The Sweetness of Forgetting Read Online Free PDF Page A

this water up. We can see if it did any damage once the floors are dry.”
    I glance at Annie, who’s still standing there with a huge pile of towels in her hand. “We can clean all this up ourselves,” I tell Gavin. “You don’t have to stay. Right?” I add, looking at Annie and then at Matt.
    “I guess,” Annie says with a shrug.
    Matt looks away. “Actually, Hope, I’ve got an early morning tomorrow. I’m going to have to head home.”
    Gavin snorts and walks outside without saying another word. I ignore him. “Oh,” I say to Matt. “Of course. Thanks for dinner.”
    By the time I walk Matt to the door, Gavin’s reentering with his wet-vac.
    “I said you didn’t have to do that,” I mumble.
    “I know what you said,” Gavin says, without slowing down to look at me. A moment later, as I watch Matt’s shiny Lexus pull away from the curb, I hear Gavin’s vacuum turn on in the kitchen. I close my eyes for a minute, and then I turn and begin walking back toward the one mess in my life that can actually be fixed.

    The next evening, Annie’s at Rob’s house again, and as I mop up the remainder of the mess in the kitchen after work, I find myself thinking of Mamie, who always used to know how to fix disasters. It’s been two weeks since I last visited her, I realize. I shouldbe a better granddaughter, I think with a swell of guilt. I should be a better person. Yet one more area in which I seem to be eternally falling short.
    With a lump in my throat, I finish mopping, put some lipstick on in the hall mirror, and grab my keys. Annie’s right; I need to go see my grandmother. Visiting Mamie always makes me want to cry, because although the home she’s in is cheerful and friendly, it’s terrible to see her slipping away. It’s like standing on the deck of a boat, watching the waves suck someone under, and knowing that there’s no life preserver to throw in.
    Fifteen minutes later, I’m walking through the doors of Mamie’s assisted living facility, a huge home that’s painted buttercream yellow and filled with pictures of flowers and woodland creatures. The top floor is the memory care unit, where visitors are required to enter a pass code on a digital pad at the door.
    I walk down the hallway toward Mamie’s room, which sits at the far end of the west wing. The residents’ rooms are all private and apartment-style, although they eat all their meals in the dining room, and staff members all have master keys so that they can check on residents and give them their daily medications. Mamie’s on an antidepressant, two heart medications, and an experimental drug for Alzheimer’s that doesn’t seem to be helping; I meet with the staff doctor once a month to get a status report. He said at our last meeting that her mental faculties have been going sharply downhill in the last few months.
    “The worst part is,” he’d said, looking over his glasses at me, “she’s lucid enough to know it. This is one of the hardest stages to watch; she knows her memory will be all but gone soon, which is very unsettling and sad for patients in this state.”
    I swallow back a lump as I ring the doorbell beside her name: Rose McKenna . I can hear her shuffling around inside, probably getting up from her recliner with some effort, moving toward the door with the cane she’s been using since she fell and broke her hip two years ago.
    The door opens, and I resist the urge to throw myself into her arms for a hug, the way I used to do when I was a little girl. Up until this moment, I’d thought I’d come here for her, but now I realize it’s for me. I need this. I need to see someone who loves me, even if it’s an imperfect love.
    “Hello,” Mamie says, smiling at me. Her hair looks whiter than the last time I saw her, the lines in her face deeper. But as always, she’s wearing her burgundy lipstick, and her eyes are rimmed in kohl and mascara. “What a surprise, dear.”
    Her words are tinged with the hint of a