The day was cold and we were walking at a fast clip. "I need to talk to you."
Jesse exhaled a frosty breath as he glanced at my somber expression. "What about?"
"Mom..."
Our stride slowed. He raised a wary eyebrow. "What about her?"
I had coerced my stepfather outside on the pretense of wanting company for a walk around the block. I was home for a visit and the apartment where my parents lived was small, just right for two but very crowded for three. Mom's close proximity in the kitchen, humming contentedly over her cooking chores, made it impossible to discuss with Jesse what I perceived as one more indication of a problem I had suspicioned for months.
"Haven't you noticed some of the things she's been doing?" I said it with a solemn frown, expecting instant accord. All I saw in Jesse's reaction was feigned ignorance.
"Like what? What're you talking about?"
"I'm talking about yesterday, the pecan pie."
"So what."
Jesse's bland expression continued to fend off my challenging gaze.
"What do you mean 'so what'--?" I waited for his response, jaws clinched. Jesse picked up the pace, as if trying to outrun the question. I could see he was struggling with a secret sadness, but in an instant he had covered it with a dismissing shrug. "Forget it. Just forget it."
Jesse's eyes stared straight ahead. His seeming indifference annoyed me. I locked step with him, respecting his silence for longer than I wanted to.
"Come on, Jesse, don't you think it was a little weird?"
"Let it go..."
His protective reflexes were armed and ready, but I was determined.
"Mom's never done anything like that."
Jesse didn't want to agree with me, even though deep down in the honest part of himself I think he knew that sooner or later he would have to. His gaze shifted, measuring his own footsteps.
"You don't know her, you don't live with her."
That interior flash of sadness I had seen Jesse so quickly camouflage was beginning to leak through the barrier. This was no longer a discussion, it was two men struggling to come to terms with an undeniable truth about someone they both loved. I pressed the point harder.
"Something's wrong. I can see changes, can't you?"
"She forgets, that's all. Who doesn't?"
"Jesse, she made the pie and put it in the oven but she didn't turn on the gas..." My voice had taken on an edge of disbelief. "...it just sat there in the oven without baking."
"Don't worry about it. She's done stuff like that before."
"I know. That's what I'm talking about."
I retreated into my own incredulous silence. Surely there's been a mistake, it couldn't be my mother. She was infallible, she was perfect, especially in the kitchen. I wanted Jesse to give me a plausible reason why she had failed, but his mechanism for handling this particular truth continued to resist assault. He knew I wasn't buying into his evasions and he tried to divert me with an elbow nudge.
"It's not worth arguing about."
"I'm not arguing."
"Okay, so forget it."
Jesse was still into denial. Not me, I wanted confirmation. I wanted him to say it out loud, what we had both observed happening to Mom in a hundred subtle ways. We were walking side by side, but there was a vast emotional chasm now separating us. Again I tried to pry open this uncomfortable topic, softening my voice into a more negotiable tone.
"Jesse, it's not just being forgetful."
"Okay, okay..."
"Did you know I had to completely re-do the checkbook?"
"I'm watching the money."
Mom had always been the dependable family exchequer for the two of them and here I was, faithless son, challenging her time-proven skills.
"It's as if she doesn't know what to do sometimes."
"We manage. Quit worrying about it."
We had barely reached the end of the block before we spun around and headed back, too caught up in our disagreement to even notice we had aborted our walk. I kept picking away at Jesse's defenses.
"I think we should take her to the doctor."
"What for?"
"He could make some tests, whatever he does."
I saw the stab of pain behind Jesse's gaze when I said "doctor"--but he still refused to give me the confirmation I wanted. Bluster was the only defense left.
"To hell with doctors. All they do is take the money and they don't do a damn thing."
We were rapidly closing on the apartment where Mom would be waiting to serve us supper, her daily labor of love for her family. I reached out to snare Jesse's arm.
"Jesse, you know about Alzheimer's, don't you?"
"She had a stroke in her sleep, that's all."
"Yes, I know about the stroke, but I'm talking about something else."
Jesse jerked his arm free, as if severing himself from such a preposterous concept.
"You're not a doctor. There's nothing wrong."
We walked on, both of us buried in a silent gloom. Jesse and Mom were about to celebrate their fiftieth wedding anniversary in several months and I could see he was fiercely determined to protect their mutual investment in each other. I also knew his knowledge of the disease was only a superficial awareness, as mine had once been. But the fear of it, the probability of it, had clearly imprinted itself in his denial.
The strained silence between us was obvious evidence of a failed negotiation. I hung my question on the end of a disgruntled sigh.
"We just going to leave it like this?"
We were now only yards away from the front door. Jesse gave me a sharp wave-off to squelch any further talk about this fearful subject matter.
"She'll have dinner ready. She's probably waiting."
Neither of us wanted to walk into the apartment with the grim expressions we were wearing. Mom would know something was wrong and she'd ask questions. Even though Jesse and I were both acutely aware that nothing had been resolved, I made a last-ditch attempt to salvage the mood.
"Maybe I'm making too much out of nothing..."
"I don't want to talk about it anymore."
"Okay, okay ... forget it."
Jesse took another step, then suddenly stopped and spun around to face me. I was at least six inches taller, but amazingly, in that instant, it seemed as if we were standing there eye to eye. His voice was subdued, but his gaze was hard and uncompromising.
"She doesn't have Old Timers!"
I blinked at the pronunciation. Old Timers? Was he serious? Yes, a second look at that gritted, desperate expression told me my stepfather was dead serious. Jesse had tricked his mind into attaching this folksy, homespun name to the disease so it wouldn't sound quite so sinister.
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