5 From the Grounds Up

by Sandra Balzo

  Sarah and Ronny exchanged looks.

  'As opposed to, like . . . raw?' Ronny asked.

  'No. No, I mean we could have a hot food and deli counter, where people could pick up something for dinner to take home. That way, they wouldn't have to stop at the store or cook themselves.'

  Sarah cocked her head. 'Great idea, but if you're worried about grilling a couple of breakfast sandwiches, how are we going to "prepare" your food?'

  I'd been thinking about that, too. 'Luc and Tien.' Luc Romano and his daughter Tien had owned a grocery store and deli in the same ill-fated mall that Uncommon Grounds had occupied. And I knew first-hand that Luc was a great cook.

  Sarah's eyebrows rose. 'Not a bad idea. Though I thought Tien wanted to do something else.'

  'Luc wanted Tien to do something else,' I said. 'And Tien wanted Luc to be free to do whatever he chose. Last time I talked to them, they both had realized they liked things the way they are. Or were.'

  'That girl's never going to get married.'

  I looked at career bachelorette Sarah. 'So?'

  She shrugged. 'Point taken.'

  'Maggy?' This was from Ronny, now standing on a chair, looking at the ceiling tiles. 'Do you have a blueprint of your old place? It'd help me understand what should maybe be in this new one.'

  'Not a blueprint, really, but a diagram.' I pulled a folded legal-size sheet of paper from my handbag as he climbed down off the chair. 'Will this do?'

  'Perfect,' he said, then checked his watch and fluttered the paper. 'I'd love to go over this and talk to you more today, since time is short. But . . .'

  'We're here,' Sarah said. 'Let's do it.'

  'I have to go to Brookhills Manor.' Ronny seemed apologetic. 'Get Auntie Vi's things and make arrangements for Dad's.' Hope suddenly floodlit his face. 'Unless somebody else wants to do it?'

  Sarah's face, on the other hand, darkened.

  Ronny continued enthusiastically. 'That way, I'd have an hour or so to look at Maggy's plans and do some sketches before you get back.'

  I grabbed Sarah's arm. 'C'mon, I'll go with you.'

  She shook me off. 'I hate that place. All those old people.'

  'We'll be "those old people" some day.'

  'Some day, but not yet, thank God,' Sarah muttered.

  'It's sure up to you,' said Ronny. 'But we're cutting it close the way it is. I'm willing to work weekends, but even so—'

  Sarah knew when she'd been out-leveraged. 'Fine,' she snarled at her cousin, 'but you call them about your father's things. I'm just getting Aunt Vi's.'

  She turned back to me. 'C'mon, depot-freak. Next stop, Geezerville.'

  Chapter Seven

  Unlike Sarah, I was looking forward to the visit, mostly because I hadn't seen one of my favorite people, Henry Wested, for a while.

  With Uncommon Grounds closed, there was no place for our regular customers to gather. I wanted to make sure Henry hadn't gone over to the dark side. Or 'Mickey D's', as in McDonald's.

  We entered Brookhills Manor through the main entrance, labeled 'The Villas'.

  'Villas, my ass,' Sarah said. 'They're tiny little apartments with two windows and a kitchen you can't even turn around in.'

  'I don't know,' I said as we moved through the foyer. 'Henry seems to like it here.'

  'I'm sure he does. Auntie Vi said Henry and Sophie have been banging each other like bass drums.' Sophie Daystrom had been another regular at Uncommon Grounds.

  Sarah related her gossip loudly enough for the ten or so seniors, sitting in chairs and participating in a quasi-exercise class, to stop in the middle of their shoulder shrugs.

  The instructor, a young, dark-haired man, glared at us.

  'Sorry,' I said, holding up my hand. 'My friend didn't mean it.'

  'Well then, she's an idiot,' the second old lady from the right said. 'Sophie's been in that man's room so much she might as well just shack up.'

  'Damn right,' said the only man in the class. He looked like an albino prune. 'And more power to 'em, I say.'

  That started everyone chattering and arguing. I grabbed Sarah's arm and pulled her to the main desk while the instructor tried to control the roaring--if still seated--mob.

  'We're here about Vi and Kornell Eisvogel,' I told the teenage girl behind the desk.

  'Kingston,' Sarah corrected me. 'Violet Kingston. She never took Kornell's last name.'

  'Gotcha.' The girl took a wad of gum out of her mouth and tossed it in the wastebasket before turning to her computer. 'Vi and--can you spell the Colonel's name for me?'

  'Not "colonel", Sarah said. 'Kornell: K-O-R-N-E-L-L.'

  'Oh,' said the girl, 'like the Russian version of Cornell University.'

  'Yeah,' I said before Sarah blew a gasket. 'Like that.'

  'Sweet. We are the world, right?' She typed into her computer. 'Kingston and . . . E-I-S-V-O-G-E-L.'

  Through clenched teeth, Sarah said, 'You got it.'

  The girl swiveled back to us. 'Sorry to tell you, but they're both, ah, no longer with us.'

  'Yeah, like that'd be a novelty here,' Sarah snapped. 'We didn't come to visit them. We want their stuff.'

  The girl's face almost relaxed. 'The old people have been dropping like flies around here. I just don't like to tell the . . .' She waved her fingers at us.

  'Family?' I supplied.

  'Yeah, that.' She unwrapped a new stick of gum and plopped it into her mouth.

  'Did your chewing gum lose its flavor?' Sarah asked, quoting the old Lonnie Donnegan song.

  Miss Information gave Sarah a curious look, like she recognized the line. 'Isn't that part of a legend or something?'

  'Greek mythology,' Sarah said solemnly. 'I'm Goddess of the Juicy Fruit and she's my spearmint-carrier.'

  I cleared my throat. 'Is there someone we can talk to about the property of the . . . deceaseds?'

  'Sure.' The girl wisely dropped the lesson in mythology gone awry and yanked a couple of lanyards with 'GUEST' passes dangling from them out of her drawer. 'Put these on and take that hallway.' She pointed to a sign that read 'Sunrise Wing'.

  Plucking the second piece of gum from her mouth, she dropped it in the basket, too. 'When you get to the end of the hall, you'll see Mr Levitt's office. He's the social worker.'

  'Thank you,' I said as we turned away. No wonder the kid was working so young. Had to support her gum habit.

  I peered down the corridor. There was a window at the far end. 'I guess we should just walk to the light.' I slapped a hand over my mouth. 'Sorry. Didn't mean that.'

  Sarah threw me her practiced, sidelong glance as we started down the hall. 'The hell you didn't.'

  'I . . . OK, maybe I did. But it wasn't nice of me.'

  'C'mon, let's get this over with.' Sarah hustled me to the end of the corridor. There was nothing there but the window we'd seen and a right-angle turn.

  'I guess we just keep going,' I said. Two more turns later, we were still walking.

  'How in the hell do the old coots manage this?' Sarah said as we approached our fourth blind corner. 'Even I'm disoriented and exhausted.'

  As she spoke, a leg encased in a pink plaster cast rounded the corner, coming fast. The leg was attached to a tiny woman projecting a scent of flowers and driving a candy-apple red motorized wheelchair with a joystick.

  'Coming through!' she yelled, laying on her horn and glaring at us from under thick white bangs. She reminded me a little of Frank the sheepdog driving a bumper car.

  The woman brandished her plaster cast like a tank's cannon barrel. Sarah and I parted like the Red Sea, me ducking into the doorway of a stairwell and my friend seeking refuge behind a potted palm.

  'Next time be more aware of your surroundings,' NASCAR Granny yelled as she left us behind in a floral-scented cloud.

  Sarah brushed palm fronds out of her hair. 'I told you this place was—'

  Just then, another plaster ankle swung around the corner.

  'Take cover,' Sarah ordered. 'They must travel in
packs.' She and I dove for our lives. Or, at least, our skeletal integrity.

  'Hello?'

  I stuck my head warily into the corridor. 'Sophie? Is that you?'

  Sophie Daystrom sat in a wheelchair, cast on one elevated leg. Unlike the last chair, though, this one wasn't motorized. Instead, Henry Wested shuffled behind, propelling the chair onward.

  Sarah emerged from behind her chosen palm and gestured at Sophie's leg. 'What happened to you?'

  'I should ask you the same damn thing,' Sophie said. 'What are you doing to that plant?'

  'Don't underestimate the allure of inter-species love.' I plucked a palm frond from Sarah's hair as she gave me a very sour look. 'We were hiding from a nasty woman in a wheelchair.'

  'Must've been Clara Huseby,' Henry said, tipping his gray fedora to us. 'Was it a powered model?'

  'Over-powered, more like it,' Sarah said, checking her hair for any other flora. 'The woman's a menace.'

  'She lost her husband last year,' Henry said. As a long-time resident, he probably functioned as the place's archivist.

  And, apparently, had shared the information with Sophie, who tended to be less charitable. 'That's no excuse,' Sophie said. 'My husband died, too, but I didn't turn into a kleptomaniac.'

  'Kleptomaniac?' I asked. 'Doesn't that take finesse? How stealthy can a woman in a leg cast and wheelchair be?'

  'Stealthy enough to ambush us at a blind corner,' Sarah said dryly.

  She had me on that one. 'But where does Mrs Huseby shoplift? And how does she get there?'

  I was imagining NASCAR Granny motoring across Poplar Creek Road to prey upon the drugstore down the block.

  'Here at the Manor, I'm afraid,' Henry said. 'Rumor has it she glides silently into rooms when they're empty and pilfers toiletries and other sundries. Then she hides them in her lap-robe and backs right out.'

  'Genius,' said Sophie, shaking her head in what seemed like reluctant appreciation.

  'Sophie,' Henry warned.

  'But wrong,' his main squeeze allowed. 'Very, very wrong.'

  Sophie rolled herself closer to Sarah. 'Your Aunt Vi was Clara's favorite mark. Vi was certain the woman was filching her silken petals.'

  'Huseby stole my aunt's fake . . . flowers?'

  Since taking somebody's 'silken petals' sounded more like de-flowering to me, I just kept my mouth shut.

  'No. No, even worse.' Sophie's voice dropped to a whisper. 'Her body powder, Silken Petals. I think that's just sick--don't you, Henry?'

  He tugged at his collar, though he wore no necktie. 'Well, yes, I suppose so.'

  That explained the blossom cloud enveloping NASCAR Granny, aka Klepto Clara. She was wearing her ill-gotten booty.

  'The woman parades around, smelling of Silken Petals,' Sophie said. 'The real designer version, mind you. Not some knock-off. Clara has brass, you have to give her that.'

  Again, that touch of grudging admiration in the voice.

  Henry cleared his throat--theatrically so--and Sophie flushed.

  I decided to change the subject. 'So you didn't explain, Sophie. What happened to you?'

  'I fell out of bed,' she admitted. 'They have to make those damn things with rails if they're going to frickin' cater to the active senior.'

  Four-foot-eleven Sophie had never been mistaken for Mother Teresa, but her language was bluer than her hair these days.

  'The "active" senior?' I asked.

  She threw back her shoulders and pushed out her breasts, which seemed to ride unnaturally high. 'Sexually, that is.'

  No wonder they were the talk of the exercise class. I liked both Sophie and Henry, but I really didn't want to picture them being . . . 'active'.

  Sarah, on the other hand, appeared to be perking up. She pointed at Sophie's boobs. 'Are those new?'

  'Nah,' Sophie said. 'I couldn't afford that, and neither could Henry, much as I'm sure he'd enjoy them.'

  She twisted around in the chair to wink at Henry, who had a pained smile on his face. 'I just shortened my bra straps.' She pulled on the straps to illustrate, making her breasts dance like roly-poly marionettes.

  'Smart thinking,' Sarah said in response to Sophie's preening. 'They look great.'

  Sophie turned to me.

  'Perky,' I managed.

  Satisfied with our reaction, she settled back. 'So, what in blazes are you two doing in the Sunrise Wing? It's like that Hotel California. You can check out, but you can never leave.'

  'Heh-heh.' The sound came from Henry. We all turned to look at him.

  'Sorry,' he said, holding up his hand. 'She breaks me up sometimes.'

  I loved that they both knew the Eagles.

  'Then why are you here? Physical therapy?' I asked. Despite the amount of time Sophie might spend at the Manor, I knew she had a home in Brookhills.

  'Rehab,' she said. 'But Medicare won't pay anymore, so I have to get out of here.'

  'To where, though?' I asked. 'Can you get around well enough to go back home?'

  Sophie hooked a thumb at Henry. 'I'm selling my place and shacking up with him. We're going to follow our muse and live in sin.'

  Henry blushed. Given the quiet, straight-arrow image he'd always projected at our coffeehouse, I was relieved the top of his skull hadn't blown off.

  Time--no, past time--to go. 'We'd love to hear more,' I said quickly, 'but Sarah has to pick up her Aunt Vi's things.'

  Henry threw me a grateful look.

  'Such a blasted shame that was,' Sophie said. 'She was about as lively as they come. In my Red Hat group. Went out every day.'

  'Which was her undoing,' Henry contributed ominously.

  'Why?' I turned to Sarah. 'How did your aunt die?'

  'I told you,' Sarah said. 'Kornell dropped her off at a store and pulled away too quickly. She had her hand on the door handle and fell.'

  'Broke her hip,' Sophie said. 'A week later, she was worm food.'

  'Pneumonia,' Henry pronounced. 'The enemy of the elderly.'

  'Right,' said Sarah. 'Can we please get going?'

  Having been reminded of our mission, she seemed impatient to get it done. And us out.

  'Be nice,' I hissed at her under my breath.

  'Nah, don't bother,' Sophie said as Henry started to push the chair again. 'Nobody here is nice. We live this long, we figure we can say whatever damn well comes into our heads.'

  And with a wave of her hand, the lovebirds departed.

  Contrary to Sophie Daystrom's assessment, Mr Levitt, the Manor's social worker, seemed nice.

  'Please sit a bit,' he said, waving us into the two visitors' chairs across the desk from his own.

  He took off horned-rimmed glasses and set them on the calendar that covered the small portion of his desk not piled high with file folders. 'I'm glad you found your way over here. This place is a labyrinth, especially since we added the Sunrise Wing. We prefer to have everything on one floor--for the wheelchairs, you know--but that means the building has to sprawl a scosh.'

  'A scosh,' Sarah echoed with a straight face.

  I elbowed her. 'We met one of the wheelchairs on the way here. Candy-apple-red, motorized model?'

  'Ah, yes. Clara Huseby. A charming woman.'

  Great, Mr Levitt was both nice and delusional. I thought maybe I should set him straight before Klepto Clara added vehicular manslaughter to her Manor rap sheet.

  'I'm certain she is,' I started. 'But with the speed of the wheelchair and that battering ram of a leg sticking out, she nearly flattened us coming around the corner.'

  'Really?' Mr Levitt's face had changed from friendly to blank. That shade called 'wary of a lawsuit'.

  'Really,' I said. 'I thought you'd want to know.' I considered telling him about the stealing, but I had that only via hearsay--and Sophie's hearsay, at that.

  'She's a thief, too,' Sarah offered. 'Check her lap-robe sometime.'

  'I'll do that,' Levitt said shortly. 'Now, though, back to your business?'

  The placing of the emphasis on 'y
our' was nicely done, I thought. And fair as well.

  'I'm so sorry about Mr Eisvogel,' Levitt continued. 'It's as if they couldn't live without each other. First, Vi went and then Kornell--what, a week later?'

  'Let's call it a scosh,' Sarah said. This time I didn't elbow her. Let the social worker defend himself. 'My cousin Ronny said you had some of my Auntie Vi's things. He asked me to pick them up.'

  'Yes. Yes, of course.' Levitt stood up and went to a closet behind his desk. When he opened the door, I saw that the shelves were lined with stuffed grocery bags, recycled from various area stores. Waste not, want not.

  Levitt ran his finger along the top shelf, then the next, searching for just the right sack. On the third level, he found what he was looking for. An over-stuffed grocery bag from Schultz's Market.

  'Ah, here it is.' Levitt set it on the desk.

  I pointed at the closet. 'All personal effects?'

  'Yes. Not everyone has a family member, or at least one who cares enough to claim them.' He shrugged.

  'Lot of turnover, huh?' From Sarah, naturally.

  Levitt shot her a questioning look. 'In the staff?'

  'I think she means in the patients.' I was trying to be helpful again. 'You know, by dying?'

  'We prefer to call the people living here at Brookhills Manor "residents". Even the clients who are in Sunrise, which is what we call the skilled nursing section, prefer not to be referred to as "patients".'

  'Or coots,' I whispered to Sarah.

  Unfortunately, Mr Levitt had especially good hearing, and sat up straighter. 'We would never call our residents "coots", Ms Thorsen, and I'd appreciate it if you didn't either. Or thieves, for that matter.'

  'I wasn't,' I stammered, 'I mean, I didn't . . .'

  Sarah stood up, grabbed the grocery bag and handed it to me to carry. 'Yeah, Maggy, keep your nasty thoughts to yourself.' She stuck out her hand to Mr Levitt. 'Thanks so much for everything. My cousin Ronny will be in touch to clean out his father's apartment.'

  'Good, good,' Levitt said, following us to the door. 'We have a new resident eagerly awaiting it.'

  'How did I turn into the bad guy?' I asked Sarah as we made our way down the long hall back to the Manor's front entrance.

  'You shouldn't call people names,' Sarah said, sniffing the air. 'Ugh. This place reeks of disinfectant and dead flowers.'