Then she asked what you were planning for Sandra’s birthday. Sandra’s birthday, of course, is something you had forgotten about, had remembered again a few days ago, and ultimately had landed on the side of forgetting. You’re not sure whether Eva would have decided that was an Alzheimer’s thing, or a Jerry thing, but it’s a moot point because you have been thinking about it, but at that stage you hadn’t decided on either the perfect gift, or the how to spend the day.

“How about a surprise party?” Eva suggested.

You agreed it was a fantastic idea, but what you didn’t say was she should have arranged a surprise party without your knowledge. You see one of two things happening—either forgetting about the party, or forgetting that it’s meant to be a secret. When Eva drove you back home, she handed you a folder from the backseat with a dozen songs in it. You sat out on the deck in the sun reading the lyrics, putting them to the music in your head, so excited for her, for her future, for the people who will one day get to hear them.

Your own writing, by the way, is going well. You sent the revised edition of The Man Goes Burning to your editor this morning. It was, it turned out, a lot of work. The book is about a firefighter who is also an arsonist who falls in love with a fellow firefighter, and burns down buildings just so he can work with her, with the ultimate goal of being able to save her life. You ended up introducing a new character, which has really helped—a guy by the name of Nicholas, and Nicholas brings a whole new element to the story, some heart and depth that was lacking before. Nicholas is a punk teenager accused of an armed robbery, and while in a holding cell at the police station he is severely beaten and raped and almost dies, and of course Nicholas never committed the robbery at all. He uses what little money he is given in compensation to put himself through law school—so all of that is in the past, and now your main character, the arsonist, uses a lawyer when he becomes a suspect after the woman he loves disappears. Nicholas is the kind of lawyer willing to go to the end of the world for a client he truly believes in.

The book isn’t the only thing going well. The wedding preparations are racing along, all the pieces of the big day falling into place. It’s wedding this and wedding that, Let’s talk about flowers, Let’s talk about place settings, Do you like the dress, Do you like the cake, You’re the writer, Jerry, so tell us what font do you think looks best on these dinner menus? That one? Are you sure? How sure?

Thank God you’ve had all this work to do because really you’ve just been able to stay out of the way, which is probably the best gift you can give your family. The wedding is less than five weeks away and you can’t wait until it’s in the rearview mirror. In five weeks you’ll have shaken off the dementia too, and maybe you can get a good chunk of book fourteen written before going on tour with book thirteen. You’re enough of a realist to know that even though you’re dodging the dementia bullet now, that doesn’t mean it still hasn’t got your name on it. It could be twenty years away, or it could be ten. You need to keep writing for you, for your fans, for your family.

Getting caught up in the rewrite has been a lot of work as well as a lot of fun, but it has kept you away from this journal. In saying that, there is definitely less of a need to keep writing here—why would anybody clearly not mad need to keep a Madness Journal? You barely read from it anymore anyway.

Before signing off for the day, here’s a little something from a few mornings ago, a weird incident that’s hardly worth mentioning, but here goes . . .

Sandra was at work, and your neighbor, Mrs. Smith, comes over. She comes over and she is pissed off. Somebody tore all of her flowers up, and Mrs. Smith wants to know if you know anything about it. You don’t know—of course you don’t—but then she says one of the neighbors said they saw you doing it—or at least somebody who looked like you. You tell her no, it wasn’t you, you’re a forty-nine-year-old crime writer who has been inside writing crime all week and who, you assure her, has far better things to do than wipe out rows and rows of her roses.

I just find it strange that Mrs. Blatch says she was sure it was you, and that she thought you were doing some gardening.

Now, Mrs. Blatch, to put things into perspective, Future Jerry, is of an age that can only be prefaced by a seven again if she reaches seven hundred. She wears glasses so heavy her eventual cause of death will be from a broken neck.

Then Mrs. Blatch is wrong, which can’t be much of a surprise, can it? She is almost two hundred years old.

Be that as it may, Jerry, she is sure it was you and, well, there’s no real delicate way of putting this, but after our conversation the other day, it seems like you’re paying me back.

What conversation?

I asked you to tidy up your yard. Your garden is a disgrace.

I’m working on it, and it wasn’t me that dug up your roses.

How can you be so sure it wasn’t? A man in your condition—really, how can you be so sure?

If you’re going to accuse me of having a grudge against your garden, then next time try to have a witness who wasn’t around when fire was invented.

You wished her good day—you actually used those very words, straight out of a Victorian drama, then closed the door on her.

Good news—Nicholas is going to save your manuscript. You’re sure of it, and the book will be out next year. Good news—Replacement Jerry is no longer knocking on the door. You’re beating this thing.

Bad news—last night you took a leak in one of the bedrooms. You were halfway through when you suddenly realized you were pissing in the corner of the guest bedroom rather than the bathroom. You did manage to stop midflow (good news), and you did manage to clean it up without Sandra knowing (also good news).

So this is it, Future Jerry. No real time to stay in touch now and not much point either. You’re going to dedicate your time to the wedding and to the next book. You actually have an idea for a new novel—about a crime writer who has dementia. Not quite based on you, because this guy actually has the Big A. Write what you know, remember? And fake the rest.

Jerry doesn’t get to play with the sirens on the way. He doesn’t get to do anything except sit in the backseat and stare out the side window. He is starting to feel a little like his old self. Could be the motion of the car is stirring up the brain chemistry, stirring up the memories like silt from the bottom of a river. Could be the smell of fast food and coffee that has soaked into the pores of the upholstery, taking him back to times overseas where he’s eaten in takeaway joints while pressed for time. It could be the change of environment, it could be the fresh air he got between the nursing home and the car. There are bits and pieces of his past floating to the surface. He remembers his dad drowning in the pool, he remembers meeting Sandra at university, he remembers taking his family to cities so big they made Christchurch look like a drop in a bucket. Of course there are things he can’t remember. He has no idea what he ate for breakfast. He can’t remember what he did yesterday, whether he watched TV or walked in the garden. He can’t remember the last time he looked at a newspaper, the last time he held his wife, the last time he made a phone call or typed an email. The memories shift, they stir, some of them settle, some of them disappear.