There Was an Old Woman (10 page)

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 have 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 abdomen. 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?”

“What we can do is keep her calm and comfortable. That's what we're doing now. She's taking medication for anxiety and delirium. There's more we can give her as the disease progresses.” Dr. Foran put her hand on Evie's arm. “But you know of course, no one survives without a functioning liver. The damage is irreversible.”

Irreversible.
Evie wrote the word down. Read it. And even though it was what she'd expected to hear, she felt as if she'd been sucker-punched.

“Does she know?”

“It's difficult to tell what your mother”—Dr. Foran drew quote marks in the air—“
knows.
I've scheduled a brain scan for tomorrow. I'm guessing that will show that she's already suffered significant brain damage.”

“Significant brain damage,” Evie murmured. She couldn't bring herself to write down those words.

“The problem is that we have no baseline to compare. Your mother hasn't been seeing a physician regularly. But a decline like this is generally gradual. Up to a point.”

Since when had her mother been beyond that point? Evie wondered. Years ago when she'd shown up drunk at Ginger's wedding? Or ten years before that when she'd fallen down the stairs? Or what about when she'd run the family station wagon into a tree?

No one had put a gun to her mother's head and forced her to drink. At first it had to have been a choice. At some point, though, Evie knew it hadn't been.

“How long does she have?”

“You'd think with all the cases like this that we handle, we'd know the answer. But it's surprisingly variable. Maybe a few months. Maybe weeks. What often happens is that the kidneys fail and the patient falls into a hepatic coma. After that, it's usually a matter of days, depending on whether the patient wants us to use extreme measures to prolong life.”

“Extreme measures?” Evie's voice was barely a whisper.

Dr. Foran shook her head and pursed her lips. “There's no easy way to say this. There's a good chance that she'll linger. Possibly for weeks. It will be up to you and your sister to determine the course of treatment at that point.” She handed Evie some stapled pages.
COMPASSION AND TREATMENT CHOICES
was printed on the cover sheet.

Evie tried to swallow the lump in her throat. She'd known that this moment was coming, but now that it was here, she wasn't ready for it. “What should we do?”

“Get her affairs in order. Be here for her. Watch and wait. She may surprise us all and rebound. But you need to prepare yourselves. Now is the time for you and your sister to talk to your mother about what will happen when she can no longer tell us what she wants. And this is important. Write down exactly what she says. It will make it easier for you later to respect her wishes.”

 

After Dr. Foran left, Evie stood at the window of the lounge, alone with her thoughts. As fat raindrops pelted the glass, the doctor's words sank in. She and Ginger were not going to be able to prop their mother up on her pins this time. There'd be no miracle cure. No liver transplant. Not even a temporary reprieve until the next emergency, drop-everything-right-now phone call.

She called Ginger.

“So you talked to Dr. Foran?” was the first thing Ginger said.

“Yes, Ginger, I talked to Dr. Foran.” The words came out sharp. “I'm sorry. Yes. Just now. She says—” Evie's insides wrenched, and a sob escaped from nowhere.

“Evie? Honey?”

“Hang on.” Evie put the phone down for a few moments until she could breathe again. Then she started over. “It's not good.” She told Ginger what Dr. Foran had said, glad that she had taken notes.

“Significant brain damage,” Ginger said. “But I thought you said she recognized you?”

“Yesterday she did.”

“So how can they tell? I mean, they've got her on all kinds of drugs. And she's in withdrawal. She's got the DTs. How can they be sure that whatever this is isn't temporary?”

“They're giving her a brain scan.”

“When?”

“Tomorrow.”

“And what if—”

“Ginger, she's dying. And Dr. Foran says it could be soon.”

“Oh, God. How soon?”

Evie stared at her notes, the words swimming on the page. “Weeks. Maybe only days.”

“Days? I don't believe it.”

“Ginger—”

“Oh, God. We should have done something. Dragged her to AA meetings. Gotten her a sponsor.”

“You know it doesn't work like that.”

“Insisted that she see a therapist, then. I don't know. Done
something.
” Ginger paused, then added, “And maybe, just maybe if you hadn't checked out months ago—”

“Stop right there,” Evie said, suddenly furious. “And maybe if her father hadn't been such a shithead. Maybe if her mother hadn't been depressed. Maybe if Daddy hadn't died. And you're right. Maybe if I'd been a better daughter.” She stopped and took a deep breath, counted to five, then added, “Do you really think anything either of us could have done would have made a difference? She'd have had to want to stop drinking.”

Ginger didn't say anything, but Evie could hear her raspy breathing.

“Ginger?”

“You're right. I'm sorry. Of course it's not your fault.”

“It's not yours, either.” Evie stared out the rain-streaked window. Cars were still going up and down the street. The red light on the corner turned green. As if nothing had changed.

“And I'm sorry, too,” Evie said. “Even if I couldn't be there for her, I should have been there for you.”

Ginger sniffed. “Yeah, you should have been.”

“All right already, I get it, Gingey Wingey.”

“Sticks and stones, Fungus Face.”

“Oh, very original.”

“Brat,” Ginger shot right back.

“I'm rubber, you're glue.” Evie tried to laugh, but she just couldn't make it happen.

“So,” Ginger said, taking a long, audible inhale, “moving forward.”

“Moving forward,” Evie repeated. “We need to talk to her. Both of us. Together. And find out what she wants. For now. For later. The doctor said we shouldn't put it off for even another day.”

After a long silence, Ginger said, “I wish Daddy were here.”

“Me, too.”

“I'll be there as soon as I can.”