\n<\/p>\n
\u201cLook, Moll, this is a hearing problem,\u201d Ken said. I had spent so many years arguing with him about what reality was and what reality wasn\u2019t, and each time he would tell me my reality was wrong and his was right. I hated arguing. I hated it. \u201cShe just needs hearing aids.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cKen,<\/em>\u201d I said. \u201cThis has nothing to do with hearing. She has dementia.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cAh, Moll,\u201d he said. \u201cYou know she\u2019s just thinking of her next book.\u201d<\/p>\n But Mom hadn\u2019t written a book in a long time. The last thing she\u2019d published was a book of poetry with a publisher that seemed like a vanity press. They had asked her for a donation. I\u2019m not an economist or anything, but I think the publisher is supposed to pay the author.<\/p>\n And suddenly I was 13 again, begging my stepfather to get my mother to stop taking diet pills, or to have her slow down on the drinking. Everyone told me I was crazy in that case too. They would tell me that my mom didn\u2019t drink too much; she was just tired. She was just passed out on the bed, eye makeup smeared all over her face, lipstick everywhere.<\/p>\n She was just working on another book. She was just under a lot of pressure. Ken would inevitably declare, \u201cOnce she gets her book done, then she\u2019ll be back to normal.\u201d Thirty years later, and I was having the exact same conversation with him. But this time, at 44, I finally knew my reality was right and his was wrong.<\/p>\n There was no book. There would never be another book. Her Last Tycoon,<\/em> her swan song, was to be an autobiography called Selfie.<\/em> She had gotten the idea that Selfie<\/em> was a good title because, at a memorial service for a friend, she had run into David Remnick, the editor in chief of The New Yorker.<\/em> She had told Remnick the title, and she had decided he had liked it. It was not completely clear if this had actually happened, or happened in the way my mom was reporting it, but it didn\u2019t matter. That was her version of the story. It was always her version of the story.<\/p>\n \u201cI think she\u2019s fine,\u201d Ken said calmly.<\/p>\n One of the interesting things was that you could say anything to my mom and stepdad, like anything,<\/em> and they wouldn\u2019t get mad at you. Ken did love fighting, but part of the reason he loved it was because he never got really angry.<\/p>\n I told him that this was bordering on insane. I told him that everyone could see what was happening here.<\/p>\n \u201cShe wrote \u2018neat\u2019 on someone\u2019s Instagram post about her dead father. Like, \u2018Gee whiz, that\u2019s so neat that your father died.\u2019\u2009\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cEh,\u201d Ken said.<\/p>\n That was one of the many baffling things about both of them\u2014when presented with evidence that perhaps they were wrong, they would just ignore the evidence and continue on their merry way. This habit of theirs always made me feel insane.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n