2004 - Vol. 1, Issue 4

In the galleries, looking at French landscapes, we seem briefly on familiar ground. Observers would spot us as ex-lovers, old friends, by the way we touch comfortably, a hand against the other's shoulder, a brush of lips against the other's ear to share a whispered insight about beauty's sunny charm. They wouldn't guess how the ground is shifting, even though the Corots with their tiny peasants and oblivious bathers warn of change and human insignificance.

Before, at lunch in the museum restaurant, she told me that she has the beginnings of Alzheimer's, forgetting that she'd already told me on the telephone. That was during her second call, the one to admit with forced matter-of-factness that she couldn't remember how to get to my house and to ask again for directions she had lost. "The doctor says that I have seven years," she added, then concentrated on chewing a piece of bread. A crumb stayed on her chin. I turned away toward the courtyard below, a square of lemony grass surrounded by high walls and sparsely peopled by old statues. Their faces weatherworn and indistinct held a look of stoic resignation. I fretted my white napkin and wished that I could be resigned to change and human insignificance.

Against the olive gallery walls her face looks whiter, blander, too. I search for the old acuteness in her eyes, find and lose it intermittently. Her memory darts in different directions. She speaks of the ranch in Montana, how on early mornings, sent out to feed the cattle, she rode her horse bareback, because the saddles were too cold. I picture the steam rising from the somnolent herd, snow blurring the horizon. Into the scene she rides, strong-shouldered, her spine a resilient curve, her mount's rough coat exciting her thighs. Into her life she rides, sharp in perception, avid for sensation. Before her the olive prairie brightening toward the lemon sky, the choices of what she will take in and what she will keep out.

Once she took me in. But, that was very long ago, a small memory in the landscape of our lives. Now she is an old woman, fading. Something obscures the landmarks of time and place, like she is lost in a snowstorm, like she is a bather terrified by an inexplicable snow.

"The doctor tells me I have seven years." She didn't say 'til what.