The Tooth of Time

by Sue Henry

SEVEN

  SHIRLEY KEPT HER ACT TOGETHER BY HOLDING ON TO Pat’s arm while I retrieved my car, moved the dog’s basket to the backseat, helped her in while Pat climbed in back with Stretch, and drove away from the nurse, who moved unhappily to collect the abandoned wheelchair, shaking her head in frustration as she watched us go. But as soon as we were out of her sight Shirley slumped in the seat and held her head with the heels of both hands over her eyes.

  “Thank you,” she said with a deep sigh. “I couldn’t have stayed there another second.”

  “We’ll have you home in just a few minutes,” Pat told her, leaning on the back of the seat in front of her. “Does your head hurt?”

  “It’s the carbon monoxide,” Shirley told her without moving. “I must have got a pretty good dose. I woke up vomiting like a sick dog, with my head splitting. It’s a little better now.”

  “You want to talk about what happened?” Pat asked a little hesitantly.

  Shirley raised her head and turned enough to give Pat a glance that was full of fatigue and, I thought, a bit of cynicism.

  “There’s nothing to talk about,” she said. “I don’t know what happened. I went to bed last night in my room. I woke up sometime later in a hospital bed with an oxygen mask over my face. What happened and how I got there, I have no idea. But I did not try to commit suicide.”

  As she dropped her face into her hands again I could see that there were tears streaming from her eyes.

  “If I’d tried to kill myself I’d have done a better, more permanent job of it. Oh God, my head hurts so I can hardly think, but I know that much at least. If I had done what they assume I did, I would have made sure it worked—and maybe I should.”

  I looked up and saw Pat’s dismay in the rearview mirror.

  It was about then that I began to have real doubts that we had done the right thing in helping Shirley escape medical and psychological care.

  We had left the street where the hospital was, and were traveling north on Paseo del Pueblo toward the center of town.

  “Where are we going?” I asked Pat.

  “Keep driving straight. I’ve got to go back to the shop. You can drop me off on the way and from there I’ll direct you where to turn. You’re in that duplex near the Fechin Inn, right, Shirley?”

  As I pulled up to a traffic light, Shirley groaned.

  “Yes. Well—for the time being,” she confessed. “I can’t stay there much longer. I don’t have enough money left at the moment. He took it all. I’ve got to find a cheaper place.”

  In the mirror Pat and I stared at each other, appalled at this new revelation.

  He? Who was he?

  I assumed at that point that she was referring to her ex-husband and that the divorce had left her with little in the way of financial support—a situation with which I was acquainted through the separations of a friend or two in the past whose exes grabbed the money, or hid it away in advance, and refused to divide it equitably, if they admitted it existed at all. Not all men are like that, of course, but men are more likely to calculate their worth and success by the amount of money they have or will make, the number and quality of things they own, and how it all compares with what other men have amassed. This seemed especially true of those leaving one wife for another, younger and prettier, waiting in the wings with expectations of the high standard of living that had attracted her in the first place. The departing husband of one acquaintance of mine simply told her, “You know how to work. Get a job,” disregarding and devaluing the fact that she had worked for years in a job she hated simply to add enough to their income so that he could present an impressive social front to those in his profession who measured success by the size of their incomes and houses, the make of their expensive cars, the exclusivity and price of their club memberships.

  Remember what I said earlier about lemons? Well, bear that in mind. For, without substantiation, I have to admit I presumed that Shirley’s ex must be a particularly sour lemon.

  There are times when you simply make choices with very little or nothing to go on. I seldom allow myself to choose on the spur of the moment and without knowing and considering what I am committing myself to, for past experience has taught me that quick decisions are usually unwise—sometimes extremely so. But it was evident that this woman was close to the breaking point and that there was more to her situation than first appeared. I was curious to know what that more was—and concerned that she might be serious about making suicide work. If she was, getting involved didn’t much appeal to me, but from the sound of it she needed help.

  It was Stretch who decided it. Loose in the back, he thrust himself far enough forward between the seats to give Shirley’s elbow a sympathetic lick. Having hardly noticed he was there, she was startled by the sensation of his wet tongue on her skin and jerked around to find him staring up at her with those irresistible liquid-coffee eyes of his offering concern.

  “Oh my!” she said. Then against all odds she giggled. It started with a short burst on an almost hysterical note. But as Pat, who had seen what happened, joined in tentatively, it grew more natural and relaxed. In seconds we were all laughing as Stretch, taking mirth for approval, followed his nose and scrambled into Shirley’s lap, where she couldn’t help petting him. Few can.

  The upshot of it all was that, with Stretch’s apparent approval and still wondering if it was wise, I invited Shirley to bunk with me in the Winnebago, for the night at least, and offered to help her look for a less expensive place to live the next day, whatever her reason. We dropped Pat off at Weaving Southwest, where she still had a show to prepare, then went to the nearby duplex where Shirley had been living to pick up the few things she would need until she could find a place to move into.

  It was a neat frame structure with an attached garage at the end of each of its two units. An adobe wall with a gate surrounded the shallow front yard of each, and the plots were planted with cactus and other desert plants among pebbles in the space that a lawn would have occupied in less dry conditions. I was to recall later that the well-decorated and well-kept appearance of the place, inside and out, gave me my first hint that perhaps Pat had been right and Shirley had money—or had had money.

  Being more concerned with Shirley’s frame of mind, and having no idea of the price of local housing, I ignored it then. Traveling in my Winnebago, which is both transportation and living space, is practical—I don’t have to make reservations far ahead for the places I visit, or follow a rigid schedule in meeting them—and economical. I can often stay in an RV park space for three or four days for what a hotel would cost for one—a condition I view as a significant luxury. I grew up in a middle-class family more concerned with well-being than wealth. We made choices as to where extra dollars would be most beneficial and enjoyable for all. While my second husband, Daniel, left me well provided for, I am careful of his investments, as he taught me, knowing that there may be more and different needs for them as I grow older.

  Taking Stretch, we went into Shirley’s half of the furnished duplex, which I found was larger than it appeared from the front—spacious for one person and arranged pleasantly with clean lines, cheerful southwestern colors, comfortable furniture, and an adobe pueblo-style fire-place in one corner. Beyond a table and four matching chairs, through a sliding glass door I could see a small tiled patio surrounded by another adobe wall with plantings similar to those in front, some in large pots. It was a perfect place for Stretch, so I let him out with the door open enough for him to come back inside if he liked. In the process I noticed that the door had not been locked, nor had the bar been used that fit in the track to brace it closed. I didn’t think much of it at the time, just mentally filed it for consideration later.

  “Would it hold you up if I took a quick shower and got dressed in something more appropriate?” Shirley asked.

  I assured her it wouldn’t and that she should take her time.

  She disappeared into the back of the house and in a few minutes I could hea
r water running.

  I am not generally a nosy sort, but not hesitant either if I feel it would be irresponsible to ignore the facts of anything in which I may be involved. Not completely satisfied with Shirley’s declaration that she had not tried to take her own life, or that she would not try it again, I thought it might be wise to see if I could find anything to help me come to a conclusion on whether or not to depend on her word.

  I didn’t snoop exactly, just wandered through the place to discover whatever was there that might be enlightening.

  On the table a small loom was set up, the warp half filled with wool that I recognized from Weaving Southwest. Her project for the class Pat had said she was taking, I assumed.

  There was a desk in an alcove between the kitchen and the living room. I stopped beside it and found two books, one about triumphing over divorce, the other on being an outrageous older woman. Both exhibited signs of being read and reread, for they all but fell open and were full of dog-eared pages and underlining. In the first of the two I saw that in pencil Shirley had marked several sentences that referred to men’s inability to understand their wives’ desire for some kind of financial independence, or support for their emotional needs. As I flipped through the rest of the book, a slip of paper that had been inserted between the pages like a bookmark fell out and fluttered to the floor. It read: “Just take care of today. Take care of tomorrow when it gets here.”

  Evidently Shirley had been working on her problems, and in a way that seemed positive to me.

  Next to the books was a laptop computer, open but turned off, a telephone, a notepad, and a coffee mug holding a collection of pencils and pens and sitting next to a dictionary, a thesaurus, a phone book, and what looked like a journal with a blue cover, all standing upright between bookends on the back of the desk. The journal tempted me, but I resisted. Somehow I have never been able to invade the privacy of someone else’s personal thoughts—even those of my own children, when they were still at home.

  On the wall over the desk was a small bulletin board containing a calendar and a short handwritten list of initials followed by phone numbers. Beneath four of the numbers were e-mail addresses. Listening to be sure the water still ran in the bathroom, I took a pencil from the coffee mug and quickly copied the list on a page of the notepad, stuck the page into my pocket, and replaced the items on the desk the way I’d found them.

  A small, immaculately clean kitchen lay to the left of the dinette set. I stepped in and opened the refrigerator door—you can tell a lot about people by what they eat. Shirley evidently ate like a bird, a regimen I’m sure she had followed for years. The quart of milk I found on the top shelf was labeled fat free, and the other shelves held nothing but several cans of diet soda and iced tea. There was no bread or butter, no eggs, only a crisper full of vegetables and fruit and a freezer compartment empty of anything but half a dozen diet entrées.

  I closed the door feeling comfortably, thankfully, and slightly—as Pat had put it—fluffy.

  On the other side of the dinette there was a door I assumed to be a closet, and I was about to make a quick check inside it when I heard the shower turn off and Shirley leave the bathroom and go into her bedroom, so I left it alone.

  By the time she reappeared, having washed traces of the hospital away and dressed in an attractive blue and white blouse and blue pantsuit that may have been denim but looked expensive enough to have come straight off Rodeo Drive, I was sitting on the living room sofa, with a recent fashion magazine on my lap, flipping pages and feeling as indisposed toward the styles they revealed as I had toward the contents of the refrigerator.

  “That’s better,” Shirley said, setting down a small suitcase and a large green cosmetic bag that appeared to be stuffed full, with several tall containers of lotion, shampoo, and the like that, along with a hair dryer, protruded from the top. It gave me another piece of the puzzle of her attitude, for would any woman depressed enough to intend suicide actually pay attention to taking excessive care of herself? I thought not.

  My own beauty regimen—if the word beauty can apply—consists mainly of shower and shampoo, slathering myself with moisturizer, using lots of sunblock and ChapStick, plucking my eyebrows if they threaten to get out of control, and applying a minimum amount of makeup—lipstick, eye shadow, and a touch of mascara—when necessary and if I remember. If I gave it a name, I’d be more likely to call it a maintenance routine. Regimen is a word that has never fit me at all well.

  But, I thought, considering the probable cost, if you were going to go so far as to have a plastic surgeon lift anything and wanted to sustain your investment, regimen would probably be the exact word to use. I wondered if Shirley had a checklist.

  “This is a very nice place,” I told her. “How’d you find it?”

  She nodded, then smiled in amusement.

  “A friend recommended it, but you should have seen it when I moved in—doilies and framed embroidered mottoes everywhere. CLEANLINESS IS NEXT TO GODLINESS, for Pete’s sake—pretty obvious reminder. I removed them all to a closet. The pictures are my own.”

  I glanced around and noticed that the three that now hung on the living room walls were attractively peaceful, with long horizontal lines typical of the southwestern landscape. Another, in the dining area, was an abstract acrylic in brilliant colors, but clean of line and uncluttered. They all looked very expensive.

  “Nice choices. I particularly like the abstract,” I told her.

  “It was a gift,” she said, “from a friend.”

  Pretty significant friend, I thought. “Was the switch okay with your landlady?”

  “Well—she didn’t seem particularly pleased—a little hurt even. But when I promised to put them all back before I left and showed her that I’d put them away carefully, there wasn’t much she could do. I’d used the same hangers, so there weren’t any new holes in the walls.”

  She hesitated, frowning. “I think she comes in sometimes when I’m not here,” she told me. “I’ve found a thing or two moved from where I had put it—a book, a letter on the desk. Oh, I don’t care really. It’s not legal, but she’s harmless, if a bit of an odd bird, and she makes great fruit-flavored iced tea.”

  She walked across and took the journal, the list of phone numbers, and a pen from the desk, dropping them into her bag. “Shall we go?”

  Laying aside the periodical, I headed for the sliding door to collect Stretch, who came willingly. I tucked him under one arm and was locking the back door when there was a knock at the front.

  Shirley went to answer it and I heard a female voice.

  “Oh, Shirley. I heard the water running and hoped it was you. How are you doing, dear?”

  “Fine,” said Shirley, and ushered in a tall woman with graying hair, older than either of us, with a cane in one hand that she leaned on heavily in taking the first steps into the room.

  “Are you sure? I didn’t expect you back so soon and I would have thought that—”

  Shirley interrupted.

  “I’m fine—really.” She turned to me. “Ann Barnes is my next-door neighbor, Maxie. Ann—Maxie McNabb—and Stretch.”

  So this was the snoopy landlady—the woman Connie had told us found Shirley and called for help.

  Ann nodded in my direction, but her frown was all for my short-legged friend.

  “Oh dear, I know I told you no animals. I simply can’t rent to people who bring in animals.”

  “Stretch is only visiting, Ann. I’m going to stay with Maxie for a day or two and I came back to collect a few things and give you my notice. I’ll be moving as soon as I find a new place.”

  “Oh. Well. I do think that would be best. You would probably feel more comfortable somewhere nearer a—ah—doctor, wouldn’t you?”

  It was evident that the woman wanted to lose Shirley as a tenant and would have told her so in a minute or two if necessary. The bathrooms in the two units of the duplex evidently backed up to each other, so she could have either hea
rd the shower water running or seen us arrive. She might have heard the car running in the garage next door the night before—though I wondered about that, considering that the garages were on opposite ends of the building and her speaking voice was loud enough to make me think she might be a little hard of hearing.

  “Look, Ann. Whatever you may have assumed, I did not try to asphyxiate myself last night. But I must thank you for calling—whoever you called. It saved my life and I’m grateful.”

  “That’s not necessary. Anyone would have called nine-one-one,” Ann told her, waving a deprecating hand and returning immediately to the subject of Shirley’s leaving. “So you’ll let me know when you’re moving? There’s a week and two days left on this month’s rent—nonrefundable, of course. Then there’s the security deposit and the cleaning fee—and . . .”

  Clearly she had carefully checked the dates before arriving, I thought grimly, but her words trailed off as my irritation overcame my reticence enough to make me step forward and interrupt. “Both of which you will return, I’m sure. This place is spotless now, or could be in ten minutes.”

  “Oh,” she said.

  She was big on oh.

  “Well, there’s always something needs doing when a tenant moves out. And considering there has been a prohibited animal on the premises . . .”

  She had evidently memorized the local regulations for rentals.

  “For about half an hour and not inside—out on the patio,” I told her, tightening my hold on Stretch, who was wriggling to get down.

  “Still . . .”

  “I think you’ll find it legally advisable to refund it all except what’s left of Shirley’s rent for this month—if she moves before it runs out. Ready, Shirley?”

  With a twinkle of relief and amusement in her eye, she nodded, picked up her suitcase and cosmetic bag, and followed me past her landlady to the front door.

  “Thank you again, Ann,” she said sweetly as we went by. “You’ll make sure the front door is locked, won’t you—dear?”

  I was glad my back was turned. There’s no use adding insult to injury with a chortle—even if deserved—when the woman still holds your money.