Allie Donohue
Fiction
The Memory Carrier
I switched off the alarm. Grabbing my running shoes, I tiptoed downstairs, hoping the
dogs wouldn’t hear me and start to bark as I passed my Mother’s room. Once outside I took a
deep breath and smiled at the rays of light peaking over the houses, golden beams of amber
reflecting off the silent glass windows in the peaceful morning. Picking up my pace, I ran
through the streets. I ran with only my thoughts, no music. And as my feet hit the wet pavement,
the scene flashed before my eyes, the scene I could never forget: It had been pouring that day,
pouring––everything pouring down.
*
*
*
I finished my run, took off my sweaty t-shirt, and entered the house. Walking back to the
kitchen, I was struck by the image of my mother. There she sat, legs crossed at the kitchen table
busy with the morning word scramble, tea at hand. I remember when I was a little girl how I’d
sat next to her, legs crossed, pencil poised as I tried to beat her to the solution, never once
winning. If there’s something my mother did know it was how to figure out the perfect word that
would somehow make the puzzle complete. This morning was no different than every other
morning. But as I watched, I noticed her forehead crinkled more than usual, her pencil shook in
her hand and I heard a quiet exhale of frustration, something I’d never heard from her before.
Glancing up, she recovered, gave me a smile and said, “Good run, honey?”
I bee-lined it to the tap with a glass in hand, shrugging my shoulders and replied, “It was
okay, not one of my best.” As I stood, drinking down the cool water, I watched her wrinkle her
nose, shake her head and erase the letters she put in the blank.
Then suddenly she looked up, and said, “Darling, hand me my glasses, they’re right there
on the counter.”
“Where?”
“Right there,” she said patiently, pointing to the counter where at least three pairs of
glasses of all different shapes and sizes laid.
I grabbed the pair with the least amount of rhinestones on them and with a quick hand
motion shoved them under her nose. She started back, took the glasses from my hand and
watched as I walked away.
“Honey, what’s wrong? You’ve been in a mood ever since you came home,” her voice
was strained.
On guard, I fired back, “Nothing’s wrong. I’m fine.”
“Something’s wrong. You’re being short with me, you know you can talk to me?”
“No, I can’t.”
“Why?”
“Cause you’re not here…I mean I just can’t talk to you about – I know you didn’t ask for
this or want this to happen, but you can’t just lay this, this burden on me! I’m nineteen, do you
know what that means? I’m supposed to be going out, meeting people but ever since that raining
day, I can’t. All I can think about is what I’m going to do, how the future’s going to be, whether
or not I’m going to be all alone. I don’t know…”
“Hey baby,” she reaches for her, “Norah, I’m right here.”
I pulled away, grabbing my water glass instead of her hand, “But you’re not always going
to be.”
“Honey, but that’s true of everyone, It was never going to be forever.”
Feeling the back of my neck get hot, I stole a glance at my defeated mother, and suddenly
needing air, stalked out to the back deck. I perched on the step, breathing.
I sat, watching the grass sway in the slight morning breeze and thought back over the
signs, the many signs I’d seen and ignored over all these years. I remembered was when I was
thirteen. I came home from school after my first day in seventh grade. “Mom, mom!” I screamed
the moment I flew in the door, racing down the hall to the kitchen where my mother stood sifting
flour into a bowl. “What darling?” She smiled as she bent her head over the cookie recipe. “I got
a locker and it’s blue! And in my first period class I met this girl named Jodi and she was in three
of my other classes too––English, Math and P.E.” As I rambled I remember watching my mother
get the butter from the fridge, unwrap it and place it in a bowl. As I finished the tirade of my day,
she walked the butter over to the microwave popped it in and suddenly paused. “Mom?” I said
as I watched her puzzle for a moment over the microwave buttons––buttons she’d used since
before I was born. “That sounds great, honey!” She replied as she walked away, checking the
recipe once more––or feigning to check it as I caught the worried look spread over her face.
Recovering herself, her heels clicked on the hard wood, making their way back to the
microwave. Determined, she bent down clicked “Start Time” entered fifteen seconds and pressed
“Start.” Turning my back, I bit my nails..
*
*
*
The kitchen was empty when I went back inside. I took a shower, got into sweats, went
downstairs and put water on for tea. Five hours loomed large ahead of me until she would return
home from work. My thoughts raced on how to bring it up, how to talk to her about what was
happening, about how we were going to handle this. I sat at the kitchen table where the
uncompleted word scramble stared back at me. It was the first time I’d ever seen her leave for
work without finishing it. I picked it up and looked at the one blank she couldn’t figure out. It
was a four-letter word, and the clue was slave away. Reaching for the pencil, I wrote in toil. Toil.
Something she’d done her entire life, so that I could have a new first day of school outfit, so that
I could go to college.
I laid the pencil down, it had been going on for years. I just don’t know how to be okay
with it, to be okay with knowing that one day she’s not going to be here. I don’t mean here as in
alive because I know that she’s still young, but I mean here as in her. What if I come home one
day, and suddenly she doesn’t know where I’ve been––where I go to college? What if I meet
someone and introduce him to her? Will she remember his name? Or even him the next time I
bring him home? I’m afraid of having to remind her of everything, I’m afraid…
*
*
*
Hearing my mom come in the back door from work, I clamored down the stairs. “Is that
you, Nor?” My mother called from the kitchen, “Yup,” I answered as I jogged into the kitchen
wearing my running shoes and pulling my gloves on.
“It really hasn’t let up yet has it?” I ask as I pull my hood out from under my jacket and
tie it at the throat so it stays up while I run.
My mother sat. “Norah, we need to talk. I have something important to tell you,
something that you need to know.”
Watching my mother cradle her hands in her lap, I slowly sat down, knowing, fearing
what was about to come, “Okay…”
“I thought you were too young before––before when I first started to notice it, but now
you’re nineteen. You’re nineteen and I should have told you years ago, but, but you’re still my
little girl and I didn’t want to…you’re still so young, I didn’t want you to have to deal with this,
yet.”
“Mom…”
“No, you have to know. It’s been going on for years. I didn’t believe it for a long time, I
ignored the missteps and the forgetfulness, I didn’t think anything of it when I couldn’t come up
with the right word at work or when I simply couldn’t remember a doctor’s appointment I’d
made the week before.”
I watched her sit there, telling me about the signs, signs I’d seen before she had. She
broke the news––the news that had been building since I was thirteen, the news I’d known all
along. “Alzheimer’s,” she whispered under her breath, almost like a curse.
“No,” I said covering my ears when I heard it, “no.” I grabbed my head band and ran out
the back door, hearing her crying voice behind me beg, “Norah, please, honey, we can get
through this. They treat this disease everyday, it’s going to be––” slamming the door, I cut her
off and I ran.
Four miles later and drenched to the bone, I quietly opened the screen door and entered
the house. Stepping into the laundry room, I sloshed into the kitchen leaving small pools of water
in my wake. There she sat. At the table holding her mug of tea, red puffed cheeks. She looked
smaller than I’d ever seen her before, as though for once she wasn’t my mother, but merely a
5’4” sixty-five year old woman. I stood, drenched from head to toe in front of her. She stood,
wrapped her arms around me––a blanket in themselves––and whispered, “You can never make
the sun stand still.”
“But, what about everything, what about me? What am I going to do?”
Smiling sadly, she slowly lowered her eyelids and whispered, “You? You’re going to
live, my darling.”
We stood like that, with her arms encompassing my heaving soaked body, listening as the
rain tumbled down, echoing it’s condolences. Hearing the drumbeat above my head, I thought of
the years to come, of the constant reminders I’d have to give, of the continual prodding at her to
remember the time we did this or that. I would have to remember everything for the both of us. I
would have to carry our past years upon my back, alone.