Read Online Final Stroke by Michael Beres - Free Book Online Page B

he says the wrong word?” asked Lydia.
    “Sometimes, but I think he realizes he’s on the right track even if an inappropriate word comes out now and then. Like the speech ther apist says, the idea is to stimulate memory, not to relearn speech.”
    “You said you were doing rehab. How do you work with him?”
    “We go through old magazines together. ‘To stimulate the old egg noggin,’ as he put it the other day. He says when I bring in magazines it’s a lot like bringing in old friends he’s forgotten. I’m not sure if he says that for my benefit, but it’s what he says. I bring in Time , Atlantic , Newsweek . We go over each one together. When one of the therapists found out, she suggested he make a chronological chart. So now he fills out his chart while we go through the magazines. It’s a huge fold out thing for the last ten years. It’s already filled in with tons of notes. Sometimes I quiz him on the notes in the chart.
    “You should see the back seat of my car. It’s filled with old maga zines. I get them at the library. The librarian knew Steve because he did a lot of research there. I used to go with him. We spent a lot of time in the library. It was one of our favorite places. Anyway, one day when I was taking out a few magazines from the shelves, the librar ian took me down to the basement and told me I could take all the magazines I wanted because the articles were on the info system and they were going to recycle the paper. Steve was always fond of the li brary. When I took him out in the parking lot for a walk one time so he could see how full the back seat of my car was, we joked that if I was ever afraid I’d get lost I could throw magazines out the window and leave a trail behind. That was pretty ironic, I guess, because Steve’s the one who’s lost.
    “The reason I use magazines from the last ten years is because those were the ones available in the basement stacks. At least that’s what I try to tell myself. How coincidental that Steve and I have been together ten years. But there are things from further back that he finds out for himself while in rehab, or while watching television. For example, when he found out about Jimmy Carter, he seemed re ally sad. For some reason he identified with Carter’s defeat by Rea gan. Something about Carter’s name being repeated over and over by another patient in rehab. One day, when I got to the facility, I found Steve looking out the window. When I went to the window I saw he was watching a car being hooked up and towed in the parking lot. He had tears in his eyes and he was saying, over and over, ‘Poor Jimmy Carter. Poor Jimmy Carter.’
    “So here I am back to my original dilemma. Do I try to fill in only the past ten years because these were what I consider the good years? Or do I go back more than ten years to the good old days when Jan Kowalski was a stripper, or when she got boozed up so she could stomach giving massages to bug-eyed hairballs with hard-ons?”
    Ilonka Szabo stood at the side of their table. “I hope everything is all right. And I hope Steve will be back soon. Don’t feel bad if you do not finish. I understand.” Then Ilonka turned to the next table.
    “Ilonka has dark eyes like Steve,” said Jan. “She reminds me a little of Steve’s speech rehab partner. Marjorie’s older and Italian, not Hungarian, but there’s something about her. Maybe the fact that she’s so straightforward. Last time I saw her, Marjorie said some very spe cial things about Steve. It was hard for her to get it out—her speech problems are worse than Steve’s—but I understood. She told me that in rehab when she gets upset, Steve holds her and keeps repeating over and over, ‘It’s okay. You’ll be okay.’
    “Sometimes Marjorie kids me, saying if she were only younger. And one time she said she trusts Steve more than her family. I guess that’s understandable because her husband was in the mob. What other family members she’s