Mixed Messages (A Malone Mystery)

by Gligor, Patricia

  Just as she’d closed her eyes again, the phone rang. She jumped up. “Oh, my God! Please let it be David!” She ran into the living room, terrified that her worst fears were about to come true. Her hands were shaking as she turned on the table lamp and picked up the receiver.

  “Ann, ‘s me, David.”

  “Oh, thank God! David! You’re all right. Are you all right?”

  “Mm, okay,” he slurred.

  “Where are you?” she asked, relief flooding through her.

  “Jail. In-di-an-a.”

  “Jail! Indiana? Why?”

  “D-U-I.”

  “Oh, no. David, how could you? We can’t afford … . What are you doing in Indiana?”

  “Boat. Make some money … for us.”

  “Oh, dear God!”

  “Ann, can you come get me?”

  “Come get you? How can I come get you? You have our car, remember? You do still have our car, don’t you?”

  “Don’t yell. Please, don’t yell. My head hurts.”

  “I’ll bet your head hurts. It ought to hurt. What were you thinking? You deserve it. I hope it really hurts!”

  “Fine. Call my mother. She’ll come get me.”

  “I am not calling your mother at four o’clock in the morning. No way! You’re just going to have to stay where you are for now. I’m tired and I can’t deal with this right now.”

  “Only get one call. Should a called my mother in the first place,” he said.

  “Yeah, maybe you should have.”

  “Ann, please … .”

  “No! I’m hanging up now. Call me later when you’re sober and we’ll figure something out.”

  “Ann … .”

  She slammed the receiver down. She looked up and saw Davey standing in the doorway, rubbing his eyes. “Mommy, who were you talking to?”

  “Davey, go back to bed, honey. Don’t worry. Everything’s fine.”

  “But, Mommy … .”

  “Now, young man!” She reached over to turn off the lamp and, when she looked up, her son was gone.

  She stomped down the hallway to her bedroom, threw back the comforter and got into bed. She reached over and punched David’s pillow over and over again. “How could you do this?” she asked. “How could you be so irresponsible? Don’t we have enough problems already? What are we going to do now?”

  I don’t have any money to bail him out, she thought. I don’t even know how to go about doing that. Well, she decided, I have no choice but to tell David’s mother. She’ll just have to take care of this. She does her best to keep David tied to her apron strings anyway. She’ll probably be thrilled that her baby boy needs her help. Well, that’s it then. There’s really nothing else I can do.

  You have to sleep now, she told herself. You’ve got to go to work in a few hours and take the kids out trick-or-treating after dinner. You need to relax. She breathed in deeply through her nose, held her breath and counted to three, and then she exhaled through her mouth to the count of six. She could feel her body beginning to respond. Her eyes felt heavy and began to droop. At least David’s safe and I know where he is, she thought, as she finally dropped off to a deep, dreamless sleep.

  Chapter 32

  LOUISE HAD TOSSED AND TURNED all night long. She glanced at the clock on her bedside table: 4:58 a.m. The alarm would go off in two minutes. She reached over and turned it off. I don’t know why I bother to set it, she thought. No matter what time she went to bed, every morning for more years than she cared to remember, she had awakened at exactly the same time. Intuitively, her brain knew that it was time to get up.

  She sat up in bed, covering her face with her hands, struggling to hold back the tears. The dream she’d had was so fresh in her mind, so vivid. It was a dream of happy times, when both of her sons were young, when both of her sons were alive and well. She wanted to stay in the dream. Sometimes it was hard to separate her dreams from reality. More often than not these days, she would wake up expecting her two little boys to come running in and jump on her bed, “Mommy, Mommy. Time to get up.”

  This was the most difficult part of her day, the moment, early in the morning when it was still dark outside and she realized that her young sons weren’t really there; that Daniel had gone to be with the Lord and David, a grown man, was living with a family of his own, that he had his own life. She was alone and, for the time that it took her to collect herself and face the truth, she was filled with a devastating sense of loneliness and loss. She grimaced as she forced herself to get up. Her whole body was stiff and her muscles and joints ached. It was a toss up as to which hurt the most: her body or her heart.

  “Stop feeling sorry for yourself, old woman,” she whispered, fluffing her pillow and straightening the chenille bedspread. “You’re sixty-nine years old and you’ve worked hard your whole life. You’re bound to have some aches and pains.” She knew that once she got moving, her muscles and joints would loosen up and she’d feel better.

  She reached down, under her mattress, and pulled out a small, leather bound book. She had kept a journal since she was a teenager, when writing in a diary was something most young girls did. She’d discovered that writing down her private thoughts and feelings every day made her feel better; it was a way to unleash her emotions without acting them out. It worked most of the time. She hid the completed journals in the attic because she never wanted anyone to read them. After I’m gone, she thought, David will find them but, until then, there are too many things I don’t want him to know. She sat down on the edge of her bed and wrote for the next several minutes.

  Usually, writing in her journal calmed her but this morning, as she stood up and stashed the book back in its hiding place, she couldn’t shake the feeling that something was wrong. I’ll visit both of my boys today, she decided, because I need to know they’re all right. She went into the bathroom and stood in front of the mirror, pulling Bobbie pins from her thin, gray hair. It was time to get ready to go to work.

  She bent over the bathtub to turn on the water and a pain shot down her back. How much longer will I be able to work? she wondered. Then what will I do? She worried constantly that her monthly social security check wouldn’t be enough to live on if she got sick and that Medicare wouldn’t cover all of her medical expenses, but she couldn’t afford supplemental insurance. That would be stretching her budget too thin, way beyond her comfort zone.

  Without her part-time job at the Church, she was afraid she would have to give up her house and go into government housing. Prices went up every day for essentials like heat, water and food and, even though the Social Security Administration adjusted her monthly allotment each year for inflation, her Medicare bill increased each year too and the price of prescription medicines was staggering.

  It angered her that the pharmaceutical companies were getting rich while the elderly in this country were, in many cases, living in poverty. She wanted to throw something at her TV and shatter the screen when she saw the constant barrage of advertisements for one pill after another to treat everything from depression to a leaky bladder. The only thing that stopped her from destroying her television set was knowing how much it would cost to replace it.

  Moving to government housing would be bad enough, she thought, but what happens if I get to the point where I can’t even take care of myself? It would be worse to live in an old folk’s home where underpaid nurses and orderlies, total strangers, would be responsible for my care. I’ve seen the kind of care that is and I want no part of it, she thought.

  She cringed, remembering how her father had spent his last days. She could still picture him with spittle running down his unshaven chin as he sat for endless hours, slumped in a wheelchair in front of the television set in the lobby of the nursing home. It was the best my sisters and I could do for him, she remembered. The other facilities, the ones that really do provide quality care, were way out of our price range. Anyway, he really didn’t deserve any better.

  The good places are out of the qu
estion for me too, she thought. And I refuse to go on Medicaid! Oh, I could get quality care but, after I died, my house would go to the state as payment for my medical expenses. No! I worked too hard to pay off this house. I want my son and his children to benefit, not the state of Ohio! It’s not fair! I’ve always been independent. I raised David all by myself with no help from anyone. It wasn’t easy, she remembered, but I did it. I’ve definitely had some hard times in my life but this is the worst of all. Getting old is hell!

  A thought occurred to her. David! If she got to the point where she couldn’t live alone anymore, David would take her in; he would take care of her just as she’d always taken care of him. But what about his wife? Would Ann go along with that? Doubtful. She and Ann had never been on the best of terms and, lately, they’d had more than a few disagreements. No, with Ann in the picture, there was no way, she decided, that David would be in a position to help her.

  She got into the bathtub and leaned back. The warm water began to soothe her aching body. She closed her eyes and willed herself to relax. You have some savings, she reminded herself. However, she knew in her heart that she wanted what little money she had in the bank to go to David and her grandchildren after she was gone. She needed to be sure that both children would be able to afford a college education so they could get good jobs. After all, money was security. She didn’t want them to end up like her, in a low paying, physically demanding job. But, she’d had no choice; she’d done what she had to do under the circumstances.

  I should have gotten my GED and gone on to college, she thought. Who knows what I could have accomplished if I’d had a decent education? I could’ve gotten a job making good money. If my father hadn’t forced me to quit school to care for my two younger sisters while my mother was hospitalized with a nervous breakdown, things might have been different. But she knew that it was pointless, wondering what might have been and, in her day, women weren’t encouraged to further their education. Back then, more often than not, they were told, “You’ll get married.” As if that were the answer to everything, as if that would solve all of life’s problems.

  With only a ninth grade education, it wasn’t easy to find a job, she recalled. So, as soon as she turned eighteen, she took a job in Home Health care. Her father hadn’t wanted her to work but she was determined to break free of his control. The work was hard and the hours were terrible, she thought, but at least I was making some money of my own.

  She remembered standing at the bus stop in all kinds of weather, often in the dark, waiting for a bus that would take her to an elderly person’s home. It wasn’t easy, caring for her patients. It was physically exhausting because she often had to lift a patient into his or her wheelchair in order to bathe her or just to be able to change the sheets on his bed.

  It was difficult emotionally too because so many of the patients were irritable and demanding. Sometimes, to alleviate the stress, she’d gone into another room and screamed into a pillow; other days she pummeled the pillow with her fists because that’s what she’d felt like doing to her patient.

  However, as hard as it often was cleaning up after and dealing with the elderly patients, sometimes it was the relatives who had hired her who were the most trouble.

  “What did you do with my mother’s diamond ring?” the daughter of one of her patients had screamed at her. “Did you steal it? It’s worth a lot of money. You have no right to take things that don’t belong to you.”

  Louise had adamantly denied the accusation. Still, the woman threw her hands into the air and shouted, “I don’t care what you say. I don’t believe you and I will not have a thief taking care of my mother!”

  Fortunately, the ring turned up the next day but the whole experience was humiliating and frightening. Not only could Louise have lost her job, she could have been arrested for a crime that she didn’t commit. No, she recalled, it hadn’t been easy.

  When she turned sixty-two, she retired from her full-time job and began to collect her meager social security check each month. She’d planned to work another three years to increase her social security benefit to its full amount but she was fed up with putting up with other people. Still, she knew that she had to find a way to make extra money to supplement her social security.

  She searched through the want ads in the Cincinnati Enquirer and the Western Hills Press but couldn’t find a job that she was qualified for and that was accessible by bus. She’d learned to drive and gotten her driver’s license when she was in her early twenties but she was never at ease behind the wheel. When she stopped for gasoline one morning and barely missed going through the plate glass window of the service station, she vowed never to drive again. She never had, which meant that she was dependent on the bus service and her own two legs to get to where she needed to go.

  Then, one day, as she entered the church vestibule to say her daily prayers, she’d stopped to pick up a piece of paper that had fallen from the bulletin board and there it was: “Housekeeper needed. If interested, call or see Father Andrew for details.”

  The church was close to home and she was willing to work hard and physically able to do the work that the position required. And, most important to her, she could come and go as she pleased, working whatever hours she chose as long as her earnings didn’t exceed the amount allowed by social security. Father Andrew left her alone most of the time; he trusted her to do her job at the church without constantly looking over her shoulder.

  “God has always taken care of you, hasn’t he?” the priest asked her once when she’d gone to him, worried about the future. “Well, Louise,” he’d said, “do you think he’s going to stop now?”

  Another voice popped into her head, a louder, more adamant voice. “God helps those who help themselves!” It sounded a lot like the voice of her father.

  All of a sudden, she remembered that it was Halloween. She recalled that, as a little girl, she wasn’t permitted to go trick-or-treating. Her father, a fanatic Jehovah’s Witness who interpreted the Bible his way, had not allowed his family to observe any holidays. He believed that participating in Halloween rituals was the same as worshipping the Devil. Her parents had always turned out all the lights in the front of the house to discourage anyone from ringing their doorbell. She and her sisters had been sent to their rooms to read the Bible and pray, “to be saved from the evil temptations of Satan.”

  She had wanted to be like the other children but she towered over everyone in her class and felt clumsy and plain compared to the short, petite girls she envied. That was bad enough but she could still remember how she’d felt even more different from the others when, the day after Halloween, all the kids shared and traded their candy and other treats. When they asked her why she didn’t have any candy, she’d always told them lies: my mother gave my candy to the poor orphans, we were out of town and I left my candy at my Aunt Mildred’s, etcetera. After she told the lies, she’d always prayed to be forgiven. She was terrified that, as her father often warned, she would “burn in eternal Hell.”

  When she got married, she had been eager to leave behind the religion she’d grown up with and convert to her husband’s religion, Catholicism. She’d embraced the Catholic faith with all the enthusiasm of the newly converted. She went to church every single day, on the weekends and each day before work. She would go into the silent, empty sanctuary and light candles for those who were gone from her life and those who were still with her.

  Looking back now after all these years, she still didn’t understand why her parents had been so strict with their daughters. She didn’t see anything wrong with children or, if they wanted to, adults dressing up on Halloween, or All Hallow’s Eve, as the Church referred to the holiday. As a matter-of-fact, as a devout Catholic, she fervently believed that the costumes were symbolic. They were meant to scare away the evil spirits so that the next day, on All Saints Day, the saints could celebrate without fear and, the following day, All Souls Day, people could remember those who had died, especially in t
heir immediate families, secure in the knowledge that they were at peace.

  She pulled the stopper on the drain and eased herself up and out of the bathtub. Too much lollygagging, she silently chided herself. Time to get going. She shivered as she stood up and reached for her towel. She felt an all too familiar tingle in her left leg and sighed. “Come on body, don’t fail me today. There’s a lot to do. I don’t have any time to waste.”

  Chapter 33

  ANN WOKE UP ABRUPTLY to the loud, staccato buzzing of her alarm clock. Her eyes popped open and she sat straight up in bed. Being jarred from sleep like that had startled her. Her heart was fluttering like a hummingbird was trapped inside her chest, trying to escape. How will I ever make it through this day on two or three hours of sleep? she wondered.

  Calm down, she told herself. Deep breath. But she was physically and mentally exhausted. More than anything in the world, she wanted to lie back down, close her eyes and drift off to a peaceful, carefree sleep. Instead, she forced herself to get out of bed, plodded down the hall and flipped on the overhead kitchen light.

  She plugged in the coffeemaker and leaned back against the counter. Her whole body ached and she had a dull headache. She felt as if the weight of the world rested on her shoulders. I have so much to do, she thought. I have to get the kids up, I have to get the kids up and ready for school, I have to get ready for work and I have to figure out what to do about David. I can’t face calling Louise right now. I’ll see her at the church and I’ll talk to her then, she decided.

  The second that there was enough coffee brewed to fill her mug, she grabbed the handle of the decanter and started pouring. As she picked up the decanter, coffee spewed out, making a hissing noise as it hit the base. “You’re not supposed to do that! You’re supposed to have the ‘Sneak a cup feature,’” she said aloud, grabbing a dishcloth and wiping up the mess.