There Was an Old Woman

by Hallie Ephron

  Evie went to the open door and peered inside. Mrs. Yetner was lying in the raised hospital bed, facing away from the door.

  “Hello?” Evie said. “Can we come in?”

  Mrs. Yetner turned her head. “Oh! It’s you.” She gestured Evie into the room. She was as pale as the bedsheets, but her eyes were as clear and sharp as ever.

  Evie went over to the bed. “I ran into your nephew. He said you fell? That you had surgery?”

  “Surgery?” Mrs. Yetner seemed to summon her dignity, sitting straighter, but a spasm of pain stopped her. “Not exactly. They put me out and snapped me back together. My artificial hip.”

  Evie winced, thinking of the pop beads she and Ginger used to play with.

  “Painful but not life threatening. Unfortunately for Brian.”

  “Hi, Mrs. Yetner,” Ginger said, coming from behind Evie and approaching the bed. Gently she took Mrs. Yetner’s hand. “You remember me?”

  Mrs. Yetner’s eyes widened. “Ginger? Of course I remember you. Miss Root Beer Popsicle. I used to keep some in the icebox, just for you.” Under Mrs. Yetner’s appraising look, Ginger smoothed her rumpled T-shirt and patted her hair.

  Mrs. Yetner’s gaze shifted back and forth from Evie to Ginger. “Oh, girls, don’t look at me like that. I’m not ready for last rites. And I’ve already been up and around.”

  “You have? That’s wonderful,” Evie said, wiping away an unexpected tear.

  “And I’ll be going home soon. As long as that thing”—she pointed at the monitor by the bed—“doesn’t misbehave.”

  Ginger pulled over a chair. “Thank you for calling me about Mom. We’d never have known otherwise.”

  Mrs. Yetner smiled. “How is she?”

  “She’s okay.” Ginger mouth quivered as she exchanged a look with Evie. “She’s not okay. She’s in a coma. She’s never going to be”—Ginger hiccuped—“okay. Oh, I don’t mean to burden you with all this. You’ve got your own problems to deal with. But the message you left me? You said she wanted me to know something, but then you didn’t get a chance to say what it was.”

  “Oh dear.” Mrs. Yetner blinked. “What did she say? Something about don’t tell him—”

  “Who?”

  “She didn’t say. I wrote down her exact words. I’m sure I did. Because I knew I’d forget.” She looked at Evie. “You’ll find it in the house. It was”—Mrs. Yetner strained to find the memory—“on a slip of paper that the ambulance person gave me. She wrote down Ginger’s phone number, and when I got in the house, I wrote down exactly what your mother said because my brain is a sieve these days.” She pushed the key ring that was on her tray table over. “Here. Evie, you go in and see if you can find the note. And please. I’ve been so worried about Ivory. Could you feed her and let her sit in your lap for a bit? She won’t eat dry food. There’s tins of wet food in the cabinet. Tuna and mackerel—that’s her favorite. And could you see that she has fresh water and scoop out her litter box?”

  “Should I let her out?”

  “Let her out?” Mrs. Yetner looked horrified. “As in outside out? She wouldn’t know what to do with herself. She’s used to being inside, and she’s used to having company.”

  “I could take her home with me.”

  “Heavens, no. She’s never lived anywhere but with me and she’s a bit high-strung. If you get there and can’t find her, she’ll be hiding under the living room sofa.”

  “I’ll feed her as soon as I get back,” Evie promised. “And I can check in the morning and feed her before I leave.”

  “Or . . . why don’t you stay in my house? Would you?”

  Evie had mounds of trash yet to deal with, and she wasn’t sure it was a good idea to leave her mother’s house empty overnight. “Why don’t we play it by ear?”

  “The upstairs bedroom is all yours,” Mrs. Yetner went on. “There’s fresh towels and sheets in the linen closet. Just until I’m back, of course. And then, when I get home”—Mrs. Yetner cleared her throat—“we can have that talk about what it was like. You were right. I was working at the Empire State Building on that terrible morning.”

  Chapter Forty-two

  Before Evie left, Mrs. Yetner told her to leave the keys under a whitewashed rock by the back porch where she could find them when she got home. As Evie sat in the passenger seat of Ginger’s minivan for the short ride from the hospital, she called work and left a message that she’d be out but checking e-mail.

  When they pulled up at their mother’s house, Ginger sat there for a few moments staring out the car window. “Dear God,” she said. “You told me, but I really had no idea how bad it was.”

  “Believe it or not, it was worse when I got here,” Evie said.

  Headlights strafed the house, and a dark pickup truck pulled up alongside them. Ginger hit the automatic door locks. The driver-side window on the truck rolled down. Finn leaned out.

  “That’s Finn Ryan,” Evie said. “His father owned the convenience store. Remember him?”

  “I do.” Ginger rolled down the window.

  “Hey,” Finn said. Then, “Oh, excuse me. I thought you were—” He did a double take. “Ginger?”

  “Here I am,” Evie called across to him before Ginger could muster a response. “What’s up?”

  “I came by to see if you wanted a ride to tonight’s meeting.”

  For a moment Evie’s mind went blank. Then she remembered. His neighborhood conservancy group. “I’m sorry, Finn. I can’t make it tonight. They’ve moved my mother to the ICU, and I’m completely wiped.”

  “ICU? I’m sorry.” After an awkward silence, he said, “Okay. Of course. I understand. Another time then?” He revved the truck engine and shifted into gear.

  “Another time,” Evie called over the noise.

  He smiled at her, winked, and took off.

  “Finn,” Ginger said. “I certainly do remember him. He’s the kid who used to hang out in the back of the store. Kind of a geek.” She gave Evie a speculative look. “He turned out cute, don’t you think? What meeting?”

  “Marsh preservation. A neighborhood group he belongs to. Actually, I get the impression that he started it.”

  “Sounds like he thought you had a date to go with him, or—” Fortunately for Evie, Ginger’s cell phone chimed. She fished it out to read a text message. “Uh-oh. I’ve got to get home. Tony’s running a fever.”

  “Tell him I said feel better soon,” Evie said as she started to get out of the car.

  Ginger put her hand on her arm. “You sure you’re okay here alone? You could come home with me.”

  “You have your hands full. Besides, I don’t want to catch whatever Tony’s got and then give it to Mom. That’s all she needs. And Ivory would be very annoyed if I left her without her salmon.”

  “Tuna and mackerel.”

  “Exactly.”

  Ginger waited in the car as Evie went around to the back of Mrs. Yetner’s house and tried to fit Mrs. Yetner’s key into the back door in the dark. Piteous reproachful yowls came from inside the house, and Ivory jumped up on the windowsill and stared out at her. When Evie finally got the door open, she came around and waved to Ginger.

  “You sure you’re okay?” Ginger called.

  “Go!” Evie said, shooing her away.

  As Ginger drove off, Evie went inside. The cat kept right on squalling until Evie picked her up. She settled briefly in Evie’s arms, then turned back to complaining as Evie put her down and hurried into the kitchen to find the cat food. Ivory was up on her back legs, begging, when Evie bent down and put the full dish on the floor.

  While the cat ate, Evie rinsed out the can and tossed it into Mrs. Yetner’s recycle bin. There were already a half-dozen empties in there. Fancy Feast. That was the same brand as the empty cat food cans she’d found in her mother’s house.

  Evie put fresh water in the cat’s bowl and crouched to set it on the floor by the food. While Ivory lapped some up, Evie noticed there was still a slight bu
rnt smell in the air. She remembered—Mrs. Yetner had burned some chicken.

  Sure enough, there in the sink a blackened pot was soaking. Otherwise, the room was in perfect order. Evie hadn’t noticed before that the kitchen had a wall-mounted phone with a rotary dial. The calendar beside the phone caught her eye. Calendars were one of those things people rarely saved, but were in their own way a Rorschach that said as much about the person as the era. She remembered Farrah Fawcett in that famous swimsuit on the calendar that hung on the wall at her father’s fire station. Mrs. Yetner’s calendar was from the Nature Conservancy, and April’s picture featured a trio of tiny owls, their bright green eyes wide open.

  In some of the date blocks, Mrs. Yetner had written notes in her neat, precise hand. But in the last few days she’d written much more. Burned teakettle, the list began and went on, spreading over into later date blocks.

  The poor thing. Maybe her nephew did have her pegged.

  Evie picked up Mrs. Yetner’s keys and got ready to leave. But when she got to the back door, Ivory was pacing back and forth in front of it and yowling piteously. When Evie bent down and scratched the cat behind the ears, Ivory blinked, yelped once, and with a graceful leap landed on Evie’s shoulder. Then she stuck her nose in Evie’s ear and purred like a truck engine.

  The message was clear. And why not stay overnight? This house was so much cleaner and cozier than her mother’s. Besides, Ivory wasn’t the only one who needed company.

  Chapter Forty-three

  Mrs. Yetner’s upstairs bedroom was long and narrow, stretching from the front of the house to the back, just like the bedroom where Evie and Ginger had slept as kids. Two simple iron twin beds were shoved under sloping ceilings at one end on either side of a window. The beds were covered with quilts, hand pieced from patches of soft 1930s cotton printed in distinctive period designs rich in creamy pastels. Hooked area rugs from the same period in gray, black, and pale green were scattered on the floor.

  Evie stepped to the window that looked out over the water—the same view as from her mother’s—but this window and the one at the opposite end of the room felt grander than the windows in her mother’s upstairs. They were trimmed in oak carved in the Eastlake architectural style that predated the house by at least forty years. Evie ran her hand over the sill and its distinctive sawtooth trim. It wouldn’t have surprised her if the woodwork had come from the house where Mrs. Yetner’s father had found that marble mantel.

  At the opposite end of the room were a pair of dark mahogany bureaus, one low and one high, 1940s vintage. She came closer. Among the perfume bottles on the lower bureau sat quite a large blown-glass paperweight with lovely millefiori flowers of red, white, and blue. A single framed picture was on the wall behind the bureau. It was a page from one of those massive old street atlases and was dated 1911.

  Evie took the map down to get a better look. The neighborhood was rendered in detail typical of maps from that period. There was the Bronx River running into the East River with piers jutting out into the water. A few blocks inland was Snakapins Park, the amusement park Finn said his great-grandfather had owned. In the middle of the park was what looked like a black hole labeled INK WELL. Probably the park’s swimming pool. One of the bigger structures had to be what was now Sparkles Variety.

  Apparently in 1911 Mrs. Yetner’s father hadn’t started building the houses in what was now Higgs Point. The crescent of land bounded by water—Evie estimated about a hundred acres—had no structures, but narrow lanes were indicated with parallel dashed lines running east-west, some of them extensions of streets farther in from the water. Over the area, in print so small that she could barely read it, the words Snakapins Park Bungalows were spelled out. Evie wondered if that was the waterfront where Finn’s great-grandfather’s family used to come summers and camp out. A pier marked Ferry Point, just south, must have been the landing point for the ferry from College Point in Queens, where there really had been a college once upon a time, in the early 1800s. So interesting how old maps like this one were historical snapshots.

  Later, Evie went back to her mother’s house to get clothes and her toothbrush. When she came back to Mrs. Yetner’s, she washed out Ivory’s food bowl, added some fresh water, turned out the lights downstairs, and headed up to the bedroom.

  She took the bed on the right, the same side that had been hers growing up. The bed had old-fashioned springs that squeaked when she got into it, and her instinct to duck her head so she didn’t hit the sloped ceiling was ingrained. Immediately the cat jumped up, circled, kneaded her claws into the quilt, and curled up. Evie hoped it was all right to let Ivory sleep with her. The cat’s back felt warm up against Evie’s.

  Even with Ivory’s comforting presence, it took Evie what felt like hours to fall asleep. When she finally did, she dreamed she was trying to fall asleep in her own childhood bedroom. A cold breeze swept through the room, from front window to back window. The door to the room opened and her mother stood there.

  But the mother wavering on the threshold of the room was the wraith mother Evie had left in the hospital. It’s just a dream, it’s just a dream, it’s just a dream, Evie told herself. She knew that because the silk robe this mother had on had been thrown away years ago.

  Her mother stepped into the room, pointed her finger at Evie, opened her mouth, and emitted an unearthly yowl.

  Evie sat bolt upright in the bed, sweating and shaking. The bedroom really was cold, and outside the sky was dark. The room was familiar and not familiar. It took a moment for her to remember where she was.

  And then the sound came again. A yowl. Definitely an animal. Then a thump. Then a hiss. The empty spot beside her on the bed was still warm, and the sounds were coming from downstairs.

  Evie wrapped the quilt around her, stepped to the window, and looked out into the marsh. Far off, the lights of Manhattan barely glowed through a thin fog. Below, light poured out onto the backyard from the living room window. She was sure she’d turned out the lights downstairs.

  Evie held very still and listened, her heart pounding in her chest. Those creaking footsteps didn’t belong to any house cat. Someone was in the house.

  She looked for a phone in the room but there was none. Her cell phone was downstairs in her purse, though she couldn’t remember where she’d left it. She remembered there was a phone at the foot of the stairs.

  Casting about for some kind of weapon, she grabbed the glass paperweight from the bureau and crept to the top of the stairs. In the gloom, she could make out the telephone sitting on the table by the front door. She started down the stairs, tiptoeing, holding the heavy paperweight like a baseball. She’d almost reached the table when she heard a man’s voice call quietly, “Here, kitty kitty kitty.”

  Evie froze. There was a hiss and, again, that preternatural howling. That had to be Ivory.

  Evie used the sounds as cover to take the last few steps. She grabbed the phone and darted back up the stairs, as far as the cord would reach. She sat on a step and, by feel, she found the 9 hole and dialed, cringing at the sound as the dial ratcheted back.

  “Shit.” The man’s voice again. She heard him grunt. Footsteps on the kitchen floor. A cabinet door opening, then closing. Then footsteps receding from the kitchen and onto the carpet. Another grunt.

  She dialed 1 and was about to dial another 1 when she heard, “Come on out of there, Ivory.”

  Ivory? A burglar who knew the cat’s name? How likely was that?

  Evie hung up the phone and set it on the step. Still holding the paperweight, she crept down to the kitchen door and peered in. No one was there. Beyond the dining room, lights were on in the living room. A man dressed in dark clothing and a baseball cap was crouched in front of the couch, holding a broom. As Evie watched, he got down on his belly. “Shit,” he said again and turned his baseball cap to face the back. The brim was red, and the team insignia above it looked familiar. “Come on. Get out of the way, you stupid cat.” Now Evie recognized the voice. I
t was Mrs. Yetner’s nephew.

  Ivory hissed and yowled as Brian poked the broom under the couch. He reached under, groped about, and then jerked back. “Ow. Damn you.” He reached in again, grunting. “Now I’ve got you. Just you—”

  “Hey,” Evie cried.

  Brian kept right on grunting and reaching and Ivory kept right on screeching and hissing.

  Evie came up behind him. “Hey!”

  Brian froze. He let go, sat up, and twisted around. “What are you doing here?”

  “Your aunt asked me to stay over and take care of the cat. She didn’t tell you?”

  “Obviously not,” Brian said. “I came over to take care of the cat, too.”

  Evie folded her arms across her chest. “In the middle of the night? With a broom?”

  He struggled to his feet and dropped the broom. “The cat got spooked. I was trying to coax her out from under there so I can take her home with me.”

  Coax? Drag was more like it. And in what? Evie didn’t see a cat carrier sitting open.

  “Well, you didn’t need to. Your aunt asked me to stay here with Ivory while she’s gone. So I am. And when your aunt comes home—”

  Brian rocked back on his heels and squashed his chins into his neck. “Who said she’s coming home?”

  “She did.” Evie pulled the quilt tighter around her as he narrowed his eyes.

  “I’m sure you mean well,” he said, tugging on his lapels, “but you don’t even live here. I don’t want to see my aunt hurt. I don’t want her to start depending on you and then you disappear.” He took a breath. “Anyway, never mind about the cat. I can see Ivory doesn’t need me.” He started for the door, then paused and turned around. “Thank you.” He stomped off.

  “No problem,” Evie murmured to his receding back.

  Evie heard the front door open and shut. Moments later a car engine started. By the time she got to the kitchen and looked out the window, his car was gone.