There Was an Old Woman

by Hallie Ephron

  “Having a jolly postmortem on my behalf, no doubt.”

  After a long pause, Evie said, “They’re leaving now.”

  When she heard the sound of a car engine catching, Mina felt the tension finally drain from her back. “I’m quite sure they think I’m a complete nitwit. Delusional. But this thing nearly hit me in the head.” She set the golf ball on the hall table. “As if I could make up something like that.”

  Evie picked up the ball and examined it.

  “He said it was”—Mina continued, lowering her voice though she knew no one but Evie could hear her—“the third time that I’ve set off that alarm.”

  “But it’s not?” Evie offered Mina her cane.

  “Could someone forget a thing like that?” Mina took the cane and stood. “With that alarm blaring? You tell me.” She pushed away the supporting hand Evie offered. She’d be damned if she’d let herself be treated as an invalid.

  She made her way to the bathroom where she washed the mud off her hands and arm. Afterward, she stared at her reflection in the mirror over the sink. The scar had turned bright pink. She ran her fingers along its rippled surface. Pink or not, it was completely numb. A blessing, really.

  She moistened a washcloth and wiped away streaks of mud from her face. Then she turned her head so she could no longer see the scar.

  When she’d turned forty, Mina’s face had started to remind her of her mother’s. But her mother hadn’t made it past seventy. Now the person in the mirror was a complete stranger. The loose skin on her cheeks looked like antique vellum, foxed with age. Pouches sagged under her eyes. Deep lines were incised from the corners of her mouth to her chin. It was odd. Though she was physically transformed, she felt like exactly the same person she’d been when she was twelve.

  She could take looking older. Feeling older, even. But losing her memory and her mind? Turning into a person that people talked about but never to? Mina swallowed a knot of fear in her throat and left the bathroom.

  “You’re the one who sold me on the therapeutic effects of a nice cup of tea,” Evie said as Mina sank into her chair in the living room. “How about I fix one for you now? I know where everything is.”

  Mina sighed. Yes, a cup of hot tea would be lovely. Especially one that she didn’t have to make herself. She was about to say so when she remembered the incinerated teakettle. She felt a new flush of humiliation creep up her neck.

  “No, thank you, dear. You’re kind to offer. But really I’m perfectly fine. Don’t worry about me. You already have your hands full. Are you going back to the hospital today?”

  Evie checked her watch. “Oh, shit.” Her face colored. “I mean sheesh. How’d it get so late? The doctor’s only there until noon, and I have to take the bus again unless Finn has put some gas in the tank.”

  “Well, you certainly don’t want to miss the doctor.” Mina pushed off the afghan and heaved herself to her feet. “Take my car keys. I’m not going anywhere, and in case you can’t get your mother’s car started, you’ll have a backup.”

  “You sure?”

  “Oh my, yes. I should have offered earlier. Besides, I haven’t driven it in days and it’s like an old dog that needs to be walked every once in a while. As soon as I find my purse—” Mina glanced around the living room. Where had she left it?

  “I saw it. Hold on.” Evie disappeared into the kitchen. She came back a moment later with Mina’s handbag.

  Of course. Now Mina remembered setting it carefully on the quilted placemat on the kitchen counter, determined not to lose it again. What on earth was the matter with her?

  “Thank you so much,” Evie said when Mina handed her the car keys. “This is so generous of you. You really are a peach.” Evie started to go but turned back. “You sure you’re okay? Is there anyone I should call to come stay with you?”

  “Stay with me? Pshaw. If there’s anything I know how to be, it’s alone. You go. Hurry.”

  “Thank you.”

  As Evie started out through the dining room, Mina noticed for the first time that she had on loose red-and-blue-plaid flannel pants. Were those pajama bottoms?

  “You’re going out in those?” she asked.

  Chapter Twenty-five

  You’re going out in those? Mrs. Yetner’s parting shot was a zinger—a gibe masquerading as an innocent question. Evie would have bristled had it come from her own mother. But she loved it coming from Mrs. Yetner. She gave her startled neighbor a quick hug and chuckled as she hurried back to her mother’s house to shower and dress for the hospital.

  When Evie pulled the shower curtain, two roaches ran down the drain. In the shower, she let hot water run hard, pounding her sore shoulders and neck. Was that man really going to arrest Mrs. Yetner? More likely he’d said that to rattle her. If that had been his intention, it worked.

  Right after Evie had helped Mrs. Yetner off with her boots, she’d looked out and seen the officer and Frank Cutler talking, their heads bent. The man had acted like a police officer, but since when did police badges say SECURITY? Maybe he was a private security guard.

  The golf ball was no figment of Mrs. Yetner’s imagination. When Evie had picked it up and scraped dried mud off its dimpled surface, she could tell that it was no ancient relic, either. Still, it could have been lying in the marsh for months, and there was no way to tell whether Mr. Cutler had been the one who’d launched it.

  Before Evie left for the hospital, she made sure all the windows were shut and set up roach bombs on the bathroom and kitchen floors. SUPER FOGGER, the label read. PRO GRADE. The bomb didn’t just have a warning label. It had a warning booklet that peeled off the can: Hazards to humans and domestic animals. Environmental hazards. Danger of explosion. Leave the premises for at least four hours. Ventilate thoroughly before reentering.

  The label almost talked her out of it until she noticed on the kitchen ceiling four translucent wormy creatures, which sadly she recognized as moth larvae. As she rushed out of the house, bombs activated, locking the door behind her, Finn was in the driveway raising her mother’s garage door. He waved to her.

  “Hey,” she said, heading over to him.

  “Everything okay?”

  “We had a little excitement.” She hadn’t realized, but she was out of breath.

  “I heard. Something about a golf ball.” He shook his head and picked up a red square gallon gas can from the ground by his feet. The contents sloshed. “This should be enough to get you to a gas station. And the fix to your front steps is only temporary, but at least you won’t kill yourself coming and going.” He unscrewed the gas cap and inserted the can’s long yellow spout into the opening.

  As he started to pour, Evie smelled the pungent gasoline odor. She glanced at her watch. She had just enough time to stop for gas on her way to the hospital.

  “There,” he said, pulling out the spout. “Hop in and give it a whirl.” He came around, pulled open the driver-side door, and gestured with a welcoming hand. Then he hesitated. “Hold on. Stay back.” He crouched alongside the car. Unhooking a flashlight from his tool belt, he played the light under the car, around and behind the rear wheel.

  “What?” Evie stepped closer. Then she smelled it. The odor of gasoline had gone from strong to overwhelming. She put her hand up over her face.

  “Your mother’s car didn’t run out of gas.” Finn stood and faced her, brushing his hands off on his pant legs. “Gas ran out of it.”

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Long after the girl had gone, Mina could feel Evie’s strong arms around her and a faint fruity smell that Mina finally placed. Raspberry.

  It had been a while since Mina had been properly hugged. Not since her sister. Mina sat at the kitchen table as memories flooded back. She and Annabelle, young, walking arm in arm to Sparkles. Annabelle supporting her in the shallows, helping her learn to float on her back. Buttoning the long row of tiny mother-of-pearl buttons on the back of Annabelle’s wedding dress.

  Their last embrace might h
ave been one of the last times that Mina visited Annabelle in the nursing home, a few weeks before her sister slipped into a coma and was moved to the hospital where Mina had promised her she’d never end up.

  Mina had arrived that day and found Annabelle parked in the corridor outside her room, hunched over a locked-in tray-table in what the nurses called a geri-chair. Asleep? Mina couldn’t be sure.

  Her sister’s once lustrous auburn hair, now white and wispy, was neatly pulled back into a bun at her neck. Her eyeglasses were anchored with a band that went around her head. The blouse and pants Mina had bought for her a few weeks earlier were already swimming on her.

  When she’d stepped closer, she heard Annabelle muttering. She had to stoop to make out the words. “Don’t say that.” A pause. “You already . . . had your chance.” The words came out in short intense spurts, on puffs of breaths like Annabelle was trying to blow out a match. “You just be quiet.”

  “Hello, dear,” Mina said, laying her hand gently on her sister’s arm. She kissed the top of her head and breathed in shampoo scent. Even if the staff couldn’t keep Annabelle from sliding into oblivion, at least the attention to hygiene was excellent.

  Annabelle lifted her head and blinked, an unfocused look in her eyes, then coughed weakly. Mina could hear her labored breathing. Pneumonia and heart failure would eventually be the official cause of death.

  Mina lifted her sister’s hand and pressed it against her own cheek. “Hello, Annabelle.”

  Finally her sister’s gaze connected with hers. “Hello, dearest,” Annabelle said. The flicker of recognition was still there, thank God. That sweet smile. Then Annabelle raised her arms and gave Mina what she didn’t know would be her last hug.

  “Who were you talking to?” Mina had asked.

  “Talking to talking to talking . . .” Annabelle gave a vague wave of the hand. Her once long, tapered fingers were knotted with arthritis, the way that Mina’s were becoming. “Friends.” Annabelle blinked twice, her gaze wandering until it anchored once again on Mina. “Imaginary friends.”

  “You know they’re not real,” Mina said.

  “I know, I know.” Annabelle put a finger to her lips, shhh, and added in a stage whisper. “But they don’t.”

  Mina had laughed, and then stopped laughing because it was clear that Annabelle didn’t get her own joke, and she wasn’t about to start laughing at her sister. Not then. Not ever.

  Later, after Annabelle was back in bed, Brian had arrived at the nursing home. “Hello, Mother,” he’d said, standing in the doorway like a cigar store Indian.

  “Hello, Gilbert,” Annabelle had said. She raised her eyebrows in Brian’s direction and asked Mina, “Is he imaginary, too?”

  Fortunately Brian never heard that. He wouldn’t have found the comment amusing, not the slightest bit.

  He came over to the bed and kissed Annabelle’s cheek.

  Every once in a while, even then near the end, Annabelle had surprised Mina, as she did at that moment when her gaze sharpened. “Oh!” She pursed her lips, tilted her head, and narrowed her eyes. Then she licked her thumb and wiped his cheek. Annabelle never had been much of a doting mother, but she had liked her things spotless.

  Brian had drawn back. “Mother, please.”

  The familiar sound of her car engine turning over brought Mina back to the present. Apparently Evie needed to borrow her car after all.

  Mina remembered the chicken she’d thawed. Chicken cacciatore was a simple recipe. Chicken, chopped green and sweet red pepper, a can of Hunt’s tomato sauce, plus an onion, which Mina left out. These days, onions of any kind gave her heartburn. She hoped the chicken, having been thawed and then refrigerated, wasn’t going to kill her.

  A short time later Mina had put together the ingredients. She set the lid on the pot and turned the burner low to simmer. She could leave it there for hours because she liked her chicken well cooked, to the point where the meat was falling off the bone. With rice and a green salad, she’d have dinner for at least four nights.

  Before she sat down again with the paper, she pulled her calendar from the kitchen wall. Three baby burrowing owls were pictured for May—not anything she was likely to see out her window. She wrote BRIAN in Monday’s block. She could hardly forget the reason he was coming back.

  Annabelle’s had been a slow decline. In the early days, she’d felt her marbles slipping away. Then, even those were gone. If Mina hadn’t been there, she’d have forgotten to eat. Forgotten to clean herself. Eventually she completely lost track of what she’d lost track of.

  Mina was determined not to let her present slip away. In today’s box in tiny printing she started a list.

  1. Burned teakettle

  2. Purse + oatmeal in icebox

  3. Lost legal papers

  4. Set off C’s alarm

  To the last item she added a question: For the third time?

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Evie had gratefully accepted Finn’s offer to call a local mechanic, a buddy of his, he said, and get the car towed. Once it was up on a lift, Finn assured her, they’d find the leak and patch the tank. It shouldn’t cost much at all.

  Evie barely had to turn the key for Mrs. Yetner’s Mustang to roar to life. She shifted into reverse, released the emergency brake, and backed out of the driveway. In seconds she was past Sparkles and on her way.

  Like the house, Mrs. Yetner’s car was in its own spotlessly clean time warp. Not even a corner of the faux wood laminate on the dash was curled or missing. But it wasn’t perfect: the springs in the driver seat were shot, and Evie needed three of the four cushions Mrs. Yetner had piled on the deep bucket seat to see over the leather-clad steering wheel. She hand-cranked the window down and reached out to adjust the side mirror.

  A tow truck passed her, going the opposite way. She wondered if it could be heading over to pick up her mother’s car already. How long had it been, she wondered, since her mother had tried to drive it?

  Evie was lucky that Mrs. Yetner had pressed her car keys on her. What would have taken forty minutes by bus took ten, and still she was going to get to the hospital barely in time to catch the doctor. Halfway there it started to drizzle, and by the time she pulled into the parking lot, rain was coming down hard. She parked and ran into the building.

  When she got to her mother’s room, wet and out of breath from running, she found the curtain drawn around her mother’s bed. From within, she heard voices. She backed out of the room and waited in the open doorway.

  Finally the curtain drew back. A woman in a white lab coat turned around. Beyond her, Evie’s mother lay propped up in bed, unblinking, staring off into space. Her skin was tinged yellow against the white linen.

  “Dr. Foran?” Evie said.

  “You must be Sandra’s daughter.” Dr. Foran offered her hand. Her nails were cut short, polished clear, and she wore a thin gold wedding band. She had a file folder tucked under her other arm.

  “Evie Ferrante,” Evie said, shaking the doctor’s cool strong hand.

  “I’m glad you’re here.” Dr. Foran’s voice was low and her direct look unnerving. “Let’s go somewhere we can talk.”

  Evie followed her down the hall, anchoring her gaze on the long dark ponytail that snaked down the back of the doctor’s white lab coat.

  Dr. Foran led Evie to a visitors’ lounge and pulled up two chairs opposite each other in a corner. Evie sat in one. Dr. Foran sat in the other and leaned forward. She looked very young, no older than Evie. In the harsh artificial light, the dark circles under her eyes grew even darker.

  “You know, of course, that your mother has late-stage liver disease.”

  Late stage. That was what Ginger had said. Evie’s pulse pounded in her ears, and she wished Ginger were there.

  “It’s cirrhosis,” Dr. Foran continued. “Her liver function is very compromised. The liver detoxifies the body, and your mother’s is no longer doing its job. That’s what’s causing the fluid buildup in her abdome
n. Her mood swings and agitation. Weight loss. Jaundice. Fatigue. Nausea.”

  Jaundice. Fatigue. Nausea. The words seemed to float in front of Evie. She opened her bag and found a little notebook and a pen. “I’m sorry, what did you say? I need to write this down.”

  As Dr. Foran repeated the symptoms, Evie copied them down. Dr. Foran added, “She shows signs of chronic malnutrition, that much is obvious. But her liver function tests turned up additional abnormalities. Whenever a patient presents with liver failure, we compare the levels of two liver enzymes, AST and ALT.”

  “AST. ALT.” Evie wrote the acronyms.

  “Aspartate aminotransferase and alanine aminotransferase.”

  Evie didn’t even try to write that down.

  “Her AST and ALT would be between two hundred and four hundred if she had liver failure from alcohol alone. But they’re over a thousand.”

  Evie wrote down > 1000 and circled it. “What does that mean?”

  “It’s an indication of paracetamol overdose.”

  “Paracetamol.”

  “Acetaminophen. Same thing. It’s in a lot of over-the-counter drugs. People take a Tylenol and a Nyquil and a Coricidin, not realizing they all have acetaminophen. More than two grams a day can be lethal for someone with a compromised liver. That’s just three Extra Strength Tylenol. You can see how easy it is to overdose.”

  “Especially if you’re drinking and losing track of time.”

  “Especially. Acetaminophen toxicity is the second-most-common cause of acute liver failure requiring transplantation.”

  A liver transplant? “Would my mother be a candidate for that?”

  “We do many of them here. But your mother is so weak she might not survive the operation. More than that, she’d have to really want to stop drinking. Make a serious commitment.” Dr. Foran tilted her head and gave a tired smile.

  No, Evie didn’t think her mother could stop drinking either, not even if she realized it was a question of life or death. “Is there no other treatment?”