‘There but Not There’: A Husband’s Dementia Leaves His Wife Reeling

COUNTING BACKWARDS, by Binnie Kirshenbaum

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.