by Bill Yancey
“It’s in the dorm at Flagler. I spent the night at a friend’s. Got a ride here.” Kayla scanned the small, two-bedroom home, taking in the chaos. “Maid hasn’t been by, yet, this morning?” she asked.
“Very funny, honey,” Wolfe said, wrapping his arm around his daughter’s shoulders. “How’s summer school going? Must not be too tough if you can party in the middle of the week.”
“First summer session is over, Dad. We had exams the day before yesterday. Second session starts Monday.”
“Short break. What brings you to the cemetery, as you call it?”
“Mom made me promise to look in on you this week. She said you would be alone for a while. Where did she go?”
“She took your brother to Costa Rica to bird watch,” Wolfe said, padding his way to the small kitchen to make some coffee.
“How long have she and Junior been gone? This place is a disaster,” Kayla said, eyes roaming over the mess in the great room: several day’s worth of newspapers on the couch and floor. Dirty dishes sat on the end table, dining table, and floor. Sweat clothes occupied one of the recliners. “Those jogging clothes are pretty rank, Pops. Are they headed for the washing machine?”
“No, I can get one more walk out of them. Don’t sweat as much as when I used to jog. So now I’m walking three miles, three times a week. Swimming in the clubhouse pool twice a week. Working out with weights twice a week, too.” Wolfe listed his ideal retirement workout schedule, one he didn’t follow too closely.
“Really, Dad?” She eyed his dirty, holey, old T-shirt, bare feet, and week’s growth of beard. “When was the last time you left the house?”
Wolfe rolled his eyes, thinking. He said, “Let’s see, the kids are out of school, so they don’t need tutoring –“
“Did you really like tutoring reading?” Kayla asked.
“A frickin’ elephant, I did.”
“What?”
Wolfe smiled, recalling a first grader’s first attempt at reading a caption in an alphabet zoo book. He said, “That’s Hooked on Phonics for African Elephant.”
“And the last time you left the house?” Kayla asked.
“I needed some bananas last week.” He pointed to the black bananas hanging from the holder on the counter. They oozed liquid essence of banana onto the granite countertop.
“Yech,” Kayla said. “You go take a shower and shave. I’ll fix you some breakfast.”
“I only shave on Sunday and Wednesday now,” Wolfe protested. “It’s only Thursday….”
“Friday. Get your ass in the shower or I’ll call Mom.” She held her cell phone in front of her. “By the way, why didn’t you answer your phone when I called this morning?”
“Same reason you can’t call your mother. The reception stinks,” Wolfe said. He picked up his telephone from the table and tossed it to her. “See for yourself. No bars.”
Catching his phone, she looked at it then at her phone. She flashed the front of hers at him. “Four bars,” she lied. “Shower, Dad.”
Shoulders slumped and head bowed, Wolfe shuffled slowly toward the master bedroom and bathroom. She heard both doors close and lock. When the shower water ran, she went to work.
In thirty minutes Wolfe reappeared, clean-shaven and smelling fresh. She had loaded the dishwasher and the washing machine. A bowl of oatmeal, toast, and two scrambled eggs, along with orange juice, waited for Wolfe at the dining table.
“Smells good,” he said. Inspecting the room, he added, “You didn’t throw out any of the newspapers, did you? There are some articles in them –”
“They’re all in the recycle bin, if you really want to search for them,” she said.
Wolfe sat heavily in front of the food. One elbow on the table, he poked at the eggs with his fork for a while, and then stirred the oatmeal with his spoon. He didn’t eat much.
Kayla waited in silence for ten minutes, watching her father’s facial expressions, frown on her face. When he finally put the silverware down and looked up at her, she said, “Get your jogging shoes. We’re going for a walk.”
“I just took a shower,” Wolfe said. “I’ll need another if we walk. It’s already eighty degrees out there.”
“It’s Florida, Dad. Deal with it.” Wolfe trundled into his room and retrieved his worn ex-jogging shoes.
Using her father’s keys, Kayla locked the front door. “Wait, my phone.” Wolfe said.
“Is dead. That was the real reason you couldn’t answer. I plugged it into the charger,” Kayla said.
They walked on Copperhead Circle toward the Cascades clubhouse. Wolfe said nothing.
After reaching Legacy Trail, about a quarter mile from his house, Kayla had to speak. “You’re depressed, Dad.”
“Yeah, I suppose I am. A little. Maybe.”
“What did you do to drive Mom away?” she asked.
“Nothing.”
“Really? I don’t think she has spent six months here in this so-called active adult community since you moved in, what, two years ago?”
“About that. Well, it’s better than those inactive adult communities you compare it to,” Wolfe said.
“It is like a cemetery, in ways. Maybe three steps prior: this, then assisted living, then nursing home, then inactive adult community,” she said. “But that’s not why Mom isn’t around, is it?”
“Well, she’s much younger than I am,” Wolfe said.
“She knew that when she married you. Something else?”
Wolfe fell silent. Kayla waited. She had learned some things in her two semester-psychology course. Prime directive: wait the patient out. Silence asked better questions than most therapists did.
“I did retire, you know,” Wolfe said.
“Yes….”
“I spend a lot more time at home than she was used to.”
“And….”
“She was much more efficient as an office nurse. You know, multitasking,” he said.
Kayla waited, steering him away from the clubhouse and toward Inverness Drive, lengthening their walk around the block.
“But she wasn’t interested in the best way to load the dishwasher, or the most efficient way to do laundry, or how food should be stored in the refrigerator or pantry. They are both small here and if you don’t pack them so the most used stuff is up front, then you spend all day re-arranging things to get what you need.”
“When did you become an efficiency expert?” she asked and immediately regretted the inference.
“I’ll have you know that as an intern and physician I learned one hell of a lot about being efficient.”
“Sorry, Dad. I didn’t mean that,” Kayla said quickly, blushing. “I meant that’s what Mom must have thought, after years of running the household without your help. Why don’t we get you a hobby? Something you can do and stay out of her hair.”
“I’ve tried. Thought of a lot of things,” Wolfe said. “But some are too expensive, like building or converting another internal combustion vehicle to electricity. She was really upset with that. I spent twenty grand on it over four years, but then never drove it. I guess the driving wasn’t the challenge that building it was.”
“Was that EVie, the electric vehicle you gave to the college so the students could disassemble it and reassemble it?”
Wolfe shrugged. He said, “Yeah. Great tax deduction. But who needs tax deductions when you’re living on social security?”
“Don’t play poor with me, Dad. You may live on social security, but your house and automobiles are paid for. And you have some investments.”
“Not good enough for your mother,” Wolfe said. “Remember, she’s the daughter of a very, very successful, rich radiologist. And she remembers her old life style. She thought she married another rich doctor, not a struggling one.”
Kayla put her arm around her father. He felt thin, less substantial than the last time she had hugged him. Old age, and two families, had worn him down. Maybe he had reason to be depressed. “You’re not sick are y
ou?” she asked.
“Aside from the usual osteoarthritis in my knees, spinal stenosis in my back, the pernicious anemia, and Barrett’s esophagitis, I’m as healthy as a horse. Except my BUN and creatinine are climbing slowly. Too many anti-inflammatories, likely. But you aren’t interested in that, or you would be applying to medical school, right?” he asked.
“Right,” she agreed. “But still, a hobby.”
“I thought about electronics, too expensive. Even bought a guitar. Can’t sit still long enough to practice with my back pain. I’ll find something eventually, or it will find me.”
“What do you mean it will find you?”
Wolfe said, “I have a bad habit of becoming obsessed by something. Like EVie. Like the RV. Once I decided to buy it, I spent innumerable hours researching it. I had thought about buying one to live in as a medical student, almost did. Fought off the compulsion. But when I was working as a doc, the fixation hit me again. Couldn’t resist.”
“So it found you?”
“Yep,” Wolfe nodded.
“Going to sell it?”
“Never,” Wolfe said. “My neighbors here in the Cascades tried to get me to do that. It fits within their rules, much to their chagrin. They tried to fine me $100 a day, until they read their own rules. That was a fun fight.” Wolfe smiled for the first time since she had come home.
“Anyone else driving you crazy?” she asked, going with what seemed to make him happy.
“Yeah,” he said. “One of my neighbors knocked on the door the other day. As you know I help keep the borrowing library in the clubhouse alphabetically arranged. When I get out of the house.” She nodded. “When I first started, I carried a clipboard back and forth when I walked to the clubhouse. To remind myself to do things, like print the dividers.”
“And?”
“Well, a month ago, a little old lady with a heavy cane knocks on my door. She shakes the brass head of the cane at me and says, ‘Are you the guy who walks around the neighborhood with a clipboard?’ ‘Maybe,’ I said. ‘Why?’ ‘Well my husband saw you in our backyard taking pictures the other day and I want to know what you were doing, sonny?’ She also claimed to be a retired BAM drill sergeant.”
“A retired what?”
“B-A-M, broad-assed marine. That’s swabbie talk. Don’t repeat it, especially around her. I believe her. She was muscular and mean. although she was 50-plus pounds overweight. Probably from all the medication she might be taking for PTSD.”
“Geez. What did you do?” Kayla asked.
“Well I explained that I thought I was on common property, taking a picture of a huge red-shouldered hawk that had landed on her roof. I took it for your mom. She’s gone overboard with this birding stuff. Kind of reminds me of dogs and squirrels. She can’t complete a sentence, or drive safely if a bird flies by. I started yelling, ‘Squirrel!’ whenever she gets distracted by a bird.”
“And I wondered if you did something to drive her away,” Kayla said.
“It’s a joke,” Wolfe said.
“Which part?” Kayla asked. “Do you really yell squirrel, and that’s the joke? Or, are you joking about yelling squirrel?”
Wolfe smiled. “Both are jokes,” he said. “I don’t do it much.”
“Because she’s not here much,” Kayla said.
“True,” Wolfe said. He started to laugh. “Anyway, I showed this old biddy the pictures of the bird on her roof that I have on my cell phone. That appeased her. She went away happy. As she left, I asked her why she cared about me walking to the clubhouse with the clipboard. ‘Listen, sonny, we old folks here have nothing to do but keep track of our neighbors,’ she said. ‘Get used to it.’ That explains the neighbor who didn’t like the fact that I covered the garage door windows. ‘Ugly,’ she said. I gave her the choice of leaving the windows covered or watching my jock straps dry after I jogged. I put them on the clothesline I hung in front of the windows. She agreed the covered windows weren’t as ugly as my jockstraps. She’s since become a friend.”
The walk on Inverness led back to Copperhead and then to his house. The morning paper lay in the driveway behind the van conversion. Four more morning papers lay on the bricked front porch where a neighbor had thrown them. Having not seen Wolfe for several days, the neighbor assumed Wolfe was out of town and had worried about rain ruining the papers. Wolfe gathered the newspapers, two already yellowing, as Kayla unlocked the front door.
“More articles to clip,” she said. “Don’t become a hoarder, Dad. This place is only 1600 square feet.”
“Might find my next hobby in one of these,” Wolfe said. He pulled the clear plastic cover off the oldest paper and spread it before him. Kayla removed wet clothing from the washing machine and tossed it into the dryer. Once the dryer started up she returned to the great room and found her father engrossed in the paper.
“Dad,” she said quietly, then again louder when he didn’t respond.
“Oh, sorry, dear,” Wolfe said. “Aircraft carrier did in my ears, as you well know.”
“Find something interesting in the paper?” she asked. “I’ve got to get back to the dorm. I have things to do and a date tonight. Can’t waste my short time off.”
Wolfe stood and put his arm around his daughter. “Well, it was good to see you, Kayla. I love you. Drive carefully,” he said.
“Dad. You have to drive me back to Flagler. A friend dropped me off. Remember?”
“Oh, yeah,” Wolfe said. “I was distracted by the paper.”
“What about the paper?”
“On the front page of today’s paper, there’s a story about an attempted murder at Flagler Hospital. Someone pushed a bolus of potassium into a dead man, and then left a note: This is for Jimmy Byrnes. I knew a Jimmy Byrnes in the navy. He was a yellowshirt on the Oriskany hangar deck crew when I got to Vietnam. Probably a coincidence. Why would someone push potassium into a dead man? Makes no sense.”
CHAPTER 3
Wolfe drove the large van conversion into the parking lot between the Anastasia Bookstore and the Villa Zorayda Museum, setting the brake. He reached to his right and grabbed Kayla’s hand before she jumped out. “Study hard, KayLan,” he said, using his pet name for her, an abbreviated form of Kayla Anne. He left the engine running and the air conditioner blowing cold air. Seconds after shutting either one down the van’s interior temperature would shoot to a hundred degrees or more.
“As always, Pops,” she said. Remembering what else was nearby, besides Flagler College, she asked, “Don’t you go to Price’s for haircuts?” She eyed his shaggy mop of hair. “How long has it been?”
Running his hand through his graying mane, Wolfe thought for a second. “Two months, I guess. Don’t need haircuts as often, since it’s thinning.”
“That’s a matter of opinion,” she said. “It looks pretty bad, especially that hairy neck. And you can wander through the bookstore when you’re done. Might find something to do in the hobby section. We’ve got to work on your depression.”
“I told you. Something will grab me. I’m easily infatuated,” Wolfe said, staring at three barely dressed co-eds walking through the parking lot.
“I don’t expect Mom wants you to take up girl watching, Dad. Did you ever have a crush on a girl?” Kayla leaned back in the captain’s chair and explored her father’s countenance. His expression went from gloomy to bright. A smile crossed his lips.
“Only with every girl I ever met,” he said. “Your mother knew that about me. She kept me out of circulation after the twins’ mother died, until I had convinced myself she was my next wife.”
“Explain that, the crush on everyone,” Kayla said. “I’ve had similar feelings about boys. Men, I guess.”
Wolfe stared at the ceiling for a long minute, then tried to frame an answer. “Well, it seems I have a hard time differentiating between casual flirting, or a woman being nice to me, or commiserating with me, and telling the difference between that and being interested in me. Should one of thos
e women who walked through the parking lot just now wave to me, my heart would have done flip-flops.”
“That ever get you in trouble?” Kayla asked.
“All the time. I believe I’ve had more first dates with no second dates than all my male high school and college classmates put together.” Wolfe said and laughed. “I dated a college student after Lisa died, not really a date. She volunteered in my clinic for several weeks. I took her to dinner, as a reward, her last night in the clinic. After dinner we walked back to my car. I grabbed her hand. She pulled her hand from mine and turned to face me with tears in her eyes. ‘You’re like a father figure to me,’ she said. ‘Why would you do that?’ I said I would like to get to know her better. She said, ‘You’re so old.’ Mind you, I was forty-two. She was twenty-two. Only six years younger than your mom. Anyway, I immediately came to my senses and apologized for misinterpreting her kindness and interest. But she never spoke to me again.”
“Ew,” Kayla said. “Twenty years. And now you’re almost seventy and Mom is fifty-five.”
“Sixty-nine.”
“Whatever. I don’t think I could date someone twice as old as I am.”
“Better start looking now. Gets harder as you get older,” Wolfe agreed, smile on his face. “By the time you are fifty, eligible bachelors who are one hundred years-old are rare.” He started to laugh, quietly at first, then louder as his daughter joined in.
Wolfe turned the ignition key off and opened his door. “Where are you going, Dad?” Kayla asked jumping down from the passenger seat. They met behind the van.
He put his arm around her shoulder. “I suppose I’ll get a trim while I’m here. Can you lend me twenty bucks? Price’s won’t take my credit card.”
Kayla opened her purse. “I think –”
“Just kidding, honey. I’ve got money.” Wolfe scanned the parking lot. “Maybe I will hit the bookstore afterwards and check out the hobby section. Worse thing that could happen is I might find a good book.”
