Helen stared at the image Amina held in front of her.
“I need a photograph of you,” she said, poking Amina with her finger. “You’re also my sister.”
“I’ll bring a camera tomorrow,” Mitch said. “We’ll take pictures of Amina and you can have one in your room. If that’s ok with you,” Mitch said, looking at Amina who had tears in her eyes.
“Is now a good time?” Molly said cheerfully as she entered the room, assuming that the answer would be yes. She introduced Dr. Coomaswarmy, who, fortunately, was not wearing a white coat. He was a slight Asian man, not much taller than Josh. Mitch guessed the doctor weighed 110 pounds if that much.
“I have to get back to work, Doctor. The RN on the floor asked me to give you this,” Amina said, passing him the list of Helen’s current medicines.
“It’s nice of you to come from so far to examine me,” Aunt Helen said to Doctor Coomarswarmy, apparently mistaking his ethnicity for his place of residence.
“It’s no trouble at all,” he replied, taking his stethoscope from an inside pocket.
Mitch waved goodbye to Molly and left as the doctor unbuttoned his aunt’s blouse. He walked to the small lounge to be near a window. The cell phone reception was better there. He called Ell and told her of Molly’s suggestion that they do family things with her, to show her everything was normal.
“Why don’t I come and pick the two of you up. Aunt Helen can have dinner with us. It’s meatloaf tonight. Nothing special.”
“I’m sure she’s not going to care what we serve,” he said, laughing. “Ok. We’ll be ready any time after five. I’m taking tomorrow off. I’ll spend the day with her at the Home. Might bring some work to read while she naps. Ell, think about the weekend. We should be outdoors but places where we can wheel her.”
“My mother was counting on being with us. At least for part of the time. Any suggestions about how we handle her?”
Mitch thought of a snide quip in response but suppressed it. “Why not tell your mother how they found Aunt Helen this morning and ask her to help. That we need to create a normal safe atmosphere. See what she says.” There was silence at the other end. “Ell? Are you there?”
“Yes. I’m here.”
“Oh. I thought the cell had gone dead. Well?”
“I’ll call my mother. That’s a nice thought Mitch. See you soon.”
Dinner went well. Aunt Helen praised everything she ate. She consumed larger portions than usual. The meatloaf was the best ever, she said. The house looked wonderful, the kids were so bright, Oliver was so well trained and on and on. Mitch noted that there were none of the negative comments which normally accompanied her praise. If the meatloaf at their dinner was delicious, she usually coupled that with a comment that the meatloaf at the Home was inedible, or had too much filler, or was burned, or served cold. He wondered if this change was due to the sedative. Dr. Coomaswarmy had assured him the dose was very mild and confirmed there should be no adverse interactions with the other medicines she was taking. It seemed too short a time to have taken effect. Maybe she was just happy to be out of the Home and with the family, Mitch concluded.
It was a mild night. Aunt Helen sat in the front seat of the Taurus, her coat unbuttoned. Mitch opened both windows almost half way. “Too much air for you?” he asked.
“No. Mitchell. It’s fine.” She sighed.
“What are you thinking?”
“That God should bless and watch over my sister’s family.”
“He is, Aunt Helen. We’re all fine.”
“What if they come for me tonight?” she asked.
“No one is coming for you, Aunt Helen. You’re safe at the Home. It’s a Jewish nursing home.”
“That’s why they came before. To get the Jews. They knew we’d be here.”
He remembered Willy Sutton’s answer when asked why do you rob banks? Because that’s where the money is, he replied. His aunt may be hallucinating but she was thinking logically. In her own peculiar way. You wouldn’t go to the nearby Lutheran Nursing Home to conduct a pogrom against Jews.
“I’ll be back in the morning, Aunt Helen. I’ll spend the day with you.”
“What day is tomorrow?” she asked, concerned.
“Friday.”
“Why aren’t you at work? You haven’t lost your job, have you?”
“No, Aunt Helen. Of course not. I’m taking a vacation day,” he lied. “It’s the Friday before the Memorial Day weekend. That way I have four days off.”
“So, I’ll see you tomorrow?”
“Yeah. We’ll sit out in the garden, maybe go out for coffee and lunch. And then we’ll do things together as a family over the weekend. What would you like to do,” he asked, not expecting any practical response.
They were stopped at a long red light waiting to turn on to Wisconsin Avenue. He looked at her. She was gazing unblinking through the windshield at the headlights of cars turning toward them.
“You know, Mitchell, the lights look like wolves’ eyes but they’re not.” She struggled to explain her thoughts more clearly. “Wolves’ eyes are yellow with green centers. And cars do not have fangs.” She grinned, proudly reaching this conclusion, as if the issue had been in doubt.
He was alarmed with her thought process. He didn’t like the talk of wolves when he was bringing her back to the Home for the night.
“What would you like to do for the weekend?” he asked, trying to pull her back into the real world.
“I want to have a picnic. I haven’t been on a picnic for years,” she said wistfully. “And I want Chinese food.”
“Chinese food for the picnic?” Mitch asked, already thinking of where to go for take out.
“No, darling. A picnic one day and Chinese food for dinner another day. Who ever heard of Chinese food at a picnic? Mitchell. Sometimes you are so silly.” She patted him affectionately on his knee.
The weekend was both a whirlwind of activities and a logistical nightmare. With the six of them, plus Oliver and Aunt Helen’s wheel chair, they had needed two cars to do everything. Surprisingly, his mother-in-law acquiesced and let Eleanor drive her car with Amy and Josh, while Mitch took the Taurus, Aunt Helen, her wheelchair and the dog. Mitch had his aunt’s medicine in two small envelopes in his shirt pocket, one for lunch and the other for dinner.
The weather, as predicted was gorgeous. High 60s during the day and low 50s at night with clear skies every day. Saturday, in the morning they went to the Tidal Basin. His mother-in-law had suggested the spot because it was tranquil and she liked the idyllic area around the cherry trees. The cherry blossoms, which had attracted droves of tourists in early April and then covered the water along the Basin’s shore in a shower of delicate pink petals, were long gone. Now, the trees with their photogenic branches and spiraling trunks simply were peaceful groves of green shade. They sat on one of the benches in the warm sun, while Josh and Amy ran among the trees and raced each other around the concrete path to the bridge and back. Helga kept up a constant chatter with Aunt Helen, barely giving her time to respond before launching into another topic. He listened with amusement, an unusual reaction for him he noted, as she flitted from talking about cherry trees in bloom to how she liked Japanese culture, (they were so refined and had such an ancient history), to how many Japanese tourists there were in Europe now, (so unlike the 1970s and 1980s when she had been to Vienna with her husband), and how Vienna itself had changed, much more modern, (too much so for her tastes), but still they had their opera season and of course, the Mozart Festival in Salzburg. Aunt Helen had initially been attentive, had not made a nasty comment about Helga’s knowledge of Mozart’s music and then fallen asleep in the sun.
They had lunch in the National Gallery’s underground cafeteria. Aunt Helen devoured two hot dogs and a chocolate éclair, eating her desert as she had the hot dogs, with her hands, leaving her fingers sticky with a mixture of mustard and cream. From there, it was on to the FDR Memorial. When Izzy had heard they were goin
g to the FDR Memorial, he had told Josh, FDR was the greatest of all the Presidents. He had challenged Josh to see the sculptures and the inscriptions of FDR’s speeches with his mind and heart and not just skim the words with his eyes.
Dinner was at a Chinese Restaurant in Silver Spring that Mrs. Fessler liked. She was obviously pleased when the owner’s wife, in a high collared Chinese silk dress, greeted her by name and escorted them to a round table for six, by the window. The fresh air and the outing seemed to have further stimulated his aunt’s appetite. She ate as if she had missed lunch, starting with an egg roll, followed by chicken wonton soup, which she slurped noisily, and shrimp in lobster sauce. The rest of them shared the dishes on the lazy susan.
Sunday, Mitch drove directly to Mt. Vernon, while Ell, her mother and the two children stopped midway down the George Washington Parkway. Amy and Josh rode their bikes from that point to Mt. Vernon, while Eleanor and her mother ambled along the paved pathway. Mrs. Fessler, while she walked with determination, didn’t walk very far and they doubled back to the parked car and drove the rest of the way. Mitch set up their lunch on a picnic table in the sun at the end of the bike trail. He was waiting with Aunt Helen and the kids, when Ell pulled into the parking lot with her mother. Oliver lay on the ground between Aunt Helen and Mrs. Fessler, knowing from experience that one would drop some food by accident and the other would slip him something intentionally.
Monday, it was off to the gardens of Dumbarton Oaks in the morning, this time without Oliver, and another picnic in the adjacent public park. The afternoon was spent in the Tudor House garden. Mitch waited outside with Aunt Helen on the hill overlooking Georgetown, while the rest of the family toured the historic home. Ell made fried chicken, mashed potatoes and green beans for dinner. When Mitch drove Aunt Helen to the Home, she fell asleep mid-sentence and snored until he woke her at the entrance way. He took her upstairs, kissed her goodnight and left her with one of the night duty CNAs he recognized.
It was slightly after nine when Mitch walked in the door, kicked off his shoes, and sank down into their deep leather recliner in their living room. He was surprised he felt so worn out. After all, much of the weekend had been spent sitting around with Aunt Helen or Helga.
“Not really,” Ell said. “Almost everywhere we went, you dropped us off, parked the car, walked to where we were, went back to the car to drive and pick Aunt Helen up. You probably walked twice as much as you usually do on a weekend. It’s healthy for you.”
“Yeah. I hadn’t thought of about that. Well, Aunt Helen’s tired. She’s not talking about pogroms at the Home any more. Maybe we did some good. Who knows? Let’s hope the psychiatrist can keep her on an even keel.” He shrugged and stretched his legs out. “I’m actually looking forward to going back to work tomorrow. Where are the kids?”
Ell curled her legs underneath her on the sofa and gestured toward the ceiling. “Upstairs, catching up on the homework they postponed until the last minute. I’m not a good example for them,” she said, taking a thick sheaf of paper from her briefcase. She waved it at him. “This is something on national dropout rates at the high school level, I should have read earlier.”
“I read my stuff for my Tuesday meeting on Friday,” Mitch said cheerfully.
“At the Home, while Aunt Helen snoozed in the sun. I was a good boy. I’m going to read The Sunday Times, now.”
He moved his right leg on the ottoman to ease the ache in the knee and opened the first section. He skimmed through the usual bad news from around the world, a bombing in Beirut, riots by North African youth in a suburb of Marseilles, flooding in Bangladesh, famine in Ethiopia, ethnic violence somewhere in India and turned to the National News.
“That bastard. That bigoted son of a bitch,” he said emphatically, sitting up and folding the page in half.
“Mitch. There’s no reason to talk like that,” Ell said.
“No?” he said, his voice rising. “Listen to this. They just released some more of Nixon’s tapes. Here’s the bastard talking about Jews at BLS. That’s where I work. Remember?”
Nixon to Colson: ‘Well listen, are they all Jews over there?’
Colson to Nixon: ‘Everyone of them. Well, a couple of exceptions.’
“Remember Halderman? His Chief of Staff?” Mitch added, looking up at Ell. She nodded. Mitch continued.
Nixon to Halderman: ‘All right. I want to look at any sensitive areas around where Jews are involved, Bob. See, the Jews are all through the government and we have got to get in those areas. We’ve got to get a man in charge who is not Jewish to control the Jewish- do you understand?’
“God. The stupid son of a bitch can’t even speak correct English. Here’s Nixon again to Halderman:
‘The government is full of Jews. Second, most Jews are disloyal. You know what I mean? You have Garment and Kissinger and frankly Safire and, by God, they’re exceptions. But Bob, generally speaking, you can’t trust the bastards. They turn on you. Am I wrong or am I right?’
“This is the President of the United States talking, Ell. This happened in 1971 in the U.S. of A. This is not some superstitious peasant in medieval Europe,” he said, his face flushed. “All because Nixon didn’t like the reports coming out of BLS on unemployment and inflation. When I got to BLS in the early 80s, they were still talking about how the Nixon White House had been out to get someone. No one knew that Nixon talked about all Jews like this.” His eyes darted down the page. “Oh, here he is after Colson found out that sixteen people at BLS were registered Democrats.”
Nixon to Halderman: ‘The point that he did not get into that I want to know, Bob, how many were Jews? There’s a Jewish cabal, you know running through this, working with people like Burns and the rest. And they all only talk to Jews.’
“What a paranoid prick.” Mitch said vehemently. “What happened to his Quaker upbringing?”
“But he was an equal opportunity paranoid,” Ell said teasingly. “He disliked Italians because he said they smelled badly.
That came out on some earlier tapes, remember?”
“Yeah, but it’s not funny,” Mitch replied. “Some people at BLS lost their jobs because of this. I forgot the guy’s name. He was an Assistant Commissioner and he was removed because Nixon thought Jews were plotting against him.”
“That’s more than thirty years ago, Mitch. Times have changed.”
“Have they? I’m not so sure.” Tomorrow, I’m opening my meeting by reading this out loud and giving everybody copies.” He hit the newspaper with the back of his hand. “This is the first item on the agenda. Then we’ll talk about the damn draft reports.”
“I hope you calm down by then,” Ell said soothingly, concerned by his anger and profanity. “Wait. I know that look. It means you’ve got some mischievous idea in mind. Where are you going?”
Mitch grinned at her as he headed upstairs. “To go to The New York Times on line and find what Nixon said about Italians. I want to print it off and light a fire under Tony Santangelo at the meeting tomorrow. Don’t want him thinking this is just between Nixon and us Jews.”
Chapter Sixteen
This was the moment Helga dreaded. Alone in her cabin on the Holland American’s Amsterdam, leaving the wharf. The cabin was nice enough. She had splurged and taken an ocean view stateroom, mid ship on the Main Deck, just below the Promenade. There was a large complimentary basket of fresh fruit on the small writing table in front of the window, next to the fine leather folder with embossed stationery. The bathroom was sparkling white and airy. Everything in the room was glistening clean and highly polished. As one would expect, she thought.
She lived alone, in Silver Spring, she reasoned. So why was she afraid to be alone in her cabin, embarking on a 12 day cruise from Seattle to Alaska and back? She had been excited Eleanor had invited her to travel with the family to Seattle, and surprised when her daughter had told her it had been her son-in-law’s idea. The plan, which seemed reasonable to her at the time, was to spend part o
f the vacation together in Seattle, and for her to take a cruise to Alaska, while Eleanor and the family flew first to Juneau and then to Anchorage. It had made sense to go their separate ways. The family was going to national parks, with day long hikes in Denali, bike rides around Juneau to the glaciers, a long drive down the Kenai Peninsula to Homer, charter fishing for halibut from Homer. All activities she either couldn’t or wouldn’t want to do.
At her age, she had to admit, she enjoyed her comforts. To be pampered by service personnel, play bridge before lunch, enjoy tea in the afternoon or go to the spa, and have elegant dinners at night. She had immersed herself in the pleasure of sitting with Eleanor planning her trip, which cruise line to book with, what deck level to select, which itinerary to choose and whether to add an extra few days in Vancouver. She had deliberately dragged out the planning process so as to have more time with her daughter- or more accurately, to have Eleanor more to herself. Helga had asked her daughter’s opinion about everything, even though she already had her mind made up. What clothes to take, whether the jewelry she selected was appropriate for ship board dining, what dress shoes to wear on board, what casual shoes to wear for off ship excursions, what toiletries to bring, whether to take one large suitcase or two medium sized ones. Eleanor had spent the afternoon before they left helping her pack. Afterwards, Helga had reopened one suitcase and added her medicines and the small, framed photo of her husband. There still were certain secrets to be kept from her daughter.
The flight to Seattle had gone smoothly. The downtown hotel they had stayed at was nice. Mitchell had been solicitous and caring, the grandchildren polite and attentive, Eleanor perhaps a little too guarded and not spontaneous enough, but certainly not abrasive and disrespectful, as she was sometimes back in Washington.
Perhaps, Helga thought, because the time leading up to the cruise was so much like what she yearned for in the relationship with her daughter, she was succumbing to these little stabs of fear. For the third time since she had unpacked, she went through each drawer of the dark wood dresser, first running her finger along the marble top and finding, with satisfaction, that it was dust free. She knew she should be up on deck, watching the Seattle skyline disappear in the early evening dusk. She should be mingling with the other passengers, making herself known and being seen by those who would be taking care of her for the next twelve days. But she couldn’t bring herself to leave yet.
The Orange Tree Page 33
