There Was an Old Woman (18 page)

Chapter Forty-six

“For heaven's sakes, we'll get you another pair of glasses, Aunt Mina,” Brian said. “Would you stop fretting about them already? It's not a big deal.”

It was a big deal. Mina was belted into the front seat of Brian's car, her handbag clutched in her lap. The world whizzing by through the window was a blur. Brian, sitting not three feet away from her, was featureless. If she hadn't recognized the voice coming out of his mouth, and that distinctive smell of whatever cologne it was that he slathered on himself, she'd have had no idea who was driving.

The car came to a halt. “Where are we?” Mina asked.

“Stopped at a light.”

As if she didn't know that. After a minute, the car accelerated up an incline, fast. Mina assumed they were on the highway now.

“Now we're on the Bruckner,” Brian confirmed.

Mina held on to the door handle as the car moved into the left lane and sped along. The car shuddered rhythmically over seams in the pavement. The vibrations made her hip ache. She could feel the changes in pressure as they passed cars and trucks.

By the time Brian pulled up in front of her house, Mina was wrung out. She was desperate for a quiet cup of tea, her own chair, and another of those painkillers they'd given her in the hospital.

A medium-sized white box truck was parked in front of the house. Brian pulled up parallel to it and rolled down the window. “Yo! How's it going?” he called out.

“We should have it done by the end of the day,” the answer came back. A man's voice, though to Mina the man himself was nothing more than a tall dark shadow.

Brian pulled his car into the driveway. Mina squinted. It looked like another man was carrying something inside.

“What's going on?” Mina said.

“The social worker at the hospital told me that the house—the bathroom in particular—isn't properly set up for you. With the walker, you can barely get in the room. If you end up in a wheelchair, you wouldn't be able to get through the door. That got me thinking about turning the upstairs into a master suite with its own bath. So that's what they're building for you. Wide doorway. Roll-in shower. Grab bars. Slip-proof floor.”

Mina snorted. Sounded like the spiel she'd heard when the woman in the blue suit had shown them one of the rooms at Pelham Manor.

Brian ignored her. “Once it's done, your health aide can sleep downstairs. We'll see how it goes, and if we need to install a lift on the stairs, we'll do that.”

Second-floor bath? Live-in health aide? Stair lift? “How much is all this going to cost?”

“A lot less than the cost of a residential setting, and your insurance will pay for most of it. They'll be using a prefab unit for the bathroom so it won't take long to finish the work. Dora will sleep upstairs until the new bath is done and you can move up.”

“Dora?”

“The hospital referred her. Dora . . . Fleischer I think is her last name. I hired her to help you.” Without waiting for a response, Brian got out of the car, popped the trunk, and came around to her side and opened the door. He unfolded the walker and set it up for her. “What's the matter? I thought you'd be pleased.”

Well, she was and she wasn't. She was pleased to be home. But strangers were in her house. Leaving the door wide open. Tramping up and down her staircase in their work boots. Breaking apart the upstairs bedroom. Had Brian forgotten he didn't own the house? Not yet, at least.

But Mina didn't say anything. Just pushed against the dashboard and shifted her feet out, tried to stand, and then grudgingly took Brian's offered hand and slid out of the car. She gritted her teeth against the pain. The doctor had said she'd feel a lot better a week from now when the swelling went down. As it was, it was slow going pushing the walker up the front walk. Brian helped her climb the front steps.

Inside, the house smelled of plaster dust and overworked electrical tools. As she shuffled across the kitchen floor, Mina felt as if her feet were leaving streaks in a coating of dust. Just as well that she couldn't see. She'd have been desperate to clean, and until the work was done, “clean” would be an uphill battle. Besides, the doctor had said in no uncertain terms there was to be no stooping or bending, not until the physical therapist who'd be coming to the house gave her permission.

“Where are my rugs?” Mina asked as Brian helped her across the bare floor to the living room.

“Rolled up and put away,” he said. “You can bring them back when the construction is finished and you don't need to use the walker any longer.” They'd reached her chair. He helped her turn around. She felt behind her for the seat cushion. Then, holding on to him, she lowered herself into the chair. This was going to get old fast.

Mina shivered with cold. Brian found her sweater and helped her on with it. Later, even with a mug of hot tea, the crocheted spread piled over her, and the sun shining in through the windows, Mina still felt chilled. She wished Ivory would come out of hiding.

 

All day long, Brian kept going upstairs to
supervise,
as he called it, the construction. Noise went on unabated, banging and sawing and drilling and hammering, with workers—there had to be at least three of them—marching in and out. It sounded as if they were taking the house apart. Brian explained that the banging and clattering she heard was a chute they'd set up to carry away rubble and debris. They had better not be burying her lovely lacecap hydrangeas.

She'd had to remind Brian to call and order her another pair of prescription glasses. She listened as he made the call, gave them her name and her prescription number. Of course they no longer carried anything like her old frames, but Brian said the woman he talked to on the phone had promised to do her best to come close. Fortunately, '50s fashions were apparently back.

While Brian was on one of his supervisory forays upstairs, Mina made her way to what she was already thinking of as the “downstairs” bath. He was right. She had to leave the walker in the hall.

She washed her face. All that noise had given her a headache, and the hot washcloth felt soothing. Then she took a capsule of pain medication—Brian had filled the prescription at the hospital and the container was on the sink. She'd had a dose before breakfast in the hospital. She couldn't read the label, but she remembered what the doctor had said: no more than once every six hours and take it with food.

In the kitchen she started to put together a light lunch for herself. But as she stood there waiting for the toast to pop, the room felt as if it was spinning. By the time Brian found her, she'd collapsed in the kitchen chair and the toast had gone cold in the toaster.

“What are you doing in here? I could have gotten you lunch. I told you, let me help you.”

He walked her into the living room and settled her in her chair again. A while later he brought her lunch on a tray. Mina had taken a few nibbles of cottage cheese on toast and a bite of what she'd thought was canned peaches but turned out to be apricots, when she started to feel warm and drowsy. The headache had gone from sharp to fuzzy.

She took a few more bites and set the tray on the table. Brian plumped a pillow behind her and, despite all the noise coming from upstairs, she nodded off.

Chapter Forty-seven

Evie had spent the rest of the afternoon sitting by her mother's bedside talking quietly. When she ran out of things to say, she read to her mother from a copy of Tina Fey's
Bossypants,
which Ginger had left. If her mother got the jokes or felt any pain, she showed no sign of it.

Now Evie backed the car into her mother's driveway and pulled to a stop before the closed garage door. Sitting on the passenger seat were Mrs. Yetner's glasses and a bag of takeout she'd picked up at El Coquí, a little bodega she'd passed on the way home. The rich aroma from chicken soup, a double order of sweet plantains, and garlicky black beans and rice filled the car.

She got out of the car and opened the garage, intending to pull the car in. Instead, she turned on the light and gazed around.

The kitty litter Mrs. Yetner had sprinkled on the floor was still there. Evie swept it onto a newspaper and dumped it in one of the garbage bags she'd left outside. Then she went back into the garage.

When she was growing up, her parents had kept the car parked in the driveway. The garage had been her father's domain. Inside, it always reeked, not of gasoline but of his cigars, the ones her mother wouldn't let him smoke in the house.

The shadowy interior seemed so much smaller without a car filling it. Without her father. At least her mother hadn't packed the garage with garbage and debris the way she had the house.

Against the back wall was her father's fireman's locker—a tall, narrow wooden cabinet with
FERRANTE
stenciled on the front of it. His captain had let him take it home when he retired. It was one of the few things she'd really want to keep when her mother died.
When her mother died.
The phrase brought her up short, no longer a hypothetical.

Beside the locker stood her father's worktable. How often she'd sat perched on the edge, watching her father sand down a tabletop or cane a chair seat. His coveted set of red metal tool drawers was tucked in the back of the garage, too. She understood now how he must have used the garage as a refuge.

But as Evie looked around she wondered what had been poured into her mother's car's gas tank that had been strong enough to rot it out within a few weeks. Paint stripper? Toilet cleaner? Drain cleaner? Or what about muriatic acid? She knew forgers often used that to make new metal look old, sometimes so convincingly that even experts couldn't tell.

But nothing like any of that was lying around. Besides, the more toxic the material, the more likely that it would be sealed inside something else. Like mercury in a fluorescent bulb. Or acid in a battery.

It wasn't until she'd backed the car into the garage and got out with Mrs. Yetner's glasses and the take-out bag that she realized. Of course. There had been several car batteries sitting on the floor of the garage. She went to the spot alongside the car where she'd seen them. Nothing was sitting there now. But when she crouched, she could see scars in the concrete floor. She set down the take-out bag and ran her hand over them. The floor had been eaten away, right through to soil underneath.

Evie remembered her chemistry. Acid dissolved concrete. She looked closely at the shape of the deterioration. Four rectangular outlines. Each could have been the footprint of a car battery.

Chapter Forty-eight

Mina slept fitfully in her chair, dimly aware of workers tramping up and down the stairs, going in and out of the house. When she finally came fully awake, it was dusk. She couldn't see the time on either of the watches on her wrist. Ivory was curled up in her lap. From overhead, there were heavy footsteps, thumps, and scrapes. But no more debris was clattering down the chute.

She felt groggy and dry mouthed, and she groped for her glasses for a few moments before she remembered she'd lost them at the hospital. Annabelle had lost her teeth at the nursing home. She didn't know which was worse.

When she heard the doorbell ring, she wondered if that was what had woken her. “Brian!” Mina called. “It's the door.” But she knew her voice was not making it up the stairs, and she certainly couldn't be heard over the workers' ruckus.

She cleared her throat and tried again. “Brian? The door!” The only response was the whine of what sounded like a drill.

Knock, knock, knock.
“Mrs. Yetner? It's Evie. Are you there?”

Mina got her feet untangled from the afghan, pulled the walker closer to her, and stood.

“Wait. I'm coming,” she said, though not with enough force for the girl to actually hear her.

She started toward the door, slowly, haltingly. Walkers weren't made for speed. By the time she got to the kitchen, she was sure Evie would have given up. But there was one more knock.

“I'm here,” Mina called out as she pushed the walker ahead of her and shuffled into the entry hall, her voice stronger but probably not strong enough.

The light came on at the top of the stairwell. “Aunt Mina,” Brian called down to her. “What are you doing up? I told you to call me if you need anything.”

Well, what was the good of her calling him if he was going to be making such a racket that he couldn't hear her? And besides, the doctor had said she should get up and move around as much as she was comfortable. “I can get it,” she called back.

Mina moved the walker forward and set it down, moved the walker and set it down, trying to get close enough to reach the door. She was almost there when she heard the hinged brass mail panel open and clack shut. Another step and the door was within reach. When she set the walker down and leaned forward to pull the door open, she heard something crack under one of the walker's front prongs.

Ignoring it, she turned the doorknob and opened the door a few inches. It ran into the walker and she had to back up before she could open it more. It was so frustrating—such a simple act and the walker made it so cumbersome, she thought as she jockeyed back and forth until finally she had the door open enough to see out. And then, of course, she couldn't see.

“Evie?” she called out. “Are you out there?” She groped for the wall switch and turned on the outside light.

Chapter Forty-nine

Evie was halfway back to her mother's house when the light in front of Mrs. Yetner's came on and the front door opened. There stood Mrs. Yetner leaning against a metal walker and squinting out. Her hair had come loose and, backlit, it looked like a spidery halo around her face.

“Mrs. Yetner?” Evie said, hurrying back. “I'm sorry to bother you. You weren't in the hospital, and I saw the lights on, and I thought . . .” The metallic scent of overheated power tools wafted out at her. “I found your glasses and I wanted to return them to you.”

“I'm afraid to ask.” Mrs. Yetner backed up and pointed to the floor. “Are those my glasses?”

Evie came up the steps and through the door. She picked up the envelope she'd pushed through the mail slot and shook out Mrs. Yetner's glasses. With the lenses cracked and the frame bent, they reminded her of a mangled bird skeleton. “They were,” she said. “I'm sorry. I knew you'd want them back right away, but I guess I should have waited until I could hand them to you.”

Mrs. Yetner took the broken glasses from her. When she tried to put them on, one of the lenses fell out in pieces. “Well, no use crying over spilled milk.” She set the broken glasses on the hall table. “Where on earth did you find them?”

Evie picked up the broken lens from the floor and set the pieces next to the frames. “In a potted plant by the hospital elevator. I came up to see how you were doing—”

“You did?” Mrs. Yetner put her hand to her heart.

“Of course I did.” Evie found herself choked up. They'd barely reconnected, and yet there was something about her relationship with this woman, a simple pleasure in shared company, that she'd never experienced with her own mother or grandmother.

“Imagine that,” Mrs. Yetner said. “There they were, in a potted plant by the hospital elevator. I wonder how they got there?” Evie followed her gaze halfway up the stairs to where Brian was standing looking down at them. “Whatever made you look there?”

Evie said, “I'd been helping the nurse look for them in your room. Then I was waiting for the elevator and there they were.” In retrospect, it was amazing that she'd noticed them.

“It's a good thing my nephew has already ordered me another pair. Haven't you, Brian?”

Evie looked up the stairs again. Brian was still there.

“Is that chicken soup I smell?” Mrs. Yetner said.

“It is.” As Evie showed Mina the take-out bag, she realized it had begun to leak. “Uh-oh.” She hurried into the kitchen and set it in the sink. Mina shuffled in after her with her walker. Brian came in after.

“I know you mean well,” Brian said to Evie, “but my aunt is exhausted.” His shirtsleeves were rolled up and his pant legs and boat shoes were covered with dust. “She's been resting all day. She's still recovering from her injuries. The accident. The operation.”

“The construction,” Mrs. Yetner added. “Which somehow I managed to sleep through. My nephew is building me a new bathroom upstairs. Handicap accessible.” Mrs. Yetner spit out those final words as if they had a bad taste. “Isn't that lovely?”

“That's wonderful. I saw the truck outside,” Evie said. She hoped no one was planning to “renovate” the downstairs. But Evie suspected that if Mrs. Yetner's nephew inherited the house, the only way the period-perfect rooms could be preserved would be in photographs, and Evie would have to take them.

“Apparently I need grab bars.” Mrs. Yetner turned to Brian, her face softening. “I don't mean to sound ungrateful. Really, Brian, it's very thoughtful of you.” She turned back to Evie. “My nephew is making the changes so I can live here instead of going into a nursing home.” She sniffed the air and shuffled to the sink where Evie had left the soup.

“And you'll have someone staying with you?” Evie asked.

Brian answered. “Dora will be here soon. She's making supper and staying overnight.”

“My nurse, apparently,” Mrs. Yetner said. “Evie, dear, why don't you get down some dishes and silverware and we can talk.”

“Talk?” Brian said. “About what?”

“Nothing that concerns you,” Mrs. Yetner said, winking at Evie.

Evie felt a little bad for Brian. “Would you like some, too?” she offered. “I've got soup, sweet plantains, black beans, and rice.” She opened one of the take-out boxes to show him the black beans, releasing the smell of garlic and cilantro. Evie's mouth watered.

“No, thank you,” Brian said. “Maybe later.” He opened a closet, pulled out a vacuum cleaner, and clomped up the stairs with it.

Once he'd disappeared, Mrs. Yetner sat at the table. Evie pulled two bowls and salad plates from the cabinet. She found forks and soup spoons in a drawer.

“
Now
he's vacuuming,” Mrs. Yetner said, under her breath. “When he was little, he'd never lift a finger to clean up after himself unless he got paid. In advance. We used to joke and call him the COD kid.” She gazed up at the ceiling, which was creaking.

Evie took a cautious look to make sure Brian wasn't within earshot. “Has he given up on getting you to sign away the house?” she asked quietly.

Mrs. Yetner stared at her. “How do you know about that? Finn must have told you.”

“I overheard your nephew asking about it. Then I found the agreement papers under your couch where Ivory was hiding.”

“Hiding? But Ivory likes you.”

“Apparently Ivory doesn't like Brian. He was here late last night trying to get her out from under the couch so he could take care of her.”

“Take care of her?” Mrs. Yetner cocked an eyebrow. “He said that?”

“Pretty much word for word. He didn't know I'd be here.”

“Imagine that. And you say the papers were
under
the couch?”

Evie nodded. “After he left and I looked underneath for Ivory, I found them. You know what else was there? The little whistle that goes on the spout of your kettle.”

Mrs. Yetner beamed. “I knew it. I knew I couldn't have lost that, too. And Brian was here for the cat? If you believe that”—Mrs. Yetner lowered her voice—“I've got a bridge to sell you. My silver safety net?
Pfff.
”

“Safety net?” Evie said.

“Another of my nephew's cockamamie schemes.”

“Maybe it's a coincidence, but that's the same term my mother used when I asked her about some cash I found in her house. And I'm wondering if Brian got my mother to sign an agreement like the one he wanted you to sign.”

“Oh, dear. Your mother signed away her house?”

“I don't know.” Evie set the take-out boxes on the table. “Monthly cash payments were part of the agreement your nephew left for you to sign. Maybe he offered my mother the same deal, only she didn't have the good sense to turn him down.” She ladled soup into bowls and set them on the table along with plates and glasses of water.

Mrs. Yetner pursed her lips and gave her head a shake. “My Brian and your mother?” She considered that for a few moments. “No. Oh my, no. I'd be very surprised at that.” She sounded so sure of herself.

Evie said, “The outfit behind it might be the same one that tore down a house a few blocks up.”

Mrs. Yetner looked stricken. “I thought Finn was going to put a stop to that.”

“He wanted to, but they moved the equipment over there while he was having one of his neighborhood meetings.”

Mrs. Yetner groped on the table for a little plastic container with compartments for each day of the week and handed it to Evie. “Would you? I need to take one of these. What day is it? Tuesday, right? Please tell me it's Tuesday.”

“You haven't lost track.” Evie gave Mrs. Yetner the pill behind the little door marked
TU
.

Mrs. Yetner took the pill with a swallow of water and set down her glass. Then she lifted a spoonful of soup and blew on it. Took a sip. She closed her eyes. “This is as delicious as it smells. Where did you get it?”

Evie told her about the little bodega not far away. “They tucked a take-out menu into the bag. I'll leave it on your counter for when you've got your eyes back.”

Mrs. Yetner laughed. Then she turned serious. “So how is your mother doing?”

Evie hadn't wanted to get into all the gory details, but it all came tumbling out. The hepatic coma. The acetaminophen poisoning. The rotted gas tank, and how the man at the gas station suggested that it had been vandalized.

Mrs. Yetner lowered her spoon. “Evie, dear, did it occur to you that someone might have been trying to do your mother a favor? I know you love her. But neither you nor your sister has been around.” Mrs. Yetner reached across the table and patted the back of Evie's hand. “Perhaps it was a friend, someone who felt there was no other way to keep her off the road?”

Evie hadn't considered that, but it was certainly possible, and it made her wonder if Brian hadn't deliberately hidden his aunt's glasses to protect her as well. After all, they hadn't been under the bed or on the bathroom sink. They'd been nearly buried in fake moss. Putting the most positive spin on it that Evie could, maybe he thought it was the only way to slow Mrs. Yetner down enough to allow her hip to heal.

“But who?” Evie said. “Does my mother still even have any friends? Frank Cutler's the only one who's come to the hospital to see her.”

“He was at the hospital?” Mrs. Yetner's eyes turned bright. “When?”

“Yesterday. I ran into him in the café. I told him she was in intensive care. He didn't know that they only allow family to visit.”

“I don't think that man even knows how to be a friend, not unless there's something in it for him.” The comment didn't surprise Evie. Frank Cutler could have pushed Mrs. Yetner from in front of a speeding truck and she'd have found a reason why it was self-serving.

Later, over cups of tea and Nilla Wafers from Mrs. Yetner's cupboard, Evie said, “That's a wonderful old map you have upstairs on the bedroom wall.”

Mrs. Yetner smiled. “It was my father's, of course.”

“This neighborhood used to be Snakapins Point, and it looks as if it was once part of Snakapins Park. Did you ever go there?”

“I was very little when we moved into the house,” Mrs. Yetner said, blowing into her tea. “By then the amusement park had closed. It's been Higgs Point ever since I can remember.”

“Your father must have known Finn's great-grandfather. He built the park, and your father developed all of this land that was once part of it.”

“Of course they knew each other.” Abruptly Mrs. Yetner set down her cup and pushed herself to her feet. “So, are you ready to hear about the day the plane crashed into the Empire State Building? Because I think I'd like to tell you about it.”