There was a knock on the driver's-side window of my mother's Passat. I turned to see a 40-something guy with glasses, seemingly middle class. "Excuse me, I'm sorry, excuse me, I'm very sorry," he was saying, while motioning for me to roll down the window.
I had just left the Milford, Connecticut service plaza and climbed into the car; he was there so quickly, he must have followed me out from the lobster roll stand inside.
I took my window down a little bit, and asked warily, "What's up?"
He started into his story, peppering it with apologies for bothering me, yet continuing to bother me. It was a tale of a broken-down car, lost wallet, hungry children waiting by the side of the road and the need for just $26 more for a tow truck. He would pay me back if I gave him my address and phone number. He seemed the requisite amount of desperate, but you never know.
I was pretty sure this was a scam, but paused a bit to digest it all. He launched into a repeat of his pitch again, only this time he added something that caught my attention. "And we were visiting my father," the man said, "who has Alzheimer's, at the place where he lives up the road."
Here, my listening went from "somewhat polite" and "tolerant" to "did he really just say that?"
I got out of the car. Up until then, I had been through this game before. One late night in Chicago, a guy who looked homeless ran up to me just as I parked my car and rattled off a similar speech about a broken-down car and the need to raise money for a tow truck. It was very late and although he looked car-less as well as homeless, I threw $5 at him and said good luck as I briskly walk-ran into my apartment building. Another night, years later in Brooklyn, I just walked away mid-story from a scary-looking guy. It's not like I don't want to help people, but these guys seemed more predatory than needy.
But this time, in Milford, Conn., I asked the guy to repeat what he had just said. He did. Then I told him my story.
"Two hours ago, I dropped off my father at an Alzheimer's facility where he's probably going to live for the rest of his life," I told him. "Two weeks ago, my mother died, after a severe stroke that hit out of nowhere, at a restaurant after a show I directed. I have 6-year-old twins that I haven't seen in almost two weeks. I just left Long Island, where my dad is now in that facility, and am driving to Boston, where my kids have been staying with their other grandparents.
"This is my story," I added soberly, "and it is real." In that moment, the tragically surreal events of my summer that had only been running on a continuous loop in my head, burst out of my mouth like bullet points. To some stranger that I didn't like at first glance yet.
I think I raised my voice a bit then, and maybe scared the guy. He backed off just a little.
"I'm going to tell you right now that if your story is a scam, if you've made up all of this--especially the part about having a father with Alzheimer's--just to get a few bucks out of me, then …" Then I stopped. I censored myself.
If I knew for a fact, 100 percent sure, that he was lying, I think I might have hit him. I don't hit people. I'm a nice Jewish boy who spent the previous three weeks sleeping on his parents' couch, half of it mourning the sudden loss of my mother and watching my father deteriorate even faster after her death as his mind continued to betray him. I'm sad, I'm bone-tired, I'm not violent. Yet, the idea that the universe might have sent this man to taunt me with this sob story or make me think that we made a wrong decision about my Dad or I don't know, just push a button I never even knew I had. Why did I want to hit this guy?
He looked scared but was shaking his head. "No, it's the truth, I swear."
In all my nice-guy-toughness I said to him, "If you're lying, then you need to know that you are scum. Lower than scum. And this is the wrong day to tell your story to the wrong person. If you're lying, then you are … you are just not a nice person and you should know that about yourself." (I wish I had said something more profound than "not a nice person," but, well, I am no more practiced at cursing strangers out than at beating them up.)
Stammering a bit now, he said it again: "I'm telling you, it's all true."
Two or three more long seconds of staring at him was probably not enough time to truly judge a man's soul, but I didn't want to live with the possibility that he was me, only short a few bucks. I reached into my pocket and pulled out a twenty.
"Thank you, thank you," he said. "Give me your address, I promise I'll pay you back, I promise."
"That's OK," I told him. "Next time, you can help someone else. Just do that."
The guy stuffed the $20 in his pocket and fast-walked back into the service center. I got into my car and back on the road, my mind and heart racing. After a bit I just shook my head: "Did that just happen?"
During the rest of my drive, I replayed the whole episode over and over again in my head, trying to convince myself that the guy wasn't a scumbag con artist, just a guy down on his luck. Not just because I wanted to feel better about giving him money. I also wanted to believe, in a weird way, that our brief encounter had some meaning.
Would I have told a stranger in a parking lot about my dad's disease just to get $26? I guess I wouldn't, but who knows what you'll do when you get desperate? But then again, I had just told him everything about my family for no money. Why the hell had I done that? And why did it feel so cathartic?
I try every day to remember everything I can about my Dad--not just dwell on my latest memory of him sitting in his new room in a comfortable but depressing facility, surrounded by pictures of my mom and siblings and his grandkids, all in a futile effort to make sure he remembers us. I need to remember the stories. Funny stories, serious stories, learning stories--Dad stories.
But at least at the moment, his Alzheimer's has taken center stage. And that's unfair. It's infuriating. You want your old dad back, the one you remember. And there's nothing you can do to keep him from slipping away.
When you tell people that your dad has Alzheimer's, you start to realize how big a universe it is for parents with horrific diseases. I have friends with family members ravaged by ALS and Parkinson's. Almost everyone has a story, a sad story. You don't realize what helpless feels like until it happens to you.
There was something weirdly satisfying about unloading on this guy, telling him all the ugly truths about what had happened to my parents. Not in the way that your friends want to hear as they're trying to comfort you. In an angry burst, with all the raw emotion, to a stranger who may be going through the same thing.
That's what I really got for my $20. The chance to be angry, and to shout at another human being about how righteously unfair and fucking awful it really was. Maybe he understood because he was going through the same thing. Or maybe he was just a hapless scam artist who didn't realize what he'd gotten into.
Either way, it felt like money well spent.
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