Halfway through Binnie Kirshenbaum’s gutsy, funny, heart-wrenching novel “Counting Backwards,” Addie, an artist, switches media.
Gone are the collages that made her “reasonably successful,” or at least fortunate enough to be represented by a middling gallery and to land the occasional commission from a bossy interior decorator. Suddenly Addie goes 3-D, filling cardboard boxes with dollhouse furniture and scraps of fabric, creating familiar tableaus she then singes or otherwise distresses to a point where their contours are barely recognizable.
But the bones of these dioramas are still visible — and they’re a metaphor for the bittersweetness of this book. Because Leo, Addie’s beloved husband, a research scientist, is slipping away. “He’s there but not there, not Leo,” Kirshenbaum writes, “like how no matter how hard you press a conch shell to your ear, you’re no nearer to the Jersey Shore.”
At the beginning of “Counting Backwards,” Leo has strange visions. He sees Mahatma Gandhi stirring lentils in a pot outside their apartment building. He sees stripes on the moon and a blurry string of paper dolls spanning rooftops across the street. Then his behavior changes, words and phrases slipping his mind. But Leo and Addie are still quintessential middle-aged New Yorkers, connoisseurs of takeout and flea markets, inveterate strollers and sharers of everything except mango chutney (she finds it too sweet).
In the type of gift notebook she never knows what to do with, Addie begins to list Leo’s quirks, which slowly mushroom into oddities: “Put away dirty dishes”; “Bought dog biscuits for cat, then asked why I bought dog biscuits for cat”; “Seems different, but not.”
Leo sees an ophthalmologist, a neurologist and a neuropsychiatrist, becoming more obstinate and unreachable with each appointment. He has a CAT scan, then an M.R.I.
“Why don’t they call an M.R.I. a DOG?” Addie wonders aloud. “Keep to the theme.”
Leo doesn’t have Alzheimer’s or Parkinson’s. He doesn’t have spongiform encephalopathy (i.e., mad cow disease). Eventually, a compassionate consultant recommended by a volunteer at a suicide prevention hotline informs Addie that Leo has Lewy body dementia, also known as Lewy body disease. “It’s a matter of semantics,” the consultant tells her. The prognosis is bleak. The “steep drop” will become only more precipitous.
Perhaps you’re wondering about the humor promised in the first line of this review. It’s in Addie’s irreverent asides; in the labyrinth of facilities she finds herself borne into alongside Leo; in the cocktail of gratitude and jealousy she feels for the caregiver who steps in when her clever husband has all but exited the stage. But not quite, of course — and therein lies the rub, rough as sandpaper on a scab.
“I miss you already,” Addie thinks.
Kirshenbaum, who’s known for unpredictable novels like “Rabbits for Food” (2019) and “An Almost Perfect Moment” (2004), pulls off a bold second-person approach to her chronicle of a death in slow motion.
“‘Not perfect,’ you say, ‘but, yes, he was a good man. A very good man.’ Was. Past tense.”
Is it destabilizing to find yourself in the shoes of a reluctant protector who has to figure out a way to pay for round-the-clock nursing from the ice floe of long-term illness? Yes, but that’s the point. Somehow Kirshenbaum compels you to delve deeper, frenetically, into her complicated but bracing story, accompanied all the while by illustrations of phantom clock hands reminding you of the time.
“Counting Backwards” is to illness narratives what yellow is to the rainbow. It mixes well with others, but it’s going to do its own thing — brighten up a room, get on your nerves, define the beginning of a new day or the end of an old one. Its beauty is in the eye of the beholder. This one couldn’t look away, and didn’t want to.
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