A woman goes to her doctor to have a prescription renewed. But the doctor is not there. It's her day off. In fact the woman has got the day wrong, she has mixed up Monday with Tuesday.
This is the very thing she wanted to talk to the doctor about, as well as renewing the prescription. She has wondered if her mind is slipping a bit.
"What a laugh," she has expected the doctor to say. "Your mind. You of all people."
(It isn't that the doctor knows her all that well, but they do have friends in common.)
Instead, the doctor's assistant phones a day later to say that the prescription is ready and that an appointment has been made for the woman--Nancy--to be examined by a specialist about this mind problem.
It isn't mind. It's just memory.
Whatever. The specialist deals with elderly patients....
This is the start of an Alice Munro story; it's about the war you have with your own body.
Nancy knows, deep down, that she is losing her mind. But she fights the knowledge with a fantasy; her doctor will rescue her. A thoughtless assistant states the obvious: "You have a mind problem." And Nancy retreats to defensiveness--as if the assistant had really been on the attack. "It isn't mind. It's just memory...."
Again and again, Munro opens trap-doors underneath her heroine. It's not Monday; it's Tuesday. It's not a problem with memory; it's a problem with sanity. It's not something for the regular doctor; it's something for the "Elders Specialist." These ruptures happen quickly, in a brutal way; the constant shifting challenges you to stay on your toes. In this sense, you're like Nancy herself; you're frantically trying to interpret various signals when the view isn't clear.
The story is from "Dear Life," a subject of interest in today's NYT. Ben Dolnick writes, in a lively way, about how Alice Munro is "not just important, but fun." He reminds us that Munro trained her focus on "the penis, which does not look as intelligent and graceful as, say, a finger," and on "couples having sex even as they try to finalize their divorce." It's an entertaining essay. Long live Alice.
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