They Called Me Beautiful

Eleven: Dementia

Maddie’s new job took a lot out of her. The demented old lady was nasty more often than not, calling names and throwing things and trying to drag Maddie out of bed in the middle of the night. Maddie and I couldn’t go on walks anymore because Maddie would sleep away her days in order to prepare for the nights ahead. When I saw her, she looked like a shell, but this time it wasn’t depression that had emptied her.

It was dementia. The one small mercy was that it wasn’t her own.

She’d always hated November, but with her new job, it became a hell to her. She told me how she’d get home from work in the morning and just flop on her bed and cry her eyes out. I told her to quit, but she needed the money.

And she wasn’t a quitter. “I can do this, Kate,” she’d tell me. “I just need to be stronger.”

I was afraid she was killing herself.

One night she took me with her. When she picked me up, her eyes were bloodshot. “My mind is shredding, Kate.”

I didn’t know what to say to that. I hated what the job was doing to her, but I couldn’t convince her to quit.

“Don’t you get dementia now, too,” I told her lamely.

She didn’t even laugh. “I cried all day when I wasn’t sleeping, and I went with my mom to town even though I didn’t need anything. I just needed a distraction.”

“Did it work?”

She shook her head. “Sometimes I can tell when it’s going to be a good night, and this isn’t going to be one of them.”

I believed her. And it was as awful as she’d said it was going to be. The old lady yelled at us, insisted on calling the police, and refused to take her medicine. Maddie tried everything. Reasoning with her, having her call her son so he could try to talk sense into her, yelling at her, even bawling her eyes out when she couldn’t take it anymore.

The old lady was merciless though, and I finally escaped to the living room to hide while she and Maddie battled it out in the kitchen. I knew then that I’d never be as strong as Maddie. She kept going even when the tears stood in her eyes and her heart was pounding so hard it must have hurt.

Eventually she persuaded the old lady to take her pills. We had a peaceful night after that. Maddie washed away all traces of her tears and changed into tight brown pj pants and an even tighter orange shirt. I wore a nightgown; my mom wouldn’t let me wear pants, not even to bed.

And even though I’d just witnessed Maddie go through a very traumatic experience, I envied her again. She looked so wild and worldly standing there in her form-fitting clothes and loose hair.

I thought she was beautiful.

We climbed into bed, and even though the old lady was sleeping peacefully, Maddie was tense beside me. “Sometimes she gets up and down all night,” she told me.

But she didn’t that night. I had Maddie all to myself for a few luxurious hours.

November 15, 2011.

I’ve never slept in a bed with Maddie before. In fact, I’ve never slept in a bed with anyone other than Irene. I try not to think about it so it doesn’t get awkward, but I can’t relax. Maddie’s buried in blankets beside me, and I curl up against the wall, as far from her as possible. Maybe if we start talking, the unease will dissipate.

“Are you afraid of dying, Lane?” It’s a question I’ve been wanting to ask her for a long time, ever since she started hanging out with her other friends. I have to know just how much she’s still like me.

I hear her laugh in the darkness. “Why are you thinking about dying, Kate? We’re not even thirty yet.”

“It doesn’t matter how old you are,” I remind her. “It doesn’t scare you?”

A rustle of movement signals her shrugging against the mattress. “Not really. I haven’t thought about it for a long time. Not since I wanted to commit suicide.”

I’ve heard it all before. I went through the self-hatred stage with her. I guess I just never got around to leaving it with her. But still, her statement makes me cringe. Madeleine Proctor committing suicide. The two don’t mix.

“You don’t still want to kill yourself, do you?” she asks when I don’t say anything.

“No.” A pause. “I’m more scared of dying now than I ever was before.”

“What, you think you’re not a Christian or something?” She’s so subtly mocking that I hardly catch it.

I don’t want to talk about it anymore. It’s beginning to feel like talking to Damian.

“You’re not going to do anything stupid, are you, Kate?”

I shake my head, knowing she’ll feel it through the pillows. “I just wonder sometimes what it’d be like to die.”

“Well, hopefully we’ll both have to keep wondering for a few more years yet.” Then she laughs. She does things like this so easily all the time, diffuses awkward situations with just her words.

I wish I knew how to do that.

We talked about boys, but she was friends with all of them, and I wasn’t. I told her Justin intimidated me, and she admitted that he intimidated her, too, but that he was one of her best guy friends, second after Damian.

She asked me if I was still on pills for depression, and when I said I was, she said she was so glad those days were over for her. I asked her what made the difference, but her pat answer of “God” seemed so contrived that I hardly believed her. After all, I believed in God, too. I loved Him just as much as she did, maybe even more. And I was the one who was still depressed.

But I didn’t push it.

Every topic we touched on just drove the knife point of envy further into my heart. She was better than me in so many areas. Maybe we were once at the same place, but she’d left that place long ago, even if only in her own mind.

Because I didn’t believe she’d left the depression behind. I saw it sometimes, when she’d be laughing with Damian or talking to Annalena on the phone. But for the most part, she hid it well.

Soon after that, she quit the overnights and started just going in the evenings and early mornings. She was happier with that arrangement, though her pay was cut nearly in half.

“Now I can write more,” she said to me. I was still her only friend that knew she’d written a book, besides her family. I still had that above the rest of them.

We were closer after that, for at least the rest of the month. I kept close tabs on her, making sure her job was going okay, and she seemed to appreciate that. Since I was the only one who’d actually gone to work with her, I was the only one who knew how truly awful it could be. She recognized that.

But with the overnights gone, she brightened considerably. I knew before long she’d go back to her other friends, to her life of parties and fun, where the darkness of her job didn’t matter so much. And in leaving the darkness, she’d leave me as well.

I held my breath waiting for it, and it came like clockwork.