The Appointment

The dark bags under Ben’s eyes droop like day-old tea bags. He’s washing the breakfast dishes, a tattered tea towel flung over his shoulder. 

“Have you been sleeping, love?” Ruth asks, troubled eyes tracking him from the table.

“Not really, Ru. You’ve been sleepwalking again.”

“So? Let me sleepwalk.” 

“It’s dangerous.”

Souvenirs from her witching hour sojourns bloom on her shins under the creeping vines of varicose veins. He noticed them this morning while he helped her with her socks. 

“Lock the doors if you’re so worried I’ll escape.” Ruth says this teasingly, but Ben just turns back to the sink. 

He has been locking the doors–and setting the new alarm. Polite police officers have delivered Ruth home twice now, barefoot and whimpering in the dark of almost-dawn. 

She tries again. “Well, go catch a nap now, while I’m wake-walking.”

“We have that appointment today,” he says, scraping at the stubborn egg crust in the pan. 

Ruth picks at a wayward thread poking its red arm out from the seam of a poinsettia-splashed placemat. “Ah…the appointment.” Her brow furrows. “Who makes appointments on Christmas?”

“Doctors, I guess.”

“But aren’t the kids coming today?”

“No.”

“Are you sure? Nat told me they’re coming today.”

“The kids aren’t coming today, Ru.”

“Well, we should cancel.”

“The appointment? We’re not cancelling.”

“I really think it’s unnecessary, love.” She pretends that she knows what the appointment is for, as if the knowledge hasn’t lost its way in the mutating labyrinth of her mind.

“It’s too late to cancel. We’re going.” He pretends they’re going out of pure politeness, as if they might have cancelled with more notice. 

“Will you grab me the scissors?” Ruth asks, picking again at the offending thread.

He’s elbow deep in suds. “You’re closer.”

“Must I do EVERYTHING?” Her voice escalates, childlike in its demand. Reason is unable to wrestle control from frustration. Her gaze shies away from the garland-garbed cabinets that she’s navigated for thirty years. She stares down at the garish placemat. 

He dries his hands, crosses the kitchen, and opens the drawer immediately behind her chair.

She sniffs and waves him off, but he hovers anyway. She takes the scissors by the blades and flips them over…and over…and over. Her fingers are clumsy and uncertain. He’s about to offer to do it for her when the task that she’d meant to turn them to slips away with a cloud of passing fog. 

She sets them down on the table and announces: “We should get going on the turkey.”

“Not today, honey.”

“What do you mean, not today? The kids are coming. It’s Christmas!”

“It’s June.” 

Sometimes, he just can’t help himself.

“Ha!” 

He pulls up the blinds. Golden sunlight splashes across the table. Pink peonies peek curiously at the snow globes on the windowsill. 

Ruth cries out and shrinks away from the light, then lurches over to the calendar on the fridge where December is buried and June 23 is marked with Dr. Banks - 11 a.m.

“Oh…oh dear…” Her head swivels wildly, taking in the festively dressed kitchen and the yard beyond in full bloom. “I’m a bit mixed up…” 

He’s tried to punch some reality into their day but regret slaps him across the face instead. Last time she’d been confronted with confusion she’d smashed her mother’s gold-rimmed tea cups. He frantically drops the blinds back down.

“It’s all right, Ru.”

“No!” She grows shrill. “No it’s not!” 

He grasps her trembling hands in his, inexcusably startled by the fragility of her paper-thin skin and the stiff knots of her knuckles.

“I’m sorry,” he holds tighter, unsure what else to do. 

A few long moments pass before the shaking subsides and she regains her composure. She reaches up, and with her fingertips she discovers the trenches gouged between his eyes and the gullies carved across his face. 

“It’s getting worse, isn’t it?”

This time he tries to tease the truth away. “Yes, I’m afraid I get uglier every day.”

“We don’t need a doctor to tell us.” 

He dips his forehead to hers. “I know.”

They’ve known for a long time now. 

The first hint had waltzed out over a year ago on a Sunday morning at church, where they volunteered as ushers.

“Jim, Marie, good morning, so good to see you. Cory, welcome. Laura, hello–yes Pastor Greg will be giving today’s sermon–best settle in, we may be here well past lunch! Fawcetts - good morning to you all!” 

Ben was in his element, but Ruth had been unusually flustered at the other side of the door. He’d kept a worried eye on her as she balked at familiar faces and grasped for names that seemed to flutter out of reach like feathers tumbling on a breeze.

“Are you alright?” Ben asked as the first hymn began and they pulled the doors closed. “You seem a bit off today.” 

She’d brushed it off as a sign that she needed another cup of coffee. They’d gone on to sit through the dreary sermon, stifling giggles and poking at each other to stay awake.

They’d thought it insignificant; in hindsight it was monumental.

Everything was fine until it wasn’t. 

They knew each other until they didn’t.

A few months ago, Ruth screamed at Ben with a ferocity that stunned them both. “WHY didn’t you TELL ME that you ALREADY went to the store?!”

“But I didn’t go to the store, Ru!” He’d thrown his hands up in surprised surrender. 

“Well how do you EXPLAIN THIS?!” The grocery bags she’d brought in were scattered around their feet, innards duplicates of the already full fridge and pantry. 

“I don’t know!”

“Don’t LIE TO ME!”

“Ru! Come on. Is there any chance that you -”

“NO!”

It came out petulant. Out of control. Afraid.

Ruth had fled. Ben had unpacked the bags in silence.

They’ve kept up a good charade, as if avoidance could bar diagnosis from existence. But there’s no stretch left in the truth. They’ve waited too long; they’re both lost, unraveling at the seams.  

“She’s mom, but she’s not mom,” Nat said to Ben a couple weeks ago, swiping angrily at a few fat tears after a short visit. Ruth had mistaken her daughter for the housekeeper that they hadn’t employed in years. “And you’ve got to take care of yourself too, Dad. We can all see that you’re not. It took us ages to get that appointment. Please, just go and see what they say. We’ll go from there. Do you want me to come? I should come.”

“We’ll go,” he’d promised. “I’ll call and tell you everything after.”

Now the appointment is an hour away, and he wishes Nat was coming.

Would the doctor immediately ask him to concede care to the professionals? Would they return home only to pack her bags and haul her away? That doesn't seem right. That's not what he wants.

But what if he's sent back to flounder his way through this twinkle-lit groundhog day with nothing more than a sorry and a pamphlet?

They lean into each other, swaying gently in the middle of the kitchen. He brings the back of her hand to his lips. She wraps the other around his neck. For a moment, it’s almost like it used to be. 

“We need help,” he says. “I need help.”

“I don’t want to be sent away.”

“Oh, honey. Never.”

Guilt nibbles at his heart. He’s in no place to promise Never. 

“Let’s cancel,” she pleads.  

His resolve nearly crumbles.

The clock in the next room chimes ten to the tune of Oh Christmas Tree. She smiles; he squeezes his eyes closed. 

“Did you remember to pick up breadcrumbs for the stuffing?” she asks.

“No, honey. We’ll pick some up on our way.”

He fetches her purse and ushers her out into the midsummer sun.