by Marra B. Gad
“Nice to meet you,” I said. “I’m Marra, Nette and Zeit’s great-niece. My mother is Nette’s niece and the executor of both of their trusts and wills. As she is unable to travel, I am acting as her proxy.”
Paula eyed me with some suspicion. “But I thought Nette was Jewish,” she said. “I am Jewish.”
“I am too. And I am her great-niece.”
“Well,” she said, “I am the daughter that seniors like Nette and Zeit never had—and sorely need.”
And she was serious. Paula was not accustomed to having a family member participate in her affairs because most of her clients did not have family that would or could participate. In many cases, she ended up working with elderly people who did not have children or any relatives, and so she was given free rein to make decisions. And when I say “free rein,” I do mean completely unfettered and unmonitored access to money, real estate, and personal property. The state, through some sort of “certification” process, had a number of these conservators. And to this day, I have never been able to determine exactly what the certification process entails.
“Well, Nette and Zeit may not have had children,” I said, “but they do have us. And I’m here to make sure we are working together to ensure that their final days are as they should be.”
That Paula had to include anyone in her efforts was an unwelcome surprise for her. That she had to include a type A person who expected to be present for every single conversation was an even more unwelcome one. She was not shy about her feelings. I knew the moment she held up her hand in front of my face to stop me from speaking that we were not on the same page. And that we had very different ideas about how to work respectfully together. There is nothing I loathe more than to have someone push their hand in my face.
I have always been a questioner. My mother says that from the moment I had enough words, I would constantly ask, “But … why?” I wanted to know why the sky would turn different colors and why I could not read another book. I wanted to know why I had to try foods that did not interest me. Why my sister wanted to play with my toys. I wanted to know the why of every single thing.
When I was a child, Rabbi Schaalman taught us that our questions were essential. As I grew older, in Hebrew school, my questions were encouraged. And so, at least at the synagogue, I was free to ask them, even if my teachers in day school did not always welcome them.
When I attended a Catholic high school, the nuns loathed my desire to know why. On my very first day, during my very first religion class, I wanted to know why they believed in the Immaculate Conception. The poor nun, Sister V, who had been charged with teaching my class, did not want to answer me, and she was ill-equipped to deal with the persistence that my parents and Rabbi Schaalman had taught me was my birthright.
“But, Sister,” I said, “I don’t understand why you think Mary was a virgin. She had a husband. And don’t husbands and wives have sex? And why do you kneel and pray to a statue of her? Isn’t that idolatry? And that’s against the Ten Commandments …”
“Miss Gad, that is enough!” Sister V was incensed that I dared to question the belief in the Virgin Mary. That I also dared to mention sex in class was a bridge too far. “You may excuse yourself and go to the dean’s office. Perhaps she will help you to better understand how things are done here and that there are appropriate and inappropriate questions that one can ask.”
The dean was a bit gentler than Sister V, but the message was the same. “We don’t encourage questions about the core of our religion here,” she told me. “Perhaps your rabbi would be a better resource for you.”
“But don’t you know more than he does about your religion?” I asked.
I very quickly realized that Paula appreciated my questions as much as the nuns had. I think I have always been a question-focused being because I want to understand the process. And when it came to Nette’s conservation, I understood nothing; therefore, I had more questions than answers.
On a macro level, I wanted to know what to expect from the process of moving Nette from the state’s custody to ours. Once the state decided to intervene and declared Nette mentally unfit to make her own decisions, all of her care and the decisions around her body, finances, and soul fell under the state’s control. And therefore, Paula’s. I had already decided it would be best to put Nette into my mother’s custody and then move her to a facility in Illinois. That way, my mother and sister would be able to care for her. I needed to understand what the legal processes would be, how long I should expect things to take, what would be expected of me, if I needed an attorney …
And those questions were just the initial ones.
“I’d like to start with my hopeful endgame and work backward from there,” I told Paula. “As my mother is Nette’s closest living relative and she is in Chicago, we would like to begin the process of transferring Nette to a facility there.” I pulled out my list of questions and thought it made sense to get down to business.
“You seem to think you’re in charge of this process. Clearly you don’t understand how this works,” Paula sneered.
“Perhaps I don’t,” I said. “Why don’t you enlighten me? Starting with your job description.”
I bit back. In retrospect, that was probably not the smartest move. But I was tired and overwhelmed and not in the mood for her nastiness when we should have been on the same page.
Once Paula laid out the basics of her job, I moved on to ask for an accounting of what she had done to date, including money she had spent—and then I wanted to come up with an action plan for the future. Like I said: I am type A and I take charge.
Normally, this worked well. I have always held jobs that allowed me to flex my natural leadership. Come on—I produce film and television for a living. Getting to the desired finish line and sorting out where to move next when the playing field gets challenging is how I spend my days. But this time, it turned out, I couldn’t take charge. Paula was in charge of everything. And while she did have an obligation to include me, it was at her discretion.
So when I asked her why there had been no progress made toward finding realtors to sell Nette and Zeit’s house, she simply didn’t answer me. When I asked why she was being paid to make weekly visits to Nette in her care facility but, according to the facility manager, had gone only twice in many months, she again didn’t answer.
She didn’t have to.
“Young lady, you are going to have to trust me,” she said. “I have been doing this for many years, and I know what is best. Period.”
It was the first of many standoffs, and I clearly was not the victor.
We then went to the house to survey Nette’s and Zeit’s belongings and to see Zeit. Zeit turned away from Paula when she walked in, but he smiled at me and accepted my kiss on his cheek. As had happened the last time, he began to weep about how “they” had taken everything from him. Paula, hearing this, became enraged.
“We are doing what is best for you,” she told Zeit sharply, “and that is the end of it.”
No compassion. No empathy. No humanity.
“What do you need, Uncle Zeit?” I asked. “Would you like some magazines? A book, perhaps?”
“I want to see Nette,” he said. “They won’t let me see her, and I don’t know why. They won’t even tell me where she is. And I want my computers back. That would be so nice.”
Zeit had always had a healthy obsession with computers, fueled, I suspect, by his background as an engineer for Lockheed. And in his later years, he had taken to purchasing them, taking them apart, and trying to re-engineer them into something better. That he had no access whatsoever to Nette was bad enough. That his computers had been taken away was too much for him to bear. They were his raison d’être, and without them, he sat. Doing nothing.
And so, for the second standoff of the day, I demanded that Paula allow Zeit to tinker with his computers. I could not understand why Zeit would be denied that pleasure and the distraction of it. We would get into the Nette-relate
d issues privately, out of Zeit’s earshot. When Paula again opened her mouth to refuse, I cut her off, saying, “I’m sure that you want him to be happy. Don’t you?”
The question silenced her, and she relented. Zeit could have his computers. And I had a small victory.
We then went to Nette’s bedroom to gather a few things before heading off to visit her. Now that I had seen her room at the facility and her nearly empty closet there, I wanted to bring some of her clothes and a few photos to make the space a bit more palatable. “I don’t know what you think she needs,” Paula said as we reached Nette’s room. “I’ve already made sure she has clothing. We should just go.”
I opened the door and found that her once pristine bedroom looked as if it had been ransacked, with drawers open and things strewn about the room and floor. Apparently, Paula had packed up Nette’s gorgeous wardrobe, leaving only what she deemed necessary for her to wear. All of her beautiful pantsuits were in bags, heaped upon one another. Her shoes, easily one hundred pairs, were piled in a corner. Later, I would find her ball gowns crammed onto a rack in the filthy garage. I did not know where to find anything in the mess, so I gathered a few photographs of the family to place in her room and we set off.
She was out of her bed when we arrived, and I was able to see her much more clearly than I had the first time I visited.
“What is she wearing?” I exclaimed.
Paula’s idea of clothing meant ill-fitting sweat suits she purchased at Walmart. I was horrified. Nette was wearing a sweatshirt that was two sizes too big and emblazoned with a glittery cat. Nette did like to sparkle. But not this way. And she definitely did not like cats.
“There is absolutely no reason for her to be decked out in the outlandish costumes I found in her closet.”
“But those are her clothes!” I said. “Doesn’t she have the right to wear her own clothing? It won’t cost the state anything!” I looked Nette over again and added, “Presuming you actually spent money on this hideous ensemble. What a waste!”
Paula fell silent.
To make matters worse, she had stopped Nette’s hair and nail appointments, and so my once always perfectly coiffed aunt was left completely unkempt. Her nails were broken and unpolished. Her hair had not been washed in so long that it was greasy, and whoever had been washing her hair was not using her lavender shampoo that left her white hair silver and beautiful. It was yellow. She had chin hairs sprouting everywhere. She was a disaster. Even in her state of diminished capacity, I couldn’t imagine that her appearance didn’t bother her. At least a bit.
I thought I would start at the top, with her hair, and work my way down. I found her hairbrush and came to her side, trying in vain to brush her greasy, limp hair. Nette flinched and grumbled each time I touched her.
“Do you really have to touch me? Why are you touching me?”
“How about a manicure, Aunt Nette?” I couldn’t stand to see her this way. And in a situation that was starting to feel just a bit out of my control, trying to get her a bit tidier felt like something I could accomplish. “Or I can get tweezers and clean up your chin?” I tried to hold up a hand mirror to her face so she might see what I was talking about, but she pushed my hand and the mirror away.
There we were. Paula glowering. Nette grumbling. And me. Trying not to lose my cool with both of them.
“I don’t need to see my face,” Nette said. “I know my own face. And I don’t need you to touch me!”
“This really isn’t necessary,” Paula mumbled under her breath.
“Yes,” I replied. “It is. It is essential. Nette has always been an elegant, well-kept woman, and there is absolutely no reason for her to go from looking like Zsa Zsa Gabor to looking like Eliza Doolittle at the start of My Fair Lady.”
I was insistent. And even with frustrated tears starting to well up in my eyes and my chest starting to hurt from the stress of it all, I continued to try to do what little I could to restore Nette to her former state of elegance, even if she was in a cat-emblazoned sweatshirt.
I now knew that Paula, Zeit and Nette’s “daughter” of a conservator, was criminal in her neglect. I will never understand the indignity and madness of it all. Nette and Zeit had plenty of money in the bank, and that money should have ensured that the rest of their days would be lived out at the same level of quality they had enjoyed before they were separated. And before they were declared incompetent. I also understood that Paula and I were not likely to see eye to eye on anything. As she was in charge, I would have to proceed carefully if I was to have any success at all in my endeavors.
Paula’s default position was that I should “trust her” to do her job. And once I realized she was not going to answer my very reasonable questions, I knew I could not trust her. She refused to account for how she billed my aunt’s estate for her time. She refused to explain why valuable things like furs and jewelry seemed to be absent from my aunt’s closets. She questioned my every move, even though I paid all of my own expenses, and she wanted to know why I insisted upon attending each court date and why, in spite of what was clearly a tense relationship, I insisted upon seeing my aunt once per month.
Unfortunately, she was also in charge of Zeit’s estate. While my mother had a bit of standing there in that she would ultimately be the executor of both Nette’s and Zeit’s wills, there was nothing I could do to intervene on Zeit’s behalf. And it was devastating.
It was one thing to see two people, once the very definition of vibrancy, fade into a version of infirm old age that is the stuff of horror dramas. It was quite another to be almost helpless in trying to make sure their final years were in keeping with the lives—and estates—they had earned. I was forced to stand by and witness what amounted to criminal theft: Nette’s and Zeit’s estates were picked clean by their state-appointed “daughter,” who did not have to account for anything.
Sadly, it was a crime for which there seemed no recourse.
It turned out that I did need to have an attorney on hand and that there are attorneys who specialize in cases like ours. As mine had been referred to me by someone other than the dreadful Paula, I felt free to share with him my concerns about Paula’s behavior and her unwillingness to answer basic questions.
“Surely there is some sort of reporting process,” I said. “Isn’t there? There has to be a board or something to which she must be held accountable.”
“You’re best served not to do that,” said my attorney. “This is a very small community, and she would certainly find out that you were the one who filed the report. Remember that she has the power to punish Nette and Zeit—and you. While your plan to move Nette is perfectly reasonable and should be allowed, Paula can keep her here in California if that is what she wants to do. And that isn’t what you want. Let’s just get through it and leave her alone.”
“But that seems so unfair,” I said. “This all seems patently unfair. To all of us.”
“That may be true. But that is where we are. And this is going to be a marathon. Not a sprint. You should plan on the process with the courts to take a number of months. Perhaps longer than a year.”
“I didn’t realize it would be so onerous,” I replied.
“Oh, yes,” said my attorney. “And remember, even if you can get Paula and the judge to agree to move Nette, Paula will likely retain control over the money, so you’ll have to deal with her for as long as Nette and Zeit are alive.”
Impotence is not a state of mind I had ever experienced until this moment. And it was excruciating.
But upon the advice of my counsel, I did my best to be polite and to limit my questions, neither of which I wanted to do. This did nothing to create comfort with Paula, as she already knew I was suspicious of her work. But I knew it was my only move if I wanted to succeed.
This may have been the first and only time in my life that I felt knowledge is not power, for I was powerless on almost every possible front. And it felt as awful as everything else that was going on.
/> Chapter Thirteen
EVENTUALLY, A RHYTHM SET IN AND I WAS GOING TO San Francisco on a monthly basis to spend time with Nette, Zeit, and the charming Paula. As I had started to focus my career on film finance, I was already in the rhythm of travelling to Los Angeles each month. The old-fashioned girl in me has always believed that doing business face-to-face is best, and those early trips allowed me to build a base of colleagues and friends I hold to this day.
The routine was almost always the same. I would fly from Los Angeles to San Jose, rent a car, and go directly to the hotel. While many people dream of staying regularly at a Four Seasons, few would want to be there for the reason that I was. But the hotel became my safe place, where I knew that everything was beautiful and I would be well cared for. The staff came to know me well, and they knew why I was coming each month. They grew accustomed to seeing me pull up after a visit with Nette, either still crying behind my large, black sunglasses or so tear-stained that it was obvious I had been crying. There was always a gentle pat on my shoulder from the doorman as I passed through and headed up to my room.
And there were always scotch and chocolate in my room from the management.
Of course, the business of my career still had to be managed during these trips, and I would often find myself having to take phone calls from investors or clients between visits and meetings with Nette, Zeit, Paula, and the court. My theater background came in handy during these moments, for I was able to pull myself together—and perform—no matter what the circumstance. During my theater days, when I was doing a fifteen-week run of Little Shop of Horrors, I was once so sick that I passed out during the show. But I didn’t pass out onstage. I waited until intermission. This was no different.
I always let Paula know I was coming one week prior so that we might find a time for both of us to meet either at the house, where Zeit still lived, or at Nette’s care facility. Without fail, I would receive back a note saying that it was a “rough” or “busy” time for her but that she would do her best to find time for me. What she spent so much time doing, I will never know, but I am certain it was not caring for Nette and Zeit.