Too Far Under (28 page)

I got over to Shady Terrace at 10:00 so I’d
have time to visit with Gramma before the meeting. The place was
taking on a deserted air. Empty rooms and empty beds. Reminded me
of one of those aging shopping malls with too many vacant
storefronts and too few customers.

As I walked down the hall to Gramma’s room, I
noticed one of the residents, Flora Gypsum, sitting on her usual
hall couch. Flora typically dressed like an aging glamour girl,
with fancy clothes and caked-on makeup, which she was still able to
apply herself despite her confusion. She also had her hair done
every week by the beautician who visited Shady Terrace. Today Flora
wore a fancy green and yellow print dress and a black hat with an
orange feather. But instead of her usual high-heeled shoes, she
wore fuzzy pink slippers—a very unusual flaw for her.

As I stopped next to her, I noticed that she
didn’t have her newspapers, which she typically carried with her
everywhere. Of course she can’t actually read them anymore, but she
seems to enjoy holding them and looking at them. Probably reading
the paper was once an important part of her daily routine.

“Hi, Flora,” I said, “How are you today?”

“Bad,” she said. She looked troubled. “Some
people here are lost and no one can find them. There are only a few
of us left.”

Where to begin? Who knows what she thought
had happened to the missing residents? It must be frightening for
her. But it wasn’t my place to have a discussion with her about the
closing of Shady Terrace. I had no idea what she’d been told or
what she understood. Anything I said might very well upset her
more.

“My gramma is still here,” I said. “You know
Martha. I’m on my way to see her now. Would you like to come with
me to her room?”

“No,” she said. “I need to wait here in case
my friends come by.”

Ouch. This was sad. But I knew Flora well
enough to know that arguing with her would only agitate her.
“Okay,” I said. “Maybe you’ll see her at lunch.”

I continued on down the hall to Gramma’s
room, where I found her sitting dispiritedly in her armchair
staring into space. I walked slowly over and knelt down next to her
chair. She startles easily, so I always give her time to adjust to
my moving into her space. “Hi, Gramma,” I said, putting my hand
gently on her arm. “How are you feeling?”

She gave me a bewildered look. “Who are you?
Did you come to buy a painting?” she asked.

Oh dear. It was one of those days when she
doesn’t recognize me. Even though I’m used to it, my heart always
drops when it happens.

“Gramma, it’s me, Cleo, your granddaughter.”
I said.

“Have you seen my husband James?” she
asked.

“No,” I said. “He must be away. Would you
like to walk down the hall and see Flora? I just saw her sitting on
the couch.” I don’t try to correct Gramma’s confusion. It’s better
to gloss it over and redirect her attention somewhere else.

“No,” she said.

“How about some music?” I asked, putting on a
CD of one of her favorite piano concertos. She closed her eyes and
seemed to relax into the music. I sat on the edge of her chair with
my arm around her and we listened together for about fifteen
minutes. Then I kissed her goodbye and went off to the conference
room to hear about Betsy’s plan.

Several people were already sitting at the
long table. Besides Betsy from Social Services, I recognized Mary
Ellen, the Director of Nursing, and Joanna, the Activity Director.
A short blonde woman introduced herself as Allie, the daughter of a
resident, and we were shortly joined by a gray-haired woman who I
recognized as the wife of a resident, accompanied by a middle-aged
man she introduced as their son Henry.

After Mary Ellen welcomed us and we’d gone
around the table greeting each other or in some cases introducing
ourselves, she began to tell us about a new and different kind of
nursing home model. “A geriatric physician named William Thomas
came up with a plan—called the Eden Alternative—to
de-institutionalize existing nursing homes by changing their
culture to be more of a community,” she said. “We’ve used some of
his ideas here like having our garden where residents help grow
vegetables we eat and giving residents choices of times for their
meals. I wanted to do more but Shady Terrace is a big place and
change is hard.” She stopped briefly for a drink of water. We all
sat in rapt attention waiting to see what would come next.

She continued. “Now with the closing, Betsy
and Joanna and I got to talking about Dr. Thomas’s newest
development called a Green House. It’s a small homelike group home
with lots of plants and visits from animals and children,” she said
enthusiastically. “We have a dream to start our own group home like
a Green House. We could keep some of our residents together and
offer jobs to some of our staff.”

Wow! This sounded amazing. It also sounded
like a huge undertaking to pull off in the time available.

The gray-haired woman asked one of the first
questions that had come to my mind. “Wouldn’t it take a long time
to build or even modify a place to meet all the Health Department
regulations?”

Betsy jumped in. “We’ve found the perfect
place, actually. It was a small assisted living home that closed
last year and the building is for sale. It has room for nine
residents and it already meets all the regulations.”

“And it has a big yard with a deck and lots
of room for a garden,” Joanna said with a big smile. “Our residents
would love it there.”

I so wanted this to be possible. But my
practical side had doubts. These women were young, probably in
their thirties. How could they afford this? Nursing home staff
aren’t highly paid and the project sounded like the sort of thing
it would be hard to get financing for. I tried to phrase my
question tactfully. “How about the financing to buy the building?”
I asked. “Would that be a problem?”

“It could be,” Mary Ellen replied. “But we
have one investor who is willing to put up about half of what we
need and we’re hoping you and other families will be our partners
in this venture. If we can find nine families who would like to
have their family member move to our group home, and if those
families are willing to invest enough to cover the rest of what we
need for startup costs, we can do it.”

Before I could open my mouth, Allie, who was
there representing her mother, asked the exact question I was about
to ask. “How much of an investment would you need from each
family?” My mother has been able to pay privately here, but she
doesn’t have a lot of extra money.”

Exactly Gramma’s current situation. Her small
monthly trust income combined with her Social Security and Grampa’s
retirement annuity provided enough money each month to cover her
private room at Shady Terrace and her personal and medical
expenses. But her ongoing expenses were high enough that she didn’t
have a large reserve of extra money. The last statement I
remembered seeing showed about $20,000 in her savings account.

“With the cost of the house, plus furnishings
and other setup costs, we figure we’d need $50,000 from each
family,” Mary Ellen said. Yikes! $50,000! Where would Gramma get
that much money? And even if she had it, could she afford to sink
it into this undertaking?

As if she’d read my thoughts, Mary Ellen
continued. “This would be an investment, which means the families
would be partners in the venture. And the families would be
co-owners of the building, which would be security for much of your
investment. The three of us—Betsy, Joanna and myself—don’t have
much money to put in, but we would donate our time in the beginning
to get this started.”

“You’d have to pay other staff, wouldn’t
you?” I asked. “What are you thinking our monthly charges would
be?”

“If we can get $450,000 from the families to
add to the $450,000 we have from our original investor, we’ll have
the $900,000 we need for setup. Then we can provide the room and
board and care for the same monthly charge you’re paying now at
Shady Terrace,” Mary Ellen said. “And we believe you and your
family member will be getting significantly more value for your
money.”

Joanna stood up and handed each of the three
of us potential investors a stack of papers. “We realize this is
complicated and you’ll want a lot more details,” she said. “So
we’ve prepared written plans, financial statements, and contracts
for you to review. We’re inviting all the families of private-pay
residents to come to one of these meetings in the next few days. We
need to act quickly, so we’re asking you all to let us know by the
end of next week if you’re interested. Then we’ll have another
meeting next weekend for all the interested families, and move on
from there.”

Our hour was almost up by then. We asked a
few more questions, then gathered up our papers and went our
separate ways to think over the proposition.

For me, the main thinking I needed to do was
about where to come up with the money. I loved the idea of a small
group home set up to be a community rather than an institution. And
from all I’d seen in recent years, Mary Ellen, Betsy and Joanna
were genuinely motivated by their concern for the best interests of
the residents. Of course I knew this was a risky venture, but after
all my searching I hadn’t found anything else even close to being
this promising. So the risk was probably worth it for Gramma.

As I drove home, I ran through possibilities
for raising the money. One big problem was that I knew virtually
nothing about Gramma’s trust. Grampa hadn’t wanted to leave me with
the job of managing Gramma’s money. To spare me that task—which he
said shouldn’t be my responsibility—he had set up her finances to
be handled by a bank and by her attorney, Vernon Evers. To be
honest, math and money management aren’t my strong suit, so I was
relieved to have that aspect of her care in more capable hands. I
got copies of quarterly statements from the bank—which is how I
knew the amount in her savings account—but all I knew about her
trust account was the monthly income. I had been planning to get
the details from Vernon Evers, but now I had no idea who would be
handling it or whether I could get $30,000 out of it in a lump
sum.

I couldn’t see how I could raise the money
personally. I had almost no savings and I didn’t think any bank
would loan me $30,000. Maybe I could sell Gramma and Grampa’s
house. But that would take months or longer to get a good price.
Plus the house was in Gramma’s name, not mine, so selling it would
probably be complicated. Also, I had promised Grampa that I would
do everything I could to keep the house in the family.

Selling some of Gramma’s best paintings
looked like a better idea. I had several at home and in my office
that had never been on the market before. These were paintings she
had done at the height of her career when she was winning awards
and selling her work to private collectors.

But I had no experience selling Gramma’s
paintings. That had all been handled by Faye or previous gallery
owners. Gramma hasn’t produced any new paintings for the past dozen
years or so due to the progression of her Alzheimer’s, so her
recent sales have all been from older never-sold work and that has
all been through Faye’s gallery. Other galleries around the country
may have some of Gramma’s work for sale but those are previously
owned pieces being sold by the original purchaser. Gramma gets
nothing from those sales, so I hadn’t tried to follow them.

Unfortunately I hadn’t kept up very well with
Faye's sales of Gramma’s paintings. I probably should have, but I
wasn’t in charge of her money and until now she’d easily had enough
to meet her needs. Since Grandpa died, I’d been focused more on
visiting her often and making sure she got good care than on
checking on sales of her artwork. I had trusted Faye to market the
paintings that she had on hand. But she still hadn’t shown me the
figures for recent sales, and she’d admitted that the gallery was
struggling financially. I wondered whether I could trust her to put
out the energy and resources to sell any of my collection of
Gramma’s paintings.

I decided to go to the gallery and insist on
an accounting of recent sales and prices. If I didn’t like what I
heard, I might consider selling the paintings from my collection
through some other means. I liked Faye, especially since she’d been
so supportive of Pablo’s work, but I needed to get this money for
Gramma and I needed it quickly.

I stopped at home for a quick lunch, then
went downtown to Faye’s gallery. I braced myself for an
uncomfortable conversation. I wasn’t looking for friction, but I
was determined to push Faye enough to get specific information
about Gramma’s recent sales.

Faye was alone, working at her desk when I
arrived. I pasted a smile on my face as I walked over and stood in
front of her.

“Hey, Faye,” I said in the most genial voice
I could manage.. “I got some good news about Gramma this
morning.”

She looked up, smiling. “Wonderful,” she
said. “What’s up?”

“Some of the Shady Terrace staff plan to
start a small group home, very homelike, not institutional. I think
it would be perfect for her.”

“That does sound like great news.”

“There’s only one catch. They need an upfront
investment from the families of the people who move there. We’d be
partners in the venture with the building as security, so it looks
reasonable to me. But I don’t know if Gramma has the cash
available. I might have to sell some of her paintings that I have
at home.”

Faye bristled and tapped her pen sharply on
her desk. “That’s not a good idea. I told you it’s not a good
market right now,” she said in an exasperated tone. “If we release
more of her paintings, I’m afraid they won’t hold their value..”
She continued making the annoying clicking sound with her pen.