. . .
Constance noticed Meredith’s shoes first. They were new. Loafers, probably hand-stitched. And she’d changed her perfume. Today it was floral, very Lily of the Valley. Last time it had been spicy, earthy, not like Meredith at all. Constance allowed her gaze to travel upward. The trousers of Meredith’s linen suit were crisp, unwrinkled—an enviable state, she thought, since linen was so hard to wear. Her necklace was long, genuine pearls, no doubt. And what’s this? Blond highlights? No more iron gray. This was a woman with big plans, clearly. She’d practically given herself a makeover.
Constance felt a little guilty at that. Meredith’s self-esteem had never been good.
“You look well,” Meredith said. She sat in the room’s only chair, a rocker with a bright yellow cushion tied to the seat. Her hands, with painted nails, lay lightly on the arms.
“You, too.”
“Thanks.”
Constance let the silence stretch. It was up to Meredith to take the lead.
“You know why I’m here,” Meredith said.
“To see if I need a padded cell.”
Meredith stared at her hard.
“There’s something different about you,” she said.
“Yes. I’m not all doped up on those sleeping pills.”
“You’re not taking them?”
“That’s what I just said.”
“You can’t just stop something that’s prescribed.”
Constance looked her in the eye.
“I’m going to check with Dr. Morris, if that’s all right with you,” Meredith said.
“Be my guest.”
Constance wheeled herself to the small table by the bed, where the tapestry lay. She put it in her lap and made her way back across the room. The effort tired her. Her breathing slowed, and she unrolled the tapestry to see where she had left off.
She patted her chest to feel for the reading glasses that hung from her neck on a chain decorated with plastic pearls. The chain had been a gift from Meredith on her last visit. Constance put on her glasses, flexed her stiff fingers, and sewed. Her goal was to finish the tapestry before she left this world. She wouldn’t make it. There was an entire section on the right-hand side still empty. She’d have to give it to someone else to work on. Not Meredith, though. Meredith wouldn’t know what to do with it.
“So, you’ve taken it up again,” Meredith said.
“Obviously.”
“You’re in a mood.”
“Liked me better when my head was full of cotton?”
“Let’s change the subject.”
“Very well. Why don’t you tell me about your trip?”
The whole thing had been a disaster, Meredith said. First, the limo driver had been late picking her up, and she’d had to really hustle through the terminal. It didn’t help that the stupid TSA people wanted her to have a full-body scan and then a pat-down, too. Something must have looked odd in the X-ray.
“Did you ask what it was?” Constance asked.
“Of course not. That would only have taken more time.”
Then the man next to her wouldn’t stop talking. He was also flying out to visit family, whom he hadn’t seen for a long time. The thought of it both upset and thrilled him.
“Classic case of ambivalence, I told him,” Meredith said.
“Uh-huh.”
Constance went on sewing. Meredith said nothing further. She was no doubt thinking about the meeting with the social worker. Constance could tell her not to worry. But, why should she? Meredith had made that bed, and she was going to have to lie in it.
“Can I get you anything?” Eunice asked. Constance hadn’t heard her come in.
“We’re fine, dear,” Constance said.
“I wouldn’t mind a cup of coffee, if it’s not too much trouble,” Meredith said.
“Sure.” Eunice left.
“They’re not supposed to wait on you. This isn’t a hotel,” Constance said.
“She offered, didn’t she?”
“She was just being polite.”
Constance returned to the tapestry. Her thread was running short. She needed to pick through the sewing basket and find the red she was using for the flowers the widow bent to lay on her husband’s grave. The basket was on top of her dresser. She didn’t ask Meredith to get it. She sat, with idle hands, until Eunice returned with Meredith’s coffee, and then asked her. Eunice brought a small side table and set it next to Constance’s chair. She put the basket on the table within easy reach. Eunice noted that Constance had taken up her embroidery again after a long time of just looking at the tapestry or holding it in her lap. In spite of not being interested much in food these days, she had a greater energy to her that didn’t seem just the result of having a clear head.
“How long?” Constance asked Eunice.
“I’m sorry?”
“Until we get this stupidity underway.”
“Oh, right. Well, the social worker’s probably already down in the conference room. But if you’d rather she come to you, that’s fine, too.”
“Ask her to come here,” Meredith said. She had put the cup of coffee on the floor by her chair.
“No, don’t be ridiculous. I’m perfectly capable of going there. If you don’t mind helping me,” Constance said. The remark was to Eunice, not Meredith, who fell in line behind as Eunice pushed her down the hall. Constance had put her sewing basket on her lap along with the tapestry.
The conference room had a long table with ten or twelve chairs. Constance never understood why the geniuses at Lindell thought so many people would ever gather around it. A display of power was at odds with the soothing mood they tried to create at every turn. For a while, in the beginning, she had been cheerfully enveloped by it.
When she first arrived, Constance had had her own cottage and lived more or less independently. She cooked for herself. She was surrounded by her own things. One day she slipped in the shower and had to use the pull cord in the bathroom to summon help. Nothing had been broken, but at the time she was eighty-seven, and it was decided, with minimal input from her, that she should move into one of the assisted living wings in the main complex.
She resisted. Meredith, as her next of kin, was consulted. At the time, Meredith was still a few years from retirement and working hard in L.A. She told Lindell to do what it thought best. The assisted living wing, despite the cheerful decoration and bland furnishing, forced a firm level of anonymity, a loss of self, as if one were being absorbed by the very walls and olive carpeting that in some rooms had a faint smell of urine. Personal belongings weren’t exactly discouraged, they just proved inconvenient. The maintenance staff was stretched thin; pictures couldn’t, therefore, be hung right away and were left leaning against the wall week after week, month after month, until some cheerful aide suggested that it might be better just to stow them away for now. Constance could have hired a handyman but found she had no interest. She had her car and could use it when she wished, but that didn’t entice her either. Age had gotten the better of her; she was ready to sit and struggle with the crossword, watch television, wander the halls, say hello to her neighbors who were as adrift as she, find a level of peace in all of that, until one day, and much to her surprise, her spirit rebelled.
She packed a bag with clean underwear, pantyhose, her favorite red sweater, a shower cap, toothbrush, reading glasses, three hundred dollars from a large envelope she kept on the top shelf of the closet and which, for some reason, she trusted the staff not to discover and pilfer, and left. She was supposed to check herself out. The rules requested that she let the receptionist at Lindell know where she wa
s going and how long she was likely to be away. She went out a side door, nowhere near the front desk, which meant a long walk around the back of the building to the carport where her late model Mercedes was parked.
It was October. The trees were aflame with brilliant color. Proof of life about to pass, that was already passing, added to her restlessness. She’d had no idea where she intended to go, but once on the highway, she kept to the road on the east side of the lake. Mile after mile, hillside after hillside, she put Lindell behind her. After a while it occurred to her that she had failed to make a plan. All her life she had made plans. She couldn’t recall a single instance of acting wholly on impulse. Except in the matter of Meredith. She hadn’t considered the problems that bringing her home would entail. She’d listened to her heart, and while she never really regretted it, she could cite a great many times when further deliberation would have helped.
Such as when her next-door neighbor stopped her as she wheeled the baby proudly down the street.
“And whom do we have here?” she’d asked. She had a purse with a scarf tied around one of the straps. She wore a straw hat. She had lipstick on her teeth.
“This is my little Meredith,” Constance said. The words sounded so strange! She’d never spoken them before.
“Why, where’s her mother? Are you babysitting?”
“I’m afraid you don’t understand. I just brought Meredith home.” That quick glance to her ringless left hand. The sly smirk. Constance bore that silent, smiling condemnation beautifully.
It happened again, over and over, as Meredith grew up. Constance shed the stigma; Meredith couldn’t. She suffered. Constance told her to rise above it, be her own person, not one defined by anyone else. Money helped. Lois bought them a pleasant ranch-style home in Beverly Hills. The other girls at Meredith’s private school were aware that she had no father and were too well bred to ever mention it. If she’d ever gotten close to any one of them, made a best friend, the subject might have been broached. Sometimes she pretended that her father had been killed in the war or a traffic accident or, once, by carjackers who stopped him late one dark night. No one believed her. Constance was candid about never having been married. It was just one of those things! The jaunty toss of her head didn’t quite work, and even she felt like a failure then.
The truth, when it came, was hard. A crushing scene, played over and over. So, Constance was a liar. Fine. It became its own rhythm. In with the truth, out with the lie. In, out. Mechanical, like breathing in an iron lung.
Constance knew she’d done wrong. But she’d had her reasons. Women were always so badly treated, so harshly judged, so she lived the lie and defied it every day.
And the day she took off in her car, what was she defying then? That she was no longer young? That was as good a fight as any. Better, really, so she kept driving. But then she needed to stop for gas in a little town she didn’t recognize, not that she would have, necessarily. She wasn’t usually one for exploring out-of-the-way places. The trouble was that she was quickly overwhelmed and disoriented. Later, she had to admit that she really didn’t know where she was, though the explanation she made to the folks at Lindell was that she’d gotten tired.
She told the man to put gas in her car, and then she sat down on a wooden bench. The station was attached to some sort of country store with weathered wooden boards and a pair of double hung windows in front. The bench was placed between the windows, a few feet from the entrance. A number of people passed by on their way in and out. Finally, the station attendant approached her and told her how much she owed for the gas. Constance realized that she’d left her purse in the car, and told the attendant so, but didn’t rise to get it. She went on sitting. He offered to bring her the purse, probably thinking how silly he’d look carrying it. Constance didn’t reply. She was looking at her hands, which trembled. After the police arrived and took it upon themselves to look through the bag for someone to contact, Lindell was called and a social worker dispatched. It took over an hour for her to arrive, driven by another staff member so the social worker could take Constance’s car back to town. At first, Constance was asked to ride with the other staff member, a woman she didn’t recognize, who turned out to be one of the housekeepers, but Constance said she wanted to stay in her own car. In the interim, she remembered how she’d gotten there, but not having known for that slippery interval of time was horrible. She submitted to her fate, which was a series of scans to see if she’d suffered a stroke. Nothing could be found. She was allowed to remain in assisted living, but if she wanted to go out again, it was urged that she take someone with her. She never wanted to leave after that. She rode the bus provided by Lindell into town if she needed an outing.
It was a sudden infection in her back—a disk—that required IV antibiotics for four months that made relocating to the nursing wing necessary. There, she was truly trapped, not only by her lack of will, but by her stupid body. She grew combative, hence the dispensing of daily sleeping pills. Rather than making nighttime an oblivion, with a mellow carry-over effect through the daylight hours, they made her jagged within, woeful, bent once more on escape, though to what, where, or whom she had absolutely no idea.
The social worker who joined them in the conference room was the same woman who’d driven Constance’s Mercedes back to Lindell that gorgeous fall afternoon five years before: Angie Dugan. She’d been firm and cheerful, yet didn’t treat Constance like a child, the way so many at Lindell did. She’d tried to draw Constance out in conversation, probably as a way to assess her mental state, but when Constance didn’t care to talk, she let it go. She’d grown plumper. Her manner had matured. She smiled pleasantly at Constance, though not at Meredith.
They sat at the end of the table nearest the door. A chair was removed so that Constance could be wheeled into the space it had occupied. Meredith sat opposite Constance. Angie Dugan was in between. Eunice also took a seat, though she hadn’t been invited to.
“Ms. Maynard, before we get started, I wanted to bring up the matter of your prescription. It says here that you’ve stopped taking your Ambien. Is that right?” Angie asked.
“Yes. They made me groggy and stupid.”
Constance spoke firmly, and with flair.
“And how long ago did you stop taking the medication?” Angie asked.
“Just about a week.”
“A week ago tomorrow,” Eunice said.
“I see.” Angie looked at the forms in front of her for a moment. “Dr. Morris has made a notation here that suspending the medication is acceptable as long as you don’t have difficulty getting enough rest at night.”
“If I’m not sleepy right away, I watch television. Quietly, I might add. So far, no one has complained,” Constance said.
“They’re all pretty hard of hearing in that wing,” Eunice said.
“Exactly.”
“Are you sure he said it’s all right?” Meredith asked.
Angie Dugan regarded Meredith at some length. “I’m positive. Of course, you’re free to ask him yourself, if you’re concerned,” she said.
Meredith removed a tissue from her handbag and wiped her nose. She suffered from seasonal allergies rather badly, Constance now recalled.
“Well, now, Ms. Maynard, do you know why we’re here today?” Angie asked.
“Meredith would like to be given control of my bank accounts.”
“That’s not it at all! I just think I could be useful to you,” Meredith said.
“How are banking matters currently handled?” Angie asked.
“Mr. West comes by once a month with my checkbook. He fills out however many checks I need to write, then I sign them. Though it was someone else last time. I think Mr. West had gone on vacation,” Constance said.
“He does, I suppose.”
“You don’t see them?”
“He told me he’d look them over for me. There are very few transactions.”
“And do you have holdings separate from your bank accounts?”
“Of course.”
“Who manages those?”
Constance gave the name of her investment company. She heard from it quarterly. She wasn’t sure where the statements were. She’d been keeping them in a file. Now that she was more alert, it shouldn’t be too hard to find them, if Ms. Dugan needed them for any specific reason.
“I don’t need to see them, no. As long as you’re satisfied that everything’s being handled properly.”
“So far, so good.”
Angie turned to Meredith. “Can you elaborate on your cause for concern about your mother’s business affairs?”
“I’m not concerned. I’m just trying to help. If she prefers I don’t, that’s fine.”
“Normally when a family member calls for an evaluation of mental faculty, there’s a specific reason. Was there some recent incident, some behavior that worried you?”
Constance could see Meredith remembering an afternoon several months before. She was surprised that she recalled so much of it herself. Meredith had come to tell her that she was retiring at last, and planned to move to Dunston and live in Lois’s old house. Constance couldn’t believe she’d be happy there after living all her life in a city the size of Los Angeles. Meredith was adamant. She needed a change of scene. Her tone alarmed Constance. She was running away from something. It couldn’t be a man; it never had been. A woman was just as unlikely. Had she done something illegal? Embezzled someone’s life savings? Constance asked her point blank.
“Nice to know you still think so highly of me,” Meredith had said. Spring sunlight had poured in the window of Constance’s room. It wasn’t flattering to Meredith in the least. She looked old and worn out. Constance pretended to be confused about the house, saying someone was living in it and couldn’t be put out. At the time, the house was vacant, which she knew full well. So did Meredith. The pretense was possible because she hadn’t taken the Ambien the night before. Some crisis had kept the nurse from completing her rounds before Constance shut off her light for the evening. If she believed in divine intervention, she’d have thanked the higher powers. As it was, she put it down to a random moment of serendipity on the part of the universe.
Women Within Page 4