“That sounds great,” I said, not wanting to be on the outside of all the fun. Not wanting to do the right thing, like Max said. Not wanting to be the person to shoulder the burden. Not Saint Nora. “Sign me up. I’m in.”
* * *
I changed out of my work clothes after the lunch rush on Thursday before driving out to the Pudding Hill House, even though Mary Beth Swindon came into the diner every Sunday evening with her parents for supper and knew what I looked like in my uniform. I used to change before visiting my dad every afternoon, too. I wanted to treat my visits like they were a special occasion, not something to dread. But the truth was, they were hard. Sean and I had kept dad at home for as long as we could, until he started wandering. The third time Sheriff Granby called me at the diner to let me know someone had found Dad sitting in their kitchen in the middle of the night, asking for a cup of coffee, we knew we didn’t have a choice.
The Pudding Hill House was the nicest nursing home in town. They made an effort to make the dayrooms look homey, with lace doilies on the tables and table lamps with warm lightbulbs. They even put some money into the cafeteria and the food they served, even though the sense of taste was one of the first things to go in Alzheimer’s patients. But at the end of the day, the Pudding Hill House was what it was—a place where people went when they couldn’t be cared for at home.
“After this, let’s get out of Guthrie and go have dinner somewhere new,” Kit said and rolled her window down a crack. She had insisted on coming along for the ride, which surprised me. Kit seemed a little unmoored with Max away, antsy and unfocused. She stared out into the cornfields that hugged Pudding Hill, the yellowing tassels on the tips of the tall green stalks waving like streamers.
“There’s a new Thai place over in Lyndonville,” I said.
“Can you imagine coming to the U.S. from Thailand and ending up here?” Kit waved her hands at the rows and rows of corn.
“Well, Lyndonville is a bigger town than Guthrie. And I’ve never been to Thailand . . . maybe it looks similar to this. Maybe they feel right at home.”
“Nora, Thailand does not look like this.”
The way Kit said this made it sound like an insult. I took in the landscape: dark forest to our left, a mixture of spruce and pine trees, their trunks tall and straight, mixed in with maple, oak, and poplar. It seemed still and quiet, but I knew if I stopped the car we would hear a chorus of birds and insects and frogs. The ground would be spongy with a carpet of fallen leaves, bark, and needles. To the right was the cornfield, acres of it, soft and green. Beyond the corn, in the distance, stood the stark ridge of mountains that shaped the town. Pudding Hill was a giant hill, and every time it felt like a leap of faith to drive up the dirt road. It may not be Thailand, but I thought anyone could see the beauty of the place.
We reached the crest of the road and drove into the Pudding Hill House parking lot. I pulled into a space and turned off the car.
“It’s so weird that Dad was here,” Kit said, toying with the drawstring of her metallic silver hoodie.
“It was the best place for him.” I unbuckled my seat belt. Kit had been in Los Angeles or New Orleans or Chicago the couple of years that Dad was in the nursing home, and had only come back for Christmas. Dad always remembered her, although he talked to her like she was a teenager still. Kit played along, which I was grateful for.
Inside, I asked the woman at the front desk where I could find Mary Beth Swindon. Kit wandered into the dayroom and sat down next to a woman who was crocheting something in variegated rainbow yarn.
“Right this way,” the receptionist said, and led me to Mary Beth’s office.
The office was cramped, her desk covered in insurance forms and patient files.
“Nora Huckleberry, nice to see you.” Mary Beth stood and held out her hand. “How are things at the diner?”
“The same,” I said. “Things are good.”
“I heard your sister is in town?” She said this cautiously. Kit had dated Mary Beth’s brother briefly while they were in high school, and Kit had broken his heart.
“I am,” Kit said from the doorway, and squeezed into the office, taking the seat beside me. “Good to see you, MB.”
“I’m sorry it’s not under better circumstances. Close the door, would you?”
I reached over and shut the office door.
Mary Beth sat down and pulled out a file. The tab read Elsie Cole. “I talked to Jack Hickey yesterday. So, just to clarify, Peggy Johnson’s will didn’t include a mention of Elsie Cole?”
I shook my head. “Not that I’m aware of. The bill was the first I heard of Elsie. Do I know her, by the way? Her name is so familiar.”
“She used to volunteer at the children’s library,” Kit said. “Don’t you remember her? She was really cool. She had all of these interesting dresses, and she always wore red cowboy boots. I’ve always wanted a pair.”
“Maybe?” I said, remembering dropping Kit off at story hour. That was back when I was still juggling high school and the diner. “Didn’t she have a stand at the farmer’s market?”
“That’s right,” Mary Beth said, “years ago. Herbs and lotions. Candles, too. A little handmade jewelry. I don’t remember when she stopped.” Mary Beth opened the file. “Ms. Cole has only been with us for two years. She lived over at the Victoria Hotel for a while, after she sold her place. Did you know you were neighbors?”
I had picked up a prescription or refreshed a litter box for almost every tenant at the Victoria. “No, we must not have been there at the same time.”
“Since you aren’t family, I wouldn’t ordinarily discuss this, but I think you need to know for decision-making purposes. Ms. Cole is in the middle to late stage of Alzheimer’s—some days she is with is, most days she isn’t. With your own family history I know you know what that’s like. She doesn’t have any family that we’re aware of. Ms. Johnson has always paid for her care here.”
With what, cakes? I wanted to ask, but didn’t. Peggy’s will hadn’t mentioned any money, and the only bank account we found was a small passbook savings account that she withdrew money from every month to pay her bills. Mr. Hickey had mentioned that the will was drawn years ago. Maybe her circumstances had changed? “So, tell us what this all looks like.”
Kit stood up and wandered out of the room, closing the door behind her. She never liked talking about money. To her, money was a way to fund the next adventure. It was about the present, never the past or the future.
“Ms. Johnson signed a financial agreement with Pudding Hill, so technically her estate is responsible for the bills. I went ahead and inquired about the state nursing home down in Middleton—since Ms. Cole doesn’t have an estate to speak of, they can help with the Medicaid paperwork—but they don’t have a bed for her right now.”
“What does that mean?” I asked, but I braced myself, knowing that it wasn’t good news.
“She’s on the waiting list. When someone . . . leaves, Elsie can be moved there. It’s a perfectly decent place. I know some of the staff over there from my nursing days.”
My heart sank. We were basically waiting for someone to die so Peggy’s friend could be moved to the state nursing home. The private nursing homes were depressing enough.
“And until then?” I asked weakly.
“She’ll stay with us. We wouldn’t kick her out, of course. We’re not that kind of place. But . . . there will be a lien put on Ms. Johnson’s estate after ninety days of nonpayment. You understand.”
I nodded. No matter what, the nursing home was going to get paid. Another lien on the estate would make it more difficult to sell. We were already thirty days late. We only had two months to get everything sorted out.
“In the meantime, we need to know if you would like for us to file a motion to appoint you the official health-care proxy. Peggy held that role.”
How
could I make health decisions for this person that I didn’t even know? “If I choose not to?”
“Then the Pudding Hill House will ask the state to appoint guardianship, since Elsie isn’t able to do it herself. Someone needs to be in place to make decisions.”
“I see. Thanks, Mary Beth. I appreciate you sharing the whole picture with us.”
“Of course.” Mary Beth reached over and patted my hand. “It’s just one thing after another, isn’t it? We found out Jim’s mother has to have her hip replaced on the same day our hot water heater died.”
“It can feel that way,” I said, smiling, even though I knew her husband’s family owned the ski operation on one of the mountains, and they could pay for a hip replacement, two knee replacements, and a house reroofing without having to change their vacation plans for next summer. Something Max had said while we were baking popped into my head. The antidote of envy is to rejoice in the good qualities of others. I said a silent apology to Mary Beth for keeping tabs on her bank account as I let myself out, trying to think of some good qualities other people had. Charlie and Fern were always so cheery, even when we were slammed at the diner, and made work so much fun. Max was a great listener, and brought calm into every situation. Elliot was so interested in everything. Open. And kind.
“Have you seen my sister?” I asked the receptionist, turning my attention to Kit and away from the fact that Elliot Danforth was on my short list. Kit wasn’t in the lobby or the dayroom. “Short, curly red hair, dressed like Stevie Nicks and one of the Disney princesses started a fashion label together?”
“Room 117,” the receptionist said without looking up from her computer.
I followed the signs down the corridor, waving hello to my neighbor Pat, who worked part time at Pudding Hill as a janitor. I could hear the singsong sound of my sister’s voice. I found her sitting in a cushioned chair pulled up close to a tiny, elderly woman lying in bed, covered in a mountain of blankets. Her face was made of a thousand wrinkles, like a Shar-Pei.
“This is my favorite part,” Kit said, showing the woman a picture in a copy of Us Weekly.
“The one on the left,” the woman said, pointing her finger.
Kit popped a cherry Lifesaver into her mouth, handed one to her friend, and offered the rest of the roll to me. “What do you think, Nora? Who wore it best?”
“Could she choke on those?”
Kit rolled her eyes at me. “She doesn’t remember a lot of things, but she remembers how to eat. “You’re cool with the candy, right, Elsie?” Kit turned the page. “Stars—they’re just like us!”
Elsie laughed and popped the cherry candy into her mouth.
I turned and went back into the corridor.
“Gotta fly,” I heard Kit say. “But I’ll be back.”
When we both had our seat belts buckled and were back on the road headed toward Lyndonville, Kit turned to me and said, “I know what we need to do.”
My shoulders dropped an inch. Maybe she would use some of the loan money to cover Elsie’s expenses, at least for a couple of months, to buy us time.
“Let’s get maple creemees.”
It was our go-to snack whenever things were rough at home—an excuse to take a drive and treat ourselves to something sweet.
“I know just the place.”
* * *
An hour later we pulled into the town of Beldon, home of the Sweet Peony Dairy Farm, which sold maple soft serve year-round in its farm stand/grocery shop.
We sat in the car looking out over the cow pasture, our hands sticky with ice cream, sucking the trapped pools of soft serve out of the little air pockets in the rim of the cake cone, not wanting to miss a drop. The Sweet Peony made the maple-iest creemee of all the Vermont dairies. We would know—Kit and I had been to them all.
Kit leaned back and sighed. “I miss these so much when I’m not in Vermont.”
I never thought about the fact that I could eat a maple creemee every single day of my life if I wanted. It was one of the fringe benefits of never leaving home.
“Do you remember getting knocked into the mud by an overfriendly cow when you were little?”
“That happened?” Kit asked. She always liked hearing stories from when she was a baby.
“Yes, you walked off to share some of your ice cream with one of the cows and managed to climb under the fence and into the pasture. One of the cows gave you a good lick and you fell into a pretty serious patch of cow patties. Mom was horrified, but Dad thought it was funny.” I grinned over at her. “You had to ride home in just a pair of pull-ups.”
“How old was I?”
“You must have been around three,” I said, wiping my hands off with a napkin.
“So it was before she got sick.”
Kit had been six when Mom was diagnosed with an aggressive form of breast cancer. Mom had to have both breasts removed, followed by chemotherapy and radiation. She was just gaining a bit of strength back when she found out the cancer had already returned.
“Yeah, a few years before.”
“What if Mom hadn’t had cancer?”
The What If game rarely took such a serious tone. I looked over at Kit. When had those crow’s-feet formed by her eyes? When had she become an adult?
“And what if Dad hadn’t started drinking?” I asked in response.
“Maybe you would have gone to art school in New York City.”
I tried to picture myself in a small apartment, surrounded by people and concrete. “It’s hard to imagine. We’d both be different people if things hadn’t happened the way they did, I guess.”
“Yeah.” Kit leaned back in her seat. “I can’t say there’s anything I would want to change, exactly. I mean, I’ve had a lot of adventures. It’s just . . . I don’t really have any memories from when Mom wasn’t sick.”
“You were still pretty little,” I said, although I didn’t know if that was a comfort.
“Yeah. I just wish—I don’t know. It’s, like, my whole memory of being mothered is through this filter of her having cancer. I think that’s why I haven’t had kids.”
I remembered. It felt like every day Mom was saying good-bye.
“Do you want kids?” I asked. I hadn’t ever thought of Kit having children. She never seemed to slow down enough to consider it, but of course she must have.
“I didn’t think I wanted them.” She glanced over at me. “I had a scare six months ago. With Max. When I found out that I wasn’t pregnant, I was disappointed, which was a huge surprise—to me and Max both. Max was thrilled, of course, when I told him how I was feeling. He’s dying to be a dad.”
“Do you think you and Max . . . ?” Sean and I had tried for years. I could get pregnant easily enough, but my body wasn’t able to hold on to a baby for long. After the tenth miscarriage we stopped trying. The funny thing was, when I went back on the Pill, I found myself feeling relieved—content, even. As if a silent question had been answered.
Kit licked her fingertips, then rubbed at them with the tiny square paper napkin. “I don’t feel ready.”
“I’m pretty sure it’s one of those things you can only get ready for by doing it.”
“Yeah.” Kit rolled down her window and stuck her whole arm out. “I know you’re right. But my brain is always saying Just this last project or One last big trip . . . I think part of my hesitation about having kids is that my feelings about being a mom are wrapped up with all the bad feelings about our mom not being there. But I’m afraid I’m going to wake up one day and realize it’s too late.”
“I’m sorry you never got a chance to be mothered by her. She was a good mom.” What I really wanted to say was I’m sorry I couldn’t be the mom you needed. I didn’t realize how much mothering Kit needed until she was up and gone. I took for granted the thirteen years I had of Mom and Dad just being regular Mom and Dad. I had had a
bucolic Vermont childhood—sledding and ice-skating in the winter, swimming in the summer. Girl Scouts and 4-H and sleepover parties. Getting grounded for cutting school during kidding season so I could see the baby goats being born. Helping Mom with her garden and Dad with the diner. Kit had missed all of that. Instead she had teenage me and grief-stricken Dad trying to cobble together a life without Mom, who we had relied on for everything.
“You’d be a great mom,” I said truthfully.
“Really?” Kit leaned her back against the headrest and turned to me. “You don’t think I’m too much of a mess?”
“Well, you are a bit of a mess, but I think you could be a mess with kids.” This was the truth. Kit was a lot of things—impulsive, a bit careless at times, unpredictable—but she was passionate about her work and dedicated to it. “You’d be a fun mom. And your kid will always have me when they want some regularity in their life.”
“They could come up in summers,” Kit said.
“And for the holidays.” I kind of liked the idea of being an auntie, having little sprouts around without having to actually do the birthing and raising on my own. “You know, Mom and Dad were pretty fun before she got sick.”
“Really?”
“Not that Mom wasn’t strict. If my bed wasn’t made, or if I left a plate in the sink without rinsing it, she would lecture me for hours on end.”
“Just like you,” Kit said, laughing.
“I don’t lecture.”
“Kit, what are you doing with all of that money? Now, I want you to keep a ledger showing all of your expenditures—”
The Late Bloomers' Club Page 16