Dying Wishes (2 page)

“Why so glum,
Gorgeous
?”

I looked up,
startled, to find a dapper, aging elf standing before me. With his bow tie,
thick lenses and unlit cigar, he bore a marked resemblance to George Burns in
his later years.

“Say goodnight,
Gracie,” he prompted, reading my mind.

“Goodnight, Gracie,”
I responded obediently. “I have a cat named Gracie Allen, actually. She’s
another ditsy blonde. You get that a lot, huh?”

He tapped his cigar
and leaned in conspiratorially. “It’s always more fun to beat ‘
em
to the punch line,
ummm
,
Kate,” he said after reading my name tag.
“Bert Rosenthal
here.
Mind if I sit for a minute?” He dropped into my visitor’s chair
with relief. “My doctor says these daily constitutionals he makes me take are
good for me. Personally, I think they’re going to do me in.”

I laughed out loud.
“I feel exactly the same way. Whenever I get the urge to exercise …”

“ … I lie down
until it passes,” he finished the old joke for me. “Well, that’s better. At
least I got you to laugh.
So why the long face, Katie?”

The friendly little
man somehow had cut through my natural reserve, or maybe I just needed to vent
to someone. For whatever reason, I warmed to him immediately. “Just
contemplating my future, I guess. My partners and I take turns staffing the
Vista View sales desk, but today I feel as if I’m really seeing the place for
the first time.” I told him a little about Mack Realty and Margo and
Strutter
and our contract as sales reps.

“The
stunning blonde and the Jamaican beauty with the sea-green eyes.
Believe me, I’ve
noticed them often. You’re more the girl next door type. So you’re stuck with
us all month?”

“That’s fine,” I
assured him. “It’s very pleasant here, and compared to our office, it’s an
oasis of calm, but for some reason lately, sitting here day after day makes me
very aware of the passage of time.”

He chuckled in
understanding. “Tick tock, eh? Yeah, this place will do that to you. Nothing
but old crocks as far as the eye can see. But a sweet young thing like you is
decades away from life here in the elder ghetto.” He twinkled at me
lasciviously. “What are you, forty-five?”

I smiled my
gratitude. “If you’re running for office, Bert, you’ve got my vote. The truth
is
,
I’ll turn fifty at the end of this month. My
fortieth birthday didn’t bother me at all, but this one is getting me down. I’m
sure that sounds ridiculous to you.” I felt myself color. The man had to be as
old as the
Henstock
sisters, and here I was whining.

“
Ahhh
, fifty.”
He leaned back in his chair and closed his
eyes. “A very good year, as I remember.” He cackled again and grinned at me.
“You’ve got to trust me on this, Katie. A fifty-year-old woman is just getting
good. Take it from one who knows.” He creaked to his feet and tipped an imaginary
hat.
“Anyway, nice to make your acquaintance.
Let’s do
this again sometime.” He selected a business card from the stack on my desk and
slipped it into his pocket.
“For my little black book.”
He headed for the dining room, where a chorus of female voices welcomed him.
Apparently, he was a popular fellow.

I found myself
smiling. Bert Rosenthal had made me feel very much better.

~

At noon on the dot
Ginny appeared to accompany me to the communal dining room. She had been the
business manager at Vista View since its opening and had hired most of the
employees, so the staff badge she flashed to the hostess was superfluous. “I
can’t insist that everyone else follow the rules if I don’t do it myself,” she
shrugged. “What looks good today, Sandy?”

The trim blonde
held one hand up to her mouth and whispered, “I thought you and your guest might
like the apple tart. It was made fresh this morning with local fruit, and it’s
still warm. I had Pete put two servings aside for you just in case we had an
early run.”

“Yum,
yum.
Thanks, Sandy.”

I followed Ginny to
a corner table in the section reserved for staff during mealtimes. We draped
our sweaters over the backs of two chairs to hold the spots before joining the
cafeteria line at the serving counters. The entrées all looked delicious, but
mindful of our waistlines and the luscious desserts waiting for us, we each
chose a veggie plate with cottage cheese. Ginny had a pleasant word for each
staff member in turn but still managed to get us through the line and seated in
record time without appearing to hurry.

“How’s business?”
she demanded as soon as we were settled. “Are we making any money this month?”

I laughed. “I’m
doing fine, thanks, and isn’t this lovely weather we’re having? Margo sends her
love and says she’ll see you next month as usual.”

Ginny made a face.
“Okay, okay, amenities first, then business.
How’s
Strutter
and that delicious
baby girl of hers? Her son has grown half a foot in the past year.” She paused.
“So did we make any money?”

“Oh,
for heaven’s sake.
Things are a little slow right now, but they always are in October. We’re right
on track with rentals, and a nice young man signed a sales contract this
morning for Mrs.
Roncaro’s
old Phase One unit in
Building Seven. Her death was quite a surprise, wasn’t it?
 
She always seemed so fit, even flirty, to
me.”

Ginny munched on a
carrot stick. “Yes, sometimes it happens that way, especially lately. It seems
as though the ones you’d never suspect had any serious health problems …” She
looked as if she had more to say on the subject but stopped herself. “Anyway, I
sure hope this fellow’s folks are happy about it. It’s gotten so I hold my
breath every time new residents move in. Even though they sign the paperwork, I
get the feeling they would really rather stay in their homes and are just
moving in here for the sake of their kids.”

“I know what you
mean. Vista View is a terrific facility, even though the redundant name sets my
teeth on edge. Most of the buyers have lived in this part of Connecticut their
whole lives, Wethersfield and Cromwell and Rocky Hill, so at least they don’t
have to move to an unfamiliar area. Still, transitions are hard. Leaving your
house has got to be one of the toughest.” I forked a cucumber slice into my
mouth and eyed my apple tart lustfully.

Ginny looked
thoughtful as she pushed some tomato wedges around her plate. “It sure will be
for me. I’ve lived in my house on Ridge Road for nearly forty years, raised my
boys and nursed my dad through his final illness there.”

“What do you mean,
it sure will be? Are you planning on making your place of employment your place
of residence?” I teased her.

The smile she
produced didn’t quite reach her eyes.
“Not exactly.
Roger and I are thinking seriously about moving to North Carolina to be near
Denny and the grandkids.
Rog
says the winters here
are getting to his arthritis, and I never planned on being a long-distance
grandmother. It doesn’t look as if Denny and his wife plan to move back here,
which is what we were hoping, so the only other option is for us to move down
there.”
 

For the first time
I noticed the gray streaked liberally through Ginny’s short brown curls and the
laugh lines that creased the freckled skin around her eyes.

“I never thought of
that,” I admitted. “Denny has lived down south for several years now, hasn’t
he? And Greg is where?”

“Teaching
English as a second language in one godforsaken third world country after
another.”
Ginny’s younger son was finishing up his second stint with the Peace Corps.
“It’s better than spending years carrying a rifle somewhere in the Middle East,
I guess. I just miss him, is
all.
Rog
and I both miss him like crazy.”

I put down my fork.
“Wow. I can’t imagine this place without you, Gin.” I looked around at the
groups of contented residents enjoying their nutritious lunches and each
other’s company. A small vase of fresh flowers brightened every table. Staff
members moved efficiently about their duties. Even the tall windows that made
the room so light and airy gleamed with recent attention. It was all Ginny’s
doing, I knew. “Have you really decided to go?” I picked up my fork and poked
at my cottage cheese.

“Just
about.
Rog
is tired of all the traveling his job demands.
He’s been offered an early retirement package we’d be crazy to turn down in
this economy, and as much as I love this place, I’m a whole lot wearier at the
end of the day than I used to be. I hate to think about it, but what do you
think our chances would be of getting a decent price for the house?”

I swallowed my
dismay and tried to think professionally about her situation. “Well, the market
has been fairly stable now for a couple of years, and property values are
holding steady after bottoming out a while back. You are
Rog
are among the lucky ones because you’ve owned your house for so long. Whatever
you wind up getting for it has got to
net
you a
handsome profit over what you paid for it in the 1960s. The mortgage is long
gone, right?”

Ginny sighed. “I
wish. The good news is, by refinancing a couple of times, we were able to send
Denny and Greg to college and keep the student loans to a minimum. The bad news
is
,
the refinancing fees and so on, along with the
equity we took out of the house, mean we still owe the bank a considerable sum.
We’re not underwater on the loan, by any means, but it’s not where we had
planned to be at our age.”

“I hear that from a
lot of our customers these days. Honestly, Ginny, I don’t know how to advise
you.
Strutter
and Margo are the realtors. I’m
basically the office manager. Talk to one of them. They can give you the real
skinny.”

“I’ll do that.
Speaking of skinny …” She pulled her apple tart in front of her. “I was never
going to lose that last ten pounds anyway.” She dug in and rolled her eyes in
ecstasy. I abandoned my veggie plate and happily did the same.

~

“Oh, great,” I said
to Margo. “Now the AARP is after me to join.” I threw the offending junk mail
on the kitchen table and opened the refrigerator door.
“White
wine or Diet Coke?”

Rhett Butler,
Margo’s chocolate Labrador retriever and her constant companion, sniffed at the
cats’ dishes curiously, then flopped on the kitchen floor. Gracie, wandering
downstairs to say hello, froze in the doorway leading to the hall. Rhett got up
and went over to be friendly, which never worked, and Gracie fled back to the
sanctuary of Armando’s bedroom.

Margo wrinkled her
perfect nose and padded over in her stocking feet to peer over my shoulder.
Manolos
were a must for the work day, but bare feet were
more her style among friends, the better to display her impeccable pedicure.
“Coke, please. Anything’s better than that awful stuff in the box you keep in
here.”

I pulled out two
cans and shut the door. “It’s just for cooking,” I protested.

“Uh
huh.
Don’t you know you shouldn’t cook with a wine you wouldn’t want to drink by the
glass? It’s the gospel
accordin
’ to Ina
Garten
. Let’s take these out on the deck. It’s such a
lovely
evenin
’, we shouldn’t waste it.”

On the deck that
overlooked tall trees and a brook that ran between The Birches and a
neighboring street, we arranged two Adirondack chairs and put our feet up
companionably on a small table set between them. At the foot of the shallow,
sloping lawn, a brown rabbit spotted Rhett and turned to stone in its tracks.

“That statue
imitation won’t fool the coyotes,” I admonished him, “but at least you won’t
have to get old.”

Margo
snorted,
an inelegant habit of hers when something amused
her. “My, my, we are in a mood about the birthday, aren’t we? Just what is it
that has your tail in a knot, Sugar?”

I smiled at my
friend. For all of her southern belle fluttering, Margo is one of the most
sensible people I know. “Nothing that every woman about to turn fifty hasn’t
felt before me, I’m sure. Laugh lines.
The beginnings of a
crepe-y neck.
Thickening waist.
And hot
flashes. Oh, yes, they’re starting already. All things considered, I can tell
it’s not going to be pretty. You, of course, seem to be immune to the ravages
of time.”

Margo’s sympathetic
chuckle didn’t totally conceal a small smile of satisfaction as she smoothed
her linen sheath over her slim thighs. “I think both of us have a few good
years left, thanks to all the exercise we get
runnin
’
around with clients and good skin care products. But those hot flashes, whew!
I’m right with you on that one. I don’t think I’ve had a decent night’s sleep
in three years.”