Afraid of the Dark

Chapter Twelve

P.O., no, no!”

Jack recognized his grandfather’s shouting the moment he entered the Alzheimer’s wing. It was coming from inside his room at the end of the hallway-that same pointless rant against the post office that Jack had heard many times before.

“P.O., NO, NO!”

The thought of his grandfather swatting at nothing and shouting nonsense made Jack want to rush to his side, but Saturday lunch was a peak visiting hour at Sunny Gardens. The hallway was clogged with clusters of residents and guests, many using wheelchairs or walkers. Merely the wind from his sprint could have knocked over most of them, and Jack had more sense than to run through an Alzheimer’s nursing home anyway. He hurried as quickly and as safely as he could to the open doorway.

“It’s okay, Grandpa,” he said as he entered the room.

His grandfather didn’t seem to notice him, but thankfully the shouting had ceased. He was sitting up in the mechanical bed, quietly staring up at an elderly woman who was standing at his bedside.

“That’s my bubbala,” she said in a soft voice of praise. She was holding his hand and stroking his forehead. Jack didn’t recognize her, and instead of the blue uniform of a Sunny Gardens employee, she was wearing a green cotton dress with a thin white sweater. Her hair was done in the classic style of a fading generation that went to the beauty parlor every Saturday morning. Jack wasn’t sure if Grandpa recognized her either, but she had an undeniably calming effect on him. They couldn’t seem to take their eyes off each other.

“Who are you?” asked Jack.

Her gaze remained fixed on the older Swyteck, and she answered in the same soothing tone. “Who am I?” she asked, smiling at Jack’s grandfather. “I’m Ruth, of course. Bubbala’s main squeeze.”

Grandpa has a girlfriend?

Jack watched them. Ruth was singing to him now, too soft for Jack to hear the words, but the tune was familiar and pleasant enough, even if it was in an older voice that cracked now and then. Grandpa’s eyes were closing, and in a matter of minutes, he was sound asleep. Ruth kissed him gently on the forehead.

“I love you,” she whispered, and then she stepped away from the safety rail.

Jack tried not to appear too shocked. His grandfather had been a widower for twenty years, and Jack had no idea that he’d even dated since.

“I’m Ruth Rosenstein,” she said, offering her hand.

Jack shook it and started to introduce himself.

“You’re Jack, I know,” she said. “Bubbala’s told me all about you before…” She glanced toward the bed and smiled sadly. “Well, before.”

“How long have you two you known each other?”

“Oh, it’s been about five years now.”

Jack suddenly felt small. He was in his thirties when his maternal grandmother had finally come over from Cuba, and he’d spent countless hours building a relationship with her, making up for lost time. Grandpa Swyteck had lived most of his life just a plane ride away in Chicago, yet Jack knew so little about his father’s father. Jack saw him on holidays and at important family events, but the relationship was never deep. It was more like the obligatory grandson visits, even after he retired to Florida. Even after he went into the facility.

“Do you have time for a cup of coffee with me in the cafeteria?”

“I’d like that,” said Jack.

An old Irving Berlin tune-“I’ll Be Loving You… Always”-played softly over the intercom system as they walked together down the hallway and found a table by the window. The coffee wasn’t good, but Jack didn’t really notice as Ruth told him how she’d met his grandfather, the kind of things they used to do together, the close relationship they had forged.

“Last year at Passover he even joined me at the seder,” she said, suddenly wistful. “That was one of his last really good days.”

Jack smiled a little. “He thinks we’re Jewish, you know.”

She drank from her cup, and then her expression turned very serious. “What do you think, Jack?”

Her response was not at all what Jack had expected. “Excuse me?”

“Oh, never mind.”

“No, please don’t say ‘never mind.’ Did my grandfather tell you something I should know?”

She measured her words and said, “I think the best way to put it is that there is some confusion about that.”

“With Alzheimer’s there’s confusion about everything.”

“True,” she said. She put her cup and saucer aside. “Let me just share one little story with you.”

She was using that very calm tone again, but it made Jack’s heart race. “All right,” he said.

“Two years ago your grandfather and I went to see a play called Edgardo Mine. It’s a true story about a little boy named Edgardo Mortara. Do you know it?”

“Mmm, no.”

“Edgardo was the son of a Jewish merchant in Bologna, one of eight children raised in an observant Jewish home in the 1850s. When he was an infant, he was very sick with fever, and the family’s Catholic serving girl secretly baptized him because she didn’t want him to be excluded from heaven. Happily, Edgardo survived his illness.”

“Something tells me there’s not a happy ending.”

“Hardly,” said Ruth. “Nineteenth-century Bologna was part of the Papal States. Under church law, a child who was baptized could not reside in a Jewish home. It’s not clear how, but whispers about Edgardo’s secret reached all the way to the pope. One night the constabulary showed up at the Mortara house and took him away.”

“This is a true story?”

“Absolutely. The church’s position was that Edgardo could return to his parents if they converted to Christianity. Needless to say, Edgardo never came home. It was a huge international incident, but the pope wouldn’t budge. The boy even lived with him in the Vatican for a while. Edgardo ended up a Catholic priest, one of the proteges of Pio Nono.”

“Pio Nono?”

“That was the Italian name for Pope Pius IX.”

“That’s what Grandpa shouts from his bed. I thought he was railing against the post office.”

“Pio Nono is actually the main character in the play. Your grandfather was very moved by the story.”

“Who wouldn’t be?”

“I mean it really impacted him,” she said. “Much more than I expected.”

Jack waited for her to say more, but she fell silent. “Because… he’s Jewish?”

“Honestly? I don’t know. Maybe something inside me made me want to think he was. Look at me,” she said, laughing at herself, “I’m eighty-three years old and still trying to please my mother. Oy vey.”

Jack smiled. It was easy to see how his grandfather had enjoyed her company.

His cell phone rang. Jack didn’t recognize the number, so he didn’t answer.

“I’m not saying it’s so,” said Ruth, “and the last thing I want to do is create an identity crisis for you. But I have heard of people literally on their deathbed, telling their children or grandchildren the truth about their ancestry. And you can’t always dismiss as crazy everything that comes out of the mouth of someone with Alzheimer’s.”

Jack’s phone chimed with an incoming text message. He glanced at it, then froze.

“It’s Pio Nono,” it read. “Call me. NOW!”

“Is something wrong?” asked Ruth.

Jack shook off the chills. “Will you excuse me one minute?”

Ruth seemed concerned, as if she might have said something to anger him, but Jack had no time to explain.

He hurried out of the cafeteria and found a quiet place to return the call from a dead pope.