Holiday Digest: The Unfinished Puzzle

By Jackie Bayless

The puzzle stumps her. It’s difficult, 1,500 pieces, sitting on a polished mahogany table in the corner of the great room at this assisted living home. She is having trouble finding the right pieces as they all seem to be various shades of red or green. The staff has chosen a seasonal puzzle. It’s a Christmas tree, standing in a clearing surrounded by undecorated evergreens. The puzzle makes no sense. Some of the pieces don’t even click into place like a proper puzzle. Instead, they lean against a sister piece, locked in place only by an additional third or fourth piece.

Her father is here. He has Alzheimer’s. He is napping, so she sits in this room with its soaring floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the shops and restaurants of picturesque Laguna Beach and the Pacific Ocean. The building sits on a bluff at a slight angle so the setting sun strikes the room pleasingly and indirectly no matter the season.

This puzzle should not be so hard. Is she noticing the first signs? They say if you really have Alzheimer’s, you don’t even realize there’s a problem. But how could she not notice the confusion she’s felt when driving to the grocery store? “Oh, yes. Turn this way,” she tells herself with relief, disaster averted for now.

A young man, a nurse, stops at her side, looking at the puzzle pieces. He fits the missing piece completing the angel at the top of the tree, smiles and goes on his way. She leaves, telling the overly smiley receptionist that she will be back. She walks down the hill to Main Beach, where she stands gazing at the ocean and the lifeguard tower decorated with a huge wreath glowing with many tiny white lights. Good taste, she thinks. She hates the displays that blink on and off like strobe lights, the garish red, blue, and purple lights. Give her tasteful, small white lights any day. She wraps her knitted scarf more tightly around her neck, pulls down the navy blue watch cap to just above her eyebrows. The same knitted hat her Navy father always wore in cold weather. When she moved to Laguna Beach 10 years ago from the East Coast, she’d donated her winter coats to a shelter. Wasn’t this Southern California? Who knew it could get so cold?

She goes back to the so-called assisted living (shouldn’t it be assisted dying?) home. Her husband, joining her after work, waits for her by the table with the blasted puzzle. Her father is awake now, he says. He’s in the common area where the residents are gathered. The residents sit in folding chairs, slumping, anxious, some seeming perfectly fine, and yes, there’s her father. Over six feet tall, an athlete still with a slim build, wearing his well-worn tan V-neck sweater and faded jeans. His formerly erect posture gone, he is one of the slumping residents. The group is singing Christmas carols led by the indefatigably cheerful social worker decked out in a Christmas sweater with—oh God—multicolored blinking lights attached.

Her husband gives her a slight push. She kneels in front of her father’s folding chair, puts a hand on his knee. Suddenly his face lights up and he sits up in his chair. “I know you!” he declares. He smiles broadly and pats her back as if she was still his little girl.

Jackie lives in Laguna Niguel; her short stories have been published in The Wall, Strands Lit Sphere, CafeLit and Down in the Dirt.