AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Can I see her now?” Connie asked sweetly.
The Director nodded. “I’ll have one of the staff show you the way. I believe she is out in the garden. She apparently told one of the other residents that she was planning to steal one of the golf buggies we use to transport our most frail clients down to the duck pond.”
Connie arched her eyebrows, and hid another grin behind her hand. She went back out into the foyer, and the receptionist who had greeted her on arrival led her down a wide passage with numbered doors on either side. At a T-intersection, the nurse turned left and Connie could see a sun-drenched garden area with lawn chairs nestled between the arms of the building.
“She’s over there,” the nurse pointed. Then she called out suddenly, her voice clear in the sleepy silence. “Ruthy! Your daughter is here to see you. Make sure you behave…”
A frail old lady, hunched down on a bench turned her head, the puzzled expression on her face clearing when she saw Connie standing in the shade. She waved to her daughter delightedly, and then flipped the receptionist the bird, thrusting the gnarled middle finger of her hand high into the air.
Ruth Dixon was a frail-looking old lady with withered arthritic hands, and a face lined by the creases of a long life beneath a shock of soft grey hair. She was tiny, the flesh withering on her bones, but her eyes were bright and glittering behind the steel frames of her glasses. She looked up into Connie’s face with an expression of pure joy and lifted her arms. Connie bent over the bench, hugged her mother and kissed her on the cheek, her fingers feeling the feeble frame beneath the long-sleeve dress and the cardigan around the old woman’s stooped shoulders.
“Hello, mom,” Connie smiled warmly. “I hear you’re still causing trouble for the staff. I’ve just been hauled into the Director’s office about your most recent antics.”
Ruth grinned with wicked mischief. Connie sat close beside her mother and the old lady clasped her hand.
“Hello, lovey!” Ruth’s voice was a thin and reedy chirp. She studied Connie’s face closely as if to remember every detail of her daughter. “Don’t mind what they say,” she lowered her voice to a whisper and leaned in conspiratorially. “The screws just want to keep me down.”
Connie nodded and then turned away, amused. An elderly man shuffled across the lawn, supporting himself with a walker. There was a young uniformed woman at his side, holding the man’s elbow.
Connie felt her mother’s fingers squeeze her hand and she turned back. Ruth had a proud, contented smile on her lips.
“Are they treating you well, mom? Do you like being here?”
Ruth nodded. “I’m surrounded by old people,” she lamented seriously, and flung a thin arm in the air to gesture her impatience, “but a couple of the screws are good. They look after me.”
Connie shook her head in mock horror, and tried to admonish the old lady. “Mom, they’re not screws, they’re nurses. This isn’t a prison.” She paused for a thoughtful second. “Would you prefer to live with Jean again?”
Selling one of the paintings she had would make that possible, Connie realized. Her mother could move back to Jean’s home and be with family. The house could be renovated to accommodate her. There might even be enough for regular visits from nursing staff to the home.
“Oh, hell no!” Ruth’s face became wide-eyed and animated with horror. “Lovey, if I hadn’t fallen down those stairs at Jean’s place I probably would have thrown myself down them. She’s my daughter, and I love her… but the woman has absolutely no sense of humor!”
Connie couldn’t help herself. She giggled and shook her head. “Well then stop giving the nurses such a hard time. The Director told me about the young man yesterday … and the poor little cat.”
Ruth gave her a scornful look. “That damned cat,” she hissed. “I’ll kick its ass if I ever catch it.”
They lapsed into a contented silence. The sun was warm, and there was just a whisper of cool breeze through the trees. Connie sighed, felt weary muscles beginning to relax from the long drive back from Maine.
Ruth watched her daughter’s face with a kind of knowing that only a mother could have. She waited until the elderly man and his nurse were out of earshot.
“Are you still on with that Dunstan?” she asked at last.
“Duncan.”
Ruth shrugged like it didn’t matter. “Dunstan, Duncan… whatever you call him, he’s no good for you, lovey.”
Connie turned, her expression curious. “How can you say that, mom?” she asked softly. “You’ve never met him…”
Ruth smiled, but it was a bitter touch at her lips without any trace of humor. “A mother knows,” she said sagely. “A mother always knows. I don’t need to meet the man. I can tell what he is like because how he treats you is reflected in your eyes and your face. It’s all there to see.”
Connie fell silent. She watched a workman on his knees, digging at a garden bed with a small hand-held shovel, grateful for the small moment of distraction.
“It’s over with Duncan,” Connie said at last. She was surprised how easy it was to say the words, how they spilled from between her lips with no regret – nothing but a bitter taste of resentment.
It was over with Duncan, she knew that, and it gave her a little lift. But it wasn’t something she wanted to discuss with her mother. She hadn’t come to share her problems.
They talked for an hour; desultory conversation with no purpose other than the closeness of companionship. Finally Connie got to her feet and glanced up at the afternoon sun. “Mom, I need to go,” she said softly. “I told Jean I would stay with her tonight, and then I’m driving back to New York tomorrow.”
Her mother nodded, understanding, yet unable to hide the shift of sadness behind her eyes. “Of course, lovey,” she patted Connie’s hand. “Try not to fight with your sister. Remember, she doesn’t have a sense of humor.” The old woman winked, then sat back on the bench. It was getting cool.
Connie hesitated in the shadows of the doorway and watched her mother for a long moment, conflicted with a child’s guilt. Then she set her shoulders and strode away down the long passage. She needed to be at Jean’s place before nightfall.
18.
Her sister answered the door on the third knock. Connie stood on the front steps harried and weary. The drive had taken forty minutes through heavy traffic, including a stop at a thrift shop where she bought an old briefcase to carry the paintings. Jean answered the door with a wan smile, glanced down at the briefcase in one of Connie’s hands and the suitcase in the other, but said nothing. She held the door open and Connie stepped inside the old house that was filled with the aromas of cooking and coffee.
The kitchen was bathed in the last of the afternoon’s light, spilling through a window above the sink. Overhead cupboards had been replaced, and the stove was new, Connie noticed, but that was where Jean’s money – or her will – had run out. The curtains across the window were pale and faded, and the kitchen counter was chipped old wood. Jean went to the sink and filled the kettle with water. Connie could hear the thump and knock of old pipes in the walls.
Jean set two enamel mugs on the counter, arranged sugar and a jar of instant coffee near her elbow, then turned back to Connie with a flicker of a smile while she waited for the water to boil.
“How is mom?”
Connie nodded. “She’s good,” she nodded her head sincerely. “Still getting into trouble, but she seems fine.”
Jean made a tired face. She nodded. “The coffee shouldn’t be long,” she said in a brittle show of domesticity. “How was your drive back from Maine?”
“Good.”
The superficial smile stayed fixed on Jean’s lips. She began to say something else, and then seemed suddenly to remember her manners. There was a wooden table in one corner of the room. She waved Connie to a chair with a flutter of her hand.
“Please…”
The table was the kind of piece that interior decorators would call ‘distressed’. There were dark m
arks and scratches in the surface, and ancient notches along the edges. Connie scraped back a chair and sat. She set the suitcase down beside her and laid the briefcase flat on the table.
Her sister reminded Connie of a dried flower, or maybe a black and white photo. Somewhere in her past, the color had been drained from her life, and Connie couldn’t quite recall when. They had never been close – the age gap had prohibited that – and it hadn’t been until recent years that the two sisters had even been in regular touch.
In a way, their mother’s failing health had brought them together, but there was a strain between them – a sense of awkwardness that comes from unfamiliarity. The two women hardly knew each other.
Connie sat in the silence while Jean turned her attention back to making coffee. There was the harsh clatter of a spoon, the hiss of the boiling water, and then just the distant monotonous ticking of a clock… sounding like the prelude to something explosive.
Jean brought the cups to the table and slumped down in a chair with a sigh. She closed her eyes as if drawing on some inner reserve of strength. There was a loosening of her body, a relief. When she opened her eyes again she looked impossibly tired.
