Dangerous Women (88 page)

My indigestion subsided later when I heard her go out again instead of putting her sore feet up. Gloria wasn’t letting the problems between us affect her relationship with my car.

Gloria continued volunteering with a wholeheartedness she’d never shown for paid employment, or at least none that hadn’t involved wearing a bathing suit. I did wonder occasionally if her apparent dedication might really be an unhealthy obsession with finding evidence that didn’t exist to prove something that wasn’t true.

Except that when I saw her during my visits, she didn’t look obsessed. She looked cheerfully busy, the way people do when they’re happy in their work. Maybe in trying to prove something to me, Gloria had found herself, discovered that caregiving was lifeguarding in street clothes—unlikely but not impossible. Her being too embarrassed to say so wasn’t impossible, either, and even less unlikely.

Unless she still believed that something wasn’t right and she was playing a role more Method than anything Brando had ever done while she watched and waited for something to happen. I really couldn’t tell. While she wasn’t openly hostile, she was still distant and had little to say beyond updates on Mom.

Maybe
I
was jumping at shadows now. After a lifetime as the grasshopper in a family of ants, Gloria was now up close and personal with the reality of Mom’s decline. Coming to terms with that would shake anyone up. I wished like anything she’d talk about it with me, but if she really felt that I’d always patronized her, I could hardly be surprised that she was keeping her distance. Nor could I blame her.

Eventually, she warmed up enough that we occasionally saw a movie or went out to eat together, but the wall between us remained. Much as I wanted to, I didn’t push her. Partly because I was afraid she’d get angry and shut me out again. But I’d also developed this rather weird, superstitious idea that looking too closely at her newfound self-discipline would somehow jinx it. She’d stop volunteering or even visiting more than once a month, if that. Eventually, despite rules I’d laid down, she’d drift into sleeping all day and staying up all night. I’d seen it happen before. Regardless of what had inspired her sense of purpose, I didn’t want her to lose it. Even if it meant we’d never say anything deeper than
It’s gonna rain
or
Guess what’s on TV? Hint: wolverines!
to each other for the rest of our lives.

Gloria held still for
Red Dawn
and even made popcorn. But she never suggested any more true-crime programs. That was fine with me, although I wasn’t sure what it meant, if it meant anything at all.

A month and a half after Gloria’s initial blowup, Mr. Santos and his daughter Lola sought me out to tell me my sister was a hero. Mr. Santos was a wiry little man in his late seventies who shared my mother’s fondness for puzzles and card games. I knew Lola to nod to, but she and her father had made Gloria’s acquaintance in a big way.

“I’ve never seen anything like that in real life,” Lola Santos said, looking at me through wide, dark eyes, as if my being Gloria’s older sister was an accomplishment in itself. “I was in the bathroom for maybe two minutes. Gloria had brought him some juice—”

“And if she hadn’t, I wouldn’t be here right now.” Mr. Santos thumped his chest twice with one bony fist before his daughter caught his hand.

“Don’t, Popi, you’re still bruised!”

“Good. The bruises remind me of the heroine with the curly brown hair and the dimple in her cheek who saved my life.” He shook his index finger at me. “She’s a wonderful girl, your sister. I don’t know what we’d do without her. She’s our heroine. She’s
my
personal heroine.”

“And mine,” Lola added.

I had no idea what to say to that, so I just smiled and thanked them for telling me. I tried to talk to Gloria about it at home later, but she wasn’t very forthcoming; when she started to look annoyed, I let it go. The next day I rearranged my work schedule and went back to see if I could find out anything else, but I might as well not have bothered. I couldn’t get any more out of Mr. Santos than what he had already told me. My mother alternately claimed to have been taking a nap or sitting in the garden. The few other residents I spoke to had nothing new or useful to add. Even the usually chatty Jill Franklyn was reticent on the subject; after praising Gloria’s mad CPR skillz and her ability to stay calm in a crisis, she made a very pointed comment about patient privacy and the confidentiality of medical records. I took the hint and spent the rest of the time with Mom, who was slightly confused by my consecutive visits.

I went back to three visits a week, on the grounds that it made Mom happy and not because I was still trying to find out more about Gloria’s big heroic moment. Because that would have been pointless, considering that I’d gotten a full account from Mr. Santos and Lola themselves. Happy ending, smiles all round—what more could there possibly be to the story? If I were jumping at shadows now, they were shadows I couldn’t even name. Maybe all the
she’s a heroine
business was getting on my nerves; weeks after the fact, it had yet to die down.

Jealous much?
said that still small voice in my brain.

I was pretty sure I hadn’t become that neurotic. Practically certain. But if I
were
—I
wasn’t,
but if I
were
—I told myself, there was still only one way to kill the shadows. Mom would benefit from the extra visits and so would I—no one knew how much longer she’d be herself. If good things sometimes got done for stupid reasons, it didn’t make them any less good. Did it?

“Weren’t you here yesterday?” my mother asked as I sat down next to her at the umbrella table. To my surprise, she seemed vaguely annoyed.

“No, I came on Thursday and today’s Saturday. What’s the matter, you sick of me hanging around?”

“I don’t understand why you won’t take advantage of Gloria’s being here,” she said, “and go away, even just for a long weekend. Instead, you come here more. What’s the matter with you? Don’t you have a life?”

“No,” I said honestly.

“What about your friends?”

“They don’t have lives, either. It’s rough out there. I was thinking about moving in with you.”

My mother gave a grim laugh. “You better win the lottery first. They don’t let you split expenses.” She looked around. “Where’s that thing? You know, with all the books inside and the screen. I coulda sworn I had it. See if I left it in my room, will ya? Since you’re here anyway.”

My mother’s door was open; inside, an aide stood with her back to me, doing something on the tray table next to the bed. On her left was a cart, both shelves crowded with water pitchers.

“Oh, hi,” I said cheerfully, and she jumped. The pitcher she’d been holding sprang out of her hands, spilling water over the bed before it fell to the floor. “Oh, damn, I’m so sorry!” I rushed to help.

“Don’t, it’s okay, I can take care of this, it’s fine—” The aide sounded almost desperate as she tried to wave me away, grab the pitcher, and pick up several small white pills all at once. “It’s only water, not plutonium, I can manage, really, I can.”

“I’m sure, but let me help anyway,” I said guiltily as I got down on my knees. The pitcher had come apart and the lid had gone under the bed. I used it to sweep up several small white pills.

“I was just taking something for a headache,” the aide said, grabbing up the pills and dumping them into the front pocket of her smock, ignoring the minor dust bunnies attached. “I have cluster headaches, they’re murder.”

“How awful.” I had no idea what cluster headaches were, but judging by how stricken she looked, she wasn’t exaggerating much. Her olive complexion had gone almost ashy. I made another sweep with the pitcher lid in case I’d missed any pills before I got to my feet. “I really am sorry, I didn’t meant to sneak up on you. I should change the bed—”

“
No,
absolutely
not,
you don’t come here to do the housekeeping, I’ll take care of it.” She spoke so quickly she was almost babbling. “I’ll take care of this, you don’t have to worry,
please
don’t take any time away from your visit, but if—” she cut off suddenly. Her color had improved slightly but now she looked like she was going to cry.

“What’s wrong? Is it your headache?” I asked.

I was about to suggest she sit down and drink some water when she said, “It’s nothing. Please, just go on with your visit, I’ll be all right.”

“Look, you won’t even let me help you change the bed, so
anything
I can do to make up for scaring the bejeebus out of you, just tell me.”

She looked down, embarrassed. “It’s kind of stupid.”

“Kind of stupid—that’s definitely in my wheelhouse,” I said. That got me a smile.

“Okay, it’s that—I just—” All at once, she was stripping the bed. “No, I can’t. I
was
going to ask if you’d mind not mentioning this to your mother, but forget it.” She dropped a bundle of wet linens on the floor and started to pull off the padded mattress cover. “It’s only because I feel like
such
an
idiot
. But I have no business asking you someth—”

“It’s done,” I said, holding up one hand. “I can’t think of a good reason why I’d have to mention it anyway.”

“But—”

“Forget it. I’m not talkin’ and you can’t make me.”

She gave a small, nervous laugh.

“I really only came in here to get her e-reader—” I spotted it on the nightstand and pointed. The aide handed it to me somehow looking grateful, sheepish, and relieved all at once. Her name tag said she was Lily R. “Thanks. What’s the
R
for?”

She stared, baffled.

“Lily R.” I nodded at her name tag. “
R
for …?”

“Romano,” she said, and rolled her eyes. “You must think I’m a real clown.”

“Hardly.” As I went back outside to my mother, I couldn’t help feeling a bit guilty for leaving Lily
R
-for-Romano to remake the bed by herself. Then Mom asked me to read to her and I put it out of my mind. I might never have given it another thought if I hadn’t found a pill in the sole of one of my very expensive athletic shoes.

I wore them not because I was particularly sporty but because walking in them felt so good. Plus, they came in bright, jazzy colors, which I had a new fondness for in my old age. And what the hell—if I ever decided to defy my old age and run a marathon, I was ready.

Running a marathon was probably the only thing that could have been farther from my mind than Lily R. when I felt something stuck to the sole of my shoe. Pausing at the kitchen door, I took it off before I scarred the tile flooring for life. A tiny rock—I used an ice pick to flip it out the open door, then checked the other shoe, just in case. The pill was about the same size as the rock but wedged in more deeply. Maybe that was why it was still intact, I thought, carefully working it free. Although I had no idea why I was bothering—I was hardly going to give it to Lily Romano next time I saw her.
Hey, girlfriend, found this on the bottom of my shoe, thought you’d want it back anyway.
Now
who’s kind of stupid?

I put it in an empty ring box on my bureau. As Mom always said, waste not; in a cluster-headache emergency, I’d be glad I’d saved it. Stranger things had happened; were happening now.

A week later, Jill Franklyn called in the middle of the afternoon, apologizing so much I couldn’t get a word in edgewise. The I heard her say something about death being harder for some people, especially the first death.

“The
first
death?” I interrupted. “Are you talking about my mother?”

“Oh, no, no, no, your mother is fine!” she said quickly. “It’s your sister—”

“My
sister
?” Suddenly the pit of my stomach was filling with ice water. “Something happened to
Gloria
?”

“No, no, no, she’s fine,” Jill Franklyn said. “Well, not
fine,
exactly—”

“Is she still alive?” I demanded.

“Yes, of
course
she’s still
alive
.” Bewilderment crept into her apologetic tone. “But—well—you need to come and get her, she shouldn’t drive home.”

I said I was on my way and hung up without telling her that would be a bit longer than either of us would have liked, because I’d have to take a cab, and although this wasn’t the middle of nowhere or darkest suburbia, it wasn’t Manhattan, either. I got there in half an hour, which was actually sooner than I’d expected.

Jill Franklyn was waiting for me at the reception desk, looking a bit flustered. “I’m so glad you’re here,” she told me, smiling, but I could hear the admonition in her voice. The receptionist pretended not to eavesdrop by studying something intently on her desk.

“Sorry, I had to get a cab.” I tried to look contrite or at least sheepish. “I’m not sure I understand what’s going on. You said my mother’s all right—”

“Yes, just fine.” Jill Franklyn nodded vigorously as she ushered me through the entry gate and down the corridor leading directly to my mother’s room. “Gloria’s with her right now.”

I found the two of them sitting side by side on Mom’s bed. Mom had her arm around my sister, who had obviously been crying. Lily Romano was there as well, looking concerned and fidgeting. She left as soon as I came in, nodding a silent hello as she rushed past. I frowned, wishing she’d stay, but I had no chance to ask and no good reason to do so.

“What kept you?” my mother was saying, a bit impatient.

“There’s only one car between us,” I said, “and Gloria has it. I don’t usually need it. What’s up, Glow-bug?”

Gloria looked up at me and I thought she was furious at my using her childhood nickname so publicly. Then she got up, flung her arms around me, and sobbed.

By the time we got to the car, she had quieted down and stayed quiet all the way home, for which I was grateful. Rush hour had started and I didn’t want to fight the traffic to the soundtrack of Gloria’s heartbroken sobs. A dozen years ago, never driving in rush hour again had been one more good reason to leave the local tax-preparation firm in favor of a home business; now I decided that it had been the best reason.