There Was an Old Woman

by Hallie Ephron

  He stared at her card for a moment, then looked up into the roof peak and scratched his head. “Really? What’s it worth?”

  “It’s worth preserving.”

  After Evie paid, Jack said, “Got a minute?” He led her out into the garage, which smelled of axle grease and cigarette smoke. Her mother’s car was being lowered on one of the hydraulic lifts. He went over to what looked like an enclosed broad shallow metal pan sitting on a sheet of plastic. With his toe, he lifted it. The underside was corroded and riddled with holes.

  “This is the gas tank we took out of your mother’s car. It’s not unusual for gas tanks to corrode little by little over time. And of course around here we’ve got more than our share of moisture and salt. But this car’s not superold, and you can see the gas tank failure is massive. Thing is, it’s rotted from the inside. We had your mother’s car up on the lift a couple of months ago for brake work and there was nothing like this.”

  “So what are you saying?”

  “This isn’t normal wear and tear. To do this much damage this fast, some kind of strong acid had to have been poured directly into the tank.”

  Evie stood there for a moment, blinking at the ruined gas tank and feeling sick to her stomach. The most benign explanation she could come up with was vandalism. More insidious: sabotage.

  Evie drove her mother’s car from the gas station directly to the hospital where Ginger was waiting for her to take over. “She hasn’t woken up,” Ginger said when she met Evie outside the ICU. Evie had the impression that Ginger was barely holding it together. “Dr. Foran says she’s in a hepatic coma. She might have some awareness but probably not. I keep talking to her anyway. I want her to know she’s not alone.”

  Evie knew it wouldn’t be much longer. Dr. Foran had said patients fell into a hepatic coma days before the end.

  “At least she’s breathing on her own,” Ginger said. “She seems calm. They’re giving her pain medication, so I hope she’s not uncomfortable.”

  Evie hoped Ginger was right. “Speaking of sick, how’s Tony doing?”

  “His fever is down, and he’s not throwing up.” Ginger gave a tired smile. “Life goes on. Which reminds me, did you pick up the car?”

  “I did. They couldn’t just patch the tank. They had to replace it. The failure was so massive the mechanic thinks someone must have poured acid into the gas tank.”

  “What? But why?”

  Evie had been asking herself that same question all the way over. Her mother was an easy target—an alcoholic, already alone and isolated. Take away her car and provide her with an endless flow of vodka, and it was a good bet that she’d go on a prolonged bender.

  “I think it’s about the house,” Evie said.

  “You’ve got to be kidding.”

  “Not the house exactly. The property. Two houses near Mom’s have been leveled in the last few months, the last one right after the owner died. And Mrs. Yetner’s nephew has been trying to get her to sign a life estate deed, signing over her property to the same people who are tearing down houses. You said Mom was excited because she was getting a regular income? That’s part of the deal.”

  To Evie’s relief, Ginger didn’t even suggest that she sounded crazy. Still, she seemed a bit skeptical. “So where’s this estate deed, or whatever you call it, that Mom signed? There’d be a record, wouldn’t there?”

  Evie wondered why she hadn’t thought of that. Tracing property ownership was a routine part of her work at the Historical Society. “It’s something I can find out.”

  “And you say Mrs. Yetner’s nephew is trying to get her to sign one of those agreements?” Ginger said.

  “I don’t think he’s getting much traction. Mrs. Yetner is pretty sharp. But I wanted to ask her what she knows about that deed. Do you mind staying with Mom a little bit longer while I go talk to her?”

  But when Evie got to Mrs. Yetner’s room, two floors up, she found the bed was empty and the sheets stripped. A nurse was inside, closing the closet door. She turned and saw Evie. “Can I help you?”

  “I’m sorry. My friend, Mrs. Yetner? She was in this room? An older woman. She’d dislocated her hip?”

  The nurse narrowed her eyes at Evie. “Did reception tell you she was still here?”

  “No, no. Nothing like that. I’m sorry.” Evie felt as if she’d been caught wandering the school hallway without a pass. “She’s my neighbor. I visited her here yesterday and I just assumed . . . and today I was here to see my mother and I thought . . . She is all right, isn’t she?”

  At that, the nurse finally smiled. “Yes, she’s fine. She left a little while ago. She couldn’t find her glasses and she was very upset, so I came back to see if she left them here.”

  While the nurse looked in all the drawers and cabinets, Evie checked under the bed and in the trash can. She knew how frantic Mrs. Yetner would be without her glasses, even for a few hours. That, coming on top of dislocating her hip? It was too much.

  “Maybe they got wrapped up in the bedding,” the nurse said. “Otherwise I can’t imagine what happened to them. Glasses.” She shook her head. “That’s not the kind of thing anyone would steal.”

  Evie took one final look around the room before following the nurse out. She’d stop over at Mrs. Yetner’s house later that night when she got home. Now she had to get back and spell Ginger.

  Evie was waiting for the elevator, pressing the down button a third time even though she knew it would do no good, when a bit of sparkle in the base of a potted plant caught her eye. Using her fingers like tweezers, she reached into a mound of fake moss and pulled out a pair of white cat’s-eye glasses with rhinestones in the corners.

  Chapter Forty-six

  “For heaven’s sakes, we’ll get you another pair of glasses, Aunt Mina,” Brian said. “Would you stop fretting about them already? It’s not a big deal.”

  It was a big deal. Mina was belted into the front seat of Brian’s car, her handbag clutched in her lap. The world whizzing by through the window was a blur. Brian, sitting not three feet away from her, was featureless. If she hadn’t recognized the voice coming out of his mouth, and that distinctive smell of whatever cologne it was that he slathered on himself, she’d have had no idea who was driving.

  The car came to a halt. “Where are we?” Mina asked.

  “Stopped at a light.”

  As if she didn’t know that. After a minute, the car accelerated up an incline, fast. Mina assumed they were on the highway now.

  “Now we’re on the Bruckner,” Brian confirmed.

  Mina held on to the door handle as the car moved into the left lane and sped along. The car shuddered rhythmically over seams in the pavement. The vibrations made her hip ache. She could feel the changes in pressure as they passed cars and trucks.

  By the time Brian pulled up in front of her house, Mina was wrung out. She was desperate for a quiet cup of tea, her own chair, and another of those painkillers they’d given her in the hospital.

  A medium-sized white box truck was parked in front of the house. Brian pulled up parallel to it and rolled down the window. “Yo! How’s it going?” he called out.

  “We should have it done by the end of the day,” the answer came back. A man’s voice, though to Mina the man himself was nothing more than a tall dark shadow.

  Brian pulled his car into the driveway. Mina squinted. It looked like another man was carrying something inside.

  “What’s going on?” Mina said.

  “The social worker at the hospital told me that the house—the bathroom in particular—isn’t properly set up for you. With the walker, you can barely get in the room. If you end up in a wheelchair, you wouldn’t be able to get through the door. That got me thinking about turning the upstairs into a master suite with its own bath. So that’s what they’re building for you. Wide doorway. Roll-in shower. Grab bars. Slip-proof floor.”

  Mina snorted. Sounded like the spiel she’d heard when the woman in the blue suit had shown them o
ne of the rooms at Pelham Manor.

  Brian ignored her. “Once it’s done, your health aide can sleep downstairs. We’ll see how it goes, and if we need to install a lift on the stairs, we’ll do that.”

  Second-floor bath? Live-in health aide? Stair lift? “How much is all this going to cost?”

  “A lot less than the cost of a residential setting, and your insurance will pay for most of it. They’ll be using a prefab unit for the bathroom so it won’t take long to finish the work. Dora will sleep upstairs until the new bath is done and you can move up.”

  “Dora?”

  “The hospital referred her. Dora . . . Fleischer I think is her last name. I hired her to help you.” Without waiting for a response, Brian got out of the car, popped the trunk, and came around to her side and opened the door. He unfolded the walker and set it up for her. “What’s the matter? I thought you’d be pleased.”

  Well, she was and she wasn’t. She was pleased to be home. But strangers were in her house. Leaving the door wide open. Tramping up and down her staircase in their work boots. Breaking apart the upstairs bedroom. Had Brian forgotten he didn’t own the house? Not yet, at least.

  But Mina didn’t say anything. Just pushed against the dashboard and shifted her feet out, tried to stand, and then grudgingly took Brian’s offered hand and slid out of the car. She gritted her teeth against the pain. The doctor had said she’d feel a lot better a week from now when the swelling went down. As it was, it was slow going pushing the walker up the front walk. Brian helped her climb the front steps.

  Inside, the house smelled of plaster dust and overworked electrical tools. As she shuffled across the kitchen floor, Mina felt as if her feet were leaving streaks in a coating of dust. Just as well that she couldn’t see. She’d have been desperate to clean, and until the work was done, “clean” would be an uphill battle. Besides, the doctor had said in no uncertain terms there was to be no stooping or bending, not until the physical therapist who’d be coming to the house gave her permission.

  “Where are my rugs?” Mina asked as Brian helped her across the bare floor to the living room.

  “Rolled up and put away,” he said. “You can bring them back when the construction is finished and you don’t need to use the walker any longer.” They’d reached her chair. He helped her turn around. She felt behind her for the seat cushion. Then, holding on to him, she lowered herself into the chair. This was going to get old fast.

  Mina shivered with cold. Brian found her sweater and helped her on with it. Later, even with a mug of hot tea, the crocheted spread piled over her, and the sun shining in through the windows, Mina still felt chilled. She wished Ivory would come out of hiding.

  All day long, Brian kept going upstairs to supervise, as he called it, the construction. Noise went on unabated, banging and sawing and drilling and hammering, with workers—there had to be at least three of them—marching in and out. It sounded as if they were taking the house apart. Brian explained that the banging and clattering she heard was a chute they’d set up to carry away rubble and debris. They had better not be burying her lovely lacecap hydrangeas.

  She’d had to remind Brian to call and order her another pair of prescription glasses. She listened as he made the call, gave them her name and her prescription number. Of course they no longer carried anything like her old frames, but Brian said the woman he talked to on the phone had promised to do her best to come close. Fortunately, ’50s fashions were apparently back.

  While Brian was on one of his supervisory forays upstairs, Mina made her way to what she was already thinking of as the “downstairs” bath. He was right. She had to leave the walker in the hall.

  She washed her face. All that noise had given her a headache, and the hot washcloth felt soothing. Then she took a capsule of pain medication—Brian had filled the prescription at the hospital and the container was on the sink. She’d had a dose before breakfast in the hospital. She couldn’t read the label, but she remembered what the doctor had said: no more than once every six hours and take it with food.

  In the kitchen she started to put together a light lunch for herself. But as she stood there waiting for the toast to pop, the room felt as if it was spinning. By the time Brian found her, she’d collapsed in the kitchen chair and the toast had gone cold in the toaster.

  “What are you doing in here? I could have gotten you lunch. I told you, let me help you.”

  He walked her into the living room and settled her in her chair again. A while later he brought her lunch on a tray. Mina had taken a few nibbles of cottage cheese on toast and a bite of what she’d thought was canned peaches but turned out to be apricots, when she started to feel warm and drowsy. The headache had gone from sharp to fuzzy.

  She took a few more bites and set the tray on the table. Brian plumped a pillow behind her and, despite all the noise coming from upstairs, she nodded off.

  Chapter Forty-seven

  Evie had spent the rest of the afternoon sitting by her mother’s bedside talking quietly. When she ran out of things to say, she read to her mother from a copy of Tina Fey’s Bossypants, which Ginger had left. If her mother got the jokes or felt any pain, she showed no sign of it.

  Now Evie backed the car into her mother’s driveway and pulled to a stop before the closed garage door. Sitting on the passenger seat were Mrs. Yetner’s glasses and a bag of takeout she’d picked up at El Coquí, a little bodega she’d passed on the way home. The rich aroma from chicken soup, a double order of sweet plantains, and garlicky black beans and rice filled the car.

  She got out of the car and opened the garage, intending to pull the car in. Instead, she turned on the light and gazed around.

  The kitty litter Mrs. Yetner had sprinkled on the floor was still there. Evie swept it onto a newspaper and dumped it in one of the garbage bags she’d left outside. Then she went back into the garage.

  When she was growing up, her parents had kept the car parked in the driveway. The garage had been her father’s domain. Inside, it always reeked, not of gasoline but of his cigars, the ones her mother wouldn’t let him smoke in the house.

  The shadowy interior seemed so much smaller without a car filling it. Without her father. At least her mother hadn’t packed the garage with garbage and debris the way she had the house.

  Against the back wall was her father’s fireman’s locker—a tall, narrow wooden cabinet with FERRANTE stenciled on the front of it. His captain had let him take it home when he retired. It was one of the few things she’d really want to keep when her mother died. When her mother died. The phrase brought her up short, no longer a hypothetical.

  Beside the locker stood her father’s worktable. How often she’d sat perched on the edge, watching her father sand down a tabletop or cane a chair seat. His coveted set of red metal tool drawers was tucked in the back of the garage, too. She understood now how he must have used the garage as a refuge.

  But as Evie looked around she wondered what had been poured into her mother’s car’s gas tank that had been strong enough to rot it out within a few weeks. Paint stripper? Toilet cleaner? Drain cleaner? Or what about muriatic acid? She knew forgers often used that to make new metal look old, sometimes so convincingly that even experts couldn’t tell.

  But nothing like any of that was lying around. Besides, the more toxic the material, the more likely that it would be sealed inside something else. Like mercury in a fluorescent bulb. Or acid in a battery.

  It wasn’t until she’d backed the car into the garage and got out with Mrs. Yetner’s glasses and the take-out bag that she realized. Of course. There had been several car batteries sitting on the floor of the garage. She went to the spot alongside the car where she’d seen them. Nothing was sitting there now. But when she crouched, she could see scars in the concrete floor. She set down the take-out bag and ran her hand over them. The floor had been eaten away, right through to soil underneath.

  Evie remembered her chemistry. Acid dissolved concrete. She looked closely a
t the shape of the deterioration. Four rectangular outlines. Each could have been the footprint of a car battery.

  Chapter Forty-eight

  Mina slept fitfully in her chair, dimly aware of workers tramping up and down the stairs, going in and out of the house. When she finally came fully awake, it was dusk. She couldn’t see the time on either of the watches on her wrist. Ivory was curled up in her lap. From overhead, there were heavy footsteps, thumps, and scrapes. But no more debris was clattering down the chute.

  She felt groggy and dry mouthed, and she groped for her glasses for a few moments before she remembered she’d lost them at the hospital. Annabelle had lost her teeth at the nursing home. She didn’t know which was worse.

  When she heard the doorbell ring, she wondered if that was what had woken her. “Brian!” Mina called. “It’s the door.” But she knew her voice was not making it up the stairs, and she certainly couldn’t be heard over the workers’ ruckus.

  She cleared her throat and tried again. “Brian? The door!” The only response was the whine of what sounded like a drill.

  Knock, knock, knock. “Mrs. Yetner? It’s Evie. Are you there?”

  Mina got her feet untangled from the afghan, pulled the walker closer to her, and stood.

  “Wait. I’m coming,” she said, though not with enough force for the girl to actually hear her.

  She started toward the door, slowly, haltingly. Walkers weren’t made for speed. By the time she got to the kitchen, she was sure Evie would have given up. But there was one more knock.

  “I’m here,” Mina called out as she pushed the walker ahead of her and shuffled into the entry hall, her voice stronger but probably not strong enough.