Once he knocked a coffee mug against the wall during a confused moment.
And every time his voice rose, Owen changed.
His whole body became still.
His thumb rubbed against his finger.
“Dad,” he would say quietly.
“You’re safe. It’s okay.”
He spoke to Frank as though he were trying to calm both the man standing in front of him and the frightened child Owen himself had once been.
By September, Owen and I hadn’t gone anywhere alone together in seven months.
Not dinner.
Not shopping.
Not even a short walk.
We tried.
In February, Lisa promised to visit so we could go to an Italian restaurant.
She canceled the day before.
In April, our neighbor offered to stay with Frank while we attended a concert.
That afternoon, Frank became frightened because he didn’t recognize her.
We stayed home.
In June, we hired a caregiver so we could spend an afternoon at the beach.
We barely reached the parking lot before the caregiver called.
Frank had locked himself in the bathroom and refused to come out.
After that, we mostly stopped trying.
One night in bed, I asked Owen,
“If you could do one completely normal thing right now, what would it be?”
He thought about it.
“Go to a movie.”
“That’s all?”
“Sit in the dark. Eat overpriced popcorn. Forget everything for two hours.”
“What movie?”
For the first time in days, he smiled.
“The new Spider-Man.”
I laughed.
“You’re thirty-eight.”
“I’ve seen every one since I was a kid.”
Then his smile faded slightly.
“My dad used to take me.”
I stayed quiet.
“It was the one place we could go where he didn’t yell,” Owen said. “You can’t yell through a movie without everybody noticing.”
He looked away.
“I always felt safe there.”
I reached for his hand.
“Then we’re going.”
It took almost three weeks to arrange.
I found a caregiver through an agency named Mrs. Pham.
She had spent twenty years working in memory care.
She came to our house twice before the movie just so Frank could get used to her.
The second time she visited, he called her by his mother’s name.
She didn’t correct him.
