Regarding Anna (24 page)

Less than an hour after they removed her body, Minnie’s phone rang.

“Okay, lady, you win. If I tell you what you want to know, will you get off my back?”

It took me several seconds to catch on to what the caller was saying. Whoever it was obviously thought I was Minnie. I went along with it.

“Mm-hm,” I said to him.

“It was Elmer who masterminded the plot to rough up the Irish guy and steal the sweepstakes money. Then the old bloke died before we could carry it out. I ended up with pocket change compared to what that guy won. And Elmer got zip.” He paused. “You still there?”

“Mm-hm.” It could only be Henry Sikes.

“Who is this?” he asked.

“Minnie.”

“And loverboy across the hall from me, he had something to do with it. That’s all I know. Now leave me the hell alone.”

* * *

The events of the days following Minnie’s death were a blur. She had died without a will—or so it seemed—and she had no living relatives. The police had told me that in cases like this, probate court assigned an administrator to handle distribution of the estate. When I contacted the clerk of the Circuit Court, I was told anyone could file a request to be an administrator, so I filed one.

In the meantime, I arranged for her burial. I found no paperwork among her things to indicate where her husband and daughter had been buried or if she had a plot of her own somewhere, so I bought one for her in Mount Olive Cemetery. Tymon offered to pay for half of it. He actually paid for all of it because I had to borrow my half from him.

I picked out a pale blue dress from her closet—she had liked blue. In the pocket I put the photograph of her with her family that was on her nightstand. I thought she might like it with her in her eternal resting place, since it appeared that was the last thing she saw before she went to bed each night.

Tymon and I were the only people present for the brief service in the cemetery’s outdoor chapel. It didn’t surprise us that no one else was present even though I had put a notice in both the
Tribune
and local
Northwest Side Press
—Minnie had managed to alienate her neighbors and just about everyone else with whom she had come into contact with her gruff demeanor. Unfortunately, they never knew what a kind heart was beneath it all.

The pastor offered a generic eulogy that he probably gave at all funerals for the dearly departed he didn’t personally know and then ended it with a Helen Keller quote. “That we once enjoyed and deeply loved we can never lose, for all that we love deeply becomes part of us.” That was exactly how I felt about Minnie. She had come into my life when I needed her most, and I knew she would stay in my heart for as long as I lived. Our short relationship had transcended friendship—she had treated me more like family.

Afterward, Tymon came back to the house, I thought mostly to comfort me but also figured maybe he needed comforting as well. We talked about Minnie, her quirky personality, and her changeable moods. He told me that they had been starting to become good friends.

Then, out of the blue, Tymon said something that came as a complete surprise to me.

“I was in love with her.”

“Minnie?”

He rolled his eyes. “No, not Minnie. Anna.”

Nothing at that point had led me to believe he had been that close to her.

“And did she have feelings for you as well?”

His sigh spoke volumes.

I wondered what he would’ve thought if he’d known I believed Anna was my real mother. Would he still be sharing this with me? I didn’t think I wanted to hear any more, and maybe I should have stopped him—unless he was about to confess something. Like what he knew about Anna’s baby.

“Did she know how you felt about her?”

“I never told her. I figured she just thought of me as a handyman, someone to call on when she needed something fixed. Besides, she had something going on with the upstairs boarder, so that was that.”

“What was it about her that made you fall in love with her?”

“I don’t know. Maybe it was just the way she made me feel when we were together—she accepted me for who I was, appreciated who I was. Maybe it was her laugh...or the way she smelled. Or the way she made my stomach flutter with nervous excitement whenever I was about to see her.

“Sometimes she would bring me a cup of coffee in the middle of what I was doing for her, or a glass of iced tea if I was working up a sweat. And sometimes she would join me, and we’d talk about...I don’t know.” Tymon’s vacant expression reflected his melancholy. “We’d talk about different things—what was going on in the world, the weather. It didn’t matter to me what the subject was. Maybe she was like that with everyone, but for me, it was special. She was special.”

It didn’t seem like the right time to bring up the baby, so I didn’t.

TWENTY-THREE

Emotional Overload

Sitting there in Minnie’s living room the day following her memorial service, I pictured her occupying the other end of the sofa that first time she invited me in to see the place. I clearly remembered that day, examining every inch of the room for clues, even taking notes. I was looking at things in the room a lot differently now.

“We’re alone now, you and me,” I said to the room.

In going through her things, I found several boxes of rocks—small, smooth rocks of varying shapes and colors—hundreds of them. I pulled a large one from the bottom of one of the boxes and found these words written on it in black marker:

I rummaged around and found other rocks with writing on them, mostly words of endearment, obviously written by a young child. Maybe by Minnie’s daughter?

As I sat on her bed sorting through the rocks, I noticed the position of the framed photo of Minnie’s late husband and daughter on the end table next to me. I had thought before that it had been placed at an odd angle. But now I realized there was a good reason for its position—when Minnie sat in her favorite chair, it was directly facing her.

Bookshelves flanked the fireplace, and at the end of a short row of books was a photograph I hadn’t noticed before. I took it down for a better look. Even though it was a black-and-white, I could tell the gardens on either side of the cobblestone path were brilliant with color. Then I glanced at the tapestry hanging over Minnie’s favorite chair. It contained the same image. When I took the tapestry down from its hanger, I saw a note pinned to its back.

I was very familiar with Gramercy Gardens—it had been developed when I was a junior in high school, and my French class had volunteered a month of Saturdays to help with the plantings. In fact, we had been the ones who named it. The word
gramercy
has a French origin and means great thanks. The garden had been dedicated to Chicago servicemen and women who’d lost their lives in World War II.

I examined the tapestry more closely and wondered if Minnie had made it herself. March 18, 1960. A chill darted down my back. That was the day my parents had died.

* * *

Minnie had been gone four days when Brenda, my contact at the Clerk of the Circuit Court’s office, called me to tell me one other person had filed a request to become administrator of Minnie’s estate and that she would get back to me when a decision was made as to who would be appointed. I asked her the other person’s name.

“You know I can’t tell you that, Grace.”

I explained the situation.

“I really can’t tell you that,” she whispered, “but if you were to come by here and happen to see any documents on my desk that revealed his name when I had my back turned, I would never even know.”

“I’ll be there in an hour,” I told her.

* * *

I wasn’t sure why I wasted my time driving to City Hall. I knew before I got there whose name I would see on Brenda’s desk.

When I arrived, there was a short line. Two people let me go in front of them—at least the crutches had one benefit. When I reached the front of the line, Brenda turned her back to me. I gazed over the counter at the top of her desk where Berghorn’s name had been boldly written on a piece of paper. Brenda turned toward me and mouthed that she would meet me outside in twenty minutes when she was on her break.

It took me fifteen minutes to reach our meeting place. I stood outside and watched the steady flow of people rush past—employees on their way to work, salesmen on their way to what they hoped was a lucrative sales call, lawyers on their way to court. When Brenda arrived a few minutes later, I first explained the crutches and then my concern about Berghorn being administrator.

“I have to be really careful what I say and to whom, Grace. You know how political everything is here.”

“I know.”

Brenda didn’t say anything for a long few seconds.

“I know the judge who’s going to handle this. Do you want me to see what I can do?”

“What do you mean?”

“Maybe he can be influenced.”

I looked around to make sure no one was within earshot. “As in offering him a bribe?”

“Are you aware of the three I’s that everyone involved in our judicial system is expected to withhold?”

“No.”

“Impartiality, independence, and integrity. Well, let’s just say some of our magistrates may come up a little short in one or more of the three I’s.”

“No kidding.”

“Don’t look so surprised. This is Chicago—not all areas of the judicial system are that judicious.”

“I could never be a part of that.”

“I was just trying to help.”

“And besides, I have no money.”

“Believe me, this would be such small potatoes compared to what goes on here, no money would be involved. It would just be a little favor.”

“Okay, I’m in.”

“I gotta go. I’ll call you when I know something.”

“I owe you, Brenda.”

“Lunch sometime?”

“You got it.”

* * *

Minnie had been gone less than a week, and I hated the emotional roller coaster I was on. What if I had wakened her earlier that day? Maybe she’d still be alive.

The burden of handling Minnie’s affairs compounded the situation. She hadn’t left behind a huge estate by any means, yet there seemed to be an endless stream of things I had to deal with in one way or another.

I was grateful that Minnie had kept all her important papers in one place—her underwear drawer. It pained me to be in her dresser drawers, invading her privacy like that. Her smell was in those drawers. By combing through her things, I had learned that the house was mortgage-free, and she had been receiving pension and social security benefits ever since her husband and daughter had died. I had also found the key to a safe deposit box at North Community Bank.

I missed her terribly and didn’t realize until I had explored her private possessions how much I had needed a Minnie in my life.

* * *

Brenda came through for me. The week following Minnie’s death, she called to tell me I would be getting a letter any day advising me of my appointment to be administrator of Minnie’s estate. That was the good news. The bad news was that the court had received a check in the amount of $1,000 to serve as earnest money for purchasing Minnie’s house.