Murder Old and New

by Chet Williamson

  “Funny? Funny how?”

  “I’ve seen a lot of people pass on here, Livy. But there was something different about this. Usually they look like, I don’t know, like they do when they fall asleep in their chair, you know? But with Enid…as happy as she always was, she shouldn’t have passed like that.”

  “Why? How did she look?” I asked, thinking involuntarily of the hanged man in the photographs.

  “She looked scared,” Karen said. “Oh, her eyes were closed, but if they’d been open her expression would’ve been horrible, Livy. Her mouth was wide open, like she was sucking in air, but at the same time there was this grimace on her face…”

  I could see that Karen was hurting. I was too, but I hadn’t found Enid, hadn’t had to see her like that, and I wanted to help ease Karen’s pain. I tried not to think of Enid, that sweet and gentle lady, suffering as she died, but I knew that death didn’t always come easy to the old. Daddy’s dying taught me that.

  “Karen,” I said, “Enid was a dear lady, and she was in great shape, but she was really old.”

  “I know she was—eighty-nine. But there’s no reason she couldn’t have lived a few more years.”

  “Apparently there was,” I said. “You’ve told me yourself, when people reach that age, there’s just no telling—they could go any day.” Then another thought struck me. “What did the doctor say?”

  “He said it looked like her heart.”

  “Had she had any heart trouble before?”

  “I don’t know, Livy, I’m the activities director, not a doctor.”

  “You’re supposed to say, ‘Damn it, Jim’ first,” I said, knowing Karen would get the Star Trek reference and hoping she’d smile.

  She did both, and rewarded me further by chuckling. “I don’t know. The doctor didn’t seem surprised by anything, and again, at that age…oh, you’re probably right, Livy. I’m being silly. She was an old woman and her heart just stopped. Maybe she couldn’t get her breath, or the sudden pain made her…look like that,” she finished quietly.

  “Well, she’s all right now,” I said. “Probably up there with Martin.” Martin was Enid’s husband, who had died twenty years before, but who Enid had always talked about as though he were just around the corner. I hoped she was right, and that he was. “And she’s probably filling him in on everything he missed.”

  “Poor Martin,” Karen said smiling. “Knowing Enid, it’ll take her twenty years to tell him all about it.” Then the smile vanished. “There’s something else, though, something that really bothers me. You know her little deer?”

  I nodded. It was an inch-high clear glass deer that Martin had given her just a few days before he had dropped dead of a stroke, and was always on her dresser, placed far back from the edge so that it wouldn’t get knocked down.

  “Well, it’s gone.”

  “You think somebody took it?”

  “What else should I think?”

  I shrugged. “Maybe she accidentally broke it. Threw the pieces away. Did you check her waste can?”

  “No, I didn’t think of it. And the trash went to the incinerator already.”

  “Maybe that’s what upset her,” I said. “You never know what’ll set somebody’s heart off at that age.” I took Karen’s hand and gave it a squeeze. “But it’s all over now. She’s okay now, really.”

  “Yeah.” Karen squeezed back. “I know. I just…I don’t like the idea of somebody taking that. What if her son asks for it?”

  “You tell him she accidentally broke it. That’s probably what happened.”

  “Maybe, but…ah, let it go.” She sat back and tried to relax. “You see your mom yet?”

  “No, I just got here. How is she today?”

  “The usual. A lot of sitting and looking out the window at the snow. A little asking if you’re coming over today, to which I have to answer that I don’t know, if it’s not one of your volunteer days.”

  “And when I do come, she says hello and then looks out the window at the snow. Or at the TV.” I could feel tears in the corners of my eyes. I kept them open and let them dry out. If I blinked, they were going to run, and I’d cried enough over Mom.

  “Getting adjusted’s hard,” Karen said. “She’s only been here a couple weeks. I’ve seen people come in so depressed you’d think they wouldn’t live out the month, and you turn around and they’ve made friends, they’re having a great time, and asking themselves why they didn’t do this years ago.”

  “And then there are some,” I said, “who really don’t live out the month.” The talk of death made me think of Enid again, and I wanted to change the subject completely. “So…how’d the date with the architect go this weekend?”

  “He’s not an architect, he’s a specifier for architects.”

  “What’s that?”

  “That means he tries to get them to use certain products in their buildings. It also means he makes about a quarter of what an architect makes. In a good year. This hasn’t been a good year. Nor was it a good date.”

  “Sorry I couldn’t sit for you,” I said.

  “You’ve got a romantic life too.”

  “Hardly. I had dinner at Winnie and Ken’s—just the three of us.”

  “Oops, sorry.”

  “Don’t be—the Chicken Florentine was to die for, and I didn’t have to play nice with some…architect salesman guy.”

  “Specifier.”

  “I forgot.”

  “And I intend to. I’d much rather have been dating the sitter.”

  “Ted was able to sit for you?”

  “Mmm. That’s some hunka man, Livy. I don’t know why you don’t date him.”

  “He’s a baby.”

  “Baby my fanny—he’s got to be thirty anyway.”

  “He is, and that’s young enough to be my baby. Besides, I don’t date employees.”

  “You’ve only got one.”

  “And I don’t date him. Why don’t you, you like him so much?”

  “I’ve tried, but he always has some excuse.” Karen pursed her lips and shook her head. “I just don’t think I’m his type. Maybe he likes older women.”

  “Oh, thank you. You’re older than he is too!”

  “Only a few years. Look, do you think you could see if…I mean, find out maybe if he’s at all…” Her voice trailed off, but I got the picture as she waggled her fingers in the air.

  “Say no more, honey. I live to procure young gentlemen for my friends. But don’t count on much interest. Remember, he’s sat both your kids.” I glanced at my watch. “Guess I better see Mom for a few minutes. Maybe I can talk her into coming to the listening session.”

  “Go for it. All she needs is something to get her out of herself.”

  “Oh, I’ll probably play something that she and Daddy danced to, and that’ll start her crying for an hour.”

  “Well, at least she’ll be crying out of nostalgia and not misery over being here,” Karen said, as if it made a difference. I couldn’t bear my mother’s tears whatever the reason for them.

  A minute later I walked down the hall and into the residential wing. This differed from the care wing in that the folks living here didn’t need constant supervision. The rooms were private rather than shared, and most people kept their doors closed, though some were ajar.

  As I walked toward Mother’s room. I thought about the photos, and though I longed to ask her if she knew about them, I wasn’t going to. The last thing Mother needed was that.

  True to form, she was sitting looking out the window at the snow when I poked my head in through the open door. I watched her for a minute without speaking, saddened again by what she had become.

  She had never been very outgoing, but now she was positively hermetic, in spite of the open door. Karen had suggested that touch, hoping that it might invite visitors, but the few who Mother had didn’t stay long. Why should they, since Mother barely talked to them?

  The broken hip had been the last nail in the coffin, th
ough Daddy’s death was what started it. She lived alone in their big two-story house for two years. I visited at least twice a week and took her to movies or dinner when I could talk her out of the house, and she seemed fairly content. She rented a lot of movies and went to the library once a week to stock up on mysteries and romances, but she had no real social life. That had died along with Daddy.

  Then, a few months ago, she tripped on the stairs, fell onto the landing, and broke her hip. That was it. Her bones were brittle to begin with, and there was no way she was going to handle those stairs again. She had a partial hip replacement, and once everything knit she could walk, but not without the aid of an aluminum walker.

  The options were limited. She wasn’t rich, but she and Daddy had saved enough so that by selling the house there would be enough money to keep her at the Gates Home. The interest plus a portion of the principal could sustain her for as many years as she would probably need. When the principal was finally gone, the actuarial tables said that Mother would be too. It was a cold way to look at it, but Mother was the one who figured it all out.

  “I hope I don’t live too long,” she told me, “or there won’t be anything left for you.”

  That’s the kind of comment that makes a daughter feel about as high as a legless ladybug. I told her in no uncertain terms that I didn’t want anything from her and didn’t expect anything. The money she and Daddy had saved was for something just like this, not a forty-five-year-old daughter who was doing just fine, thank you. I only wished Mother would be doing half as fine.

  “Hey, Mother,” I said now, slipping into the room with a chirpy wave.

  She gave either a little smile or a little wince, I wasn’t sure which. “Hello, darling.” Her tone was flat and her voice sounded like it didn’t get much use.

  I sat down and we talked about nothing. The silences between sentences were long, and I looked around the room a lot. It was a nice room, a large private one in the residence wing. The alternative was sharing a not much larger room with one or two other patients in the constant care unit, not always a pleasant place to be. Many of the less mentally stable patients were there, and it wasn’t uncommon to hear people, at any time of day or night, calling out names of spouses long gone or children seldom seen.

  Finally, it was time to go and do my program, and I invited Mother to come along. “I think you’d enjoy it, Mother—I’m playing some fun stuff. Big bands?”

  “That’s nice, Olivia,” she said, the only person I knew who still called me Olivia. “But I’m a little tired. I think I’ll just stay here. Besides, my shows are on soon.”

  She started her round of soaps at 1:00, but I don’t know why. I watched with her one afternoon, and her face was absolutely expressionless at the array of betrayals, infidelities, and other horrors that played out on her fifteen-inch screen. Maybe she was a churnin’ urn of burnin’ funk inside, but outwardly she never turned a hair.

  I wasn’t in the mood to argue her into submission, so I kissed her goodbye and headed to the social hall. On the way I ran into Harold Newbury, one of my favorite residents, and in seconds the gloomy mood my mother had put me in vanished. Harold had that effect on people.

  He was very old, but still spry, and even with the slight stoop that age and osteoporosis had caused, he still towered over six feet. I had to look up at him, which wasn’t the norm at the Gates Home, since I’m a big girl, 5’ 9” in flats.

  “And how’s my favorite jazz baby today?” Harold asked. “More of that Glenn Miller? Or are you going to be merciful to an old hipster and play some Ellington?”

  I held up the two-record 78 set of Black, Brown and Beige which I had brought along just for him. He raised his head so that he was looking at it through the lower part of his bifocals and smiled with the full span of his dentures. “A woman after my own heart. The whole thing?”

  I shook my head. “Just one side, Harold. I’ve got a lot of other listeners to please, you know.”

  A theatrical whine crept into his voice. “Maybe if you have time…”

  “All right,” I agreed. “Ellington’s first on the overtime list.” We both knew darn well I’d play more than one side. It was just a game we played, and I’m not sure which one of us enjoyed it more.

  “One of these days I’ll get you to play some opera,” he said. “I loved those old Met broadcasts. Verdi’s Otello is my favorite…when Leonard Warren would sing the Credo, oh my…”

  “Your tastes are too highbrow for your fellow residents, Harold. Most of them wouldn’t sit still for opera.”

  “Oh, one little aria would be good for them, Livy—widen their horizons.”

  Harold and I walked together toward the social room. There weren’t many I would have trusted to carry my 78s, but Harold was steady as a rock. “How’s your mother doing?” he asked.

  “Well, she won’t be this season’s social butterfly, I’ll tell you that.”

  “I’ve only seen her a couple times in the dining hall,” he said. “She doesn’t even come to chapel.” He shook his head sadly. “Person ought to come to chapel, especially when you’re as close to meeting the proprietor as we are.” Then he grinned to show that what might be self-pity was only self-parody.

  “You’re awful, Harold,” I said, only telling him what he wanted to hear.

  “Awful is as awful does,” he drawled. “God, they showed us that Gump movie again the other day.”

  “You didn’t like it?”

  “It was ridiculous. Livy, if somebody were really that dumb, they’d wind up in a place a whole lot worse than this. Instead this idiot becomes a zillionaire.”

  I didn’t say that I’d liked Forrest Gump a lot, and cried a bunch of times whenever I watched it. Yeah, I’m a sucker, but probably happier than a lot of people who aren’t. Still, Harold, cynic that he was, seemed unflaggingly happy whenever I was around. Maybe I brought the sunshine to his life. Or maybe it was just those dandy regular bowel movements he always bragged about.

  He must have gotten a psychic signal from me, for he smiled and said contentedly, “Had a corker this morning, Livy.”

  “Harold, a lot more information than I need. I’m not a nurse.”

  “I was talking about breakfast,” he lied. “Two fried eggs and scrapple and a couple of pancakes with syrup. Doc Garber’s going to be furious at me.” He paused so that I had to stop and look at him as his face grew solemn. “Probably bind me up tomorrow.”

  “Oh, Harold,” I said and strode on. He laughed and followed. Sometimes I wish I knew what men, young or old, find so funny about scatology.

  We neared a cross-hall, and I sucked in a quick breath as Tom Drummond’s wheelchair, its wheels squealing, rolled out right in front of us. Tom Drummond gave me a blank look and Harold a black one as he grabbed the wheels and gave himself a quick shove forward, lengthening the distance between us.

  “Where’s he off to in such a hurry?” I said when Drummond was out of earshot.

  “Probably rushing off to vent his spleen,” Harold said, but he wasn’t smiling. I knew there was no love lost between the two men. “He just got back from the hospital yesterday, so he’s crankier than usual.”

  “The hospital? Is he all right?”

  “Damn it, Jim, I’m a retired layabout, not a doctor.” Funny how your own gags come back to haunt you.

  “Star Trek,” I said, wanting him to know I got it.

  “Right. You see that Generations movie?” I nodded, having just rewatched the 2-DVD set a few weeks earlier. “Yeah, that was okay. When I saw those three old geezers fighting on those catwalks, I knew I could still make it in the movies.”

  “You’re changing the subject, Harold. Why was Mr. Drummond in the hospital?”

  “Tests,” he said, but added no joke.

  By then we were at the social hall, where a good crowd was waiting for me. Thirty residents, most of them women, sat at tables or in chairs drawn into a rough circle. Many were in wheelchairs. Some sat with their eye
s closed and mouths open, others looked at nothing—nothing I could see anyway. But most of them smiled when they saw me and said hello. I responded, knowing most of them by name. You can learn a lot of names coming twice a week for nearly two years.

  I started volunteering at Gates a few months after Daddy died. I’d met and become friends with Karen about a year before, and she had been trying for a long time to talk me into helping. But it was only after my father was gone that the urge hit me. I wanted to be with older people. I’d seen what Daddy’s illness had done to him, and I wanted to try and do a little something to make things easier for people if I could. Maybe I was just trying to give my father the help I couldn’t when he was alive, but I’m not getting into that whole Freudian thing. I just wanted to help, do a little good for somebody beside myself.

  It worked out fine. I loved working with the people at the Gates Home, and they seemed to enjoy what I did. I made a lot of friends and lost a few in the two years since I started, but that was only to be expected. Except for the far less numerous rehab patients, all of the residents were over sixty-five, and most of them much older than that. It was only natural that I would eventually see them take a last bow and leave the stage.

  Besides, it took only a few hours a week, and since I was my own boss I didn’t have to feel guilty. On the contrary, I felt pretty darn good about it.

  The group was ready for action today, so I started them off with the hottest Glenn Miller tunes I could find -- “King Porter Stomp” and “Bugle Call Rag”-- before going to Enid’s favorite, “Pennsylvania 6-5000.” I dedicated it to her memory, but tried to keep it light, and by the end of the tune everyone had lost their glum expressions and was tapping their toes.

  Then I let them reminisce about the music, talk about the memories it brought back. When there was a lull, I started playing records again. Halfway through Black, Brown and Beige, Tom Drummond wheeled himself in. Several people greeted him, and he nodded stiffly and gave them a tight smile. But even he loosened up as more music played, and in a few tunes’ time he was smiling and tapping his right foot, almost to the beat.