The Grandmother Plot

by Caroline B. Cooney

  He picked up an especially bright-red leaf and gave it to her. She took it wonderingly, as if it held secrets.

  There at the corner, maybe twenty or thirty yards away, sat the white Toyota Corolla, as if it had never moved but had been waiting patiently, knowing that Freddy, with his stoner brain and lousy short-term memory, would be back.

  No, Freddy told himself, white sedans are generic. It’s a different one. It can’t be Doc. I need it not to be Doc.

  It was going the opposite direction from before, so now the passenger side was closer to Freddy. The front-seat passenger rolled down his window and leaned out. He was young, probably not out of his teens, and skinny, with pale hair pulled into a ponytail dry as dead grass.

  “Hey, Freddy,” he shouted, his voice a playground taunt. Gotcha! Freddy had never seen him before.

  The driver shoved the kid out of his way and thrust his immense torso toward the window. Doc.

  Freddy had a well-developed sense of fear, but since moving to Connecticut to take care of his grandmother, he had shelved it, convinced of his invisibility. After all, he had the same cell phone number from when he lived in Evanston, so no one in glass could know that he had moved across the country to his grandmother’s house. Grandpa had been dead for ten years, but bills and taxes were still in Vincent Chase’s name, while Freddy’s last name was Bell. Freddy had a Facebook site and Instagram and hundreds of followers, but he talked only of glass. He certainly never mentioned his grandmother.

  Even after the Leper’s last phone call—Freddy still saying no when the only answer the Lep accepted from anybody was yes—Freddy had not been worried, let alone afraid. The Lep even texted him a photograph of Doc, stripped from the waist up, all muscle, tattoo, and scar.

  He’s coming, said the caption.

  Freddy just laughed. They couldn’t find him.

  But here was Doc. Not just in Connecticut but in Middletown, where Freddy didn’t live, and nobody could have suspected his presence in this neighborhood.

  “Arthur?” said Grandma anxiously.

  He really had to cut back on weed. He was not thinking at all today, never mind thinking straight. He had been caught with the most vulnerable person in his life. The person he loved most, even though most of the person had evaporated, and the most dangerous man he knew was looking straight at her.

  Bad enough Doc had seen Freddy pushing a wheelchair. He couldn’t let Doc figure out that it was his own helpless grandmother, living a quarter mile away.

  Freddy mentally mapped the maze of short one-way streets. The Toyota could not turn down the street where he and Grandma had paused. At least not legally. But Freddy didn’t care about stuff like that. Why would Doc?

  One good thing. The intersection had now filled with other cars who were getting impatient. Freddy could go down a one-way street where Doc couldn’t follow, but he could push a wheelchair only so fast. The sidewalks weren’t great. There were dips and cracks. The slightest jolt could tip his grandmother out. She might even fall face-first because among all the other essential skills lost in dementia was the ability to protect yourself from a fall. And bizarrely, wheelchairs had no seat belts, because in the institutional world, they were considered cruel restraints.

  Freddy’s glass specialty—lampwork—involved holding rods in front of his body for hours at a time, so Freddy was very strong. He could easily lower and lift the wheelchair at curbs. But what he couldn’t do was gather speed.

  He could carry Grandma, abandoning the wheelchair, and cut through yards the way he had with the bike. But then he’d really be helpless, both arms holding a very fragile package. And the wheelchair had Grandma’s name and room number on the back. He couldn’t leave it for Doc to read up on Cordelia Chase.

  The car behind Doc honked.

  “Stay put, Freddy,” yelled Doc. He drove through the intersection, presumably planning to go around the block and come up next to Freddy.

  The basic white Corolla had to be a rental because no model could be less suitable for Doc’s personality. Freddy was kind of amazed it fit Doc’s body. He couldn’t fathom that the Leper, who was in Vegas, would fly Doc and some other guy to Connecticut and send them to little old Middletown, of all places, to drive around on the off chance they’d spot Freddy.

  The Toyota’s passenger window was still down. The skinny teenager mimed a gunshot with his thumb and first finger.

  What was that about? This was weed they were talking about, not coke.

  Doc wouldn’t be armed, because guys who got into mixed martial arts prided themselves on doing violence without a weapon. But the kid? What was with the hand gesture? Did he have a gun?

  On the other hand, this was about money. Lots of money.

  The weed world had changed dramatically when many states legalized it. You mostly didn’t face jail for smoking weed now, but vast amounts of money were still changing hands, and everybody wanted some. States that had legalized weed strutted around claiming they now had control over growers, because only a select handful were allowed a permit. They were all proud that instead of dealers, their state had distributors.

  Like a different vocabulary was going to change anything.

  What did they think all the growers who didn’t get a permit would do? Become dental hygienists?

  Every one of them was still growing and still dealing, and for them, it was still criminal, still lucrative, and still roped in stupid guys like Freddy. None of them paid taxes. Their own personal millions were still kept away from the IRS and out of sight.

  Freddy had just dramatically failed the “out of sight” test.

  He had to get Grandma to safety. He hustled down the street Doc had just left, turned up yet another one-way street because it was his only option, and there was Mrs. Maple in her fire-engine-red Cadillac SRX, headed for Middletown Memory Care.

  Freddy waved wildly.

  She stopped and put her window down. “Mapes!” he yelled. “We need a ride back!” He bumped the wheelchair down the curb, she clicked the door locks, and Freddy ripped open the passenger door. “Hey, Mapes. Emergency. Gotta be quick here.”

  “Shall I call 911?” she asked, enunciating so carefully Freddy could practically see the punctuation hanging in the air.

  Freddy could not get Grandma and the wheelchair into the car in two seconds, plus take advantage of Mapes thinking this was a medical emergency and also come up with a lie that kept it an emergency but prevented her from calling 911. “Not that serious.”

  Once you were dealing with dementia, any activity was kind of like getting a two-year-old into a snowsuit, which he had witnessed the winter he visited his sister Kara and her kids in South Dakota. They can’t find the armholes, and you finally get them zipped and into their boots and mittens and hats and out the door and then they have to come back inside and go potty.

  Grandma had to have instructions every single time she got in or out of a vehicle, so Freddy skipped that, picked her up, lifted her into the front seat, and slammed the door.

  Mrs. Maple popped the trunk. Freddy removed the wheelchair footrests, tossed them into the trunk, folded the wheelchair, lifted it in, pressed the close button on the hatch, waved thank you to the courteously stopped traffic, leaped into the back seat, and slumped down. “You’re a champ, Mapes.”

  Had the Toyota caught up? Had Doc guessed the correct turns and made them fast enough? Had Doc seen him load Grandma into this car?

  Freddy wouldn’t know the answers unless he looked, but if he looked, they might spot him. So he didn’t look. Ignorance could be dangerous but it was always restful.

  “Is she having trouble breathing?” demanded Mrs. Maple.

  “No, no. She’s having diarrhea.”

  “On my front seat?” wailed Mrs. Maple. “Oh well, it’s leather. We can clean it up. I don’t smell anything, though, Freddy.”

&nb
sp; “Awesome. False alarm.”

  Chapter Two

  All morning, Laura Maple had been dancing with excitement. After years of daydreaming, she was finally getting her own practice pipe organ.

  It was the height of self-indulgence, since the Congregational church and its fine organ were just a few blocks away. Laura could stroll over anytime. In fact, she could practice in lots of churches, because she’d subbed as organist all over the shoreline. She always requested a key to the church because every organ was different, and you wanted to prepare on the actual instrument you’d play on Sunday. They always gave her a key and never asked for it back. Should she ever be in need of ecclesiastical silver, Laura could anonymously enter any church anytime.

  But she wanted her own organ so she could learn all six Bach Trio Sonatas at last. It would take years, because her fingers and feet weren’t as limber as they had been, not to mention her brain.

  Howard, the organ tech, looked around the sprawling high-ceilinged great room next to the kitchen and grimaced. “I need a little guidance on what to do with your stuff.”

  The pipe organ would join two grand pianos, a harpsichord, a Victorian parlor pump organ, a keyboard, and a collection of smashed brass. One grand was an old mahogany Steinway, and in its curve was parked her beloved Chickering. The harpsichord Laura had built from a kit in the 1970s when musicians did that kind of thing, even though everybody despises harpsichords because they have to be tuned every five minutes. The parlor pump organ was walnut, with high, elaborate shelves and ornate molding. Laura sometimes played it for exercise on rainy days because pumping with her feet was a true workout.

  “Just shove them into corners,” said Laura.

  “There’s a limit to what we can accomplish, shoving-wise. Maybe you could trade in the grand pianos and get uprights,” Howard suggested.

  Laura did not dignify this with a response.

  No one else in her four-hand club or even her two-piano club had two pianos. They met here. The rule was, you could never practice; you had to sight-read. Since much of the music was difficult, even for Laura, there was a lot of faking, blaming, and laughter. They had agreed that nobody could die or move away, because they had no replacements.

  Upright pianos had no cachet.

  Not that her grands currently had any cachet. They had been shrink-wrapped to protect them from the dust of organ installation, and they looked silly. The organ console wasn’t here yet, but the room was filled with pipe crates, massive as coffins and one of them big enough for a yeti. Even a small organ needed a lot of pipes. Luckily, her great room had a soaring ceiling.

  Laura’s house was set up so that the front door was usually ignored; it was the back door with its decorative portico over the driveway that drew people in. The back hall was quite lovely, connected to the great room with a wide arch. “Let’s roll the pianos over and block the arch opening,” said Laura. “I can go back and forth through the kitchen.”

  “But if there’s a fire, you’d have only one way out,” said Marco, Howard’s assistant, “and plus, you don’t want your musician buddies traipsing through the kitchen every time they come. You’re going to have a grand room and you want a grand entrance.”

  Laura loved the idea of a grand room, although more likely, it would just look eccentric. She reminded herself that she didn’t care what other people thought, although nobody really felt that way; everybody really cared a lot.

  Marco said, “How about we move the parlor organ into the parlor and put the harpsichord in your upstairs hall?”

  Laura did have a small front living room, which was handy because there was no seating in the great room unless you liked piano benches. But if she moved the pump organ into the parlor, the sofa might have to go. The house needed some semblance of normalcy.

  “We can try,” she said doubtfully.

  Howard and Marco had the harpsichord relocated in a minute and, after unscrewing the taller finials, effortlessly moved the pump organ on sliders. They shifted Laura’s little sofa under the window, giving the inside wall to the pump organ, where its intricate walnut carvings rose dramatically against the white paint.

  Laura clapped. “It really is a parlor now!”

  In the great room, they shifted one grand under her shelf of smashed brass. Laura had found her first smashed bugle many years ago in an antique shop, looking as if an elephant had stepped on it. Not long after that, she found a trombone bent in half. She’d spent decades with her eyes peeled for ruined brass instruments.

  The other grand blocked the arch for now, but once the pipe crates were gone, the two pianos could return to their original position. Everybody was happy.

  Laura left Howard and Marco to do their thing and set out for Middletown. She loved Route 9, which sliced through Connecticut River Valley hills, its rock cuts weathered to great jagged slabs of brown jewelry. White steeples peeked out from trees hot with fall color.

  But there was nothing like a visit to Middletown Memory Care to make the heart sink. Her aunt Polly’s memories were few. It was Laura saddled with memory.

  The pipe organ was just another time filler, just another, albeit very expensive, way to think about anything except what mattered.

  She hoped Freddy would also be at MMC. Such a sweet boy, and so attentive to his grandmother.

  He never called her Laura and had only once called her Mrs. Maple. He usually said “Mapes” or “Tree Lady.” The silly, affectionate nicknames felt like junior high to Laura, but Freddy didn’t even know what junior high was, because they were middle schools by the time he was old enough to attend, and anyway, she was pretty sure he used the nicknames for distance rather than closeness.

  When she got off Route 9, Laura wandered among teeny houses shaded by huge trees, pretending she lived in one and her life was perfect. Clapboard siding on a house, hanging baskets on a porch, a child and a puppy behind the white picket fence—these people had no problems. These people had always done the right thing.

  Laura’s biggest sin was no secret, and yet nobody ever commented. Maybe it didn’t seem like a sin to them. Maybe Laura herself was so insignificant that her actions, right or wrong, failed to register. Or maybe time diluted sin, and what had once been deeply wrong was now just background.

  She turned up the volume on the classical music station so she could drown in chords instead of heartache, and suddenly there was Freddy on the side of the street, flagging her down.

  Sometimes Laura thought that things were “meant” and some power guided you to be in the right place at the right time, like now. But more often, you were in the wrong place at the wrong time. So what did that mean?

  Almost before Laura knew what was happening, Freddy popped his grandmother into the front seat where the poor, sweet old lady looked around in panic. What’s this chair? Who’s this stranger?

  “Mrs. Chase, how pretty you look,” said Laura, knowing that Cordelia Chase would not recognize her although they’d said hello a hundred times. She smoothed Cordelia’s snow-white hair and fastened the seat belt carefully around her. Dementia having taken Cordelia’s appetite as well as her mind, she was a wisp of a person now. “You and Freddy went for a walk, didn’t you, Mrs. Chase? Such a nice fall day.”

  Cordelia Chase regarded her uncertainly. “Alice?”

  Laura was tempted to say yes. There were so few gifts you could give a dementia patient. If she said, Yes, I’m Alice, Cordelia would be comforted, because what was better than your daughter visiting you? But even Laura, who had done her fair share of lying, could not pretend to be somebody’s dead daughter.

  Freddy leaped into the back seat and slouched down. Children these days had dreadful posture and Freddy led the pack. Or didn’t lead, actually. If she’d ever dealt with a nonleader, it was Freddy. “Freddy, did you make this necklace your grandmother is wearing? It’s just lovely.”

  “I ma
ke the beads,” he reminded her. “Somebody else makes the necklaces.”

  Chapter Three

  Freddy had been selling those beads at the Milwaukee show where he first agreed to work for the Leper. Freddy had been in the game only a few years and was still astonished that it wasn’t enough to make the glass; you had to sell it. He could lampwork around the clock and often did, but retail was crushing. You sold beads singly or in threes or fives or sevens, because odd numbers always looked better. Twenty dollars here, eleven dollars there, fifty dollars now and then. It added up so slowly.

  His booth was one of hundreds filling a convention hall the size of an airport hangar and about as attractive. Everybody had a little square, marked off with aluminum poles, curtains, and skirts. Freddy couldn’t believe he participated in anything requiring a skirt, let alone that the tablecloth had to be wrinkle-free. He now had a tablecloth collection, which somebody could blackmail him about.

  It had been almost 10:00 a.m. that day, just prior to the opening bell. The last forklifts were trundling away and the final carpet sweeping was over. Food-booth smell was starting to kick in: Mexican, doughnuts, Chinese, popcorn.

  Freddy had worked four months to produce enough beads for this show, and with luck, a third of it would sell. His beads were arranged in shallow velvet-lined boxes, which themselves were arranged in tiers and aisles, with Freddy’s tiny cute signage for color and design. He wished the display didn’t look so trinkety. He wanted it to be glamorous. More representative of the time, skill, and hope invested in it.

  The five-minute warning came over the PA system, complete with recorded trumpets and crazed applause. Jason, who sold kilns, torches, and safety glasses, had the adjacent booth. “Brace yourself, Freddy,” he said. “Five thousand middle-aged overweight white ladies are about to charge.”

  That wasn’t a completely fair demographic for beading, but close. Freddy loved these women, though, because they loved his glass, and glass was the core of his life. Freddy loved the torch, loved the techniques of each task. He especially loved anybody who wanted his glass enough to pay for it.