Life with Jane and Jacques

A. and I are in Portland, looking after her grandparents while her parents are away in Hawaii. The quiet, the huge, well-stocked house, and the presence of both a Chevy Tahoe and a BMW outside the front door ought to make this time something of a relaxing break from LA — and it is something of a relaxing break. But then there’s the grandparents.

Imagine a world in which Jane Marple married Jacques Clouseau, and they both lived to 99 years old (yes, the GPs are both actually 99), and you might have some idea of the difficulties involved. Jane, who is actually Vivian, still has a mind like a steel trap, but the springs are perhaps not as taut as they once were. She scolds me for not eating breakfast. Where once she pursued the criminally genteel, she now doggedly lays the table for dinner, circumnavigating with her tennis ball walker the vast kitchen island between the table and the drawer where the place mats are kept, one mat at a time. To be young, and to be old, is to need patience in the absence of an alternative.

To watch Jacques — who is actually Frank — totter from the table to the coffee-maker for a refill, and then totter back again, the steaming mug canted at a precarious angle, is to feel one’s hair greying by the very second. His short-term memory is blisslessly decayed. Old stories of genuine charm are bled dry by repetition. A conversation between the two of them this afternoon, during which he tried to construct in his mind the sequence of actions and events which would be triggered should he need medical help — and then keep it constructed in his mind — had the miscommunication and panicky despair of Abbott and Costello.

They’re both quite remarkably self-sufficient, though this is achieved at the cost of their lives having become very small. Purpose is a matter of small ritual. Dinner at 5. Jeopardy at 7, the volume ear-meltingly loud. It’s not an easy balance, but the trick seems to be to give them space to exercise whatever volition they feel, no matter how teetering or glacial the execution, but to watch from the wings should some help be needed. And to enjoy the moments of connection and lucidity. Easier to do that knowing that we’re only going to be here another week, perhaps.