Work Text:
May 1989
"You must promise me," she pleaded, her blue-veined hands reaching up to grasp her son's face. "Promise that you will never tell your father."
"But Mom, what am I going to tell him? How do I explain... this?" His blue eyes pleaded with her not to ask this of him.
"Don't. I’ve left him a letter telling him not to look for me. Let him think whatever he wants to think. That I ran away out of vanity, hurt pride that people thought he was my son,” she released his face to wipe the tears from her cheeks. “Out of fear that he would leave me first. Or out of frustration of having to start my life over and over again."
He turned his head, brushed away his own tears.
"You know he won't really believe any of those things."
"No," she whispered. "He won't. But the doubt will let him go on. So you must promise me."
"Please, don't ask me to do this. I love you, Mom, I can't just.... "
"Promise me," she demanded. "Promise you won't tell him, that you'll watch after him. He so needs watching after. And promise me..." she pulled her son's head down and kissed him softly on the forehead, "promise me that you'll be happy."
He rested his forehead on her shoulder, defeated.
“I promise. I won’t tell him. But I’m still coming to see you. I’ll be with you until… until…”
He stopped, shoulders shuddering. She gathered him into her arms and rocked him gently, just as she’d done when he’d been a child having nightmares.
“Hush, Abraham, I know. I know.”
Doctor Franklin was waiting for him outside his mother’s room. Seeing the doctor in his white lab coat, stethoscope around his neck, patient folder—no, his mother’s folder—in his hands, brought the reality of the diagnosis home to him with a visceral certainty he hadn’t felt in his mother’s presence. As long as he could hold her, talk to her, it couldn’t be true.
“How did this happen? How did we not know?” He choked down sobs.
"I know this seems sudden to you, Abe,” Doctor Franklin put a gentle hand on Abe’s arm, “but truth be told your mother has been exhibiting small symptoms for some time now. She’s been coming to see me for at least a year, complaining of experiencing confusion, misplacing things, forgetting the day of the week and such. I counselled her to tell you and your father at least three months ago—"
"Oh my God, that day she got lost in Central Park," Abe stared at the doctor. "I had no idea."
Doctor Franklin tucked the folder under his arm and nodded slowly. "Yes, but when she started babbling in my office about how your father was immortal... well, I'm glad she decided to admit herself to the nursing home. She'll get the care she needs here." He rocked on his heels and put his hands in his pockets with a grimace. "It was pretty shocking. Your mother's always been a very stable woman, but there she was ranting and raving. She became quite agitated when I tried to reason with her and even threatened to prove it by stabbing your father—”
"She... she said what?" Abe’s eyes flew wide. Now he understood. This was why she was leaving, why she was willing to let his father think she’d abandoned them both. She’d rather her husband think the worst of her than risk hurting him or revealing his secret in her dementia.
Doctor Franklin put a consoling arm around Abe's shoulder.
"Her request that your father be banned from visitation is probably for the best. I hate to say it, but she has the potential to be violent towards him during one of her outbursts."
“There’s nothing… no drugs,” Abe grasped for straws, “no treatment at all?”
“I am sorry. I wish I could tell you there was. Alzheimers is an insidious disease, stealing away the person we know and love from the inside. It’s a lot to digest, I know.”
He scrubbed a hand across his face.
“Yes, thank you, Doctor Franklin.” He shook the doctor’s hand and headed for the door, just beginning to process what he’d learned. He’d have to come up with some sort of lie about where he’d been and what he’d been doing. His father would want to know.
He stopped on the steps in front of the nursing home. His father. The infamously observant Doctor Morgan. Who couldn’t possibly have missed all the warning signs that his son had missed. Who would have known long before even his mother had suspected what was wrong, and that there was no way to fix it. Who loved his mother far too much to make this diagnosis.
Abe closed his eyes and steeled his back, emulating his father’s perfect posture. He inhaled deeply and smelled beef roasting from the direction of the facility’s kitchen. Cooking. That was the answer. He’d always found peace when puttering about the kitchen. And Henry had enjoyed his cooking almost as much as Abigail’s.
He’d go to the market and get the ingredients for a grand Italian meal: olives, prosciutto, garlic bread, lasagna, salad, cannoli. All that and more. They’d eat until they were fit to bursting and drink red wine until they were senseless.
But he wouldn’t mention his mother. And his father wouldn’t ask.