Best Place to Die

by Charles Atkins

  He shut his laptop and yanked open the car door, his long legs pumping fast as he broke into a jog and headed them off. ‘What are you doing here?’ Spittle flew from his mouth.

  Ada turned, and Aaron’s head shot around like he’d been struck.

  Jack was breathing heavily, meeting Ada’s witchy blue eyes. His gaze raked over Aaron, not wanting even to look at his son. The last words he’d said to him: ‘You disgust me.’ ‘What the hell do you think you’re doing here?’ he repeated.

  It was Rose who spoke, her pale blue eyes looking up at him. ‘Hello, Jack. I’m so glad you’re here.’ No irony in her voice. ‘We were told we had a few minutes to go back and try to get . . .’

  He stared at his wife’s grandmother who he knew was in her nineties – the only decent member of the family. She so reminded him of his own grandmother, dead for over twenty years and one of the few people who he knew without doubt had loved him. ‘I’m so sorry, Rose.’ Realizing, through his layers of exhaustion, just how devastating this must be for her. He looked at the pathetic black plastic bags she was holding, obviously with the intent of retrieving what little she could of her possessions. Having been to hundreds of fires he knew that going back in the day after was fairly standard, unless the structure was unstable. Having already been through the building, he knew the concrete and steel infrastructure would not collapse, which might have made his job easier. What was driving him absolutely mad was the level of chaos. Rescue workers, fire fighters, boneheaded volunteers from half a dozen agencies, and cops – local, state, and in the past hour Feds in unmarked cars and dark suits. He’d practically screamed at the Fire Marshall, ‘Who’s in charge, here?’

  To be met by the man’s infuriating answer: ‘Depends who you talk to.’

  ‘You shouldn’t go in alone,’ he said, keeping his eyes on Rose. Knowing that to look at either Aaron or Ada would make things worse. In fact, he decided, pretend they’re not there.

  ‘Would you come with us?’ Rose asked. ‘The firemen all seem so busy, and you look like you belong.’

  He sighed, realizing she was right. That with his Clarion ID tag around his neck, no one would bother him. ‘OK,’ he said, knowing that if he didn’t, word would get back to Susan, not that she’d say anything, just more of his wife’s silent martyrdom. ‘But just fifteen minutes.’

  ‘In each of their apartments,’ Ada said.

  ‘Fine.’ He gave her the briefest glance, noting she looked different from the last time he’d seen her, not quite able to put his finger on it, and really not caring. And then a quick look at Aaron. The kid looked healthy, tall, too good looking – a fag. He turned his back not wanting to drag this on a second longer than necessary, just get in, get out, and try to get through the day.

  Inside Rose’s apartment, Ada was shocked at the devastation, and wondered how her mother was holding up. Horrible. She stared at the wall of framed family photos that months earlier she and Aaron had hung. Most of the glass now shattered, the images obscured by smoke, as her mind put names to the filthy faces. Tears streamed as she pushed the ruined sofa – one she’d known her entire life – against the wall so she could get to the pictures.

  ‘Let me help you.’ Aaron grabbed the other end, and then scrambled up and plucked the pictures from their hooks.

  ‘We should have brought gloves,’ she said, her hands covered in ash, jagged glass everywhere. Looking back she saw Jack, tall as his son, helping Rose retrieve her important papers from a metal filing cabinet that had swelled in the heat; the drawers not opening. In spite of herself, grateful for his somber presence. Noting how he wouldn’t even look at Aaron, but he was helping, and right now that mattered. He was even being kind to Alice, who stood still in the middle of Rose’s destroyed living room, occasionally asking, ‘Are we going home?’

  ‘What are the chances he’d be here?’ Aaron whispered as he wrapped pictures in filthy towels from the kitchen and gingerly layered them into his garbage bag.

  Ada nodded, her thoughts skittering over the enormity of what had happened and what lay ahead. ‘At least she wasn’t hurt . . . not physically.’ Her eyes wandering over her mother’s possessions. Everything here having been selected from her Rivington Street apartment. Every dish, every vase, every piece of furniture connected to stories. The shattered Royal Doulton compote, with its scenes from Dickens, had been a wedding present. A clumsy ceramic pin tray made by Aaron’s sister, Mona, in the fourth grade – she’d meant for it to be a mermaid, but the gaudily glazed lump, now blackened, looked like some horror show fish monster with breasts. It was of no intrinsic value, but Ada picked it up. ‘I think this will wash clean.’ And taking a ruined afghan that Rose had made from off her favorite arm chair, she carefully wrapped it.

  ‘Did you bring a camera?’ Jack asked.

  Ada turned. ‘No,’ she said, wishing she’d held on to Lil’s after she’d downloaded the photos and emailed them to the paper.

  ‘I’ll use mine and send you the pictures,’ he said.

  ‘Thank you,’ she said, seeing a trace of humanity in a man she’d tried so hard to like, but couldn’t. Always wondering what made her daughter pick such a bullying control freak, and not liking the answers. She went to the dining-room sideboard; its larger matching buffet sold to a used-furniture dealer when Rose moved out of the city. Straining to open the top drawer she found her mother’s good silver, an ornate Victorian pattern with twisted finials that reminded her of pine cones. It had been a twentieth-anniversary present from Ada’s father, Isaac, and was used every Sabbath and every family gathering since. The tightly closed drawer had protected the silver from the heat. You can’t leave this. She grabbed one of the sofa cushions, unzipped the case and pulled out the stuffing. She then filled it with the heavy flatware. Like a thief.

  ‘We have to leave,’ Jack said, his tone gentle, one hand on Rose’s back, while his other reached for Alice’s elbow.

  Rose turned back, her face and hands covered in dirt and ash. ‘Thank you, Jack. I don’t know what we would have done if you weren’t here.’

  ‘It’s OK,’ he replied, carrying her bag, and nudging her toward the door.

  Alice turned and smiled. She looked down at his hand on her elbow. ‘Are we going home?’

  Ada watched Jack with the two women, trying to reconcile his unexpected kindness with the man she loathed.

  He smiled at Alice. ‘Yes, it’s time to go home.’

  Outside Rose’s apartment they were met by Alice’s grandson, Kyle in a pair of blue scrubs, his ID badge around his neck. He was holding a box of heavy-duty garbage bags. ‘Thank you so much for doing this,’ he said, looking at Ada who’d called him earlier. ‘I just haven’t had time.’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ Ada said, ‘we’ll sort it out later. Aaron, can you haul all this out to your car, and if you don’t think there’s going to be room, take it back to my condo.’

  ‘Not a problem.’ He hefted two stuffed garbage bags and the pillow case filled with silver.

  Ada looked at Rose and Alice; the two women were filthy. ‘Mom, maybe you and Alice should go back home with Aaron? I’ll help Kyle go through his mom’s place.’

  ‘I don’t know.’ Rose looked at Alice. ‘Do you want to go back in there?’ she asked.

  The redhead shook her head no. ‘I want to go home,’ she said, and then to Kyle: ‘Johnny, take me home.’

  ‘That would be best,’ Jack said, looking at Rose. ‘Go home.’

  ‘Do you think they’ll let us back in?’ Rose asked,

  ‘I don’t know,’ Jack admitted. And they were interrupted by a man in a black flak vest, with a state police ID on his chest.

  ‘What are you people doing in here?’

  Jack spoke: ‘These two are residents and I’m an adjuster with The Clarion. We’re the underwriters for Nillewaug.’

  ‘I’m a nurse here,’ Kyle added, ‘the residents were told it was safe for brief walk-throughs to get important personal items.’

>   The detective looked at Aaron and his bulging bags. ‘Right . . . let me have your names, and who said it was OK? This is a crime scene. I’m going to need to know everything that’s in those bags. And how do I know you’re not looters?’

  ‘Are you kidding me?’ Ada said, feeling a pressure inside. ‘Haven’t these people gone through enough? Who the hell . . .’

  Jack interrupted her. ‘Detective,’ he said, staring hard at the man’s ID, and cutting Ada a look. ‘Ada, please let me handle this. Detective Pelton, we got permission from the Fire Marshall, and I believe it’s been extended to all the residents. He deemed the structure sound. It’s possible he did not fully factor in the police concerns. I will be on site for the foreseeable future and will take responsibility for any personal items removed by these two residents.’

  The detective shook his head, his expression was incredulous. ‘They gave permission . . . you’ve got to be kidding.’

  ‘I wish I were,’ Jack said. ‘I’d recommend whoever is in charge of the investigation coordinate with the Fire Marshall. Otherwise you’re going to have a few hundred civilians tromping through your crime scene.’

  ‘And you’ll be here?’ the detective asked.

  ‘Yes.’ Jack held his ID badge so the detective could get a clear look.

  The detective looked hard at the ID, then up at Jack, Kyle, and the rest of them. ‘OK, I guess finish up fast, and get out of here.’

  ‘Appreciate it,’ Jack said. ‘Aaron, take Rose and Alice home, then bring the car back for your grandmother.’

  Satisfied, or at least momentarily placated, the detective walked off. ‘This is a nightmare,’ Jack said, as Kyle turned the knob on his grandmother’s apartment.

  ‘Tell me about it,’ Kyle replied. ‘Six hundred displaced residents. Six hundred families who paid good money to have their loved one taken care of.’

  ‘Or off their hands,’ Ada added, as they walked down the hall into Alice’s one bedroom.

  ‘Probably best she doesn’t see this,’ Kyle said, as they got their first glimpse of the damage. Similar to Rose’s everything reeked of smoke, and anything plastic – from soda bottles to a set of unbreakable dishes Kyle had gotten for his demented grandmother – were melted into unrecognizable blobs. The once cream-colored carpet was soaked and blackened, the ends of the synthetic pile, which was supposedly heat resistant, had curled and melted into caramel-colored tips that crunched underfoot.

  Kyle led them into the living area, at first glance containing nothing of tremendous value: a pair of stuffed chairs and a couch in a matching floral upholstery – all ruined. A flat-screen TV, the metal back still standing, but the rest a shiny black puddle.

  ‘Did she have renter’s insurance?’ Jack asked.

  ‘No,’ Kyle said, walking to a framed photo on a coffee table. ‘I couldn’t see the point. She has so little.’ He picked up the picture, the glass intact and thick with grime.

  Ada stood next to him. ‘Who are they?’ Looking at the image of two blonde women, and two toddlers, one with dark hair and the other a strawberry blonde in matching outfits with penguins on their chests.

  ‘My family.’ He shook his head. ‘That’s Alice about thirty years ago, and then me, Kelly and my mom.’ And, shaking open a bag, he wrapped the photo and gently placed it inside.

  ‘You’re a twin?’ she asked.

  ‘Fraternal.’

  ‘No men in the picture,’ she noted.

  ‘Just me. My mom never married.’

  ‘So who’s Johnny?’ Ada asked.

  ‘I guess he’s my grandfather, but women in my family have trouble hanging on to men. I never met him. And Alice never discussed him.’

  ‘What’s wrong?’

  ‘Nothing, just sad. This whole thing is so sad. And now . . .’

  Ada trailed behind him as he took pictures, opened drawers, and then led her into Alice’s bedroom.

  Kyle glanced back at Jack, who was taking photos of the destroyed apartment. ‘She didn’t have renter’s, so why bother?’

  Jack seemed torn, and then said something that surprised Ada. ‘Depending on what caused the fire, she might be able to get a settlement.’

  ‘You mean from the facility’s policy?’ Ada asked, turning back from the hall.

  Jack stared at her. ‘Maybe. It doesn’t hurt to document what’s been lost, and make an inventory.’

  ‘No,’ she said, and for a brief instant could swear she saw something like compassion in his eyes. ‘Makes sense.’

  He looked away and went back to taking pictures of Alice’s ruined home.

  In the bedroom, Ada helped Kyle go through drawers and the walk-in closet. She noted how neat the room was in spite of the water and smoke damage. The two clothes chests tightly shut, their contents folded. The furniture a once blonde-wood mid-century suite, the finish now blackened and bubbled to an alligator-skin texture. She said little as Kyle went through the drawers and sorted through his grandmother’s things, filling a bag with clothes that could possibly be salvaged. ‘I’ll swing by and launder these.’

  ‘Don’t be silly, you’ve got more than enough to do.’ Feeling an odd sense of intruding into a private world, as he pulled out stacks of silk underwear and surprisingly fancy . . . provocative, bras and lingerie.

  He glanced back at her, as he slid neatly folded stacks of satin teddies into his bag. ‘In her day, Alice was kind of a hottie.’ He smiled. ‘I guess if there’s any silver lining in her Alzheimer’s it’s that she doesn’t realize it’s no longer true. She’s quite a flirt.’ In a tall chest, next to her neatly made bed, which was covered in what had once been a pale pink matelassé spread, he found her jewelry. He stared in. ‘What should I take?’

  ‘Here. I’ll double bag, just dump the whole thing in. We don’t have time to go through it,’ Ada said, looking at the hodgepodge of mostly costume pieces, but some gold bracelets, and neatly stacked velvet boxes.

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘Don’t forget her bills and anything financial.’

  ‘Right.’ Kyle stood by the bed and slowly turned, surveying the room. ‘I kept all that stuff in her kitchen.’

  Ada followed, hoisting a half-filled garbage bag, her thoughts unquiet. ‘She likes things neat.’

  ‘Yes,’ Kyle said, as they passed Jack in the living room. ‘I think it has to do with all the chaos in her life. At least in her home she could have some kind of order. Even now, if anything’s out of place it drives her crazy. She might not remember what it is, but she knows where it belongs.’

  ‘A place for everything . . .’ Ada murmured, trying to remember her Harry as his dementia had worsened; he couldn’t have cared less where anything was. In the end, that was the least of it, as she’d needed to do everything for him, feed him, bathe him . . . Alice’s dementia was advanced, but somehow her ability to keep a tidy home, and fold her clothes as precisely as a store clerk hadn’t been affected.

  ‘You would have fit right in,’ he said, as he opened a drawer next to the refrigerator in the tiny kitchenette.

  She held her bag open. ‘Just dump it in, you can sort it later.’ Looking at the contents, mostly bills and the ubiquitous statements from Medicare like her mother received with the words: ‘This is not a bill’ emblazoned over the cellophane address window. ‘She still handles her bills?’

  ‘Are you kidding? That was the first clue I had that something was seriously wrong. She stopped paying them. Had them addressed, stamped and ready to go, but the last step of taking them to the mailbox left her mind. I got a call from her crying in the middle of the night that the power went out. So I’m thinking the lines are down. I called the electric company to find out when her power is expected to be back up only to find out she hadn’t paid her bill in four months.’ He put the empty drawer back and began to go through the cabinets, pulling out a favorite mug. He grabbed a Tony the Tiger cereal bowl. ‘This was mine,’ he said, ‘and this was Kelly’s,’ he added, on finding a second with a brightly
colored Toucan Sam.

  ‘How long ago did that happen?’ Ada asked, noting how at home Kyle was in his grandmother’s kitchen.

  ‘Let’s see, she’s been here five years, probably close to seven years ago. It took me a little while to figure things out. And once I started digging . . .’ He gave a humorless laugh. ‘You can’t imagine the mess, like an onion, you get through one layer and suddenly something else appears you’d not anticipated.’

  ‘I do know,’ Ada said. ‘My husband had dementia. His doctor said it was a combination of Alzheimer’s and little strokes. I didn’t have the bills to deal with – I’ve always handled those – but everything else. And driving. Oh my God, that was the worst. He wouldn’t stop driving, even when I hired someone to do it . . . and we lived in New York.’

  ‘That can’t have gone well,’ he said, stepping back, his gaze wandering over the space. He shook his head. ‘I tried so hard to get her into this place, every cent she had, everything I could scrape together, and now what?’

  ‘You can’t think about that,’ Ada said. ‘She can stay with us for as long as you need.’

  ‘No,’ Kyle said. ‘You’ve been more than kind, but that’s no answer, and we both know it. I’ll figure something out.’

  ‘There’s no rush. We have plenty of space . . . What about your mother?’ Ada asked, wondering why it had fallen to Kyle to care for his grandmother.

  He stepped back, his eyes sad and tired. ‘She’s dead. Well, I think that’s about all for now.’

  Jack appeared. ‘We should move.’ Glancing at Ada, he said, ‘I’ll email you copies of the pictures.’