Vultures at Twilight (24 page)

‘I wish I could have been here sooner,' she said, looking out the doorway into the busy corridor.

‘What for?'

‘I just feel bad that you're out here all by yourself.'

‘Yes,' I admitted, ‘it is hard being the last living person in Connecticut.'

‘That's not what I meant.'

‘I know, dear, but I'm not alone.'

‘You don't have family.'

‘I do. I have you and Chris.' But I was thinking about Ada, and wishing she were here to help bolster my case. But I'd told her not to come this morning, knowing that Aaron was with friends and she'd have to call a cab.

‘On the other side of the country.'

‘I'm not complaining.'

‘I didn't say you were. I just think that it might be easier if we all lived closer.'

‘I don't want to move,' I said. ‘Do you?'

At that point the nurse returned with Dr Green. He looked first at me, dressed with purse in lap. Then he looked at Barbara.

‘The nurse tells me your mother wants to sign out.'

‘Yes, she's pretty insistent.'

‘Let me take a look,' he said, flipping through my clipboard. ‘Mrs Campbell, would you mind laying back on the bed?'

I obliged, not enjoying the odds of three of them against one of me. ‘Really, I feel fine.'

With a finger to his lips he motioned for me to be quiet while he insinuated the bell of his stethoscope beneath my dress.

It was such an intimate gesture. How many times I had seen Bradley do the same. Of course, he always warmed the metal with his hands first.

Dr Green's fingers sought out the pulse in my wrist. I waited, listening to the silence and catching glimpses of my daughter. Despite the fact she was annoying me no end, I had a moment's pride noting how well she looked with her quietly chic navy suit and perfectly styled hair.

But how dare she blow in from out of town, albeit with the best of intentions, and attempt to ride roughshod over my life? I can't imagine what her response would be if I told her about the journals, the murders, or my mystery caller. Right then, I determined to tell her nothing.

The cardiologist withdrew from his perch beneath my bra and, with a clicking sound between his lips, he removed the stethoscope.

He looked at me and then turned to Barbara. ‘Will anyone be at home with her?' he asked.

‘Both me and my sister.'

‘Hmmm,' he responded, weighing the options. He looked at me again, I thought he might even speak to me, but he turned back to Barbara. ‘I'm going to want a home nurse to visit. I'll have the social worker make the referral.'

‘Excuse me,' I said, having had enough of being referred to in the third-person invisible. ‘I don't want some stranger in my home.'

The doctor looked at me and in the tone one takes with a young – and not terribly swift – child said, ‘Mrs Campbell, you just had a heart attack. You're going to need to have someone check in on you.'

‘For what? I can't see what some stranger coming into my home is going to do for me. If you want me to see my internist, or go for rehab, I'd be happy to do that.'

‘Mother,' Barbara broke in, ‘would you please listen to the doctor?'

‘Fine, then at least have the courtesy to speak directly to me. I'm not a child.'

‘I just find,' he said, sounding annoyed, ‘that it is sometimes easier to communicate instructions to family members. You've been through a lot.'

‘Yes, I have, and fortunately it didn't rob me of my ability to think. I'd like to leave . . .' I tried to regain my composure, while rewrapping the top of my dress. ‘OK,' I said, ‘I'll go along with the nurse for one visit. After that I'm not making any promises.'

‘It's your life,' he said.

‘Exactly.'

‘You'll need to come in for some tests over the next few weeks.' He was about to turn back to Barbara and then stopped himself. ‘I'll have my office give you a call.'

‘That would be fine,' I said, already thinking that the first thing I would do when I got home was give my internist a call and have him refer me to another cardiologist.

‘That's it then,' he said, rising from the bed.

‘You're going to let her go?' Barbara asked, clearly alarmed.

‘It's not like I'm a serial killer,' I reminded her, ‘just your mother.'

‘Are you sure she's ready?' she persisted, tagging after the doctor as he headed toward the door.

‘Like I said earlier, I thought another day for observation was warranted, but clearly she doesn't wish to stay and as far as any imminent danger, she should be past that. It'll be important for her to rest for the next few days, take the medicine and follow up in the office next week. Then we'll get her started in rehab.' He flashed her, what I'm sure he considered, a reassuring smile. ‘She should be fine. Just keep an eye on her.'

Wonderful, now she's been given doctor's orders to boss me around.
This is not what I needed. What I needed was time to think. There was too much already and the cavalry-like arrival of my children wasn't helping. I thought back to my dream as snippets of the dark wood and the river of blood flashed to mind. A few years back, Ada and I had gone to a series of lectures on dream interpretation. For a while, both she and I had been caught up in a daily ritual of sharing our dreams and then trying to decipher them. I had no doubt that my subconscious wanted to tell me something.
But what?

Barbara followed the doctor into the corridor. I overheard whispered traces of their conversation. It did little to calm me. The theme appeared to be:
what should I do with mother?

I thought about my own mother and how Bradley and I had taken care of her in those last hard years, when everything seemed to give out: her eyes, her ears, and finally her memory. We never once thought about a nursing home and up until those last few months, I looked after her in her own home. When things had deteriorated to where she could no longer remember to turn off the stove, we had it disconnected and she joined us for all our meals, or else I'd go over and fix her breakfast. When she couldn't make the stairs, we moved her bedroom into the back parlor and put a safety gate across the stairwell. We put support bars in the bathroom and installed a separate shower where I'd bathe her. I remembered the intimacy of that, of helping my mother dress in the morning, of carefully powdering her after her bath so that she wouldn't develop rashes or pressure sores.

The day she no longer recognized Bradley was the day we moved her into our house. In retrospect, I'm not certain it was the right thing to do. A month after she had moved into our spare bedroom, which we had arranged to mimic her own, she developed pneumonia, and within a week had died.

The end had been awful. Every day I had to hover over her, lest she bolt out the door and head back to her house. At least in Grenville people knew who she was and on those couple occasions where I didn't catch her fast enough, Hank Morgan or one of the neighbors would spot her and bring her home.

I then thought of Ada and what she was facing with Rose. Of course, someone has to look after Mom, and for her that meant either returning to New York or figuring some way to get Rose into Nillewaug or something similar. If I were truly her friend, I would have seen this.

Barbara returned without the doctor. ‘Here –' she reached for my blue plastic
Patient's Belongings
bag – ‘let me help you.'

In the doorway an orderly appeared with a wheelchair. It was an archaic ritual, which Bradley never explained to my satisfaction, but I allowed myself to be helped into the chair for my ride to the front door. The whole thing begged the question:
if you still need a wheelchair maybe you shouldn't be leaving?
Then again I was thrilled to be on my way and wasn't going to make waves.

As I was rolled out, I spotted Doctor Green, surrounded by a bevy of young doctors and medical students. He looked briefly in my direction, shook his head, and then returned to his disciples. My cheeks burned as I imagined his comments.

Perhaps he was right and I should have stayed longer. Still, I felt relief that I would be out in the light of day heading toward my own home and my own bed.

Unfortunately, as we neared the lobby I saw an increasing number of dripping umbrellas.

‘Well, at least here you don't get mudslides,' said Barbara as she fished a portable umbrella from her briefcase-sized pocketbook.

‘We do need the rain,' the orderly commented as he wheeled me toward the glass-domed portico. ‘If you want, I can have the valet get your car.'

‘Will that take long?' I asked, just wanting to be away from there. I had this uneasy sense, that one wrong look and they'd whisk me back to my monitored bed.

‘Couple minutes.'

‘It's OK,' Barbara said, ‘a little rain never hurt anyone.' And with that, she bolted into the driving torrent.

‘What time is it?' I asked the orderly.

‘Getting on eleven,' he replied. ‘If you make it out the door before eleven, they don't charge you for the day.'

‘Check-out time?' I offered.

He chuckled. ‘Yeah, but no mint on your pillow.'

We lapsed into silence.

My thoughts drifted, lulled by the rhythm of the rain. Water, water everywhere. Throughout my dream there had been water that turned to blood. Like Wendy, who drowned. Perhaps that's what the dream was about. My surfacing in the golf pond, the juxtaposition of the familiar and the hidden. That was it. Grenville . . . How many times had I said that I knew my town like the back of my hand? It wasn't true, at least not now, and if Wendy's horrible accusation wasn't a lie or a delusion, perhaps I didn't even know my husband . . . or myself.

The beeping of a horn interrupted my thoughts. A shiny white rental sedan pulled into the carport. Inside, Barbara motioned for me to get in.

‘Looks like you're going to make it,' the orderly said.

I didn't know if he was referring to the eleven o'clock checkout time or my fear that I wouldn't be allowed to leave.

He wheeled me out under the sheltered parkway and opened the door.

‘Wait a minute,' he said, adjusting the brakes on the wheelchair. ‘OK, you're all set.'

With shaky hands I gripped the sides of the chair and felt the pavement beneath my slipper-clad feet. My knees wobbled and I knew that three days lying in bed had destroyed my muscle tone. As soon as I can – I told myself – it's back to yoga class.

‘You OK?' Barbara asked as I gripped the doorframe.

‘I'm fine,' I said, wishing I felt steadier. I settled into the car and caught the warm musty smell of wet clothes as they mixed with the car's heating system. It was a comfortable cocoon-like feel, the hum of the motor and the patter of the rain. I looked across at Barbara, her profile more relaxed now that we were away from the harsh light of the hospital. ‘It's good to see you,' I offered.

She smiled. ‘You too, but I still think you should have followed doctor's orders.'

‘Just ornery, and judging by what went on in there, I seem to have passed that on.'

On impulse she reached across and gave me an awkward hug and kiss. I could see that she had been crying; a tear clung to her cheek like a raindrop on the windshield.

‘I was really scared,' she admitted, settling back into the driver's seat and adjusting the safety belt. ‘When Mrs Strauss called and said you'd had a heart attack, I kept thinking about Daddy. It's like he was fine one day and then he was gone.'

‘I'm going to be OK,' I reassured her. ‘Trust me, I know lots of people who've had more serious heart attacks and they go on for years and years.'

‘Thanks,' she said. ‘I'm just not ready to lose you.' She was crying, and trying not to show it. She looked straight ahead, and pulled out into the driving rain.

‘I'm not going to die Barbara, not yet. I really do feel fine. I've just had a lot on my mind and I think things caught up with me.'

‘Like what?' she asked. ‘What's going on, Mom?'

‘Different things, nothing to be worried about.' As I said that, I thought back to the phone call. A pit in my stomach. It had to have been a wrong number.

‘Could you be more vague?' she responded.

‘Let me think . . . How are the kids?'

‘Nice transition,' she commented wryly. ‘They're fine.'

‘Now who's being vague?'

‘OK, let me see. Josh wants to marry his second grade teacher, a lovely woman with a nose piercing and, I suspect, a multitude of tattoos she keeps covered around the kids.'

‘How exciting.'

‘Exactly, and Heather lives for soccer, and absolutely refuses to play in the all-girls league.'

‘Good for her.'

‘I guess it's raised some eyebrows, and as she gets older it could be a problem. At this point, it's kind of wait and see. But she is good, and I think she takes a thrill in giving as good as she gets with the boys.'

‘Fights?' I asked, thinking of my nine-year-old granddaughter, whose Christmas list invariably involves a trip to the sporting goods store.

‘Oh, yeah. Got a mean hook on her. And with all this Ralph is making noises about having a third. Frankly, with work and all, I can't see it. Plus, I'm thirty-six, I'd be close to your age by the time that one got through college. I think two is enough. So, enough of me, and your transparent attempt to change the topic. Your friend Ada told me that things have been pretty exciting in the old town.'

‘Really?' I dreaded what might come next. ‘What did she tell you?'

‘That there'd been a string of murders. I mean, really, Grenville?'

‘It's true.'

‘Why is it happening?'

‘Lots of hypotheses, but no one really knows. They've all been antique dealers.'