She stumbled into my room shouting about cloud cover, UV rays, and sunscreen.  It was the middle of winter and still dark out.

She said, “You could get cancer.”

Or I could get early-onset Alzheimer’s. I thought it. I didn’t say it. 

“Kathleen will be here soon,” I said.  “She’s the day nurse.  She’ll help you.” I said this to her everyday. I leaned in close to the mirror and started brushing mascara on my invisible eyelashes.

“No!” she cried.  She grabbed the mascara out of my hand like it was a gun I was pointing at myself.

We stared at each other.  Her swimmy eyes rounded like she had no idea who I was.  She probably didn’t.

I felt a glop of mascara harden on my eyelashes.  Harden to a shell.  Like the one around my heart. 

Quit acting like a baby, Mom.  I thought it. I didn’t say it.

“No,” she said.  “No, no.”  Spit burbled between the cracks of her lips.

“Give it to me,” I said, holding out my hand.

She shook her head.  Shook her whole body.  Shake, shake.  The shell around my heart quaked.

“Please give me the mascara,” I said.

“No!”  She jerked away and shuffled to the mirror. 

She said, “Like this.”  She raised the mascara to her face and began to brush her lashes.  Quickly, thickly.  Like she knew what she was doing. Like she’d done it a million times. She probably had.

“Why can you remember how to put make-up on, but you can’t remember who I am?”

Crap.  I thought it and I said it. She looked at me in the mirror. I am a despicable daughter.  I braced myself for the screaming, but all she did was stare at me as though I’d been speaking Greek.        

She said, “In school I did all my friends’ makeup.  I wanted to be a makeup artist.  I was really good.”

Hand deft and sure. Stroke, stroke.  Lashes lush and black framed her eyes. She was really good. She sat me down.  “I’ll do yours.  I’m sorry I never showed you before.  That’s something a mother should do, right?  Teach her daughter how to put makeup on.”

She touched my shoulder and leaned over me.  Lightly, lightly.  She laid the mascara on my lashes like the brush of a butterfly’s wings.

“I wanted to be a makeup artist,” she said.  “But my mother wouldn’t hear of it.  ‘Forget that,’ she said. ‘Forget that!’”

She stopped brushing and barked out a laugh.

“I did forget, didn’t I?  I did just what she said!”

She cupped my chin in her hands and looked into my eyes.  I looked into hers.  There was my mother.  Laughing.  Laughing about the Alzheimer’s.

We held onto each other like rafts in the salty ocean. The shell around my heart dissolved, leaving me raw and stinging, like when the day’s makeup has been scrubbed away.

# # #

Carolyn Fay writes fiction and non-fiction. Her work has appeared in Muse, Highlights, and Dig into History. You can read more here: http://www.carolynfay.com

Photo: Sharon McCutcheon