The Grandmother Plot

by Caroline B. Cooney

  Die? They’d kill me just because I don’t want to fake a bead show?

  Now he really didn’t want to talk to Doc. He didn’t want to play a role in Auburn’s melodrama either. Coming here was yet another check on today’s list of stupid actions.

  Auburn was tapping rhythmically on the table. On her fingernails were twisted-toe decals. Wow. The Leper thought of everything: not just your usual T-shirts and stickers but even fingernail art. Freddy had to salute the guy. Not only was Gary Leperov a drug kingpin, with hired muscle crossing the country to punish wayward bead dudes, but he manufactured sidelines and kept track of them and also made sculptural glass that sold for a fortune.

  Or didn’t sell.

  It was entirely possible that the Lep faked the sales of his own glass in order to get clean money. How much money? Freddy wondered. If he was at three hundred thousand a year, were there other guys doing the same thing? Adding up to what?

  Freddy couldn’t imagine being organized enough to pull that off. On the same day he visited Grandma, Freddy could hardly manage to put gas in the car and also buy a taco.

  “The Leper is not a cakewalk,” said Auburn. “And his buddy, Doc? You’re pissing him off, Freddy. What’s going on?” Auburn opened a small cabinet on the wall, removed a slim gaudy purse, and unzipped it. She took out a small rectangular mirror and a single-edged razor blade.

  It was the end of the day. Okay, she needed to relax, but she wasn’t relaxing with weed. She was about to do a line of coke. To bring out her kit in front of him, Auburn must trust him something serious, but Freddy didn’t trust her at all, and he never hung out with people who did coke.

  “Guess what Danielle and I did the other night.” Auburn peeled away the cardboard cover of the blade. “We met this guy at a party, and he said he’d give us a ride home, and Danielle wanted to ride with him because he was adorable, in a sort of L.L. Bean catalog way. And then what does he do? You will not believe what he does.”

  Somebody out there could shock Auburn? Against his will, Freddy got interested.

  “It’s my story, Auburn,” said Danielle irritably. “I’ll tell. So I’m the front-seat passenger and Auburn’s in back and Br—”

  “No names,” said Auburn sharply.

  Danielle blinked. “Okay, no names,” she agreed, puzzled but shrugging. Freddy had a feeling Danielle could shrug about anything.

  “Anyway, he’s driving. He starts telling us how we have to shape up and get all middle class and finish our bachelors’ degrees, and above all, stop using.” She accented her words heavily, turning the run-on sentence into a mocking chant. “I mean, that’s why I left home. I am so not into nagging. And he invites us to a mind and spirit group. It will be so healthy for us. We will realize the importance of our souls and not throw ourselves away on chemicals. So Auburn and me, we’re looking at each over the seats. What are we doing with some uptight dude who doesn’t like us just the way we are? Next thing he’ll be preaching. And don’t I spot a cop car in the lane behind us. So I grab the steering wheel and jerk it around, and now his car is all over the road, crossing the center lane, almost hitting another car, and he’s yelling ‘Stop it!’ and he’s trying to knock my hand off the wheel, and the cop, the good little boy cop, pulls us over.”

  Auburn and Danielle exchanged looks, like satisfied lionesses over a kill. Freddy could almost see the blood on their chops.

  “Guess what Danielle did next,” whispered Auburn.

  From the look in their eyes, they could have dismembered the guy’s body. Freddy had to get out of here.

  “The cop makes him get out of the car, right?” said Danielle, giggling. “And he gets out? And he has to put his hands on the hood? I mean, it’s a riot. So Auburn has a baggie of coke in her purse, and I put the baggie under the driver’s seat, and when I was talking to the cop, I said, ‘Oh no, look what just slipped out of its hiding place,’ like we didn’t realize what this guy is up to.’”

  Freddy’s lips were dry. His mouth and throat were dry. Even his brain was dry.

  “And Br—well, the dude—is saying over and over, ‘It isn’t mine! I didn’t have that! I don’t know where it came from!’” Danielle imitated the panicked voice.

  “And the cop is like, ‘Yeah, right, I’ve heard that one before.’ And the cop arrests him,” said Auburn. A smile crawled over her face. She licked her smile.

  Freddy thought, She really is a snake.

  “He was so proud of himself, little Mister Virtue,” Danielle said softly. “And now he’s in jail.”

  “Wow,” said Freddy. “What a story. Listen, I have to run. But thanks for the company.”

  Auburn let him out, laughing at him or Br.

  Freddy normally enjoyed the secret, dark feel of an alley, but right now, he wanted light, not shadow. He cut over to the sidewalk, grateful for every pedestrian, his thoughts a shuddery jumble. That poor slob Br was behind bars; in Connecticut, depending on the judge, Br could walk tomorrow or end up with a serious sentence.

  Neither of these two would go to a police department and take back their story. It would incriminate them and probably not set the guy free either. The cops would figure Auburn and Danielle were throwing themselves under the bus for love.

  Why had they told Freddy? Was it a message? Something to do with the Leper?

  Or did Auburn think he would be entertained?

  Freddy walked back to Memory Care, too busy sorting out Auburn and Danielle to remember he ought to be thinking about Doc. By the time he reached his bike, Doc had become a distant cloudy event.

  There were only two main roads going south. Route 9 was a divided highway and bikes were forbidden, plus it was pretty well patrolled and the last thing he wanted was a chat with a cop like the one Br had had. He took 154 instead, the old parallel route. The shoulder was potholed, the sun was setting, and the cars surging past could hardly see him.

  Freddy didn’t even notice. He kept thinking about Br, who had been pushy with his virtues and was now ruined.

  THURSDAY

  Chapter Seven

  Glass poured out of Freddy, as if he himself were molten, but then he got cocky.

  In his left hand, he was holding the hollow body of black-and-white tubing he’d made a few months ago. In his right, he gripped a short 5mm clear glass rod, which he dragged through the molten glass to stripe it. His pressure was too intense. The glass snapped and gouged his wrist. Since he was holding the striping rod like a pencil, his pencil finger was also cut. Immediately, his whole hand was sticky with blood.

  Freddy kept a roll of bandage tape on a nail over the shop table so he could wrap a wound as fast as possible and not stop spinning, because molten glass drooped if he didn’t keep the rotation going. He bandaged himself with practiced motions, keeping the hot glass in the fire and wiping the blood on his T-shirt.

  He had been so sure of his focus, and just to prove you should never be sure of anything, glass had given him yet another lesson. Blood was everywhere and the morning was shot. He needed company. Shawn was his only pot-smoking, pipe-making buddy, the only dude around here he could really chill with and be himself. But Shawn was probably at work.

  Freddy gave up, fixed himself more coffee, and even though he’d just been at Memory Care the day before yesterday, the curvy needle of visitation guilt poked his heart.

  His grandmother was fine without him. She was warm, safe, fed, bathed, escorted to activities, and medicated. He did not need to visit today. He didn’t need to visit tomorrow either.

  But she was so happy to see him. Her face lit up and she held out her hands, and he would take her hands, even though she probably hadn’t washed them after her last potty trip and thought he was Arthur.

  Nonvisitation guilt was probably like malaria. You had a bout of suffering and then you improved and forgot you’d ever had it, and then you had another bout.
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  He decided to drive Grandma’s dark-silver four-door Toyota Avalon, just the right car for an elderly woman off to her canasta game but not the right car for Freddy. On the other hand, it was free, comfortable, got good gas mileage, looked anonymous, and as a bonus, had a sweet name for the finish: Phantom Gray.

  Of course, it would be better if Freddy had kept up the insurance payments, but oh well.

  He got settled in the Avalon, all comfortable and centered, and then forced himself to listen to Gary Leperov’s latest voicemail.

  “Freddy,” said a sharp, irritated voice. “This isn’t middle school. You can’t run down a different hall. I sent Doc to your stupid little state with all its stupid trees and guys who wear collared shirts and you are wasting his time! I’ve paid your fees at BABE. You let Doc know what airport you’re flying out of, and he’ll let you know how much product you’re selling. He’s got your paperwork. Where’s the negative here, Freddy? Don’t screw me up.”

  BABE. The Bay Area Bead Show in November. Freddy had a lot of customers there. They would expect bounty on his table, and he didn’t have it.

  He drove carefully to Middletown, saw nothing of Doc, and parked safely in the employee lot. It started to rain. He and Grandma would have to stay inside. He might even have to partake of an activity.

  He couldn’t make himself go in.

  He lit up and breathed deep.

  Laura arrived at the front desk as Freddy was ambling through the employees’ door. “Tree Lady!” he said, grinning. She felt the rush of relief and happiness that Freddy’s presence brought. She did not want to analyze this. Freddy was forty years younger than she was. More than.

  Laura signed in. Freddy did not.

  Constanza was on the desk. She did not remind Freddy to sign in. “Mrs. Yardley died yesterday,” she announced.

  This was breaking policy. Nobody here mentioned death. Even the hospice people, working at any given time with several residents, wore name tags that read Palliative Medicine Specialist, implying everything including death could be palliated.

  When death did come, MMC moved bodies to funeral homes clandestinely, closing the empty bedroom door so nobody would even see the stripped and naked mattress.

  Yet death was a constant at Memory Care. People lived here because their organs were collapsing. Brains had already partially failed, and one by one, heart, lungs, skin, kidney, and liver would also fail. Freddy’s grandmother and Laura’s aunt had been using every organ for over nine decades, and every organ was signing off.

  Spend enough time in a facility like this, and you knew that longevity was overrated.

  Grandma was sitting in her wheelchair, folded over and down, like a doll losing her stuffing. Freddy kissed his grandmother’s cheek and she didn’t know. Smoothed her hair and she didn’t know. “Grandma?” he said softly. “It’s me, Freddy. I’m sitting with you. I’m holding your hand. You hold mine back, okay?”

  She squeezed his hand so lightly, he could be making it up to suit himself. But then she gave him her old pixie smile, the mischief and love still there, and it was all worth it, and he approved of longevity after all. He gave her the careful hug you had to use with somebody whose bones could break just sitting there. “Love you, Grandma,” he told her.

  She wouldn’t know about Maude Yardley’s death even though her room was next door. She wouldn’t miss Maude, because she couldn’t remember people. Perhaps she had never learned Maude’s name.

  “Uh-oh, Mapes,” he said. “Your aunt Polly is sitting here next to us, but I’m facing her room, and somebody’s in her bed. Hey, Jade!” he yelled.

  Jade stared at him with dislike.

  He who dealt with bead ladies should have known better than to shout. “Lookin’ great, Jade,” he added. “Love the lipstick.” There was nothing else to compliment because Jade wore scrubs with pandas on them, which did nothing for a generous figure, and that was too bad, because she had potential.

  “You in need, Freddy?” she said without moving. “You want I should do a taco run for you?”

  He waved at the occupied bed of Polly Lambert.

  “Oh, that. Probably Irene. She’s always testing beds.” Jade moved slowly into Polly’s room, argued with Irene, and finally coaxed her out of Polly’s bed. Muttering her numbers, Irene shuffled into the common room. Jade snapped the covers back, leaving no clue that a stranger with a diaper and shoes on had just crept under Polly’s covers.

  Freddy had low sheet standards. He could go for a long time without washing his. Still, it was good to be high right now. He could just let this little sheet thing waft away.

  Jade struck a pose Freddy knew to be the prelude to gossip. She was ticked at him, but he and Mapes were the only visitors at the moment, so her choices were limited. “They’re doing an autopsy on her at Yale.”

  “Autopsy on whom?” asked Mrs. Maple.

  “Maude Yardley.”

  “Maude had TIAs for years,” said Mrs. Maple, “so they know how she died. Is the autopsy part of some ongoing research project?”

  Freddy wished he didn’t know that TIA meant transient ischemic attacks, little bitty strokes, not noticeable at the time but adding up to the vascular dementia that Grandma had. Patches of useless brain tissue all over the place. Whereas Polly had Alzheimer’s, which was plaques all over the place. The net outcome was equally lousy.

  Freddy was comforted by the thought of Yale’s involvement. The very word “Yale” projected authority. His sister Jenny had gone to Yale, as she ceaselessly informed everybody. Yale would learn something from the autopsy and add it to the million of other things they had learned. Someday, although not soon enough for Grandma, they would solve this.

  “The night nurse,” said Jade, “she thinks something’s not quite right.”

  Duh, thought Freddy. That’s our theme song.

  “What sort of ‘not quite right’ does Vera have in mind?” asked Mrs. Maple.

  Freddy had met Vera only a few times because he didn’t visit during the night shift, but now and then, she worked days. Vera was a commanding presence. Her breasts were the size of watermelons, and she stacked her braided hair in a towering black sculpture. Her earrings looked heavy enough to use as anchors, and her magenta lipstick embraced big, square white teeth.

  Jade shrugged. “That’s why they’re doing the autopsy.”

  Meds, probably, thought Freddy.

  Some residents were on a stunning amount of medication, which in Freddy’s opinion kept them alive past their sell-by date. You probably couldn’t overdose anybody, because every patient had a big, plastic zip bag, each day’s medications put by the pharmaceutical supplier into tiny pockets, labeled by day and hour. The bags were locked in the medicine cart in a sort of fat file drawer. But even with so many controls in place, maybe the wrong meds could go to the wrong person.

  Freddy had enough to worry about with his own drug errors. I have to call the Lep back, he thought. I have to deal with it.

  But Freddy’s modus operandi had always been postponement.

  “Hey,” said Jade. She was oddly still. Holding her breath. Not blinking.

  Freddy followed her gaze out the big picture windows that faced the front gardens and the parking lots beyond.

  Two police cars idled, their roof lights silently twirling.

  Chapter Eight

  Freddy was not a fan of the police, since he made a market in drug paraphernalia and hung out with stoners, and this was a state that often jailed you.

  Like every state with a lot of gambling—Connecticut had Foxwoods and Mohegan Sun—the authorities hated drugs. They didn’t want crime surfacing where suburbanites were happily throwing away their money at tables and slots. But casinos hated weed more than hard drugs. If you were high on weed, you didn’t need to get high on gambling because you stayed home and mellowed out. Vegas regarded
grass as the enemy, not because it was a drug but because users didn’t frequent casinos as often.

  What was up with cop cars at MMC?

  Local emergency protocol required fire trucks as well as ambulances if, say, a resident took a bad fall, but Freddy had never seen cops.

  Immediately, he felt guilty, figuring they were here for him. He was guilty. Failure to pay income tax, failure to pay insurance premiums, faking sales receipts for the Leper, and probably trickiest of all, failure to notify Social Security that Alice Bell was no longer alive and they should stop sending money every month.

  He told himself to behave normally if the cops came in here. Although he wasn’t the one who’d look weird. A hundred and thirty people were way ahead of him.

  Grandma woke up. “Where is my machine, Freddy?”

  “Machine” was Grandma’s all-purpose word. She could be referring to her hearing aids or the sippy cup in which she took her fortified chocolate drink. But usually she meant walker. “Your walker’s in your room, Grandma,” he said. “Want me to get it for you?”

  “Are we going somewhere?”

  “No,” said Freddy. “It’s raining.”

  “I don’t need it unless we’re going somewhere,” Grandma pointed out, sounding completely lucid.

  “Do you want to go somewhere?”

  She pointed toward the hall and the wide opening through which Kenneth Yardley was approaching. “I want you to make that meany beany go away.”

  Freddy didn’t think she could actually see that far. This was some generalized statement, not an indictment of poor Kenneth.

  Kenneth looked around vaguely, as if he’d never visited before. He stared one by one at each door. No patient’s room was down a hall or out of sight; they encircled the common room. Very slowly, he walked toward his dead wife’s room. “Tottered” was a better word. He was literally unbalanced.