June Aman no longer laughs when her husband teases her, which he does fairly often. When she complains about how long it takes Dave to fix something, he says she never told him she was in a hurry. When she says he has no one else to pick on, he responds, “You poor thing.” Sometimes, he speaks about her beauty in the past tense and doesn’t correct it when she needles him about it.
She stiffens when the man she has been married to for the past 56 years pokes at her. His stings hurt June, but they also worry her, because she’s not sure when he’s kidding or when he’s covering up his inability to contribute anything else to the conversation. Three years ago, Dave was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease. And when he jokingly says of the doctors who made the diagnosis, “What do they know?” the knot inside June tightens.
