by Una Tiers
Over beer, he gave me the short course on how the cases worked. He was smart. That in a friend is a good thing.
“The problem with this division is that our fees have to be approved by the court when a guardian is appointed.” Andrew added. “People should make powers of attorney instead.”
He kept telling me war stories, and I kept drinking. Not the best combination.”
Although it was around four PM when I checked my watch, the place was jumping. Andrew knew a lot of people and introduced me to all of them.
“This is Daveman, meet Kimberly, hello Ron how are you…”
Sadly the names pretty much slipped out of my mind as fast as he uttered them.
I had quite a headache when I stopped at the office on Saturday to do a little (if there were people in the office) or a lot (if I was alone) of copying. The Department on Aging did not fax over the complaint.
With my beer courage, I drafted a response to the licensing bureau letter.
This is in response to your letter dated Monday, June 23rd (copy attached).
I did not kidnap Dorothy Daisy, nor was I involved with her departure from any facility. Your letter referenced a court order, but it was not enclosed. How can we obtain a copy?
I placed both letters inside my briefcase to think about a little more. I would probably remove the title of Sister before I prepared the final version of the letter.
Chapter Fifteen
On Sunday, I read the Guardianship statute again with the same dull headache. The section on adult guardianship wasn’t very long and didn’t take long to read. As to money matters, the decedent’s estates sections of the law were applied most of the time. It discouraged me to see that guardianship had constitutional law issues, not an area I like or understand.
Monday came too soon. I checked for the guardianship file at the clerk’s office and was told if it was in court on Friday, it would take at least a week to return to the file room. The clerk went on to confuse me saying if service was not complete, the petition would remain in the court room and not be sent back to the file room. I thanked her anyway.
Back at the Recorder of Deeds, I looked at the lis pendens filed against Dorothy’s house. It was filed by the Department on Aging and referenced a court order that was not attached. A lis pendens was a placeholder filed against a piece of real estate that was a part of some court case. It would prevent a third party transfer of the real estate, but did not preclude my recording of the deed for the trust. I recorded the deed to place the property into the trust.
Returning the books to the library, I asked at the information desk if there was anything more fundamental on the topic of guardianship.
“First case counsel?” The librarian asked. His smile wasn’t malicious.
“First guardianship case,” I corrected him.
Libraries have always fascinated me. Now I felt the law library would be more fun if I knew the people behind the curtains, working the levers and smoke machine.
The librarian gave me a few more books on guardianship to take home. They turned out to be infinitely more readable. Translation-easy.
Andrew called the next day and offered to analyze the documents from the court file, saying they were preprinted forms. I explained the dilemma.
One question that returned to me over and over again was what the heck did they want with Dorothy? Did they know what they were doing to her? Did they want to intimidate her? Did they know she was scared and hiding out? Rat faces!
Chapter Sixteen
While it worried me that I couldn’t get to Dorothy, if I couldn’t find her neither could a process server. Was that a reasonable deduction?
Every time the phone rang, I jumped.
“Fiona?”
“Speaking.”
“This is Emma, Dorothy has been having nightmares. It’s just awful. She walks around at night now, waking everybody else up. She goes out and rearranges the garbage cans and recycling containers. We want her to see a therapist, but she says she isn’t crazy. She seems to have deteriorated in the last few days. I don’t know how much longer I can keep this up. She’s wearing me down.”
“I don’t have a solution. I haven’t had time with her to discuss the matter. I keep getting interrupted.” My sarcasm was lost on Emma.
“Would she talk to another attorney? I met someone who knows guardianship law.” I added.
“She doesn’t need a guardian. She needs to fill out the power of attorney, can I get the forms from you?”
“Are you giving her my messages Emma?”
“She is afraid…and…”
“No buts Emma, you don’t have power of attorney and she hasn’t authorized me to talk to you and I need to speak to her privately and it has to be either today or tomorrow. She is probably having trouble since she is so afraid and without talking to her I can’t get to the bottom of this.”
“I don’t know if she will agree to talk to you. Won’t they give up after a while?”
“It isn’t up to you. I need to talk to her and alone.” My exasperation was at an all time high.
Dorothy came to the phone.
“The dreams are awful. I'm scared Fiona. I want to go back and live in my house. It’s my house and they are trying to take it away from me. I’m living like an animal. House to house this isn’t right. I am a citizen and didn’t do anything very wrong.”
Dorothy and I decided she would make a doctor’s appointment under the name of her sister, Jeanine Daisy. Emma would drop her off. I would meet her there and we would talk to the doctor together. Yes, we also talked about disguises.
I hoped her doctor would take the position that she was able to make her own decisions. He was treating her. Vaguely I remembered something about battery, informed consent and doctors from law school, but couldn’t pull the whole idea out in the open.
Andrew suggested that we approach Dorothy’s personal physician and ask if he would complete a court medical form.
The appointment went well, although I was on the verge of asking for a valium prescription most of the time. We reviewed the medical report required by the court. Dr. Urgle opined that Dorothy was capable of taking care of herself and her finances.
He couldn’t see what the fuss was about. He said to have them call him, and I insisted he complete the form. He was suspicious of whether or not a psychiatrist had taken the position that Dorothy was not capable of making good decisions.
After what seemed like unnecessary haggling, he promised to complete the form and return it to my office within the week.
Dorothy was in particularly good spirits after the appointment. We talked about her returning to her home. She was partly determined and partly afraid. All the advice I gave her was crummy. I revisited the idea of stashing her at my aunt’s house until we could sort out the problem.
She asked to go out to lunch. “Emma is a dear soul, but she is a terrible cook.” She whispered while we waited for Emma to collect us.
Emma picked us up and we had a late lunch and drinks. It was lovely once Dorothy decided what to order. Pancakes and screwdrivers were an awesome mix.
While we were walking to the car, Dorothy begged to stop at the cemetery. Not really my idea of a cap to the afternoon, but since we went in Emma’s car, I agreed.
“Left here, and right there and…” Dorothy directed. “Now just a little further, and then pull up on the left hand side.” She counted several rows and looked for the tallest Holy Mary monument.
Two women standing close to where we were headed looked at us and as we approached, they scurried across the graves to their car and pulled away almost kicking up gravel.
Dorothy introduced us to her family. Mom, Dad, Seumas, Ross, Nancy and Jeanine. The siblings had identical headstones, lined up very close together. I assumed Seumas died and was buried in Springfield, but he was here. Didn’t Dorothy tell me he left for Springfield and she never saw him again? She must have meant she never saw him again while he was alive.
Dorothy fell asleep in the backseat of the car on the way home. She didn’t wake up to say goodbye when Emma dropped me at my car.
Since the afternoon knocked the stuffing out of me too, I went home instead of returning to the office. It was a matter of minutes before I fell asleep. I had nightmares, with strange people introducing themselves to me over and over again. The weird part, was many of the images were skeletons but instead of a head, they were topped with a daisy flower.
Several frantic messages, all from Emma, greeted me at the office the next morning. Emma said she couldn’t rouse Dorothy when they got home. Her pulse was so faint, she drove her to the emergency room and called Dr. Urgle. Dorothy was admitted to the hospital under Jeanine’s name.
“I was with her most of the night Fiona. I came home once to change clothes and get something to eat around two AM. I didn’t want her to be alone, so I went back. They ran all kinds of tests on her. Isn’t there a way to reach you in an emergency?”
“What time did you see her?” I sidestepped giving her my cell number.
“I just came home ten minutes ago. She seems better, her blood pressure is back to normal. She was joking around about breakfast in bed.”
“And what did the doctor say?”
“I don’t know if Dr. Urgle has been there or not. The nurse won’t talk to me. The social worker gave me a power of attorney form though.”
Later that afternoon, I found Dorothy in a private hospital room, looking really small in bed with tubes coming and going. What I saw didn’t match the description Emma gave earlier in the day.
“Dorothy?” I called softly.
“You can’t keep us from flowering. We are family. It’s a family secret.” She mumbled and smiled. Then she nodded off, mouth open but a smile there too.
Waiting for her to wake up, I wondered how we could protect her. A nurse walked in without making a sound. She nodded to me and checked some things on the monitors and intravenous gizmos. She sent a sad glance my way.
“She mumbles a lot.” She said, “I think she is troubled.”
Before I made it back to the office, I received a message from Dorothy, yes from Dorothy.
“Fiona, you can come to see me, I’m better. I hope I can go home now. Maybe you can give me a lift?” She was clear and cheerful, not what I observed at the hospital an hour earlier. Sometimes it felt as if I were dealing with two people.
A message came from the Department on Aging, claiming they served Dorothy with process at her house this afternoon. Right.
There was a message from Martha that some man handed her papers and then ran to his car when she stopped to water the flowers at Dorothy’s house. She was willing to trade the papers for the original documents I prepared for Dorothy. I sighed.
Needing to do something, I finished the response to the license bureau and dropped it in the mailbox.
Chapter Seventeen
Dorothy Daisy died in her sleep three days after being admitted to the hospital. Her ordeal was twelve days from start to finish. She had been in two hospitals, one nursing home, had a cab ride in her robe, a ride in an ambulance and slept around the neighborhood.
What a lousy way to go out.
Emma, as successor trustee of her trust, made funeral arrangements. The bank did not object to her accessing the bank account although it was not in the name of the trust. The balance was over a hundred thousand dollars.
Emma planned to go to the cemetery to make the arrangements. She called the funeral home and asked me to meet her at the house to help pick out clothes for Dorothy.
“You know I’ve never been past the kitchen in her house.” Emma noted that her husband fixed the broken glass and replaced the locks on the porch and kitchen. She said he spent $32 dollars that she would like to be reimbursed.
As we walked into the house through the kitchen, it was very dark and musty. However, it was closed up for almost two weeks.
Unlike when I thought the house told me to RUN, now it felt sad.
I reflected back on what Judge Curie said about how Dorothy must have felt being the survivor of her whole family. I felt as if I lost the opportunity to get to know her better.
Waiting for our eyes to adjust to the low light, the room looked odd. Dorothy had a three foot high stack of yellowed newspapers near the door of the kitchen. The kitchen didn’t seem used much.
We walked through the dining room. It had a table long enough to seat all of the Apostles. The china cabinet had beautiful flowered china, in even stacks for all the dishes, cups, bowls and serving platters.
The front room had very old stuffed sofas, loveseats and wing chairs. Touching a cushion, I think it was horsehair. Everything was dark. The fireplace looked like it hadn’t been used in years although a sooty scent hung in the air.
The pictures on the mantel were of young children in sepia tones. No one was smiling. An ancient version of a board game was on the end table under a lamp.
Chapter Eighteen
Emma walked through the first floor and I peered into each room in curiosity. The sunroom had wicker furniture more yellow than white, with cushions that were probably once bright yellow. Another stack of newspapers, tied with string was next to the front door.
Emma and I looked to one another wordlessly urging the other to head up the stairs first.
She gave in and started up the stairs as I feigned interest in a picture on the wall. No one was smiling in the picture. The stairs protested with creaks and snaps at the presence of strangers.
A scent of moth balls was strong as we reached the second floor.
I heard a humming as we approached the first door.
“I don’t hear humming, you’re just nervous Fiona.” Emma said.
In the first room we opened on the second floor, there was a double bed, neatly made with a thin layer of dust. We couldn’t find a wall switch and finally put a bedside lamp on, but it barely threw off enough light to see the shadows better.
The closet had men’s suits, shirts and pants that had a slight aroma of tobacco. This had to be her parent’s bedroom. Her father died in 1960 and the room probably wasn’t used for more than fifty years. Feeling unwelcome, we exchanged a look, turned off the light and closed the door quietly. Later I wondered how the scent could linger so long.
The bathroom had a claw foot tub, pedestal sink and commode with the tank up near the ceiling. It had a rag crocheted rug, one toothbrush and one bar of soap. The towel was nearly threadbare. A pink robe, also threadbare hung on a hook on the wall.
I didn’t see moth balls, but the scent seemed stronger. The humming continued, but Emma continued to deny hearing anything.
In the next room there were two single beds. Books were piled on every surface. The rug was large, more than 12’ by 15’ and faded to an indecipherable blue with outlines of what could have been flowers at one time.
A few pairs of men’s work boots near the door suggested it was the room Seumas and Ross shared. This room was also neat but we didn’t open the closet. I could not remember the year that Ross died. An old satchel was on the floor against the dresser.
My next idea was to go out and buy a nice dress for Dorothy, instead of disturbing the sanctity of her home. Why didn’t I think of this in the first place? Still, it seemed more respectful to lay her to rest in one of her own dresses.
The next room belonged to Dorothy. It was filled with books on every surface and stacked on the floor. The books were about gardening and had to be twenty or thirty years old. Three identical pairs of gym shoes were lined up next to the door. Those were the shoes she wore when I met with her at the house. The humming seemed louder, but just to me.
A vase of daisies, dried and wilted was on the nightstand.
Dorothy had two dresses in her closet. They looked like the height of fashion in the late 60s and seemed prom like. Although they would be too short on a lady of her age, onl
y the top would be visible in the coffin.
Emma decided there wouldn’t be visitation. She wanted a few words at the graveyard and a fast burial.
Emma complained that she and the other neighbors were not invited to the other funerals, although I wasn’t sure how long she lived next door to the family and whether they died before she moved to the area.
“You know it was just family so I doubt seriously that Dorothy wanted anything more.”
We picked a dress, underclothes and gym shoes, in case she had to run from anything in the afterlife.
We peeked into one more bedroom from the hallway without stepping inside. It too was left as though the occupants would return that night when they had in fact been dead for years.
A rather narrow door at the end of the hallway was locked.
Hours after we left, I could still smell mothballs and hear the humming of something.
Chapter Nineteen
The entire funeral was at the cemetery. Emma, Martha the stuttering neighbor and I made up the mourners. Emma didn’t think a clergy member was necessary. In a redeeming act, Martha brought a large bunch of daisies from Dorothy’s yard.
Needing to pray, I led the group in the Our Father prayer since I know all the words. The neighbor, recited the V-V-Valley of Death. He smiled shyly at me and I wondered if I still scared him.
As we started toward the cars, two women approached us as another car parked and David stepped out.
“You don’t know who you just buried.” The older woman screamed.
We stopped and stared at them while they stopped and stared at us.
I examined them closely. The older woman was probably past ninety and had a white hair like Daisy’s. The younger woman looked like her too.
