Crust No One

by Winnie Archer

  Before we went inside, I stopped him. There was something about him. Something I couldn’t put my finger on. His mind might not be 100-percent there, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t help me. “Bernard,” I said slowly. He looked at me. “Do you know what happened to Hank?”

  His eyes twitched and he looked away. “Collin’s dead, did you know that?”

  “Who’s that?” I asked.

  “Martha left,” he said by way of answer. “They all go away, but me? No, no. I not leave. I never leave. I rake. I can rake for you? Take away the leaves.” He bent and scooped up a handful of brittle, brown, curled leaves that had fallen from the trees. “I take away the dead leaves?”

  “Sure, Bernard,” I said, not wanting to upset him.

  But he was upset. He half nodded, half shook his head, the force of it making me wonder if his brain was rattling inside his skull. “I take care of his flowers now,” he said. He slapped his open palm against his chest. “I take care of the flowers, now.”

  I tried to follow his train of thought. “Hank’s flowers?”

  “No dead branches. Not one. I tend Hank’s flowers. No one else. Just me. Just me.”

  It was clear that things inside Bernard’s head were muffled, but I asked one more time for good measure. “Bernard, do you know what happened to Hank?”

  He just shook his head. “I take care of the flowers. Hank’s flowers.”

  I sighed. If Bernard did know something, it was buried deep inside his mind. He missed Hank. That seemed obvious, even if he didn’t show it in an ordinary way, but I couldn’t help him understand that Hank was gone. I did not want to be the one to break that news to him. “They’re beautiful flowers,” I said as we slowly made our way back inside.

  He started in immediately. “I take care of the flowers. Only I. Everyone, get out. Get out!”

  Janice was on her feet in an instant, rushing to Bernard’s side. She put her arm around him, patting his shoulder. “Shhh, Bernard. It’s okay. Of course, you take care of the flowers. Hank knew you would.” Her voice was calm. Soothing. Bernard’s eyes had been wide, like he was disconnected to the here and the now, but as Janice talked, he relaxed. His face smoothed out. His shoulders hunched forward.

  “Come on, buddy,” Richie said, leading the way into the kitchen. Bernard went, shuffling along, his body language defeated.

  My gaze lingered on him, but my worry about him slipped away. Janice had calmed him, Richie was with him, and now Bernard was noisily crunching an apple. Mental illness, if that was Bernard’s situation, was a beating. I felt for him. He probably didn’t realize he was not functioning in reality, which made it all the more heartbreaking.

  I steadied my nerves as I switched lenses to a different wide-angle to optimize the light in the house. My goal was to use the ambient light that filtered in from outside, rather than the artificial light from my light kit. My Canon had a fast lens, plenty capable of capturing the details I wanted for the interior shots.

  I slung my bag with my lenses over my shoulder, just in case, and went from room to room, shooting from different positions. I hadn’t done this type of photography before, so I wanted as many options as I could manage. I’d cull through the photos tonight, choosing the best ones to show Janice and Richie.

  Richie rejoined me as I walked down the hallway downstairs away from the community rooms and toward the bedrooms. The first was unoccupied. Several collapsed cardboard boxes were leaning up against the wall, several square wooden boxes—one of them overflowing with books and magazines—in front of them. “My mother can’t seem to part with her books, but she doesn’t have room for them in her own house,” he said. “She’s packing them in these crates to keep them in the shed.”

  I gave a low whistle. “That’s a lot of books.”

  “Yep. She won’t switch to an e-reader, but she won’t stop buying them. I wish she would.”

  I wandered to the opposite side of the room, glancing out the window to the backyard. It was a work in progress. A little outbuilding sat in the back corner of the yard—the shed Richie had just mentioned—the double doors wide open and swinging in the breeze. A few boxes like the ones in this room were visible, as well as a pile of long-handled gardening equipment. I closed my eyes for a moment, picturing Hank holding a shovel, digging in the yard, planting the flowers Bernard tended to.

  Richie was preoccupied with the lid of one of the wooden boxes, so I turned from the window and walked over to an antique desk, stopping to take a picture. Its back sat against the wall. Hanging above the desk was an antique letter cubby. It reminded me of something from an old hotel, room keys hanging below. Two rows of vertical slats held envelopes and magazines and catalogs, the openings large enough to see what each space held. It was an interesting setup.

  The bottom of each slat was marked with a tag, several layered with new tags on top of old ones. I scanned them, wondering if Hank had had one, and if so, what it held. I read the tags on each slot and noted what was held in each slot: Leonard. A stack of letters. The pile was neat, so I could only see the top letter. It was addressed to an L. Chester and was from Social Security; David. An investment letter of some sort; Chase. An AARP letter. Chase’s tag was curled on one end. An older one was underneath, the paper peeling, but the visible letters were hard to make out. An O, maybe, or a G. And an L? I leaned in to get a closer look. No, an E. A bank statement from a local credit union lay flat inside, along with a Garden & Gun magazine and a prescription bottle. I never did understand the combination of those two disparate ideas.

  The next box belonged to Collin. There were no envelopes or magazines, but there was a check from Social Security. My eyes continued to scan the boxes. After Collin’s was a cubby marked Dixie. A magazine—no, I corrected—a catalog for vintage clothing was the sole piece of mail.

  The second to last on the top row was Bernard’s. I wanted to understand him better and I wondered what mail he had tucked away for his perusal, and if he even understood whatever he received. The contents inside were staggered enough for me to see. A seed catalog, which seemed apropos, a medical or—no, an insurance statement, something from another local bank, a letter with a seal I couldn’t quite make out. Government, I thought, or maybe military? But I couldn’t be sure. A postcard mailer for a local hardware store was next, and on top of it all was a prescription bottle. I liked that Richie took care of all the tenants’ needs.

  My gaze skipped to the last box. Finally, the space I’d hoped to find. It had been Hank’s box, but it was empty. I was disappointed, but not surprised. The bottom row of mail slots were marked differently. They were marked with abbreviations in no particular order: Mags; Pers; Bnk; Bill; Gov; Rich; Soc; Com; Jan. They stopped there and I supposed the rest of the boxes would eventually be tagged for the rest of the months. Each held a hefty pile of mail that looked like it still needed to be sorted and distributed to the tenants’ boxes. I imagined it was a weekly task, and I was impressed with the organization. It had to be challenging to manage so many things for so many people.

  “We should move on.”

  I jumped, straightening up to see Richie suddenly beside me. I had been so engrossed in the mail slots that I hadn’t heard him approach.

  “This is great,” I said. “It looks like it belongs in an old movie.” Truthfully, I wanted one for my house, albeit on a smaller scale.

  “It’s handy,” he said.

  I floated my hand out, palm up. “That’s a lot to manage, with all the tenants you have.”

  “Our occupancy is low at the moment. At their age, and in their mental capacity . . .” He trailed off. “They pass on, or move.”

  “Where would they move to?” I asked, and then I answered my own question. “Oh, to a place like Rusty Gates.”

  “Or a nursing home if they became unable to care for themselves.”

  I looked back at the name tags. “Leonard and Chase?”

  He nodded.

  “Collin?”

  �
��A few months ago.”

  “Dixie?” She was the only female tenant.

  “She’s here.”

  I was glad somebody was left. “I’m sorry,” I said. It had to be hard to care for the elderly or the indigent and to know that you’d lose them eventually.

  “It goes with the territory,” he said, but I could hear the melancholy in his voice.

  “How do you find the time for the paperwork?” I asked, genuinely interested. Staying on top of the few bills and incoming mail I had was a chore I didn’t relish.

  “I’m not great with numbers,” Richie said, “but it’s a necessary evil.” He picked up a small pile of envelopes and a magazine, quickly riffling through them and sorting them into the general boxes on the bottom row. He slid bills into the appropriate slot, and quickly slid the remaining into the January space.

  “I bet.”

  “My mother usually takes care of the bills, utilities, banking, things like that, and I do the medical stuff, the appointments, et cetera. Divide and conquer.”

  I admired that they had a strong and collaborative mother-son relationship and business. My dad was the city manager and oversaw the historic district. That was not my passion, nor was it something I could be part of even if I wanted to. A father-daughter enterprise was not in the cards for my dad and me, but we connected in other ways. Lately, that meant over the bread that I baked and took over to him.

  Richie closed up that room and we moved down the hall. He knocked lightly on the next door and a female voice said, “Come in.” He swung the door open. Inside, a woman stood in front of a mirror in a silky, lightweight, cream-colored slip. She reminded me of an aging pinup girl from the thirties, complete with her side-swept, finger-curled hair and ruby-red lips. She reminded me of Jessica Lange in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. Sultry and raw.

  She turned, a slow smile spreading on her face when she saw Richie. An old Mae West quote came to mind: When I’m good I’m very, very good, but when I’m bad, I’m better.

  “I knew you’d come back,” she said to him with a subtle wink. “I’ve been waiting for you, Georgie.”

  Richie glanced back at me before smiling awkwardly at the woman, but played along. “You’re looking beautiful, Dixie,” he said.

  She tilted her head coquettishly. “That’s what all the men say.”

  In the corner, the arm of an old record player bounced, the LP on the turntable spinning and spinning and spinning. “Should I fix your record album?”

  She looked over his shoulder with clouded eyes, but they cleared a moment later. “Of course. Come in, George. You can take care of me.”

  Richie didn’t correct her. He strode across the room and popped the arm up, gently placing the needle on the edge of the black vinyl. The speakers crackled for a few seconds until the sultry voice of Billie Holiday filled the room. I stood, transfixed, watching her move slightly, her hips swaying to music. “Can I take your picture?” I asked after a moment, waiting in the doorway.

  She turned, gracing me with a sublime smile. “Of course,” she said as she struck a pose. She put one hand on her hip, leaned her body so her other hip curved seductively. “Where will you put it?” she asked.

  I didn’t quite know how to answer that. First Bernard, and now this woman, Dixie. Both lived in an alternate reality. I had to give it to Richie: Providing stability and having the patience to deal with people who had such day-to-day, maybe minute-to-minute, challenges was no small feat.

  “It’ll be everywhere, Dixie,” he said, jumping in to answer for me. “Posters, playbills, you name it.”

  Instead of her smile widening, it grew more subtle and more satisfied. “I’ll be famous,” she said, “and then she’ll set me free, won’t she?”

  “You’ll be free as a bird,” Richie said.

  She looked at me and fluttered her hand, which I took as a sign to go forth and photograph. I changed my lens quickly; I didn’t want Dixie to change her mind. She truly looked as if she belonged to another era and I wanted to stop time for a moment. I took several shots of her posed. When I lowered my camera, she turned to the full-length mirror, patting her hair. That moment, that gesture—that’s when I was able to really capture her image in a way that was unique and unplanned and uncensored. She didn’t notice as I raised my camera again, shooting her from the back, but seeing her expression in the mirror. It was confident. Poised. Beautiful, but at the same time, her face held a measure of loneliness. I placed her in her midfifties, but she carried herself in a timeless manner.

  She turned to the turntable and bent over it, moving the needle forward to another song. Snap, snap, snap. I took photo after photo, glancing quickly at the images on my display screen to make sure the lighting was good. I shot a few more before thanking her.

  “For what?” she asked, and then her gaze dropped to my camera. “Do you want to take my picture?” And then she struck her pose again, smiling and hand on hip.

  “Dementia,” Richie said softly. “She has really good days sometimes, but other times, like now, it’s hit-and-miss. I have to keep an eye on her, but I couldn’t turn her away.”

  We left Dixie to her Billie Holiday record album. “Who’s Georgie?” I asked when we were in the hallway again.

  “A former tenant. They had a little May-December romance going. He’s about eighty.”

  “Where is he now?” I asked.

  He took a beat before he answered. “We don’t know, actually. He up and walked out. We searched for him, the police searched, but we could never find him.”

  I thought about our conversation from a few minutes ago. People passed on, went into a home, or simply vanished. Alzheimer’s, I imagined. It could lead to a tragic ending. I didn’t know this man, George, but I was sad for him.

  Richie pointed down the hall. “These are more tenant rooms. Like I said, most of them are empty right now, but we’re looking for new people to take in.”

  “Their families pay the rent?” I asked, curious how Richie was able to cover his expenses.

  “Usually. Some collect disability or Social Security.” He moved on down the hallway. “There are more bedrooms upstairs,” he said. “We had one room redone so it’s ready to be photographed. The others have tenants. I knew Dixie would welcome the company, but the others I’m not so sure.” He took me upstairs to the second floor and showed me the three bedrooms there. The one he’d referred to looked straight out of a movie. It was tastefully done, but minimal. A queen-sized bed with an off-white down comforter, a tall, dark-wood dresser, and side table with a little lamp, and pale sheers on either side of the window. “This is lovely,” I said. “I’d stay here.”

  “My mom has a knack,” he said. “She’s been redoing the rooms one by one. It’s been kind of slow, but we’re picking up the pace now. Several rooms are empty, so we’re going to get them spruced up before re-renting.”

  “Good idea,” I said, admiring Janice’s talent. “I should have her over to my house. Get some decorating advice.”

  “She’d love that,” he said. “Spending money is one of her favorite pastimes.”

  I laughed. “It would be one of mine, too, if I had the money.” Janice and I had agreed on a price for my time and the finished photos. With her approval, I’d put them together in a book to commemorate the house and the renovations. It would be a good memory. The photos of Dixie and Bernard, however, I’d keep for my own collection.

  The third floor consisted of just two rooms, one a converted attic and the other a mini-suite complete with a full bathroom. It was darker on the top floor. “I might need my light kit for up here,” I said after taking a few test shots.

  “Should I get it?” he asked, turning toward the door.

  I looked at the digital screen of my DSLR camera. “No, wait,” I said. “They might be okay.” The lighting wasn’t great, but if I opened the blinds . . . I walked to the window, my camera lifted and ready to shoot. I twisted the slats open, directing the light inside. “This could be e
nough,” I said.

  I quickly took a few shots through the blinds. As I lowered the camera, it slipped and my finger depressed the shutter button. I heard the click-click-click as a series of pictures were taken. They’d be lovely shots of the wall and floor. I held on tight, quickly slipping the strap around my neck. The strap was a safety precaution. I scolded myself. With an expensive camera, I knew better than to take chances. I’d delete the rogue pictures later, for the moment redirecting my attention to the room, moving to the entrance to get the space from all angles. “Done,” I said after a couple more shots. “I should have proofs for you to look at in a day or two.”

  “Just send them to my mother,” he said. “She’s in charge.”

  I could completely relate. My mother had been the same way. Multiple scrapbooks for both Billy and me. A box full of trinkets that represented important moments in our childhoods. A small wooden jewelry box with a delicate strand of pearls my dad had given me, a tiny signet ring that had been my mother’s, a woven friendship bracelet from Emmaline. “Moms are like that.”

  A few minutes later we were back downstairs, and a few minutes after that Mrs. Branford, Olaya, and I were back in my car and heading into town. I hadn’t seen any evidence of a computer anywhere in the house, which made sense to me. Bernard and Dixie didn’t strike me as people who would do well with them. It seemed safer to not have them around. I’d already eliminated the idea that Hank had met someone online. If that had been the case, why would his body have ended up in Brenda’s garbage can? It just didn’t make sense to me.

  As I drove, we each fell into our own thoughts. I suspected that Olaya and Mrs. Branford were thinking about Hank. For my part, I was thinking about an uneasy feeling I’d gotten at the boardinghouse. Specifically, I was uneasy about Bernard. His demeanor and his agitation had both been concerning. I replayed the conversation I’d had with him in the garden. He said he didn’t know anything about what had happened to Hank, but I wasn’t so sure. I couldn’t put my finger on it, but buried in his head somewhere, I thought Bernard knew something about Hank’s disappearance. Maybe even about his murder.