Gentleman John Marcone

So in case anyone was wondering what happened to me or why I don’t write right now I’m going to get the tl;dr version out of the way right now.

My grandmother got dementia. It has made her paranoid. And she’s stopped being able to cook for herself or understand her medications. If you want to know the gory details read further. 

What this entailed was me moving back to Canada when my grandmother caught influenza in April. (I was in Georgia). We discovered she hadn’t been eating and we agreed I would live with her while I helped get her back on her feet.

This was fine right up until 2 weeks in, my grandmother fell and chipped a bone in her leg. Little did I know this was the beginning of the problem. My grandmother failed to understand why she wasn’t allowed to put weight on her leg or allowed to drive. When she was allowed onto a cane, she failed to use it and turned the chip into a microfracture. I became frantic to keep her safe and she simply would not listen. I was supposed to have use of her car to keep the household running, she would call my mother endlessly telling her she didn’t know where I was and was just using her car for god knows what. In actuality, i was getting her meds and groceries and this was it. 

This completely curtailed my ability to work because I could not leave my grandmother alone. She would not heed doctor’s instructions when you did. I found out she had been stockpiling her meds and not taking them and in fact had forgotten what they were for. 

After two months of fighting her tooth and nail to keep her safe my mother came to try and help us. We sat down and made a list of the things we had noticed about my grandmother and ended up at four page document of things that weren’t quite right with back up documentation. My grandmother at this point was very angry at me for taking charge, even though the medical community agreed someone had to run her split-level while she couldn’t use stairs. 

We presented our concerns to the doctor with the aim of figuring out if she could still drive. She was forgetting what the buttons were for and didn’t seem to understand that there were two lanes on a road at minimum. While we were trying to keep our business running, my grandmother took the car and got into an accident in a town 45 minutes away doing banking she could have done from her phone. She was at fault and tried to hide it and when discovered acted like she had done the girl she hit a favor for paying for the damage. 

We have been going through the Canadian Medical system, which while effective, is slow. From my grandmother’s first MMSE in July to her latest one it has been 4 months of slowly increasing paranoia. We were told not to let her drive. To stay until her memory clinic. 

During this time we got her involved in two exercise classes, back at her volunteering and her advocacy. We arranged for friends to take her out. Made sure she increased weight from 74 lbs to 79.5 by dint of homecooking three meals a day for her. We got her to all her doctor’s appointments. Paid bills she missed. The whole thing. 

Fast forward:

She’s been diagnosed with alzheimer’s with many incidents of playing in toilets at 4 am, misplacing passports, calling banks because she thinks they’ve cancelled her credit cards. She’s also had her license revoked. All while she’s become progressively sure my mother and I are doing something to her. She’s started stealing our stuff, raiding our luggage, telling the neighbors we’re here to take her house and car. 

The doctors however have judged her capable of making her own housing decisions, although not to understand her meals or meds. 

She has told social services that we were out to get her so many times that we have finally had to leave. She told us that was fine GET OUT. So we did. And returned to the states

Now she tells the neighbors that we abandoned her, while calling my mother every single day to yell at her for not letting her drive. For killing her computer (Which she did because she cancelled her anti-virus on her 15 year old box). For stealing her credit cards and keys, which are definitely still in her purse. The neighbors think we should talk, but grandma only yells at us. 

We have stayed in contact with social services, but the outcome is not good looking. It’s not their fault, but because she keeps lying to them, they keep having to let her manage on her own. The people around her keep telling my mom to just let it go, but never have any solutions for how to make sure my grandmother eats and keeps from falling down stairs. 

Now for the kicker: My grandmother is an abuser. She has continuously isolated my mom through her young life so that she could blame her for everything that ever went wrong. 

This sounds terrible to say of a 90 year old woman. But she’s been trying to use my mom for the scapegoat of her problems since she came out of the womb. My grandmother is also a consummate liar. She’s lied to herself to make it so she’s never wrong. Sadly, she convinces people of these lies because she convinces herself. And my mother deserves a fucking award for sticking by her and trying to make sure that she always had what she needed. It is tragic that at the end of my grandmother’s life the last thing my grandmother will have told my mother was that she wasn’t good enough or wanted. 

And this is what the social workers want me to accept. That my mother should just accept the blame of my grandmother’s bad behavior. 

I’m sorry. This isn’t helping.

My grandmother isn’t getting the help she needs.

My mother is hysterical.

And now my grandmother has brought the lawyers in and we can’t stop her because the Social Workers have judged the only people working in her interest as having to let this woman try and kill herself.

“But - but how did the poison get in the wine?” “Well, we put it in wine because it’s less noticeable. When it’s in tea it has a distinct odor.”

“Currently, yes,” she agreed.  “There is a finite amount of resources on this planet, and they are being used quite inefficiently.  Should they be used up to the point of drastic consequence, though, it will be humans that will die out first, not the planet.  Life will continue.”

She laughed lightly.  “Oh, there is quite a lot of misinformation being spread around.  Some of it is purposeful, some of it is simple human foolishness.  There is a tendency to simply believe anything that is heard, without bothering with fact-checking.  That has caused the spread of many falsehoods throughout history.”

“Parsing the truth from the lies can be quite difficult at times.” Lash tilted her head at Marcone.  “How would you say your skills fare in that matter?”

Marcone inclined his head. “Better than most,” he said without a trace of hesitation. “Not as broad as some. Helps to narrow your interests or at least what facts interest you and leave the rest to people who can use them. Collect, but don’t assign relevance until it’s needed.”

She tucked the rolled up charts and maps in her her belt next to the hilt where her sword was sheathed. If he was trying to dissuade her from the course he was doing a poor job of it. Scary monster and demons. She had seen scarier things crawl out of the interior of Mag Mell. It would take more than cloven hooved, half men to frighten her off.

Something he said made her pause, and then she grabbed the hilt of her sword, and in a breath it was out and the tip was pressed against his addams apple. Bébinn starred at him, all amusement gone from her gaze. One of her hands rested against the table the other had a firm grip on her sword. “Don’t use a word unless you know the exact meaning of it. And if you meet my kind again, I would suggest you refrain from calling them what you just called me.”

Marcone raised an eyebrow. “Fae? I had rather assumed that was the broad term. Isn’t sidhe the word you object to? Or fairy-fucker? To be fair, i’m with you on the last one.”

“Not at all,” she replied, and took a bite. 

This had to be a test. If he really slept with all of his escorts then that said a lot more about him than she thought he actually wanted to let on. Most likely they would go out, go back to a hotel, or maybe his office, start things off, and then he’d tell her she had the job, or not. 

She didn’t actually have to sleep with him. No, of course not. 

But… the thought was intriguing. She had confidence in her abilities, and if he really liked her… well, all the better for her. It got her further ahead, and maybe even the admiration of the Gentleman himself. 

“Will this all happen today?” She asked lightly. 

It was interesting to watch the thoughts run through her eyes in the infinitesimal pause between bites. “Not today,” he assured her. “I only have so much time for any one task on any given day.”

“Be here,” he told her, writing an address on the back of a business card. “Tomorrow night at 9 pm.”

Of course, he didn’t sleep with them. But it was interesting to set up that expectation. He had no interest in continual testing for STDs for himself. It wasn’t his line of work. Better to keep your interests confined, but there was no harm in setting up the expectation. Then he could see how they handled shake ups in the plans.