Free The Memory Artists by Jeffrey Moore Page A

for Émile,” she said. “Can you take it to him, dear? You can read it if you like.”
    Before he could reply, in the blink of an eye she fell asleep. For a moment he thought of waking her, of extending these precious moments, but he didn’t have the heart. She’d suffered from insomnia for weeks. So he ever so gently lifted her fingers from his hair, and kissed her on the forehead. On tiptoes he then crept towards her blue Olivetti Lettera (a gift from her husband that a computer would never replace) and picked up a sheaf of papers beside a well-thumbed thesaurus. There was a half-finished page still in the typewriter, barely readable. Must change the ribbon, he thought. Taking one last peek at his mother, Noel switched off the light, closed the door. In the hall, after selecting a key from a ring, he locked the door from the outside—his mother’s jailer!—as emotions rose to fill his throat and flood his eyes.
    A sound from below distracted him. Someone was ringing the doorbell, piercingly and long, while pounding maniacally on the door. A picture quivered on the foyer wall. The cacophony of clangs and bangs continued for several minutes before a dead silence redescended on the house. At the top of the stairs he sat down and began to read his mother’s pages.

Chapter 6
    Stella’s Diary (I)
    Like one, that on a lonesome road
    Doth walk in fear and dread,
    And having once turned round walks on
    And turns no more his head;
    Because he knows a frightful fiend
    Doth close behind him tread.
    — Coleridge, “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner”
    Friday, 9 February 2001. A huge day, in the hugely negative sense. According to the doctor I have ‘mild cognitive impairment’. That doesn’t sound too bad at first, but let me put it another way: I’m in the first stage of ... Alzheimer’s Disease. The very names of certain diseases bring dread and AD is one of them. It’s a death sentence. A long and slow one.
    Émile asked me to keep this journal while I still have ‘self-insight’ -i.e. the ability to recognise what’s happening to me. Later on, because of the deterioration in the cells in my temporal lobe, where insights are formed apparently, I won’t be able to do this. ‘Don’t forget to keep it every day,’ he told me.
    Fine, I still have insight, but that’s more a curse than a blessing. Because I know the future and the future is this:

    I can’t remember the term for it, which is why I drew it (I used to draw better).
    Or if it’s not like being under the sword, it’s like the Ancient Mariner, but I can’t remember why. And I don’t want to bother poor Noel again. I used to draw better than this .
    The sword of Damocles! (I just asked Noel.)
    Thank God for Noel. And yet even with Noel here, life can be so terribly lonely. I don’t see my old colleagues any more. Or my friends. Because keeping up my end of the conversation can be a real battle sometimes. Too often I can’t remember the last thing said. I can remember rocking Noel in his crib thirty-two years ago, I can remember my husband proposing to me thirty-five years ago, but often I can’t remember what was said thirty-five seconds ago.
    I seem forever on the verge of remembrance, like trying to recall a dream, when you get the faintest of glimpses before the whole thing evaporates.
    And it’s so frustrating when I explain what’s wrong with me. No one really understands. My lapses, I mean. My friends say things like ‘We all forget things, Stella. We all lose our train of thought. It’s normal in this age of PIN numbers and passwords. There’s really nothing wrong with you.’ And I just nod, instead of saying ‘No no, that’s not it, that’s not it at all. It’s more than that, you see.’
    Émile says I have ‘mild cognitive impairment’. In conversations, just when you think of something relevant or clever or amusing to say, you forget some pertinent detail. And you lose your confidence. Or you’re afraid you’ve asked the