She sniffed loudly and lifted her chin. “It’s the new millennium, Grant. The woman doesn’t have to do all the—”
He tipped his head and grimaced at her ridiculousness. “I’m not going to argue about that again,” he said. “I work full-time, go to school full-time, and if anything gets done around here, it’s because I—” He caught himself. There he was, doing just what he said he wouldn’t do. “Stephanie, you want a baby, right? If you had a baby, you think you could even find it in this mess?”
“That was just mean.”
“Steph, last night put the cap on it, so to speak. When I came home to find you hysterical because that asshole, Freddy, had been pestering you, scaring you, I realized our problems are out of control. Bigger than we are. You’re not happy. You’re worse than not happy, you’re miserable. You think if I change my work schedule, you’ll be happy. Or if I decide not to be a cop, like your dad, you’ll be happy. Or maybe if I don’t complain that I have to dig around in a mound of dirty dishes to find a cup to wash every morning, you’ll be happy. All problems considered, you still think we should go ahead and—”
He stopped talking as her eyes welled up and one large pitiful tear spilled over and rolled down her cheek. He wiped it with the knuckle of his index finger.
“I work hard, Steph, and I plan to keep working hard. I don’t just want to be a cop, I want to be the chief of police. Maybe the commissioner. I’ve wanted that since I was about four. Nothing’s going to change that.
“I’m going to leave, Steph, and give you your life back. Give you a chance to find out what it takes to make you happy. Because, baby, happy people just don’t live like this. And when I do get married and have a family, it’s gotta be with someone who is on my team, who is proud of what I’m doing, and who I can’t wait to get home to. And to someone whose team I can get on. I just can’t get on this team. It’s a goddamn wreck. You’d expect this from a teenager,” he said, throwing his arm wide to indicate the unkempt bedroom. “Not a grown woman.”
“Leave?” she choked. “You’d do that to me?”
“Yeah, I’m afraid I’m going to do that to you. Oh, I’ll pay the rent and leave the furnishings that are mine. At least for a while. But my advice? I think you should go move in with your dad. Charlene would never put up with this mess, and your dad will make you feel safe.”
“With Freddy stalking me and Peaches in the hospital, you’d—”
“I’m going now, before this gets any worse. Every week I stay we fight more and this place makes me angrier. It’s gone too far. I don’t want a life like this. Not with every day being miserable. Not with complications like other guys.”
“But I would never—”
“Steph, I don’t have any more compromises in me. Maybe with me gone, you’ll figure out what you really want.”
“So you’re going to walk out on me, leave me to handle this lunatic who’s putting roses on my—”
“Not to worry, baby. Fast Freddy isn’t going to bother you again. I guarantee it. Meantime, think about moving in with Jake. He’ll spoil you, make you feel like a little girl. You’d like that.” He walked to the bedroom door. “Or you could live on your own, get your life under control. And maybe grow up.”
“Grant, please don’t do this to me,” she said, her voice trembling. “Please don’t go.”
He left the room. At the apartment’s front door sat two stuffed duffel bags. He was leaving behind his TV, furniture, dishes and linens. He didn’t think he’d ever get that stuff back, but it didn’t matter. If she needed it to get by, she could have it. He looked over his shoulder and saw her standing in the bedroom door frame, comforter wrapped around her, tears streaking her face.
“If you need me, I’ll be at my folks’.”
“I hate you,” she said in a mean whisper.
It made him stiffen in hurt, even though he knew she didn’t mean it. She loved him, but she only loved him best when she got her way. Just the same, he said, “I know. That’s why I’m going.”
Ten
Lois was fatigued and her throat hurt from the respirator. This caused her to stoop just slightly when she left the hospital. She also shuffled a bit rather than marched. The woman who had spent years saying “Stand up straight” and “Pick up your feet” was painfully aware that she could do neither. “A little bit of tranquilizer goes a long damn way,” she muttered on her way to Charlene’s car.
“What, Mother?”
“Nothing,” she said. “Let’s get out of here. I want to get home and call my lawyer. I’m going to sue the bastards.”
“Mother, I’m a lawyer. And just who are you going to sue?”
She stopped midstride and glared at her daughter. “I’m going to sue whoever put these marks on my biceps when they were trying to tie me down to a gurney, and I’m completely aware of your profession. I doubt you’ll be objective enough to help me.”
She resumed shuffling toward the car and Charlene muttered, “I’m thinking of a lawsuit myself. I’d like to go after whoever gave you the nasty pill.”
“When was the last time you found yourself losing your marbles in public, Charlene Louise? Just see if it doesn’t make you the slightest bit cranky.”
Charlene’s purse started ringing and she actually welcomed the interruption, especially considering that her middle name was not Louise. Pam was calling; she had been checking in almost hourly with regular updates on how she was rerouting Charlene’s most critical cases. “Have we heard anything from Maxie Preston?”
“Nothing yet,” Pam said.
“Hmm…well, do me a favor. Call her and tell her my client was shot at early last evening.”
“Dear God.”
“She’s okay, but understandably, we have her under wraps. And no, they didn’t pick up Jersynski. He had an alibi and no apparent weapon. This whole thing has me pretty baffled.”
“I’ll call her,” Pam said. “Then there are the Samuelsons,” she went on. “They don’t want to wait for the judge to assign another arbitrator. They want you and only you.”
“Ugh! Just when I thought I had a way out.”
“They’re at your complete disposal. If you find you have a few free hours, you have only to let them know.”
“I thought it would feel better to be so loved,” she groused. “Tell them I’m embroiled in a family emergency, and if they want me they’ll have to be very patient. And tell them if they’re not patient—Oh hell, you know what to tell them. Just be sure they know they’re still on very thin ice with me.”
“Will do.”
“Scare them.”
“My pleasure. Give my love to Peaches.”
“That might be harder than you think. It’s a little prickly around here.”
Pam laughed. “Where there’s a will,” she said.
“There’s usually a thorn or two….”
She was putting the phone back into her shoulder bag as they arrived at the car. She reached for the passenger-door handle and her mother slapped her hand. “I’m losing my mind, not my ability to open a goddamn door!”
“Mother, if you don’t stop swearing at me, I’m going to start shopping for a home.”
“Go ahead, do what you want. I don’t care. If it makes me feel goddamn better to swear, I’ll swear! I heard you say I was prickly. Let me prickle!”
“Well, you may be losing your marbles, but certainly not your hearing.” With a sigh of resignation, Charlene walked to her side of the car and got in. “I’m going to take you to my house, Mother, where we’ll have a bite to eat and—”
“Take me to my house!”
“Mother, your house is badly—”
“Take me to my house or I’ll take a cab while I can still remember the goddamn address!”
Charlene, gripping the steering wheel, glared at her mother. Her mother glared back, pursed lips and all, like a video portrait of her childhood. Charlene finally said, “You’re not going to make anything about this easy, are you?”
“Let’s just remember which one of us is impaired, shall we? Then I suppose we’ll remember which one of us has it easy.”
Charlene bit her tongue and drove—to her mother’s house.
This is what it can be like for some people in old age, she reminded herself. That was one of the things she’d been thinking all morning, while she tangled with Jake, gave instructions to Pam on how to manage the office in her absence, even as she drove to her mother’s house to assess the damage. She thought about how precarious life can be for someone like Lois…or for someone like herself at the age of seventy-eight. But the numbers didn’t matter; it wasn’t really important when it happened, whether at sixty or ninety or a hundred and ten, the reality was that at some point she was going to be old and probably impaired physically or mentally—or both. Not very many people were lucky enough to live full, conscious, robust lives and then one day nod off and not resurface. Oh, that’s what everyone hoped for, that they’d just buy the big one at about the same time life became more of a struggle than a joy, but before it got too painful or difficult. But it didn’t usually happen that way.
Yet another reason she needed to marry Dennis. She didn’t trust Jake to get home to dinner on time, much less be a conscientious partner in old age.
When they pulled up to Lois’s house, the garage door was open. “Who could be in there?” Charlene asked aloud.
“Probably that neighbor…what’s his name.”
Curiosity got the best of her and she went ahead into the house, leaving her mother to follow. She heard whistling and found him scooping up charred debris in the kitchen. He wore rubber boots and wielded a wide-based janitorial broom. A big trash can stood in the middle of the room and several filled and tied-off garbage bags stood around. “Hello!” he said cheerfully.
“Mr. Conklin?” Charlene questioned.
“Dear God!” Lois gasped, looking at damage that was breathtakingly bad.
“You just keep turning up everywhere,” Charlene said, pleasantly surprised to see him again so soon. “How’d you get in?”
“The door was left unlocked, Charlene,” he replied. “Lois, it looks a lot worse than it really is. There’s serious redecorating to be done, and you’ll need new appliances, but there isn’t any structural damage at all, and I think the wiring is mostly fine. I know a man who’s a cheap but good electrician just in case.”
“My God, what a disaster!” she said. She let her purse drop to the floor, pushed back the sleeves of her sweater and took a giant step into the blackened kitchen.
“Watch your tracks,” he said. “Even though the firemen tracked soot all over the house, I think the carpet is going to make it after a good shampoo.”
“It better make it. I just put it in a couple of years ago.”
It was a dozen years, Charlene thought. At least.
“There’s just me in this house. I hardly put my foot on the floor,” she added.
Which was true enough. Just Lois, semiretired thirteen years ago, completely retired the last eight. About a hundred and twenty pounds on a little five-foot-two-inch frame. Not real hard on the carpet, but hell on wheels in the library.
“I’ve got my work cut out for me,” she said.
“Mom, we’re going to get some help with this,” Charlene said.
“We?”
“Yes, we. This isn’t a simple clean-up. It’s going to take some reconstruction, and your insurance company will pay for most of it.”
“I’m used to doing most of my own repairs,” she said, but a little less snappishly than before.
“Charlene’s right, Lois. I said it wasn’t as bad as it looks, but it’s not as though we can mop up here and call it a day.”
“We?” they both asked him.
He smiled. They were like two peas in a pod. Tough, independent, bossy women who liked calling the shots.
“I thought maybe you’d like to be nearby while all the work is being done, so you can supervise, oversee, boss around the subcontractors, so I tidied up the guest room at my house. It would put you close to the work. I’m sure whoever you hire will need to consult with you on a daily, if not hourly, basis.” Then he smiled.
“Good idea, Albert,” Lois said, while Charlene smirked and crossed her arms over her chest. Sneaky devil, she thought. Appealing to her mother’s stubborn and controlling nature.
“Mother, I’d much rather you stay at my house. I’ll bring you over here however often you—”
“Nonsense, I wouldn’t be comfortable in your house. I’ve heard too many stories about the ruined relationships when old women move in with their daughters and there’s a power struggle for who’s in charge.”
Charlene smiled patiently. “Oh, Mother, but you’re not like that—”
“I know I’m not. You are!” Charlene’s mouth dropped open as her arms fell to her sides. “Now, Albert, let’s see this guest room of yours….”
“Certainly, Lois. Come along.”
He grasped her elbow and was careful to lead her out of the kitchen by way of all the plastic garbage bags he’d spread across the carpet to the door. And if Charlene wasn’t mistaken, he threw a slightly amused yet superior look over his shoulder.
Charlene stood in Jasper’s hall while her mother inspected the guest room and bath, as discriminating as any tourist visiting a five-star hotel. The accommodations were adequate, not unlike the room Charlene had grown up in. These little suburban homes were clones of each other. Most were pleasant three-bedroom houses with eat-in kitchens and two-car garages sitting on good-size lots with large California trees. They weren’t new, but sturdily built forty-year-old houses wearing many coats of paint, havens on quiet streets, with neighbors who had known each other for years.
It was probably best, she relented, to leave her mother in the neighborhood. As forgetful as she was becoming, moving her to Charlene’s house might only aggravate the situation.
“Well, what do you think?” Lois asked Charlene.
“I think it’s very generous of Mr. Conklin.”
“Mr. Who? Oh, you mean him? Yes, I suppose it is.”
“Lois, even though the fire was in the kitchen, your clothes are going to reek of smoke. I would have started some laundry for you, but I didn’t want to meddle.”
“Bull feathers, you meddle at will,” she said.
“Well…” He laughed. “True enough. I held myself back. Why don’t you go next door, gather a laundry basket of clothes to wash over here, and I’ll put on some coffee. How does that sound?”
“Very practical. I’ll get right to it.”
As she toddled off, Charlene was struck again by how much she had aged in the last few days. “Do you think it’s a good idea to send her on a mission like that? Alone?”
“If she doesn’t come right back, I’ll go over. But let’s get that coffee going, Charlene, and talk. Let me give you some peace of mind, if I can.”
“I won’t turn down that offer,” she said, following him into the kitchen. “I could use more of the latter than the former.”
“It’s not that complicated, Charlene. In fact, I’m surprised by how simple this is.”
It turned out that, even though Jasper had lived next door with his handicapped wife for twenty-five years, Charlene had been too busy building her career and raising her daughter to notice the details of the Conklins’ lives. In fact, Jasper not only worked full-time but did almost everything for his wife. She wasn’t able to wash herself after the accident, and feeding herself was an enormous challenge that ended in a feeding tube.
“In all the time I spent resenting the labors of my marriage, it never occurred to me until she was gone that I had a real talent for caring for her. I had felt useful and needed. Much of the work I actually enjoyed. While it was hard, it was also helpful. When she was gone, my life became so desolate and empty.” He laughed in embarrassment. “I spent so many years thinking my life was desolate and empty because of her and her many needs, when in fact
it was just the opposite. Now, of course, I am the guilty party.”
“Guilty?” Charlene asked.
“I hid us from the neighborhood, from my coworkers. I should have brought her out and the world in. The visiting nurses tried for years to encourage us to be more social, but I refused. My poor wife. She must have been so lonely.”
“Poor Jasper,” Charlene said. “You were lonely.”
His eyes showed his gratitude for that understanding. “Ah! So, here I am, alone and retired. And if there’s one thing I have a sure talent for, it’s taking care of someone with medical problems. You think your mother’s quite a challenge right now, with this new wrinkle in her health. Well, let me assure you, this is barely anything at all. And she seems quite comfortable with me.”
“You’re proposing to take this on? As some way of repenting for being resentful of your wife’s ill health?”
“Don’t be silly, there’s no possible way to make amends for that now. Don’t you understand? It turns out this is what I do.”
The front door squeaked open and Lois came into the kitchen with a laundry basket in which she had a little more than laundry. In addition to clothes that smelled of soot and ash, she had a houseplant, a calendar, a bottle of perfume, a shoe, a winter coat and a collection of plastic hangers. Also, she seemed to be wearing at least four sweaters, one over the other. Charlene squinted in confusion. Pink, red, blue, white.
“You have quite a collection there,” Jasper said, as if this were completely normal. “A plant for your room, some essentials, some laundry. Let’s see if we can throw these sweaters in the wash or if they have to be sent to the dry cleaners.”
He took her by the elbow and escorted her down the hall toward her room and the washer and dryer. Momentarily he was back.
“I don’t want to mislead you, Charlene. I’m not licensed as a caretaker, but I’m thinking of looking into that. I’m not a rich man by any means—I have only the post office pension, and my social security hasn’t even kicked in. So, I’ll be happy to look after Lois for a while, to see how it goes, but I’m afraid she’ll have to pay me rent. Something to cover the food and utilities. Maybe a couple hundred a month. And bear in mind, if this experiment goes in the direction I hope, I might consider taking in a couple of elders. It just depends.”