Alzheimers, part two

“I’ve got CNN on, muted, waiting for them to show Trump surrendering.“

Moby Dick is, at its core, a monologue by a man who’s avoiding talking about a traumatic event. I imagine Ismael as a guy I happened to sit next to at a bar. He’s had a couple and he starts telling me this story about a shipwreck, but keeps going off into tangents, spouting dubious knowledge about whales and whatnot.

I need to talk about what’s going on with Mom, but I’d rather talk about whales. I’ve got CNN on, muted, waiting for them to show Trump surrendering. Trump, the rich kid who’s never faced a consequence in his life, who kept failing upward. The guy who never pays his bills but always finds someone to give him more money.

My mom is being evicted. It’s sort of my fault and it’s sort of not.

Trump owns a big stupid plane and a tacky resort in Florida and a ugly building that hovers over Tiffany’s where I used to get my eyebrows waxed. He got to live in the White House for four years and complained about it, said it was shabby.

When my Mom sold her condo a few years ago, her plan was to give my brother big chunks of the money. Our country is set up so almost no one can afford senior housing and care, but monetary assistance only goes to those who can say they have nothing. So, it is extremely common for older people to give all their money to their children in order to qualify for housing insurance.

It was during the sale of her condo that it became really clear that she was unable to handle things anymore. She became obsessed with who was going to get her books, to the exclusion of all her other possessions which remained unpacked and unaddressed.

My sort of step-sister, Michaela, was handling the sale, and I got a panicked call from her on the day of the closing. It was 45 minutes past the start time and Mom hadn’t shown up yet. She wasn’t at home, either, and her cell phone was turned off, as it always was. She thought it was ridiculous to leave her cell phone on when she just needed it for an emergency. And yet here we were in an emergency.

She finally showed up, thinking she was on time, confused about why everyone was so anxious. Papers got signed, the condo was sold.

Though it was only a year or so after I had moved out of her place, and I had told her over and over again how hard it was to find an apartment, she was still shocked and overwhelmed by trying to find an apartment. Something she hadn’t started to do before selling. I found her an apartment in Arlington.

Michaela found her amazing movers — Rare Moving and Storage, the best — and they packed everything. For weeks, my mother had been coming downstairs and knocking on my door to give me small boxes of random things she wanted to get rid of before the move. It would be, like, a mug or a bunch of toiletries or something like that. She’d hand the stuff to me in plastic shopping bags. If I said I didn’t want it, she’d throw a fit, start raising her voice, shove it into my hands. When I tried to go through her stuff with her to pick out things to go to Goodwill, more fits, lots of yelling. She would do this herself, she said. She stopped letting me into her condo.

So the movers packed everything, like I said. Except not really everything. On the day the new people were moving in, another panicked call from Michaela. Mom hadn’t gotten the stuff out of her basement space, and she’d left things all over the apartment.

I moved mom’s stuff into my basement area, and got everything out of the condo that I could find. In the twenty minutes I had before Michaela had to turn over the keys. When the new people moved in, they found a sketch Michaela’s dad had made of Mom back when they were lovers. It was tucked behind a door.

We got Mom settled into her new place. She kept talking about the big checks she was going to give us. Wanted to wait until Christmas Eve, so it would be special. That was a few weeks away. Over egg nog, eventually, she hands us envelopes. She’s giddy and excited. I open mine to find a check for a thousand dollars. My brother got the same. The wheels were coming off the wagon. If there even was a wagon anymore.

Trump paid Stormy Daniels $130K to not talk about what a pathetic person he is. Chump change to him. Worth it to get Hail to the Chief played whenever he walked into the room.

They’re looking breathless on CNN. Giddy. What fun this is for them. For all of us.