by Tim McGregor
Bloody hell.
They stood on the back patio, looking out over Connie’s small yard. Damp from rain and grey with winter, the garden was lifeless and barren under the weak patio light. Gantry lit another cigarette while Connie pulled her coat tighter against the chill.
“It was a damn selfish thing to do, John,” she said. “Even for you. Letting me go on thinking you were dead.”
“I’m sorry. I couldn’t just ring you up.” Flickering the cigarette, he watched the glowing ash blow off into the night like a tiny comet before it winked out. “Who told you about it?”
“Who do you think? Two constables standing in my kitchen, giving me the bad news. Christ.” Connie paced the small slab of deck and then turned to him. “Give me one of those damn things.”
He handed her the pack. “Thought you quit?”
“I did.” Lighting up, all but throwing the pack back at him. “Add that to the list of reasons you’re going to hell.”
He smirked at her, being the sly fox and all but it was false and she knew it. Cracks about going to hell just weren’t that funny anymore.
Connie exhaled with a long, weary sigh, looking out over her dark garden. Beyond the gabled roofs of the neighbouring houses, the spires of the cathedral rose up in a dark silhouette against the smoky light of the city. She looked at her brother. “So are you back for good now? No more chasing round the world?”
“What do you think?”
“How long are you staying, then?”
“Not sure,” Gantry said. “Got a few things to sort here, but the main thing was to see you. Apologize for being such a shite excuse of a sibling.”
“You’re not getting off the hook that easily.” Connie smiled, a cruel-looking sneer not dissimilar to her brother’s. “Stay the night. You can kip on the Chesterfield.”
“You don’t have to do that. Plenty of places where I can crash.”
“And let you get away without seeing Hannah? She’d scream blue bloody murder if she missed her uncle.”
This time his smile was wide and genuine. “In that case, I’d be happy to.” Few things made the world go round like the snarky sneer of his niece.
Connie stubbed her cigarette out in a dead flowerpot on the window sill. “Have you spoken to Darby Orton lately?”
“Christ, no. Not since Ellie died. Why?”
“I heard he’s in poor health,” she said. “Maybe you should go round and see him.”
Gantry glared up at his sister like she had suddenly sprouted two heads. “Old Darby never liked me when Ellie was alive. Why in God’s name would I go see him now?”
Connie planted a fist on her hip, as if the answer couldn’t be more clear. “Closure. Penitence. You haven’t spoken to him since Ellie’s funeral. Maybe now’s the time.”
Gantry’s mouth soured. Flicking the cigarette butt over the gate into the neighbour’s yard, he reached for his drink. “The man tried to bludgeon me with chair last time. I don’t owe him anything.”
“I disagree, John. But it’s not for him, it’s for you. She was his daughter. And you never spoke to him about what happened.” Connie slid open the sliding glass door, ready to retreat from the chill night air. “Settle the account. While you still can.”
She slipped back inside. Gantry slugged back the lager in the can and then shook another cigarette from the pack. The smoke billowed before his eyes and through the wispy coils of it, he pondered the dark outline of the cathedral spires against the sky.
~
The Palm Grove Retirement Home was a two story brick eyesore thrown up in the heyday of 1970’s architorture. Cheap, beige and devoid of soul or character. In a way, it made a perverse sort of sense as a place to house the elderly until they died. Or so Mockler claimed as they pulled into the parking lot.
“Doesn’t look that bad to me,” Billie said as they passed through the main doors. “Seems kind of cheery, actually.”
“You haven’t seen the inside yet,” Mockler countered. “Or smelled it. Hang on.”
Mockler crossed to the reception desk to check in, chatting with the two young women there. Both of them were big smiles and batting eyelashes, one flipping her hair as she laughed at something he’d said. Billie waited. Apparently Mockler was a big hit with the female staff at his father’s nursing home. And why wouldn’t he be? A police detective, good-looking in his odd way, charming when he needed to be. She tried not to let it irk her.
Stepping into an elevator, they rode one floor up.
“The ladies at reception seem very friendly,” Billie said, unable to help herself. “Or is that just with the dashing detective?”
“Easy, tiger.” He slipped his hand over hers as they got out of the elevator. “Listen, have you been to an old folk’s home before?”
“Never.”
“Okay. It can be a bit freaky for a newbie. Most of them are nice and just want to chat, but a few of them aren’t all there anymore. So don’t let it weird you out, okay?”
“Lead on, MacDuff,” she said, thinking he was over-reacting. Passing through the common room, she twigged that he wasn’t. The old and the palsied stared vacantly at the television. A few rolled aimlessly in their wheelchairs. Mouths gaped open, strings of saliva threaded between their gums. Hands curled into claws in their laps, eyes as blank as snow. One old woman thrust out her arthritic hand to grab at Billie’s sleeve.
Billie froze. The woman’s lips churned up and down, her eyes pleading. “What is it?” Billie asked the old woman. “Can I help?”
Mockler tugged her along. “Come on.”
“But she needs help,” Billie said, feeling the woman tug at her sleeve.
“She does that to everyone.” Mockler eased the old woman’s hand from Billie’s cuff. “Easy, Mrs Henderson. This isn’t Marsha.”
Confusion clouded the eyes of Mrs Henderson. Toggling the joystick control for her wheelchair, she spun the chair about and rolled away. Billie felt his hand pulling her along down a hallway of sickly green carpeting and department store art on the walls. The corridor ended in another common area, this one smaller and without a television. The large windows looking out over the gardens were beaded with condensation that hazed the glare of the faux gas lamps on the cobbled pathway.
An elderly man sat slumped in a wheelchair before the windows, his back to the hallway.
“You awake, Joe?” Mockler said as they approached the man.
Joe? Was the relationship that strained that Mockler addressed his father by name? Billie stole a glance at him. Mockler’s face was deadpan grim, his work mask.
The old man gripped the wheel and spun the chair about. His features were creased with lines, the mouth pulled into a permanent scowl but the man’s eyes were alert, aware, unlike old Mrs. Henderson’s. Although she could see no resemblance between father and son, the elder Mockler appeared to be a harmless, grandfatherly-type in his thick glasses and grey cardigan.
Then he spoke, shattering the illusion.
“Getting across town takes twenty minutes,” Joe Mockler burred, tapping at his wristwatch. “Did you stop for pussy along the way?”
“I told you before. I can’t just drop everything when you have a crisis.”
“Right. The big detective has crimes to solve. Christ Almighty, they’re dead, aren’t they? It’s not like they’re gonna get any deader.”
Billie stayed back, observing them both, politely waiting for an introduction. Mockler remained stone but she could see his jaw clench in exasperation while Joe Mockler’s grimace intensified now that it had a target to focus on. The whole dynamic seemed to have a routine to it, each player assuming a well-rehearsed role.
The old man leaned forward in his chair. “When are you getting me out of this dump? I can’t go another day.”
“We’re not going into that again. This is home now.”
“It’s a fucking prison,” Joe grumbled. “The place reeks of porridge and feces.”
Mockler looked at Billie. “So
rry.” He took her hand, drawing her closer and turned back to his father. “Joe, I’d like you to meet Billie. She’s a friend of mine.”
Ignoring the vague term ‘friend’, Billie reached out a hand to the man in the wheelchair. “Hi, Mister Mockler. It’s really nice to meet you.”
Rheumy eyes rolled up to her. “Billie? That’s a boy’s name.”
“You can call me Sybil if you want.”
He scrutinized her from crown to toe in a way that Billie didn’t care for and then his scowl deepened. “You look like the angel of death in all that black.” Rolling his head back to Mockler, he groused on. “This a hint, son? You trying to hurry along the inevitable?”
“I should be so lucky.”
Joe Mockler raised a hand, the knuckles gnarled like an old root. “What happened to Christina? I warned you not to let that one slip away.”
“Be polite, Joe,” Mockler said.
“It’s okay,” Billie said. “Ray warned me you were feisty.”
“Especially when patronized,” the old man replied with a sneer. He looked at his son. “You’re supposed to trade up when you dump your hump, Raymond. Didn’t anyone tell you that?”
Billie flinched, almost in shock.
“Why do I bother with you?” Mockler turned away, ready to leave. “We’re done here.”
The old man swivelled his head to Billie again. “Run down to the kitchen and get me that slop they pass off as tea, would you?”
Mockler shook his head. “You can’t be an asshole to someone and then order them around, Joe. Don’t bother calling me again.”
Stuck in the cloying trap of family drama, Billie decided on diplomacy and stopped the detective from leaving. “We’re already here. You may as well catch up.”
“No way.”
“Stay. I’ll be in the common room when you’re done.” Turning to face Mockler’s father, she offered a small wave goodbye. “Nice meeting you, Mr Mockler.”
She walked away before he could protest. The old man grumbled something, but, gratefully, she was out of earshot. Mockler hadn’t been exaggerating when he warned her about meeting his father. The elder Mockler was so miserable that it was hard to find any connection between the two of them. Was that just age, wreaking havoc on him? She remembered that Mockler had once told her that he had been raised by a single mom. If that was true, what was the connection between father and son now?
Distracted by the tangled mess of family relationships, Billie rounded a bend in the hallway to arrive in the common area and then stopped cold. Ghosts in the room. Without realizing it, she must have let her guard down. There were six apparitions in all, one for each of the elderly patrons in the common room. Seated next to an old woman dozing on the sofa sat the ghost of an old man, gently patting the hand of his sleeping widow. A woman in a fringe jacket hovered near an old man drooling into a bib, a man in a dark suit stood sentry over an elderly woman watching television. The remaining spirits were less whole, wispy mists of smoke in the sterile light but like the others, posted like guards at the sides of an aged loved one.
The dead, all six of them, turned in unison to look at the young woman frozen in the entry.
Billie took a step back, unprepared for an encounter with the other side. Unguarded like this, the dead were often unpredictable when they locked onto someone who could see them. Some were angry, others confused or mournful or frustrated. The only common trait was that each one of them had something to say and would latch onto a medium in their midst to unburden themselves. If she wasn’t careful, she could be swarmed.
“Is that Noelle?” asked the pale man sitting with his widow. “Has she come back?”
“Noelle doesn’t come here anymore, remember?” replied the woman in the fringe jacket. Brushing her fingers through her feathered locks, she looked Billie up and down. “This is someone new. Hello.”
Billie remained mum, silently observing the ghosts in the room as they stirred at the visitor. Even the hazy ones perked up, taking on a more solidified form.
“She’s gone mute,” said the old man. “Maybe she can’t see us after all.”
“I can see you.”
There was no sense in denying it or trying to back out of the room now. The dead souls in the room seemed placid, more curious than anguished. If she was polite, they might respond in kind.
“We haven’t had one or your kind in a while,” smiled the woman.
Eye-balling the fringed leather jacket and feathered Farah hair, Billie clocked the date of the woman’s death to be late seventies. She didn’t look much older than herself but Billie saw no outward clue to the woman’s demise.
The old man squinted at the medium, as if his eyesight was still poor. “What’s your name, dear?”
“Billie.”
“Are you hear visiting a loved one?”
“I came with a friend.” The fluttering in her heart settled to its regular beat. The spirits before her were neither angry nor manic, which explained why she hadn’t sensed them before. The ghosts here did not give off a chill. A rare thing for Billie to come across.
“Who’s Noelle?”
“An adorable little thing who came with her parents to visit her nan,” said the woman. “Noelle was like you. She could see us but she wasn’t frightened. She’d come chat for a bit. We all miss her.”
“What happened to her?”
“Her nan passed,” replied the old man. “So there was no need to visit after that. I often wonder if she remembers us.”
Billie surveyed the room, each phantom hovering at the side of the elderly. Family. The common room had the air of a doctor’s waiting room. Dull, the minutes ticking by at a glacial pace. “Are you always here? With your family?”
The woman turned to look back at the old man near the window, her feathered bangs swooping. “Always.”
A tiny lump throbbed in Billie’s throat, the departed lingering with their loved ones as their clocks wound down. “That’s sweet. Being near them, like this.”
“There’s nothing sweet about it.” The young man in the dark suit had remained silent until now. He paced around the reclining chair where his elderly relation gaped vacantly at the television. “It’s our penance. For breaking their hearts.”
The three roils of mist receded at the man’s words. The feather-haired woman and the old man lowered their gaze to the floor, as if some secret shame had been unfurled before a stranger.
“Hush now, Karl,” whispered the dead widower.
“Like she cares.” The young man looked awkward in his dark suit, swimming in a jacket that was a size too big for him and Billie realized it must be the suit he was buried in. Probably picked out by the woman in the recliner. The boutineer of white rose on his lapel was crushed, dropping snowy petals here and there. As he moved about the recliner, Billie could see the back of his head. Blown out, an eruption of gore and brains dribbling down the back of his ill-fitting suit. She surmised that it was self-inflicted.
Tread carefully, Billie thought. Like the young man’s destroyed skull, their collective heartaches were still fresh, keeping them bound here in this beige nursing home.
“Is that why you’re waiting?” she asked, respectfully as possible. “To greet them when the time comes?”
“It’s the least we can do,” said the man in the stained collar. “To atone for how we treated them.”
The tale behind the woman in the fringe jacket and the old man remained a mystery. Unlike the head-trauma man, there was no outward clue to what they had done and Billie didn’t want to know. The takeaway here was the obligation shown to a loved one, to family. Did anything else matter?
Footfalls behind her. Mockler came around the corner, shrugging his coat back on. “Ready to go?”
“Yeah.” Striding with him to the elevator, she glanced back at the common room. The lingering ghosts stood silently, watching her leave. The old widower waved a feeble goodbye.
“Is everything okay?”
“I
’m sorry about that,” Mockler said. His jaw was still clenched stiff. “If it’s any consolation, he’s a dick to everybody, not just you.”
“I can see why you never talk about him. Has he always been so miserable?”
“Pretty much. It got worse when I put him in here.” Mockler stabbed the call button for the elevator, impatient to leave. “But now, it’s like the bitterness in him is a kind of strength.”
Billie took hold of his arm to stop him from smashing the button. “It’s not easy for you.” She thought of the dead, lingering in the common room. “But it’s good of you, to visit him.”
The doors opened and they stepped inside, Mockler bashing the button for the ground floor. “To be honest, Billie, I wish he’d just die. Then it would be over.”
“Don’t say that.”
“Why not? It’s true.”
“Because you’ll regret it when it happens.”
He let out a sigh. He clearly wasn’t in the mood to listen to reason so Billie let it go. Every family is cursed in its own way. Was that how Gantry put it? Even so, family was family.
Out of the elevator and walking to the front doors, something was nagging her. A woman concerned about her family’s safety. Billie stopped in the vestibule and dug out her phone. “Can you start the car? I just have to make a phone call.”
“Call from the car,” he said. “I want to get out of here.”
“I’ll just be a second.”
Mockler nodded and pushed through the door, letting a cold gust in that flapped her bangs into her eyes. Scrolling through a list of recently dialled numbers, she tapped one and listened to it ring.
“Hello?”
“Hi Robin. It’s Billie. We met yesterday, at the coffee shop?”
“Oh.” The woman on the other line sounded confused, unsure what to say. “I didn’t mean to freak you out or anything.”
“You didn’t,” Billie said. Through the dark of the vestibule glass, she watched the headlights of Mockler’s car pop to life. “Listen, I’ve been thinking about what you asked.”
“You have?” Robin’s voice lilted up, hope rising.
“Yeah,” Billie replied. “When can I come see the house?”
