The Best Contemporary Women's Fiction: Six Novels

by Jenna Blum

  Hello, says Trudy, shrugging on her bathrobe. Rose-Grete? How are you doing?

  But it is not Rose-Grete. It is Ancy Heligson, the manager from the New Heidelburg Good Samaritan Center. She ignores small-town pleasantries and gets straight to the point, speaking with urgency. And to Trudy, cinching her robe tight as if the woman were in the room and could see her, it seems as though what is happening is her fault, as if she has somehow conjured Anna up merely by thinking of her. Or is being punished for having disobeyed Anna's dictates about modesty. For the manager's news is not good. Listening, Trudy leans against the bureau for support. She closes her eyes.

  28

  AND SO IT IS THAT THE NEXT MORNING, A SUNDAY WHILE most good Minnesotans are in church, Trudy is making another pilgrimage to the New Heidelburg Good Samaritan Center. She arrives at the nursing home in record time and parks beneath the billboard on the far side of its lot. LET US ALL REMEMBER THE AGED, it commands. YES, EVEN YOU ARE GETTING OLD!!! Normally Trudy can't help a wry smile at this; it is as though the staff wants to ensure that visiting a loved one here is as depressing an experience as possible. But at the moment she is in no mood to find anything funny.

  Trudy bursts through the sliding doors at a near-run, the tails of her black wool coat belling behind her, and skids across the slick linoleum to the reception desk.

  Excuse me, she says to the aide behind it. I'm here to see Mrs. Heligson.

  The aide, who is on the phone, shows no sign of interrupting her conversation. Trudy draws herself up to her full height and gives the girl her most imperious look, the one she uses in class to quell obstreperous students. This has little effect. The aide, who is about the same age as Trudy's pupils, with a sweet, puddingy face, flashes her an apologetic smile but keeps on talking.

  Trudy leans over the desk and joggles the phone's cutoff button.

  Hey! the aide says, her mouth dropping open in protest. Then her nail-bitten hand flies to cover it.

  Oh, Mrs. Swenson, I'm sorry, I didn't recognize you—

  Get Mrs. Heligson, says Trudy. Right. Now.

  The aide jumps up.

  Sure. You bet.

  She backs toward a door bearing a plaque marked MANAGER and bolts inside. Through the thin plywood Trudy hears the aide's high excited voice and Mrs. Heligson's lower, slower responses. Trudy waits, breathing shallowly through her mouth to avoid taking in too much of the Center's smell of Lysol and urine and bland mashed food. The Center's more ambulatory residents are here, slipping sideways on mismatched couches or locked into wheelchairs behind metal trays. Under ordinary circumstances, Anna, more compos mentis than these poor husks, would be among them, picking at her lunch or staring with a faded lack of interest through the picture window at the two-lane road. But she is nowhere to be seen.

  Eventually the door to the manager's office flies open and Mrs. Heligson hurries out. The aide, trailing behind her, resumes her position behind the desk and begins dividing pills into Dixie cups with a vindicated, businesslike air. This doesn't fool Trudy for a second. She knows the girl will be straining to catch every last word of this encounter, which will be discussed and analyzed among the nurses with great relish for months to come.

  Trudy walks a few feet away into a corridor, leaving the manager no choice but to switch direction and follow her. She folds her arms and watches the woman's waddling progress, gimlet-eyed.

  Where is my mother? she asks when Mrs. Heligson reaches her.

  Now, I know you're angry, Mrs. Swenson, and I don't blame you. But let's stay calm here. Your mom's in her room, and she's doing just fine.

  Trudy lets out a snort.

  I find it hard to believe she's just fine. How could you let her get away like that? What were you people doing, watching talk shows while my seventy-six-year-old mother was wandering down the highway in her nightgown?

  Mrs. Heligson's mouth compresses into a hot-pink line.

  Well, it wasn't just her nightie, she says. She had her coat on over it ... Then, as Trudy boggles at her in astonishment, she adds hastily, Of course we were keeping a close eye on her. We do our best to monitor all our old folks. But you have to understand something: Your mom's still got it up here—

  Mrs. Heligson taps her temple.

  —and whenever she makes up her mind to get out, she gets out. There's really not much we can—

  Wait, says Trudy. Wait just a minute. Am I to understand from what you've just said that this isn't the first time she's run away?

  Well. Well, no. It's the third. But—

  And you didn't see fit to inform me of this?

  Trudy is so aghast that she waves her hands about as though fighting off a swarm of bees. You couldn't have called? Or when I was here at Christmastime—

  Mrs. Heligson holds up a fat palm.

  Now just a minute, she says. I did call you. I called a bunch of times.

  Trudy is belatedly reminded of the blinking red light on her answering machine and how she hit Save without listening to the messages, vowing to return them when she had fewer interviews and more sleep.

  And as for Christmas ... Mrs. Heligson shakes her head. We did try our best to contain her, she says.

  Mrs. Heligson, says Trudy, then stops to regain control of her voice. Mrs. Heligson, are you familiar with the phrase criminally negligent ?

  The manager bridles and crosses her arms beneath her prodigious bosom.

  We are not at fault here, she says stiffly, and you won't find a single judge in the country who'll think otherwise. Your mother has been trouble from the start. Not eating, not talking, running away ... Well. Like I said on the phone, we just can't be responsible for her anymore. I'm so sorry.

  Trudy glares at her. Mrs. Heligson looks anything but sorry. In fact, she appears decidedly smug. There is a subtext here: Trudy knows that Mrs. Heligson knows that Trudy remembers when Mrs. Heligson was still Ancy Fladager, one of nine Fladagers living in a trailer down by Deer Creek—those no-account Fladagers, everyone called them; those shanty Irish. And Trudy also recalls all too well when Ancy, only a grade ahead of her but a foot taller, pushed Trudy into the dirt on the playground and ripped off her skirt, to see if Trudy really had a swastika birthmark, as rumored; and how, finding none, she spat on Trudy and raced off, yelling, Stupid Kraut! Perhaps Anna hasn't really run away at all. Perhaps Ancy Heligson, now the buxom embodiment of New Heidelburg respectability, has contrived a way to finally eject Anna from the town, even as the body will try to rid itself of any foreign object.

  I wouldn't let my mother stay here if you paid me, Trudy tells Mrs. Heligson coolly. In fact, I'll be taking her with me right now. Today.

  Well, I think that's best.

  And before you get too relieved, Mrs. Heligson, let me tell you that I'll be lodging a complaint with the county health board. And the state. The way you run this place is a disgrace. Now, you said my mother is in her room?

  Mrs. Heligson manages to nod, her chins quivering with affront.

  Thank you.

  Trudy turns on her heel and stalks off to the Alzheimer's wing. Anna doesn't have the disease, of course, but this was the only single Trudy could procure for her. It is the caboose of the ward, the very last room, and the only one whose door is bare of Hallmark cards, Bible verses, fuzzy and unflattering Polaroids of its inhabitant. There is just an oaktag name card: MRS. JACK SCHLEMMER (ANNA). Trudy knocks, waits a polite interval for a response she knows is not forthcoming, and enters.

  That the first thing Trudy sees is her mother's back comes as no surprise to her; she sometimes thinks that after Anna dies the most enduring memory Trudy will have of her will be this pose. She takes off her coat and lays it on the hospital bed. The room is a small gray box with cinderblock walls, its reek of disinfectant not doing much to disguise the urine of its previous occupant. Anna is sitting in a plastic chair by the window, looking out at the view: a field scoured bare by the insistent wind from the Dakotas. Corn husks protruding from frozen clods of earth. Anna appears
to be studying the sole demarcation line, a fence. She gives no indication that she has heard Trudy come in.

  Trudy walks to her mother and crouches beside the chair, putting her hand on it.

  Hi, Mama, she says. How are you feeling?

  No answer.

  I hear you've had some adventures lately, Trudy says. Gave the folks here quite a scare. The manager says you've run away three times—is that true?

  Anna continues to stare through the window. Only the slight flare of her nostrils shows that she is alive at all.

  Trudy sighs. Come on, Mama, talk to me, she persists. Have they been mistreating you? Why did you do it? Such a stupid thing to do—don't you know you could have frozen to death? Or...

  Trudy pauses.

  Or perhaps that was your intent, she says.

  This is apparently worthy of response, for Anna twists to bestow a pale glare of indignation on her.

  Of course it was not, she says, and faces forward again.

  Then she adds, Du bist keine gute Tochter.

  Trudy blinks. What? What did you say?

  You heard. You are not a good daughter.

  Anna clears her throat. Her voice is rough, from lack of use, Trudy assumes.

  Only a bad daughter would put her mother into such a place as this, Anna says.

  Trudy watches her for a minute, then stands.

  How unfortunate you feel this way, she says dryly, since you're coming to live with me.

  She turns her back on Anna and crosses to the closet, from which she retrieves Anna's battered maroon suitcase. Behind her she hears a scrape as Anna rises from the chair.

  Is this true? Anna asks. We will leave right now? Today?

  As soon as I can pack your things, says Trudy, tossing dresses and blouses and skirts into the case. I called around last night to find another place for you where you might be happier, but nobody has space on such short notice. So for now you're stuck with me.

  Oh, says Anna. Oh, mean to say, that is quite acceptable.

  Trudy sets two pairs of pumps atop the clothes and hands Anna her boots. She is trying to stuff Anna's robe into the case when Mrs. Heligson, perhaps no longer confident that she would win a lawsuit, appears at the door to make amends.

  So, Anna, she says, looking a little flustered at the speed with which Trudy is dismantling the room. So I hear you're going to live with your daughter for a while then. Won't that be nice!

  Anna gives the woman a long, chilly stare but says nothing. Mrs. Heligson flushes the red of the pantsuit she is wearing, the color rising into her doughy cheeks.

  Come, Mama, says Trudy, helping Anna into her coat. Button up. It's cold out there.

  She refrains from adding, As you already know, as she takes Anna's elbow to guide her down the hall. She has no wish to needle Anna further; in fact, Trudy is feeling quite kindly toward Anna at the moment, since there is a distinct triumph in rescuing her, in mother and daughter promenading past the goggle-eyed aides, in shielding Anna from the shaking old hands that reach out to touch them as they pass. Indeed, the relief of departure is so great that it is not until the two women are in the car, the sign for the New Heidelburg town limits dwindling in the rearview mirror, that Trudy realizes she has won a Pyrrhic victory: her mother is really coming to live with her.

  Trudy glances sidelong at her passenger. Perhaps Anna too is nervous about such an arrangement, for she is looking anxiously about her at the scenery. Not that there is much to see. Everything is white, the sky, the fields. After the tiny town of Coates, the land opens up into acre upon acre so relentlessly flat that Trudy fancies she can see the curvature of the earth at the horizon. It is, she thinks, like driving on the surface of an eye. What is the joke about emigrating Scandinavians? That they searched the globe until they found a place as miserable as that they left behind. Trudy envisions Anna trudging along the roadside in only her coat and nightgown, her feet purple with cold, and shakes her head.

  The wind pushes snaking, hypnotic waves of snow across the highway, the joins thudding rhythmically beneath the tires with a sound as though the car is swallowing the road. Other than this, the miles pass in silence. Trudy can think of nothing to say but inanities, and every time she attempts one of these her mouth seems to dry up, her lips parting with a soft rip as though she has been sleeping for hours. She doesn't, of course, expect Anna to say anything, so Trudy is startled when Anna suddenly bursts out, as though resuming a conversation: Pay it no mind.

  Trudy struggles to right the course of the car, which she has steered into the oncoming lane.

  What are you talking about, Mama? she asks.

  What I have said back there. That you are a bad daughter. I did not mean it.

  It's all right.

  It is not right, Anna insists. It was only anger talking. That place. It was unspeakable.

  Trudy takes her attention from the road for a second to give Anna a strained smile.

  It's fine, Mama, she says. Forget it.

  Anna looks uncertain, but after a moment she nods and leans back against the headrest. The shadows in her sockets have the density of bruises, as though somebody has gouged his thumbs into the tender skin there.

  She dozes until they reach Trudy's house. Then, apparently rejuvenated, Anna snaps to attention and climbs from the car and—spurning Trudy's outstretched hand—marches up the porch steps by herself. Following with the suitcase, Trudy finds her mother in the living room, gazing around with wide-eyed interest. She has been in Trudy's house only once before, for the small reception following Trudy and Roger's wedding over three decades ago; since then, mother-daughter visits have always—at Trudy's insistence—taken place at the farmhouse. Now Trudy stands like a stranger by her own front door, watching uneasily as Anna wanders about, skating her fingertips over the surfaces of the furniture as if checking for dust.

  You must be tired, Mama, Trudy says, although Anna has slept for the past hour. Why don't we go up and get you settled?

  No, thank you, I am fine, Anna replies, bending to peer at Trudy's asparagus fern. She blows on one of the waving fronds.

  Trudy feels herself flushing. She is a good housekeeper, of course, but next to Anna, hausfrau extraordinaire, she is nothing, and she notices for the first time that the plant's soil is parched and that it needs to be repotted, that a pair of dust mice—stirred into life by the gust of wind from the door—are tumbling animatedly in a corner. And then there are the idiosyncrasies of the house that Trudy, accustomed to them, keeps intending to repair but hasn't gotten around to: she will have to warn Anna about the stove burner that clicks but doesn't light, emitting dangerous gas; about the fact that the taps on the bathroom sink are reversed, so hot water gushes from the cold faucet and vice versa.

  Yet if Anna notices anything amiss, she doesn't comment. Instead, she drifts through the house, pausing here to examine a lithograph, there to rub the fabric of drapes between thumb and forefinger. And still she says nothing, until Trudy—who has tired of trailing her and decided to bring the suitcase upstairs—hears Anna exclaim, What is all of this?

  Trudy drops the case and runs down the steps toward her study.

  Oh, that's nothing, Mama, she says, don't look at those—

  But she is too late, for Anna is standing over Trudy's desk, peering at the titles of the books there, her lips moving as she translates the long English words. Frauen: German Women Recall the Third Reich; The Nazi Officer's Wife; Tales of the Master Race; Hitler's Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust.

  Anna looks up at Trudy, who tries a smile that seems suspiciously large and fishy, even to herself.

  Teaching materials, she explains, for one of my classes.

  Anna's expression is unreadable.

  Come on out of there now, Mama, says Trudy, and let me show you to your room.

  But Anna has turned again to the texts, and Trudy knows from the set of Anna's shoulders that she is not about to move. Trudy shrugs and feigns nonchalance.
>
  Fine, she tells Anna's back, you can find me upstairs when you're ready.

  Then Trudy saunters from the room, as if her books and what Anna thinks of them means nothing to her at all. She takes the suitcase to the guest bedroom and sets about unpacking Anna's clothes. Every now and then she stops to listen, silencing the jangling hangers. For a long while the house is as still as if Trudy were alone, but eventually she hears the slow thump of Anna's rubber boots ascending the risers.

  Trudy turns to the bed and smoothes sheets already pulled tight, plumps pillows already fat.

  Well, Mama, she says, when Anna comes in. What do you think of the room?

  Anna takes a few tentative steps forward, gazing at the white walls, the uncarpeted hardwood floor, the yellow tulips on the bureau and afghan of the same color that Trudy has draped over the rocking chair to brighten the otherwise monastic space.

  It is very nice, Anna says.

  Then she makes her way to the rocker and lowers herself into its creaking cane seat. Drawing the curtain aside, she looks through the window at the house next door, from which, Trudy suddenly remembers, one can often hear the neighbors—they of the offensive Christmas lights—making love with great grunting gusto. It is possible to see them, too, as they are careless about lowering their blinds. Trudy has sometimes found herself viewing this floor show—a flailing leg here, a bobbing head there—with amusement and repugnance and an odd, uncomfortable sense of déjà vu. She is disgusted with herself afterward, of course. But there is something comforting about glimpsing this little sliver of boisterous life, as well as the fact that the woman's jiggling breasts and belly are no more attractive, if much fleshier, than Trudy's own.

  Trudy stows the empty suitcase on the closet floor and slaps her hands together in a workmanlike fashion.

  Well! she says. You're all set. Make yourself comfortable, Mama. If you need anything, just ask. I'll let you rest now.

  She is almost out of the room when behind her Anna says, Trudy.

  Trudy stops. Then turns. Anna has let the curtain drop and is staring at her.