“Business was slow,” is all I tell her.
“Well, anyways,” she says, and I realize she’s calling because she wants something. I steel myself for an absurd request—money, concert tickets, maybe the new four-inch heels I saw her gazing at in my copy of InStyle last night—but instead, she sounds almost shy as she asks, “Can you, like, come over to Mamie’s?”
“Is everything okay?” I ask instantly.
“Yeah,” she says. She lowers her voice. “Actually, it’s really weird, but Mamie is acting normal today.”
“Normal?”
“Yeah,” she whispers. “Like she did before Grandma died. She’s acting like she didn’t lose her memory.”
My heart lurches a little, as I remember what the nurse told me when I was last there, on my way out. There will be times she’s as clear as day. She’ll remember everything, and she’s just as lucid as you or me. Those are the days you’ll have to seize, because there’s no guarantee there will be more of them.
“Are you sure?” I ask.
“Totally,” Annie says, and I don’t hear any of the sarcasm or anger I’ve been hearing in her voice lately. I wonder suddenly whether part of her attitude problem is that she’s hurt that her great-grandmother is forgetting her. I make a mental note to have a real talk with her about Alzheimer’s. Then again, that means I’ll have to face it myself.
“She’s been, like, asking me about school and stuff,” Annie continues. “It’s weird, but she knows exactly who I am and how old I am and everything.”
“Okay,” I say, already checking my rearview mirror to make sure it’s safe to do a U-turn. “I’m on my way.”
“She says she wants you to bring one of the miniature Star Pies from the bakery,” Annie adds.
Those have always been Mamie’s favorites; filled with a blend of poppy seeds, almonds, grapes, figs, prunes, and cinnamon sugar and topped with a buttery star-shaped lattice crust, they’re our signature item. “Okay,” I tell her, “I’ll be there as fast as I can.” And for the first time in a while, I feel a sliver of hope. I didn’t realize, until that moment, how very much I missed my grandmother.
“I would like to go to the beach,” is the first thing Mamie says to me when she answers her door fifteen minutes later.
For a moment, my heart sinks. It’s late September, and there’s a chill in the air. The memory cloud must be back, for it makes no sense for my eighty-six-year-old grandmother to suddenly want to go out and sunbathe. But then she smiles at me and pulls me into a hug. “I am sorry,” she says. “Where are my manners? It is nice to see you, Hope, dear.”
“You know who I am?” I ask hesitantly.
“Well, of course I do,” she says, looking insulted. “Do not tell me you think I am old and senile?”
“Er . . .” I stall for time. “Of course not, Mamie.”
She smiles. “Do not worry. I am not a fool. I know I am forgetful at times.” She pauses. “You brought me the Star Pie?” she asks, glancing at the white bakery bag in my hand. I nod and hand it to her. “Thank you, dear,” she says.
“Sure,” I say slowly.
She tilts her head to the side. “Today, Hope, everything feels clear. Annie and I have just been having a lovely talk.”
I glance at Annie, who’s perched on the edge of Mamie’s sofa, looking nervous. She nods in agreement.
“But now you want to go to the beach?” I ask Mamie hesitantly. “It’s, um, a little chilly for a swim.”
“I am not planning on a swim, of course,” she says. “I want to see the sunset.”
I look at my watch. “The sun doesn’t go down for almost two hours.”
“Then we will have plenty of time to get there,” she says.
Thirty minutes later, after Annie and I help Mamie to bundle up in a jacket, the three of us are headed for the beach at Paines Creek, which was my favorite place to watch the sun sink into the horizon when I was in high school. It’s a quiet beach on the western edge of Brewster, and if you walk carefully out on the rocks jutting out where the creek empties into Cape Cod Bay, you have a great view of the western sky.
We stop on the way, at Annie’s suggestion, to get lobster rolls and french fries at Joe’s Dockside, a tiny restaurant that’s been on the Cape even longer than our family bakery. People drive from miles away and wait in forty-five-minute lines during the summer for takeout lobster rolls, but fortunately, at five o’clock on a Thursday during the off-season, we’re the only ones here. Annie and I listen in disbelief as Mamie, who orders a grilled cheese—she has never liked lobster—tells us a completely lucid story about the first time she and my grandfather took my mother here, when my mother was a little girl, and Josephine asked why lobsters would be silly enough to swim up to Joe’s if they knew they might be made into sandwiches.