You know there’s trouble when your mother invites the dead people to your wedding. Right there on the seating chart, highlighted in the purple felt-tip marker she’s so attached to, she’s added three names. Her parents, which doesn’t surprise you even though they’ve been dead for two decades, and the name of someone you don’t know, which does. Jane Fuller. You frown, reading the words again. “Who the fuck is Jane Fuller?” you ask Rob, shoving the clipboard his way. He leans in and examines it. Rob doesn’t care about seating charts any more than the rest of the wedding details; he’s practical to a fault, focused on the result and not the journey. As long as you end up married, he’ll leave who sits where to you. “I think you’re asking the wrong person,” he says, turning back to the papers he’s grading with a grimace. Teaching freshman comp, as he often tells you, is a soul-sucking life sentence. You find your mother on the living room couch, leafing through a catalog and picking out things she can’t afford and wouldn’t want if they arrived. She is meticulously adding things to an order form, numbers and letters in tidy, laborious print. A bathroom rug in primary colors. A cast-iron hedgehog doorstop. Twenty-five pieces of silverware shaped like twigs. She’ll hand it to you later to pay, stamp. and send (you won’t) and will never think of it again. When you ask her about the names, she just blinks up at you, owlish, disavowing all knowledge. Her face is a child’s, open and guileless. She isn’t pretending. She couldn’t tell you what she said five minutes ago, not to mention whatever her thought processes had been when she’d attacked the seating chart with editorial precision. “Mom,” you insist. “I need you to focus! Please. Who’s Jane Fuller?” Something in your tone coaxes a brief second of clarity from her dementia-addled mind. “Jane Fuller?” she asks, scrunching up her nose. “Now there’s a name I haven’t heard in a long time. Not since the funeral.” “Funeral? What funeral?” It’s too late–she’s gone back to the catalog, immersed in bric-à-brac, the detritus of modern capitalism, purple pen clutched tightly in hand. Something in her posture is sad, though, and she’s quieter than usual for the next few hours. # In the beginning, your mother forgot things in order, like she was following a checklist. Simple things first, like where she’d put her glasses, whether she’d paid a bill. Then more important things. Whether she’d eaten. What state she lived in. Whether your father had gone to the store or had left her entirely. How and when she’d broken her arm. Why you were all suddenly so bossy. Where her mother had gone. Why none of you loved her anymore. Whether you and your father had ever met. She took to introducing you, politely, knowing you’d take a shine to each other, and your eyes would meet, his and yours, whiplashed with grief. In those early days, she carried a tiny notebook and scribbled in it constantly with things she needed to remember. Her backup brain, she joked. It helped at first, until it didn’t. Years later, you still find her writing in it. Most of it is nonsense. Squirrels, one entry says. Get car serviced, inexplicably, reads another. Your mother hasn’t driven in years. Many notes you simply can’t read, the letters loopy and indistinct. It’s clear from the current notebook that she’s been trying to remember the wedding. Multiple pages feature your name and Rob’s, the date. The word “wedding” in block letters. Her parents’ names. Jane’s. She’s circled them twice, added a few stars, to help herself remember to look for them. # “Lots of cultures honor the dead,” says your sister as she refills your wineglass. “It’s not that weird to have remembrances at a wedding. And anyway, it’s grandma and grandpa.” “And Jane Fuller.” You drum your fingernails against the cup, and the clacky ping of cheap glassware rings out. You keep it up until your sister gives you a look she’s been practicing on you since birth. The knock-it-off-or-I’ll-make-you kind of look older sisters specialize in. You stop, even though that look is one of your favorite things about her. She pulls out her laptop. Your sister can find anything and anyone, from impossible concert tickets to your coworker’s cheating ex boyfriend’s new love. “Don’t worry,” she says. “I’m on it.” “Look at it this way,” your sister adds, not looking up. “They won’t eat much.” # Dementia makes one of you a child and the other a liar. The first lesson you learned here is that you must set aside childish concepts of right and wrong; life has something more twisted planned for you. No more straight and narrow; now, you must learn to lie with the skill of a grifter. Conversation becomes improv as you meet her where she is, to the best of your fledgling abilities. Yes and. Always yes and, that stalwart building block of comedians, taking what’s offered and embellishing it before offering it back on a silver tray. Where’s John? He said he’d be home in time for dinner. You don’t remind her that John had a heart attack four years ago; the At first you hate yourself for it, but you slowly accommodate to your new life as a pathological liar. You can answer any of her questions with ease, your face smooth, your voice calm, your heart a stone. # You develop theories, you and Rob. Jane was her lover, in the three years your mother spent at a respectable women’s college in New England, before your father arrived in the picture. They shared a love that defied societal norms, quarreled terribly when your mother chose a cowlick-haired engineering student, and parted, never to speak again. Jane was her long-lost sister, the ill-begotten child of one of your grandfather’s many affairs, who she had tracked down and got to know. She hid it from your grandmother, because the knowledge that she’d embraced an alternate family would’ve given her a stroke. They’d grown apart after Jane had asked to be included in family get-togethers and been turned down once too often. And your particular favorite—she and Jane had been spies, recruited in the 1950s during the height of the Cold War, to pose as harmless college coeds and worm their way into communist meetings, taking notes on the men in attendance, gaining their trust, and ultimately selling them out to the government. In the end, your mother had turned to marriage and family life, but Jane had gone on to work abroad, vanishing into the seedy side of Berlin, never to be heard from again. # Load the spoon, deliver the spoon. Late-stage dementia strips away not only your mother’s memories but the will to feed, bathe, sleep. Your mother opens her mouth like an obedient bird and swallows what you give her, provided someone douses it in maple syrup first.The actual food is immaterial: pancakes, of course, but also meatloaf, mashed potatoes, fish sticks, corn on the cob. Dementia, the doctors say, kills off the taste buds, until only sweetness remains. Whipped cream or syrup– the holy grail of second childhood. Put them on everything and don’t hesitate to add sprinkles if that helps. “Jane called today,” you say casually as you consider which food to desecrate next. You choose sweet potato. At least it matches the flavor profile. “You know, your sister?” Load the spoon. She smiles and shakes her head. “Jane wasn’t my sister. What’s gotten into you?” Deliver the spoon. No matter how much you plead, she says nothing further. It’s clear that Jane, the person, is far enough in the past for your mother to retain some memories of her, but for unknown reasons, she clams up like a toddler who has had enough, all but crossing her arms across her chest. She no longer has much of her own, but this secret is hers and she will not give it to you. # “Are you sure you don’t want to, I don’t know, talk about the menu or plan out the photography or anything?” your sister asks, ever the faithful maid of honor, when you bring up the search yet again. You should, of course. You work through a little more of the planning for your small, homegrown wedding, now just a month away. Rob and you, you aren’t wedding industry people, partly because you met in your thirties and have lived together for years. Neither of you wants to spend a down payment on the simple act of formalizing a foregone conclusion. You agree: outdoor wedding, cozy afterparty. Good music, good food, lots of booze. Absolutely no more than seventy-five people. And three ghosts. You, Rob, and your sister strategize that night after she’s gone to bed. “She won’t know,” Rob tells you both, a little detached. Sometimes you resent his unshakeable equanimity, but you can’t really hate a man who cheerfully lets your mother cheat at pinochle. After your father’s death four years ago, she deteriorated fast. It changed everything, like someone had put all of your lives in a dice cup, shaken them thoroughly, and dumped them out onto a table in a new, random configuration. Your mother soon came to live with you during the week and your sister on weekends, changing both of your ability to work your old hours. Suddenly, you and Rob had a grownup roommate with the demeanor of a child, sometimes pleasant, sometime truculent. It might have scared off a lesser man, this random shuffle, but Rob has always had the blessing of being able to adjust to the unexpected. It’s partly because his head is always elsewhere, in his books, his research. Sometimes he’s so far away, he even looks surprised to see you there, talking to him from the other side of the table. “She will,” you say. “She’s got it all laid out in her little book. She’s going to look for them at the wedding and it’s going to make her sad or angry and everything is going to go sideways.” Rob refills everyone’s glasses. “We could just steal it. The notebook, I mean,” your sister points out. You all contemplate that one. It’s such an easy, tempting solution. In your experience, though, easy, tempting solutions are usually wrong. You shake your head. “She’d spend her whole day looking for the notebook, so we’d have a whole other issue.” “Replace it with an identical blank one?” Rob offers. Your sister laughs. You can’t shake the memory of the smile she’d sport whenever you’d found her working with the notebook, back when things weren’t so bad. There had been many notebooks in the years between then and now, but each of them was an extension of her, the things she loved and valued. She keeps them all carefully lined up on a shelf in her room, like holy relics. “We can’t steal it her backup brain,” you say. “It’s the only part of her memories she has left.” “Then we have to make her wishes come true, somehow,” your sister says. # You go to see your aunt, to see what she knows. “Jane Fuller?” she says, and a cagey look slips over her face. “There’s a blast from the past. She was your mom’s friend at college. They were really close for a while.” Her voice is sour, and you must know why. “Close how?” She doesn’t meet your eyes. “I don’t know. Close. She brought her home for Thanksgiving one year, and then New Year’s, and then again the next summer. Always wanted to hang out with Jane, never wanted to talk to me at all on those trips. Jane, Jane, Jane. Honestly, I was sick of hearing her name.” “Were they roommates?” “I’m not sure. Anyway, she came by so often that year that Dad joked about whether Jane had family of her own to see on the holidays.” She snorts. “That didn’t go over so well with your mom. Huge argument.” She stands up suddenly and disappears into the back study, leaving you to study your cup of tea and wonder if you’ve offended her, but you can hear her moving around, and soon enough she re-emerges with a small, dusty box labeled “Ilene.” She digs through it, and finally hands you an aged photograph, the edges crinkled. “That’s her,” she says, tapping a nail on one of the two figures in it. She watches as you turn it over, hoping to find a short, expository essay on its blank back. In the picture, your mother and a slim, blond woman stand side by side, a stone wall behind them. It’s black and white, but you can tell the day is sunny from the stark shadows and the pinched, squinted expressions on their faces. They wear pale sweaters with peter pan collars, and dark, narrow pencil skirts. One clutches a notebook. They’re impossibly young, standing a slight distance apart. You stare, waiting for the photo to tell you something, anything. This is your mother before she was your mother, back when she was simply Ilene. You examine the planes of her face, the curl of her fingers. There’s a tension in the slight turn of her shoulders towards the woman beside her, like a houseplant rotating each leaf towards the window, too slow to notice. “What happened to her?” you ask. Your aunt shrugs. “I’m not really sure. After that summer, we never saw her again. Pretty soon after, Ilene was dating your dad, and well, things just moved on.” She crinkles her brow and stares up at the ceiling. “Years later, I asked her about Jane, and I think she said something had happened to her. She died, maybe? She didn’t want to talk about it. You know how you mom can be, her and her secrets.” # That night, you lay the photograph on the arm of the couch, next to your mother. She looks up from the quiz show she’s watching, taking it in. Her face transforms. Gone is the barely hidden fright of an animal who senses itself as prey, and instead her blue eyes focus in a way you haven’t seen in months. “Oh,” she says, smiling. “There she is.” “Mom, who is that?” “It’s Jane, silly,” she says. “Don’t you remember?” You try not to sigh. You fail. “Of course I do, but please, remind me.” She reaches out with one finger, knuckles swollen, her cheap, bubble gum pink nail polish chipping off, and strokes the picture as if it were a flighty, injured bird, and without knowing what the picture represents, your heart aches. “Oh, you know,” she says, eyeing you slyly. “It was a long time ago. There’s no point in dredging up the past, and anyway, you were there.” You wonder who she thinks you are, right at this moment. Sometimes you’re you, but more often you’re a sister, a friend, your own grandmother. Each of these roles unlocks stories, like you’ve leveled up in a video game. You’ve learned to listen closely, startled to find that it’s still difficult to see your mother as an entirely separate person, even as an adult. Finding out she and her sister once smoked half-used cigarettes out behind the house, nearly lighting the dry brown grass on fire in the process? It opens your eyes to all the former selves she contains, clattering against each other in their eagerness to be known. You each try them on like dresses, your new roles and her old ones, turning and peering back over one shoulder to admire their fit and polish in the mirror. It’s extra infuriating, then, that she won’t tell you this. She remembers it. You can see it in her eyes, in the tremble of that finger. For her to pretend otherwise is a rusty knife in the gut, the ultimate betrayal. It’s not that she can’t tell you; she just doesn’t want to. You’re too practiced in swallowing the pain to take it out on her. You help her to bed, guiding her through things she would no longer do on her own—brushing her teeth, fluffing the pillows. You gentle your way through tonight’s delusions, playing your part. But when it’s done, you go to the kitchen and pull the fat stack of order forms she’s filled from the drawer where you hide them. You aren’t sure why you keep them; maybe someday you’ll find a message in the objects she’s longed for, or perhaps you’ll arrange them into an order that feels like poetry. Tonight, though, you take a brittle pleasure in picking up sheet after flimsy sheet and tearing them into long, thin ribbons. They flutter to the floor around you like confetti, half the pile gone. You sit there, surrounded by wreckage, until Rob comes, silently taking in the chaos, and leads you to bed. # “I found something,” your sister tells you over the changing room door. It’s your final dress fitting and you’re fairly certain you’re not supposed to be thinking about your mother’s secrets at a moment like this. “About Mom’s friend.” You step out and up onto the dais and gawk at your reflection in the mirror. Who is this, encased in ivory linen, simple and warm? You’d like to meet her, this woman. She looks like she has no secrets, like she tells the truth without fear. The saleswoman kneels behind you, fussing with the small train, adding a pin or a quick stitch. You turn your attention to your sister, finally registering what she said. “What? Tell me.” “Obituary,” she says, holding out her phone. You swoop in on the tiny picture to find a small item; it’s barely four lines long and woefully devoid of detail. Jane Alice Fuller, born 1941, died 1963. Attended Sarah Lawrence. There’s a small black-and-white photo; grainy as it is, you recognize a face you now have memorized. Your heart lurches. “Twenty-two? She died when she was twenty-two?” She nods. “So probably not a spy then. More likely to be Mom’s secret girlfriend.” You’re moving too much–the seamstress looks up in concern, pins clamped between her lips. You make a motion of apology and try to settle down, brain whirring. Could that be it? Anything is possible. Whoever she was, all you know is that your mother may have been secretly grieving this person for the last four decades. The seamstress finishes and stands up, holding her hands out to you like she’s presenting a prize pumpkin at the county fair. “What do you think?” It’s beautiful, you tell her. Just perfect. Honestly, the best thing you’ve ever worn. If you could walk down the street in it, you would. You’d wear it to work. You’d wear it to bed. You can come back and get it in three days. # “Maybe we should find your mom a date for the wedding,” Rob says the next morning. That he’s offering a suggestion about the wedding at all catches your attention. “Not a date date. Just a companion, at least for the reception. Someone to sit next to her and answer her questions. Put sprinkles on her Chicken Kiev. Keep her occupied so you and your sister don’t have to.” “Are there people who do things like that?” “There must be, right?” You amuse yourself on the drive to work, writing up the want ad in your head. Wanted. Wedding guest date for demented octogenarian. Must be comfortable speaking in non sequiturs and impersonating your date’s best friend, father, mother, and childhood puppy as needed. Flights of fancy preferred. Three hours, meal included. Please bring syrup. # The idea grows, as does your worry about how your mother might behave at the ceremony. If she understands where she is, she’s going to fixate like a bird dog on where her parents and Jane are. Someone will always have to be on duty, taking care of her, making sure she doesn’t wander, not let her sneak too much champagne. Of course, any of your immediate family could do it; you’ve all been doing that dance for years. But it might be nice to let your family—your aunt, your sister, your sister’s kids, now teenagers and semi-responsible enough to task with an hour of grandma-watching—actually enjoy themselves at the reception. What if there was a professional babysitter for adults? You call your sister later that afternoon, timing it carefully to reach her just as her hospital shift ends. You can hear the road noise in the background as she pulls out of the parking garage. “I think we should hire Mom a babysitter for the wedding,” you tell her. “You know anyone who would do it? One of your nurse friends?” In the silence that follows, you hear her flick on her turn signal and pull over to the curb. Clearly, she knows you well enough to know this conversation will require her full attention. It takes a moment before she answers. “That’s a strange idea.” “I know. But do you?” “Actually yeah, maybe. I have this coworker who always does the one-on-one shifts with the patients who might rip the tubes out of their arms. She’s even blond. Looks a bit like Mom’s friend, come to think of it.” “Could we meet up with her?” # She meets you at the coffee shop outside the hospital, this potential Jane, and you realize they do look alike; your sister’s friend is similarly slim, has the same shade of wheaten blond hair, and the blue eyes. She’s older, of course; you can see the laughter in the creases around her eyes even when her face is at rest, or even when her expression is slightly suspicious, as it is now. “You want me to do what?” says this person whose actual name, it turns out, is Liane. Your sister passes out the three coffee’s she just collected from the counter, pushing a handful of sugar packets towards Liane with an assurance that denotes a long familiarity. “I know it’s a little weird. But you look like my mom’s old college girlfriend—” “—Potential girlfriend. We don’t really know—” “—and we need someone to impersonate her at the wedding, while just generally keeping an eye on Mom. Just for a couple hours, during the reception.” Jane takes a long sip of her latte. “You want me to impersonate your mom’s ex-girlfriend from college and make sure she doesn’t cause trouble.” You nod. “We’d pay you, of course. Whatever your nursing rate is. Overtime rate if you want. And you can have dinner.” “And there’s an open bar,” your sister chips in. “Besides, you’re good with confused people. You do it all the time at work.” “Is she even going to believe I’m her?” not-Jane asks, examining the photograph you’ve laid on the table in front of her. “It’s only the faintest resemblance.” “She’ll believe it,” you say, and it’s likely true, mainly because your mother will want to believe it. If you can be your father, her kindergarten best friend, her childhood puppy, why couldn’t this person, your sister’s friend, be Jane for a night? # You stand at the altar on a beautiful day—glorious really, like you’d ordered it from one of her catalogs—facing the honest-to-God love of your life, your closest friends behind you in uncomfortable chairs, their faces shining with good wishes. You state your vows in a loud, clear voice, and there’s joy, of course there’s joy. You’ve never held so much joy in your hands before; you want to stuff your pockets with it to save it for later, but also inside you a small bird is pecking at your heart, full of wishes that feel like knives. That your father was there too, his tie slightly askew in one direction, his smile in another. That your mother, in the front row with your sister and aunt to keep her from disrupting the ceremony, isn’t wondering who this lovely woman standing there in the ivory dress is, does she know you from somewhere? You seem like such a lovely girl. She hopes you’ll be happy, whoever you are, and oh, look, there’s a butterfly over there, is it blue? There’s something important about blue and weddings—new, borrowed, old, something she’s forgotten. She turns her head to watch, and you’re already fading, until the butterfly drifts away and she turns back to you to wonder anew. # Rob asks your mom to dance, as he’s supposed to, even if it’s more of an obligation than a pleasure. He sweeps her onto the dance floor, and you suppose that like music, dance steps are also paradoxically free from the vagaries of time and neuronal tangles, because she slips into a two-step easily, like she’s done it a thousand times before. Muscle memory. She blushes as if startled to find herself here. Someone has fastened a small strip of paper onto her wrist corsage, written with curlicued letters. Mother of the bride, it reads. You see her fiddle with it over Rob’s shoulder, eyes lighting up when she reads it. She peers around the room, looking for you, you realize, and then your eyes meet and, for just a moment, the puzzle piece slips into place and you know she sees you. You blow her a kiss from the sidelines, and she pretends to catch it with the hand that rests on Rob’s shoulder. # Your mother approaches you and your sister not long after that dance. She’s clutching the notebook in her hand, and you take a second to wonder where she’s been hiding it. Does her fancy dress have a pocket? Was it down her brassiere? You’d purposely encouraged her not to bring a clutch in hopes of avoiding this moment. “I’ve misplaced your grandma and grandpa, honey,” she says, waving the notebook at you. “Did you see where they ran off to?” Your sister meets your eyes over your mom’s head. Where is she? you mouth. Traffic. Soon, she mouths back. “Well anyway, maybe I’ll just go get them each a drink. I’ll be sure to find them then,” your Mom says, heading for the bar. Your sister rolls her eyes and follows. # Not-Jane arrives just before dinner is served. You see your sister greet her at the door, lead her in, pointing out you, Rob, the head table, your mother seated at it, the empty chair beside her. Your mother looks up, smiling uncertainly, as her hired friend slides into the seat next to her. “Hello, Ilene,” the stranger says. “Hi,” your mom says cautiously. Her eyes jump from spot to spot, taking in Not-Jane’s hair, eyes, shoulders, her old-fashioned blue dress, the small pearl earrings that adorn each ear. “Do I… do we know each other?” “Ilene,” not-Jane says, “don’t you recognize me? It’s Jane.” “Jane?” she cries softly, and her face is a wonder. She reaches out with one trembling hand and touches not-Jane on the cheek. “Jane, is it really you? You… you look different. Older.” “So do you,” Jane says, and for a moment, your mother hesitates, the longing to believe clear on her face, before she lets out a laugh and her whole body sags with relief you’re your surprise, she leans in, kissing her on first one cheek, then the other. You’ve never seen her do that before. She takes a deep breath, as if scenting her, and then leans back, coiling their hands together, like sisters, like lovers, like spies. “I knew you’d come,” she says. “I can see it now. You haven’t changed at all. Not really.” Your mother’s face glows like a medieval saint, picked out in egg tempera on the wall of a chapel, utterly radiant. She holds onto not-Jane’s hand, clutching it like a lifeline. They watch the party around them, and her smile is a fearless blessing on each of the dancers as they whirl past, holding each other tight as the night closes in. The End About the Author Megan Zalkan has an MA in professional writing from Carnegie Mellon, worked as a technical writer, and is now an occupational therapist in geriatrics, where she delights in hearing the stories people are still retelling at the end of their lives. Her debut novel, The Last Roadtrip, was released on December 2024.Dead People
wash of grief is always fresh and neither of you can bear to see it again. Instead, you respond with a pleasant fiction, one that’s kinder and redirects her thoughts. He went to the store, mom. Do you think he’ll bring ice cream? Let’s check and see if we need any.
The thing is, your mother isn’t doing it to honor her dead parents. She’s doing it because she can’t remember that they are no longer alive. They matter to her, so she wants them at her daughter’s wedding. She probably thinks about them more these days than she did when they were living.
You fancy yourself highly adaptable, difficult to fluster, but reassuring your mother that her dead parents and mystery friend would be along at any moment is more accommodating than you’d hoped to be to her on that one, singular day.