barnard to watch our backs and our own retirement pots will be empty. It's something to consider.) Ma's Long-Term Care policy will count as an asset, but aside from her meager income, that's it. So we're hoping we can manage whatever else Barnard might want to count on for payment in the long run.

Knowing this need would come eventually, Colette and I tried to scout a few places when she came over last year. We do want to know more about Barnard, but there's one we won't bother to see again this time around: the Retreat, a sort of pasture for elderly Roman Catholic nuns. It's spoken of with reverence around here. We'd heard they sometimes take needy but connected lay people, which Ma was at the time. (This was in the pre-Mother Brigid period. Ma still has lots of friends from her Catholic phase.) The Retreat gave us the heebie-jeebies when we stopped there last year: a sterile high-rise building, very
1984,
plopped in the middle of a flat, barren field. You needed advance permission just to get past the front desk, we were told by the stern, bureaucratic woman who guarded it that day.

There are red flags you should watch for when you're checking out nursery schools for your kids, and the same rules apply for retirement places. If you can't drop in unexpectedly, who knows what might be going on in the cloistered back rooms of the Retreat? Mean nuns with giant rulers rapping helpless old ladies across the knuckles and making them write
Jesus only loves me when I don't wet the bed
a hundred times on a blackboard?

So the Retreat is out, but we did like Barnard when we slipped in last spring. The residents all live along a series of new-looking hallways that branch out from the original building, an old Victorian mansion now housing offices. We refer to Barnard as the
show-offs
place because when we first buzzed through, rounding a corner at a good clip, a voice hollered:

—
Show-offs!

We stopped and turned. There was a feisty little dame with a gleam in her eye, all in purple, perched in a wheelchair in the hallway.

—
Excuse me?
I said.

—
Show-offs, that's what you are. Look at you, all young and walking and everything
.

On our return visit to Barnard today, Rose, their friendly head of admissions, settles us in her office for a chat, and we tell her the story.

—That's Gladys. She's the best. Ninety-seven now and still scrappy.

Barnard seems cheerful and welcoming, and Rose clearly cares about the residents. Colette sits back to let me tell our story. Then Rose looks over Ma's financial details and says she thinks there's a good chance they can figure something out. She takes us to see the dining room (very nice) and a room that might suit Ma.

It has a shared bathroom and one small window facing directly out on a brick wall that's close enough to touch. The wall is all you see.

I look at Colette. She has her poker face on. Years ago, determinedly proud of her independence after a divorce, Colette had to live in the only place she could afford: a miniscule mobile home across from the nursery where she worked. She now lives in the country with her husband, Badger, in a lovely old eighteenth-century barn they scrimped, saved, and sweated blood to convert from a wreck.

—Jolly good. Excellent closet space, Colette says.

We have agreed all along that we're going to have to face facts here, but I am speechless.
This
is what Ma can afford? Even here, most likely she will still need help from us financially as well as Medicaid, big-time, after the insurance runs out the third year. She would be
lucky
to be here in this sad little room? I can barely conceive of it. All I can think is
thank God Colette is here to give me courage
.

So
this
is what a Likely is like?

Today's another full Philadelphia day. There's a Reach in the morning: a place started by Episcopalians many generations ago, called the Abbey. This is one of those Continuing Care Retirement Communities, which means it has all different levels of care from regular, independent homes through to full-time skilled nursing. Once you're in, you're guaranteed access to whatever help you need as you age, without having to pay extra fees or stress out too much.

The Abbey is not the most expensive of its kind, but it's no bargain, either. You put down a hefty entrance deposit and pay by the month. Ma can't afford it, but we can't assume they won't be willing to work with whatever we're able to scrape together. Ma and I talked about the Abbey years ago, after she sold the Florida house, but we never even got to the financial discussion because Ma was still active and painting, and she wanted the Mills House apartment. Now two good friends are here, Babbie and Olivia (they brought the bagels to the tonsure), as well as lots of people Ma knows. She has asked us to definitely consider it.

The thing we've figured out is that it's a terrible idea for a child to sign a contract for her parents at a CCRC, unless the child is incredibly wealthy and truly madly deeply generous. These places are set up so the entrance deposit is there to help with monthly expenses if the residents live long enough to go through all their savings. If a resident's
child's
name is on the contract, then as long as the child has any money, the deposit will never be touched. The CCRC bears very little risk this way, and the child could end up bankrupt if the parent lives a really long time. So this deal has got to be made with Ma's meager assets, or not at all. I don't believe a deal for Ma is possible at the Abbey if she is truly unsupported, but we're going to go through the motions anyway.