There Was an Old Woman

by Hallie Ephron

  The light came on at the top of the stairwell. “Aunt Mina,” Brian called down to her. “What are you doing up? I told you to call me if you need anything.”

  Well, what was the good of her calling him if he was going to be making such a racket that he couldn’t hear her? And besides, the doctor had said she should get up and move around as much as she was comfortable. “I can get it,” she called back.

  Mina moved the walker forward and set it down, moved the walker and set it down, trying to get close enough to reach the door. She was almost there when she heard the hinged brass mail panel open and clack shut. Another step and the door was within reach. When she set the walker down and leaned forward to pull the door open, she heard something crack under one of the walker’s front prongs.

  Ignoring it, she turned the doorknob and opened the door a few inches. It ran into the walker and she had to back up before she could open it more. It was so frustrating—such a simple act and the walker made it so cumbersome, she thought as she jockeyed back and forth until finally she had the door open enough to see out. And then, of course, she couldn’t see.

  “Evie?” she called out. “Are you out there?” She groped for the wall switch and turned on the outside light.

  Chapter Forty-nine

  Evie was halfway back to her mother’s house when the light in front of Mrs. Yetner’s came on and the front door opened. There stood Mrs. Yetner leaning against a metal walker and squinting out. Her hair had come loose and, backlit, it looked like a spidery halo around her face.

  “Mrs. Yetner?” Evie said, hurrying back. “I’m sorry to bother you. You weren’t in the hospital, and I saw the lights on, and I thought . . .” The metallic scent of overheated power tools wafted out at her. “I found your glasses and I wanted to return them to you.”

  “I’m afraid to ask.” Mrs. Yetner backed up and pointed to the floor. “Are those my glasses?”

  Evie came up the steps and through the door. She picked up the envelope she’d pushed through the mail slot and shook out Mrs. Yetner’s glasses. With the lenses cracked and the frame bent, they reminded her of a mangled bird skeleton. “They were,” she said. “I’m sorry. I knew you’d want them back right away, but I guess I should have waited until I could hand them to you.”

  Mrs. Yetner took the broken glasses from her. When she tried to put them on, one of the lenses fell out in pieces. “Well, no use crying over spilled milk.” She set the broken glasses on the hall table. “Where on earth did you find them?”

  Evie picked up the broken lens from the floor and set the pieces next to the frames. “In a potted plant by the hospital elevator. I came up to see how you were doing—”

  “You did?” Mrs. Yetner put her hand to her heart.

  “Of course I did.” Evie found herself choked up. They’d barely reconnected, and yet there was something about her relationship with this woman, a simple pleasure in shared company, that she’d never experienced with her own mother or grandmother.

  “Imagine that,” Mrs. Yetner said. “There they were, in a potted plant by the hospital elevator. I wonder how they got there?” Evie followed her gaze halfway up the stairs to where Brian was standing looking down at them. “Whatever made you look there?”

  Evie said, “I’d been helping the nurse look for them in your room. Then I was waiting for the elevator and there they were.” In retrospect, it was amazing that she’d noticed them.

  “It’s a good thing my nephew has already ordered me another pair. Haven’t you, Brian?”

  Evie looked up the stairs again. Brian was still there.

  “Is that chicken soup I smell?” Mrs. Yetner said.

  “It is.” As Evie showed Mina the take-out bag, she realized it had begun to leak. “Uh-oh.” She hurried into the kitchen and set it in the sink. Mina shuffled in after her with her walker. Brian came in after.

  “I know you mean well,” Brian said to Evie, “but my aunt is exhausted.” His shirtsleeves were rolled up and his pant legs and boat shoes were covered with dust. “She’s been resting all day. She’s still recovering from her injuries. The accident. The operation.”

  “The construction,” Mrs. Yetner added. “Which somehow I managed to sleep through. My nephew is building me a new bathroom upstairs. Handicap accessible.” Mrs. Yetner spit out those final words as if they had a bad taste. “Isn’t that lovely?”

  “That’s wonderful. I saw the truck outside,” Evie said. She hoped no one was planning to “renovate” the downstairs. But Evie suspected that if Mrs. Yetner’s nephew inherited the house, the only way the period-perfect rooms could be preserved would be in photographs, and Evie would have to take them.

  “Apparently I need grab bars.” Mrs. Yetner turned to Brian, her face softening. “I don’t mean to sound ungrateful. Really, Brian, it’s very thoughtful of you.” She turned back to Evie. “My nephew is making the changes so I can live here instead of going into a nursing home.” She sniffed the air and shuffled to the sink where Evie had left the soup.

  “And you’ll have someone staying with you?” Evie asked.

  Brian answered. “Dora will be here soon. She’s making supper and staying overnight.”

  “My nurse, apparently,” Mrs. Yetner said. “Evie, dear, why don’t you get down some dishes and silverware and we can talk.”

  “Talk?” Brian said. “About what?”

  “Nothing that concerns you,” Mrs. Yetner said, winking at Evie.

  Evie felt a little bad for Brian. “Would you like some, too?” she offered. “I’ve got soup, sweet plantains, black beans, and rice.” She opened one of the take-out boxes to show him the black beans, releasing the smell of garlic and cilantro. Evie’s mouth watered.

  “No, thank you,” Brian said. “Maybe later.” He opened a closet, pulled out a vacuum cleaner, and clomped up the stairs with it.

  Once he’d disappeared, Mrs. Yetner sat at the table. Evie pulled two bowls and salad plates from the cabinet. She found forks and soup spoons in a drawer.

  “Now he’s vacuuming,” Mrs. Yetner said, under her breath. “When he was little, he’d never lift a finger to clean up after himself unless he got paid. In advance. We used to joke and call him the COD kid.” She gazed up at the ceiling, which was creaking.

  Evie took a cautious look to make sure Brian wasn’t within earshot. “Has he given up on getting you to sign away the house?” she asked quietly.

  Mrs. Yetner stared at her. “How do you know about that? Finn must have told you.”

  “I overheard your nephew asking about it. Then I found the agreement papers under your couch where Ivory was hiding.”

  “Hiding? But Ivory likes you.”

  “Apparently Ivory doesn’t like Brian. He was here late last night trying to get her out from under the couch so he could take care of her.”

  “Take care of her?” Mrs. Yetner cocked an eyebrow. “He said that?”

  “Pretty much word for word. He didn’t know I’d be here.”

  “Imagine that. And you say the papers were under the couch?”

  Evie nodded. “After he left and I looked underneath for Ivory, I found them. You know what else was there? The little whistle that goes on the spout of your kettle.”

  Mrs. Yetner beamed. “I knew it. I knew I couldn’t have lost that, too. And Brian was here for the cat? If you believe that”—Mrs. Yetner lowered her voice—“I’ve got a bridge to sell you. My silver safety net? Pfff.”

  “Safety net?” Evie said.

  “Another of my nephew’s cockamamie schemes.”

  “Maybe it’s a coincidence, but that’s the same term my mother used when I asked her about some cash I found in her house. And I’m wondering if Brian got my mother to sign an agreement like the one he wanted you to sign.”

  “Oh, dear. Your mother signed away her house?”

  “I don’t know.” Evie set the take-out boxes on the table. “Monthly cash payments were part of the agreement your nephew left for you to sign. Maybe he off
ered my mother the same deal, only she didn’t have the good sense to turn him down.” She ladled soup into bowls and set them on the table along with plates and glasses of water.

  Mrs. Yetner pursed her lips and gave her head a shake. “My Brian and your mother?” She considered that for a few moments. “No. Oh my, no. I’d be very surprised at that.” She sounded so sure of herself.

  Evie said, “The outfit behind it might be the same one that tore down a house a few blocks up.”

  Mrs. Yetner looked stricken. “I thought Finn was going to put a stop to that.”

  “He wanted to, but they moved the equipment over there while he was having one of his neighborhood meetings.”

  Mrs. Yetner groped on the table for a little plastic container with compartments for each day of the week and handed it to Evie. “Would you? I need to take one of these. What day is it? Tuesday, right? Please tell me it’s Tuesday.”

  “You haven’t lost track.” Evie gave Mrs. Yetner the pill behind the little door marked TU.

  Mrs. Yetner took the pill with a swallow of water and set down her glass. Then she lifted a spoonful of soup and blew on it. Took a sip. She closed her eyes. “This is as delicious as it smells. Where did you get it?”

  Evie told her about the little bodega not far away. “They tucked a take-out menu into the bag. I’ll leave it on your counter for when you’ve got your eyes back.”

  Mrs. Yetner laughed. Then she turned serious. “So how is your mother doing?”

  Evie hadn’t wanted to get into all the gory details, but it all came tumbling out. The hepatic coma. The acetaminophen poisoning. The rotted gas tank, and how the man at the gas station suggested that it had been vandalized.

  Mrs. Yetner lowered her spoon. “Evie, dear, did it occur to you that someone might have been trying to do your mother a favor? I know you love her. But neither you nor your sister has been around.” Mrs. Yetner reached across the table and patted the back of Evie’s hand. “Perhaps it was a friend, someone who felt there was no other way to keep her off the road?”

  Evie hadn’t considered that, but it was certainly possible, and it made her wonder if Brian hadn’t deliberately hidden his aunt’s glasses to protect her as well. After all, they hadn’t been under the bed or on the bathroom sink. They’d been nearly buried in fake moss. Putting the most positive spin on it that Evie could, maybe he thought it was the only way to slow Mrs. Yetner down enough to allow her hip to heal.

  “But who?” Evie said. “Does my mother still even have any friends? Frank Cutler’s the only one who’s come to the hospital to see her.”

  “He was at the hospital?” Mrs. Yetner’s eyes turned bright. “When?”

  “Yesterday. I ran into him in the café. I told him she was in intensive care. He didn’t know that they only allow family to visit.”

  “I don’t think that man even knows how to be a friend, not unless there’s something in it for him.” The comment didn’t surprise Evie. Frank Cutler could have pushed Mrs. Yetner from in front of a speeding truck and she’d have found a reason why it was self-serving.

  Later, over cups of tea and Nilla Wafers from Mrs. Yetner’s cupboard, Evie said, “That’s a wonderful old map you have upstairs on the bedroom wall.”

  Mrs. Yetner smiled. “It was my father’s, of course.”

  “This neighborhood used to be Snakapins Point, and it looks as if it was once part of Snakapins Park. Did you ever go there?”

  “I was very little when we moved into the house,” Mrs. Yetner said, blowing into her tea. “By then the amusement park had closed. It’s been Higgs Point ever since I can remember.”

  “Your father must have known Finn’s great-grandfather. He built the park, and your father developed all of this land that was once part of it.”

  “Of course they knew each other.” Abruptly Mrs. Yetner set down her cup and pushed herself to her feet. “So, are you ready to hear about the day the plane crashed into the Empire State Building? Because I think I’d like to tell you about it.”

  Chapter Fifty

  Mrs. Yetner picked up the Empire State Building souvenir from the mantel. She looked at it for a moment, then set it on the coffee table. With the walker, she shuffled a few steps over to her chair, backed up, and sat. Evie tucked the crocheted throw over her legs, then ran into the kitchen to get her purse. She brought it back and pulled out a cassette recorder that, thank God, she always carried. She sat on the couch, opposite Mrs. Yetner, and turned it on.

  “Tuesday, May 21, 2013. Evie Ferrante talking to Wilhelmina Higgs Yetner.” Evie spelled the name, looking to Mrs. Yetner to make sure she got it right. At Mrs. Yetner’s nod, she continued, “We’re at Mrs. Yetner’s home at 105 Neck Road, the Bronx, New York.”

  She played that much back. Then she pushed Record again and set the machine on the coffee table, the microphone facing Mrs. Yetner.

  “You know, those Catholics saved my life,” Mrs. Yetner began.

  Evie smiled. She knew Mrs. Yetner was making a joke, but also knew she was probably referring to the Catholic War Relief Services, whose offices had been on the north-facing side of the seventy-ninth floor of the Empire State Building. One of the secretaries who worked there had told a reporter that from her desk she could see the pilot’s Clark Gable mustache right through the cockpit window as the plane struck the building. That pilot and both of his passengers had been killed.

  But Evie didn’t interrupt to clarify. Oral histories took time to tell, and they were richest when the interviewer kept quiet and let them bubble up of their own accord. Not only that, people were surprisingly suggestible and obligingly conjured imagined details just to satisfy their audience.

  “I had applied for a job there, but they turned me down,” Mrs. Yetner went on. “They thought I needed experience to be a twenty-five-dollar-a-week stock-and-file clerk.”

  The sound of the vacuum cleaner started again upstairs. Evie could hear it being pushed across wood floor.

  “Some of the people in that office were burned to death sitting at their desks,” Mrs. Yetner said. “I remember looking through the names of the dead in the newspaper and wondering if one of them was the girl who got my job.”

  Evie sat quietly as Mrs. Yetner talked. The day before the crash, Mrs. Yetner and her friend Betty, an elevator operator whose station was on the eightieth floor, had gone up to the observation deck as they often did on their lunch hour to watch troop ships streaming into New York harbor and past the Statue of Liberty. The war in Europe was over.

  “It was hot and windy up there, and my hat blew right off my head. Betty thought her husband might be on one of those ships. She’d already tendered her notice. I remember she took her compact out and was using the mirror to reflect the sun. She was trying to signal to soldiers on the ships. I was looking through binoculars to see if any of them noticed and waved back at us. We were so silly. Giddy as schoolgirls, really. But then, we were so very young.”

  Mrs. Yetner paused, gazing off into space. Then she shook herself slightly and continued.

  “The next day. Saturday. I was supposed to work because we were taking inventory. I remember it was one of those soupy mornings when you look out the window here and the water is gray and the sky is gray, and there doesn’t seem to be a horizon. From our office windows I could barely see the Chrysler Building.

  “I had just gotten to work. I was coming out of the stockroom when I heard this roar. And I remember thinking it sounded like an airplane. I was heading for the window when someone shouted to get back. Then there was an enormous explosion. I was thrown across one of the desks. We all thought it was a German buzz bomb. Everyone was screaming. The Germans had tricked us, the Germans had tricked us! They hadn’t surrendered after all.

  “Flames were shooting up the sides of the building. One of the windows was scorched black. The office filled with smoke, and everyone was rushing around, trying to get out. I remember wanting to get my purse from my locker in the cloakroom, but Mr. Salamino yel
led at me. Said to leave it. Save myself.”

  Evie picked up the cassette recorder and leaned forward with it to be sure it caught every word.

  “I remember I had this miniature”—Mrs. Yetner pointed to the souvenir—“on my desk. I took it with me for good luck. I’d bought it in the souvenir shop on the day Mr. Salamino interviewed me for the job. My first job.

  “We ran out of the office, but when we got to the elevators, smoke was already starting to fill the landing. Fire alarms were going off. People were running for the stairs. A woman was on the floor, screaming. People standing around her. I didn’t realize who it was at first.” Mrs. Yetner’s face pinched at the memory, spots of color on her cheeks. “It was Betty. She’d been blown right out of her post. One side of her uniform was just ashes. Her legs were horribly bent, and she was in so much pain. There were ambulances on the street. We could hear the sirens. We needed to get her down there, but there was no way. Down eighty flights?”

  The doorbell rang. Mrs. Yetner ignored it. So did Evie.

  “Some people ran for the stairs. They just left her there. But I couldn’t. The elevator was still sitting there, empty. Everyone kept saying, Don’t take the elevator. It’s too dangerous. But there was no choice. It was the only way for her to get down.

  “Mr. Salamino and another man from the office carried Betty into the elevator. I didn’t volunteer to ride down with her, it just happened. The elevator needed someone to operate it and of course she couldn’t, and she was holding on to me, so I stayed. I got the doors closed. Got the elevator started. I remember praying that we’d make it. Praying that we’d get to the lobby in one piece. Praying that everything would be all right.

  “And at first it was. One floor, three floors, ten floors down. Then I heard what sounded like a gunshot. The elevator jumped and lurched. The lights went out. And we began to fall. I remember screaming and not being able to hear my own voice.”

  The doorbell rang again. The vacuum cleaner stopped, and Evie could hear footsteps on the stairs. The front door opened and closed. Evie heard Brian talking to someone in a hushed voice. Mrs. Yetner seemed oblivious.