23 November 2016

Editor’s Note: 2011 was a good year to hang with Mac. Willow was at the zenith of its culinary achievement about to win back-to-back Washington-area Burger cook-offs, and it did not seem that there was a thing wrong with the world. I was still employed, Mac was active and engaged, and the Willow Bar Flies were going strong with all relationships pretty much intact. Of course, my folks were in steep decline, Dad in particular, and that kept me on my toes. It was a magical year, and the stories from Mac’s long and fascinating life were a joy to transcribe. It is hard to convey how central Tracy’s restaurant was to our social circle- it was a magnet, and a great one. I stopped by the other day to peer in the glass windows. It has been vacant for more than a year after the crisis that brought the institution to an end, which was the decision by the government to move agencies like Fish & Wildlife out of the building next door, and the building management’s decision to double the rent.

I don’t know how their team could consider 0% of the rent was a better deal than some negotiated settlement for half of it, and the preservation of thirty or forty jobs in Arlington, but that is the way the cookie crumbles, I suppose. And a lot of things were gong to crumble after that wonderful year of 2011. But we will get to that presently.

– Vic

Helsinki Calling

John-with-an-H strolled into the Willow and took Old Jim’s stool at the Amen Corner. The bar area was ding a brisk business as I organized my notes on several cocktail napkins, and Mac was happily picking at his pomme frites and sipping his happy Hour red.

John-with took the iPod buds out of his ears. “I was hoping to save Jim’s place,” he said.

I turned to face him. “Not going to happen. He is in bumfuck West Virginia this week,” I said, and heard the muffled ring-tones of my Droid phone in my pocket. I fished it out and saw on the screen that it was a private number, so I apologized to Mac and stepped out through the vestibule to take the call.

“Hello?” I said, walking out onto the patio in the darkness.

“This place is awful,” said the muffled voice of my Swedish financial advisor.

“What do you mean? I thought you were in Rotterdam this week.” That had been the place of origin of the last communication I got- the near melt-down of the EuroZone has caused a lot of travel in the business, trying to put together gigantic deals between leviathan banking houses.

“No, Helsinki. This hotel has shag carpets and brown curtains. It is sooo 1970s. Appalling. I have one of the big Italian firms coming in, and we are supposed to take a helicopter to look at a hole in the ground in the Finnish Arctic.”

“What is at the bottom of the hole?” I asked. “Are commodities the way out of this mess?”

“Copper. The site is at Kauhajoki, up by the Artic Circle. The formation is a geologic layered intrusion ten kilometers long and two clicks wide. This could be the future of a key commodity.”

“I heard that copper is having a renaissance,” I said.

“Absolutely. That is why I am bringing the Italians up here. The hybrid powertrains in the smart cars require a lot more copper content. Plugin hybrids are going to increase the demand for electric power from the grid.

“I imagine the demand for renewable energy like solar panels is going to increase demand for copper in the building sector, too.”

“Damn straight. We don’t know what else to hedge on. Things are so crazy here. Anyway, we are taking a helicopter to the mine tomorrow. The only other way is an old access road the Nazis cut back during the war.”

“Be careful,” I said. “Those reindeer can be vicious. And should I be moving to a position strong on commodities?”

“It is the only thing I can think of at the moment. You could go short or long on just about anything these days, since nothing makes sense. But I don’t know what the Italians will think of the shag carpeting and brown curtains.”

“I understand their fashion sense,” I said, wondering if there was a way to leverage the information. “Berlusconi is toast.” I held my wrist up to the light that flooded out of the bar so I could see my watch. Trading would start in Berne on the Swiss exchange in eight hours.

“Thanks for the update,” I said, and the call from Helsinki dropped.

I walked back into the bar where Jon-with-no-H was getting a vodka iced tea from Liz-with-an-S.

“The lovely Bea will be along presently,” he said.

“Cool.” I signaled Elisabeth for more wine and turned to the Admiral. “Sorry about the call, but it was from Helsinki. We were talking about why you retired from the Intelligence Community Staff.”

Mac looked thoughtful. “Yes. It was right when Billie was diagnosed with early onset dementia. It was Alzheimer’s, though we did not call it that when things started.”

“I am curious about how it progressed, Sir. We noticed a couple years ago that my Dad was struggling to hear things. He was 84 or so.”

“I don’t think hearing is what it is,” said Mac. “More likely it was the manifestation of growing cognitive impairment.”

“I believe that. He had about six sets of hearing aids and couldn’t keep them straight. So when did you know that things were starting to go wrong? I am trying to figure out how long this could go on.”

“All cases are different,” he said. “Billie was struck when she was only 59, and her decline lasted 20 years.”

“Yike,” I said. “I got the first bill for Dad in the mail on Monday, and it was $7,200 for the first full month in The Bluffs. That isn’t going to go far on twenty years.”

“Billie went to the nursing home at the ten year point. It was subtle at first. She had been a Registered Nurse when she was younger, but turned to real estate. She was a listing agent and then a broker for 17 years. She was out previewing homes in McLain, an area she knew fairly well and got lost. She drove in circles for a quite a while before she saw something she recognized. It scared her.”

“I imagine. My Mom was still driving last year, and one time she made the trip from suburban Detroit to the Village by the Bay in like eight hours. That is enough time for a full round trip, so God only knows where she had been. Dad was no help, of course.”

“Then the real estate firm installed a new switchboard at the office, and the brokers had a regular Navy-style watch-bill to take phone calls on the weekends. I would go with her to manage the equipment and the calls, since she could not figure it out. That was not like her at all.”

“Yeah, the computer and the internet went away for Mom last year, just around the time my sister moved them out of their house and over to the assisted living facily at Potemkin Village.”

“It was only a couple months more she could work. Then she had to quit. She had been really good at what she did, but couldn’t do it anymore.”

“Mom is in and out of it,” I said. “She seems to be having a better time the last few days with Dad is not sitting on top of her.”

“They have their good days and their worse ones,” said Mac, taking a sip of wine. “My daughter and son-in-law were transferred to Ford Headquarters outside of London and we decided to go visit. Billie was adventurous, and she said that she was not going to go unless we could stay for a while. I said I couldn’t take more than two weeks, and she said that wasn’t enough. So, I decided to retire.”

“Boy, I would like to do that. I would have to hit it big in commodities to afford it, though.”

“As it turned out, we spent six weeks. That would have been 1982. We took the train all over and saw shows and had a chance to catch up with friends we met in the early ‘50s when I was assigned to CINCNELM headquarters on North Audley Street in London. It was a nice visit.”

“I have heard that the Navy walked away from the Headquarters. The dollar-a-year lease that Dwight Eisenhower signed in 1943 became too expensive for today’s force.”

“Pity. It was a great place to be posted. Anyway, the kids wound up being there for nearly four years. They had a nice little place in Warley, outside the Greenbelt. Two years after that first visit- that would have been the fall of 1984- they wanted to take a safari in Kenya, and we offered to come over and babysit the grandkids. We intended to stay on when they got back, right through Christmas.”

“How did that go?”

“Not so well. Billie would ask me every day if it was time to go home yet. That was the only thing that interested her. I changed the tickets to go back the day after the kids got back. They were a little surprised by the development, and they picked up and went back to Tulsa for the holidays. They actually left before we did.”

“That sounds like one of those sudden changes, like when Dad forgot how to shave, and Mom decided she did not want to take showers anymore.”

“Exactly,” said Mac, carefully drawing a French fry out of the basket in front of him. “After that, anyplace we went I would get two questions: ‘Why are we here?’ and ‘can we go home.’ I drove her down to one of her favorite places in the world, the big mall at Potomac Mills. She loved that place. We got there, walked around for a minute and went straight home.”

“I guess the home thing is big. Mom seems to have lost that.”

“When I put Billie in the Home, the nurses were great. I told them that she had been an RN, and they asked her if she wanted to go on rounds with them. She thought she was helping, and I moved some of her things in and my son and I left before she got back to her room.”

“That was at the ten year point?”

“Yes, it is an insidious thing. But I never heard about home from her again.”

“I was wondering if I should take Mom to visit Dad. Is that helpful or does it just get everyone agitated?” I asked.

“Two schools of thought on that,” said Mac firmly. “Some families took their people home. Billie never expressed an interest, and it seemed smarter to just keep her where she was comfortable.”

“She was there ten years?” I asked, crunching the numbers.

“Yep. There comes a point when they forget how to walk.”

“I guess that is what is next for Dad,” I said. “He might as well be in Helsinki.”

“It is a cruel thing,” he said, and finished his glass of wine. “But it is part of the life we live. At least while we do.”

Copyright 2016 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com