“Yes, I know about the red button.”
“Okay, then. That’s what you do in extremis. You push that red button.” She looks pretty pleased with herself for that Latin phrase, in extremis. “Now when you get finished, you check everything off on this clip sheet an’ take it down to the desk. Gottit?”
I tell her, yes, I’ve got it. I say, “Thank you, Belle,” and she says, “No charge, babe.”
I’ve taken the cart handle and am trundling down the hall when she calls after me, “Hey, come see me when you feel like talking.”
Which I take it is her way of saying she’s keeping her lines open. She thinks I’m an Observer. She just hopes that I’m a friendly Observer, or maybe a stupid one.
The whole thing adds to the general tenseness here. Any situation that needs an observer is not a great situation.
Chapter 5
Finally, I telephone Susie at the grocery store to tell her I’ve taken a job here. “They call it joining the Manor family,” I say. She’s at first amazed and then supportive. “Working in that place,” she says, “what a blast, where do you get these ideas? Listen, it might be okay.”
She agrees to close up my apartment and adopt my two geranium plants. That apartment is just a one-room deal with a couch and microwave.
“So how is it? Working there?” she asks, and I tell her, “Okay. Not bad, actually.”
“It’s okay,” I repeat, “the old ladies are nice to me.”
“Tell me, tell me,” she infuses enthusiasm into the telephone.
I try to remember if I’ve ever had one of those “Carla, now seriously, you can do better; you’re not living up to your full potential” lectures from her in all our life together, and I decide I haven’t. She’s always total support and interest and enthusiasm. She sends these over the airwaves now. “What do you do? What happens, like, first off in the morning?”
I describe wheeling the cart down the hall, half-admiring and half-hating the misty, moist pictures—“Listen, Sue, they put their gold frames inside of gold frames”—and knocking on each old lady’s door and saying, “Here’s your morning stuff, one calcium, one Tylenol, and we got a prescription for Cipro today, and how are you feeling?”
I don’t say anything about Belle thinking I’m an “observer,” whatever that is.
“And the ladies—or, there are two old guys, too—always announce how they’re feeling, in a lot of detail, and then they have to talk about the accidents. There was one where somebody fell out of a window, and one where the beauty parlor burned down, and then something else about a gas heater—really a lot of weird things, Sue, and now this latest one, with Mrs. Dexter and the oyster.”
Susie is all ears about the accidents, which I describe pretty thoroughly, including the glass in the oyster. I don’t tell her about Daddy’s woman in the net. I pretend to myself I omit this because Sue is so fond of my father, and why worry her unduly? But maybe I just don’t want to think about it.
It’s like her to want to know which one I like best instead of who makes the most trouble. I tell her old is like Daddy, and my favorites are the ones that love Daddy: that’s Mrs. Cohen and Mrs. La Salle and Mrs. Dexter. They call themselves the trio because they’re his fan club; Mrs. Dexter is bent and smart and cross at me right now, and Mrs. Cohen is small and chirpy. And Mrs. La Salle looks like the news-reels of royalty, maybe Monacan royalty; there’s a duchess or princess or something who looks just like Mrs. La Salle, with a straight back and modernist jewelry and a bright blue superior gaze.
“And, Sue, there are the two old men; they hide behind their doors and say, ‘Who is it? Who is it?’; they’re the only ones that give me grief . . .”
She cuts in here with, “Listen, Carly, when you see my boy, be nice to him, will you?” and I decide it’s time to end the conversation, because when she talks about me and Robbie, it is the only time Sue almost criticizes me. “I love you, Sue; lots of kisses.” She always tells me to be good to Robbie, when the actual truth was that nobody was good to anybody between me and Rob; we were too much alike. He’s a can-do type from having taken care of Susie, who is loving but scattered, and I’m the same way from tending to Daddy, so that between Rob and me, we could never figure out who should do what to whom.
But it still hurts—the fact that he and I aren’t together anymore. When you’ve spent your whole life with someone—living next door to them, and then sharing parents. Susie was for a long time the only mother I had. And my father, who mostly couldn’t remember that he was a father, would sometimes pull himself together and decide he should take me with him to Egypt. And then he would take Rob, too, who didn’t have a father. Daddy really liked Rob, and Rob truly admired my dad. And Rob got into Egyptian archaeology. He and I wanted to go back to Egypt and do good for the populace; Rob would be a doctor, and I would be a social worker or maybe Peace Corps. We were very heavy about those plans. I like remembering them.
I finish off my morning duties by writing a postcard to Aunt Crystal. I’m careful not to be too specific about Daddy’s condition because I don’t want her up here on the next plane; she’ll be irritated enough learning that I’ve taken a job at the Manor. I can hear her voice now: “Carla, that is ridiculous, when I was your age . . .” When Aunt Crystal was my age she was halfway through her graduate librarian’s degree, but I guess even she would admit that’s not the right career for me.
Aunt Crystal lives in Venice, California. That seems a peculiar place for Aunt Crystal to live, but that’s where the old family cottage is, the one she and Daddy knew as kids. Back in Daddy’s and Crystal’s childhood, Venice was a sleepy resort town, and my grandparents had their summer cottage there and their “big house” in Berkeley. Crystal and Daddy were co-owners of both houses until she sold the Berkeley place to get Daddy into the Manor.
I emerge from my room with the postcard in my hand; I’m on my way to the brass-enclosed mailbox in the main sitting room when I run head-on into Mona from the hospital. She’s draped against the wall outside my door, and I get the impression she’s been waiting there for a while. Lurking would be the word I’d use, I guess. She looks at me with big, mascara-ringed, watery blue eyes. Her face is thin, and her hair scraggly bleached-blonde. She looks, in spite of being quite young, like a seasoned barfly. Like the woman in the movie who sits down at the end of the bar and hopefully greets every guy that comes in.
“Hi,” she says to me now, not sounding very hopeful.
I say, “Hello.” I add, “It’s Mona, right?” to let her know I hardly remember her, which isn’t really true. I noticed her especially in the hospital because she was so effusively jittery.
“Can I come in?”
If Mona comes in, we’ll have to sit side by side on the bed, since there isn’t any chair. I suggest the downstairs living room, and she says, “No. Ohmigaw, no,” as if doing that would be life-threatening, so I give in and throw wide the door of my broom closet, motioning at the bed. I sit on the floor, cross-legged.
There’s a silence while she pulls at her skirt, a flowered something, quite short. Then finally she bursts out, “Oh, gaw, I’ve done so many things wrong.”
I resist saying, “We all have.” I wait. “I mean,” she goes on, “I wanted to talk to you because you’re younger, you know? I mean, nobody around here is younger.”
Again, I don’t answer. What am I supposed to say—“Mona, you sure got that right”?
“And then, you look like you know so much. And you understood about what to do when Mrs. Dexter had that thing in the dining room. That was so great! How’d you learn to do that stuff?”
There are a lot of women that got told when they were little that they are absolutely adorable when they’re enthusiastic. “Oh, she’s Daddy’s little darling. I just love little Tootsie when she gets all thrilled.” I’m willing to bet Mona heard that from some Daddy-type back in prehistory.
“And,” she’s continuing, not waiting to see if I’ll answer, “you’re so sma
rt. I could tell from the way you were talking to Mrs. Dexter how smart you were.”
“Mona,” I intrude, “what exactly are we talking about?”
This pulls her up short. “Talking? About? Ohmigaw, well, I guess you know. I mean, I made so many mistakes. Around here. Got in trouble all down the line. Did it all wrong. Everybody hates me.”
I stare up at her. She might have been a pretty little girl once, when that relative was telling her how darling she was. “I haven’t the foggiest notion what you’re saying.”
“You haven’t?”
It dawns on me that Mona, too, thinks I’m the Observer. Somebody from the outside world sent to take notes. To figure it all out. Learn about secrets, love affairs, stealing from the clients, pilfering from the Manor, whatever they’ve been up to. And about the accidents. And any other dirt.
“The dumbest things I ever did,” Mona is saying, “the real bottom-line dumbest—but you know about that, I guess, don’t you? And now I can’t do anything about it. It’s just there and—oh, gaw, I get so worried. Tell them, will you, I wasn’t thinking, and I didn’t at all mean it. And I was just trying to help. People get in a lot of trouble, don’t you think, over trying to help? I figure helping is one of the things you can do. But this time, ohmigaw, was it dumb.”
I probably look pretty blank about this, so she stumbles on. “But that’s not the only dumb thing. I did another dumb thing, and I don’t guess you know about that. I mean, it’s a secret, but I thought you might have found out.”
I stare at her. This situation is weird.
Mona certainly has me cast in this observer role.
Is it better to convince her that, no, I don’t know a damn thing? Dr. Kittredge knows more than me. Mrs. Sisal knows more. Belle, too. I don’t know enough to know what it is I don’t know. If you follow me. Or is it better to pretend and get some power out of that?
“Like with this other dumb thing,” Mona is stumbling on, “it was really dumb, jeez I can’t believe that was me; I wasn’t exactly thinking straight, know what I mean? You do know what I mean, don’t you?”
I avoid this slippery slope.
Something tells me that knowledge is dangerous around here.
“Listen, Mona, I don’t understand you. I don’t get it. I don’t even know what you’re talking about.”
It’s obvious she doesn’t believe me. She stares in disappointment. She says, “Boy, I thought you’d be more upfront than this.” She broods for a while. “Listen,” she says finally, “when you hear . . . ’cause I know you’re gonna hear . . . bound to . . . well . . . tell them I didn’t mean it. You know how that is. Didn’t mean it at all.”
“Mona,” I say; I’m going to grab her with a question while she’s here and obviously upset—strike while the iron is hot, so to speak—“Mona, do you know something about Mrs. Dexter and that oyster? And what about—” she’s halfway out the door now, so I have to raise my voice, “what about my dad? Someone’s been getting him upset; who’s been doing that?”
Mona leans against the door and says, “Oh, my gaw, my gaw.” She adds, “Things are kinda different from what they look. I guess you know all that, though. Oh, geez, is this gonna be a mess!” Then she exits, head turned, arm flapping vaguely. Out in the hall, she stares back at me with mascara-smeared eyes, making me want to reach out firmly and shake her. But also partly making me wish there were something reassuring I could say.
Chapter 6
I’ve decided I’ll take advantage of some of the stuff described in the Manor’s enthusiastic brochure Your Way to a New Life and go with Daddy to a watercolor class. Maybe I’ll learn something. And maybe keep my father from any more descriptions of the eye of Horus. I have a suspicion that aides aren’t encouraged to take landscape painting classes, but until someone specifically tells me I can’t, I’m going to try.
“Landscape painting,” Belle says, “yeah, sure, why not? Sisal more or less lets you do anything you want, right?”
Belle still thinks I’m an Observer.
“They come off on your hands,” Daddy says of the pastels; he looks at his blue-streaked palm, then presses it against his blank paper to make a handprint. “Arabic,” he announces pleasedly, “for good luck.”
“Our job,” the painting teacher is saying, “is to capture into ourselves the essence of this beautiful scene, the spirit of sea. And sun. And coast.” The teacher is Ms. Deirdre Chaundy who, along with Mrs. Sisal and Dr. Kittredge, makes up the Resident Manor Directors. Ms. Chaundy is a pop-eyed Norse-goddess type with an admirable bust and a sheaf of blonde hair; she looks as if she came off the prow of a ship.
She half-turns her metal chair in order to lecture us. “Please,” she advises, “sit back. Do not stress, don’t strain. Surrender yourselves to the scene.” Everyone does this, plop, plop of shoulders against chair backs. People that tell you what to do with your body often get obeyed. “You have the powers,” she broadcasts. “You can do it. Get in touch. And do not, do not attempt to paint yet.” She scowls at Daddy’s handprint.
There are a lot of ladies like Ms. Chaundy in Berkeley. They are always coming around to your house or your school and wanting to teach you something you can do with string or clay or autumn leaves. Susie knows all of them and is tolerant: “They provide good energy,” is how she puts it.
Ms. Chaundy wears a chiffon scarf around her neck and projects her words distinctly: “Lean forward. Lean back. Life force. Coursing. Joining with the roots of trees, the pathways of rivers.”
She asks us to close our eyes and reach down into those tree roots toward our hidden inner powers.
It’s difficult to do this leaning back in a metal chair balanced on meadow grass. The chair legs are uncertain; your balance gets loused up. Also, I have a perverse need to look at the other people from under my half-closed eyes and figure out how they’re doing.
Daddy sits beside me, his head on his chest; he looks as if he’s fallen asleep. Next to him is Mrs. Dexter, released from the hospital, healthy and irritated, with her walker balanced against the side of her chair. She, like me, is being bad; her eyes are open, and she’s watching some black-and-white ducklike birds on the tufted meadow edge.
The meadow edge is fenced and (I ascertain all this by continuing to peek) directly overhangs a big slice of ocean.
“Now,” Ms. Chaundy says. “Open your eyes. Slowly. Return to this beautiful world. You have your powers; you are ready. Paint!” Her scarf flips back in the breeze; she spreads her arms wide. I’m waiting for her to tip her chair over, but she doesn’t; she has a good sense of balance.
Daddy hasn’t been asleep. He sits up and says, “Interesting. Did you think so?” and starts arranging his pastels on the easel tray. Pastels, in spite of their soft-sounding name, come in brilliant colors, and my father marches them along his tray in a brisk sequential rainbow.
Mrs. Dexter squints at the teacher. “Utterly ridiculous.” She makes a ritual of wearily unwrapping her paintbrush. “Would you fill my paint jar, please,” she asks generally of our circle; she’s still mad at me and won’t ask me to do this. And her stiffness prevents her getting down there with the water pitcher.
Daddy rips off his handprint page and draws a blue line across the middle of a fresh sheet.
On my left is Mrs. Cohen, the lady with the elf on her door, bubbly as always; she’s having a good day with easier breathing; she has a red scarf tied around her black-and-gray hair.
“This teacher is enthusiastic,” Mrs. Cohen tells me now. “Enthusiasm is half the battle, don’t you think? And creation is a battle, don’t you think?” She sloshes her paintbrush in her water jar.
The other person here from my corridor is Mrs. La Salle, the third of my father’s fans, who looks especially elegant today with a gold Hermès scarf carelessly knotted at her throat. “I simply close my ears,” she whispers. “Pretend it’s bees or birds. I do that with half the things people say.” She examines her page. “I would like a pencil so I c
ould outline shapes, neatly, the way I like, and then color in the middle of them, also the way I like, but I know this teacher would disapprove; she’d give me an intolerable speech about how a pencil stifles your hidden powers.”
“You bet,” Mrs. Dexter agrees. She’s using yellow paint to sketch in a recognizable bluff-edge with silhouetted tufts of yellow grass.
I have decided to go abstract. Abstract, if I do it right, with just a hint of shape behind the colors, might capture some of the strangeness of this bright scene and our peculiar little class.
There are several moments of silence while we all dip and dribble. Daddy is using both pastel and watercolor; he’s the only one trying this, a tricky process, because pastels smear when they get wet. But my father is actually an accomplished artist; all archaeologists have to learn to record their finds by drawing them.
“I wonder,” Mrs. La Salle says to Mrs. Dexter, “this moment seems so peaceful that it’s hard to imagine bad things, but do you remember my theory? That our accidents are caused by a mad old lady?”
“No,” Mrs. Dexter is applying paint in heavy blobs. “It was just accidents.”
I’ve been wondering if Mrs. Dexter has talked frankly to her friends since she got out of the hospital, but I guess not.
“I don’t understand you, Louise,” Mrs. La Salle says. “I hope you’re getting a lawyer.” Mrs. Cohen joins the discussion with “Lawyers, my goodness. And lawsuits. The Manor is in for trouble. Everyone is talking lawyers. And leaving. Because of the accidents. You know, the Manor’d be better off offering cash settlements—some of those suits are going to be big-time. Did you hear about Mrs. Goliard? Carla, this Mrs. Goliard—you don’t know her, she’s the lady that went out the window—Mrs. Goliard has one of the lawyers from the O.J. case.”
We’re briefly silent in tribute to this.
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