Honey, Baby, Sweetheart

by Deb Caletti

  “In the reception area downstairs.”

  She took a pad and pen off her desk, headed back to Mr. Fiorio’s. But things were quieting down in Grandfather Wong’s room. God, we’d have to hurry.

  My heart was thudding terribly. I ran back down the hall, looking into open doors. I saw Peach and Lillian backed up inside the room of the two owl faces. Boy, they sure were getting a show today.

  “Run,” I said.

  Lillian clutched her purse. She held on to the arm of her chair with her one good hand. Peach passed Lillian’s bag to me and we flew. I punched the button of the elevator.

  Nothing.

  Punch, punch, punch.

  “Goddamned elevator,” Peach said.

  Nothing.

  I heard Mrs. Wong’s voice. Sorry, she said. So sorry. And the nurse: I’m sure you’ll replace the television.

  “Goddamnit, goddamnit,” Peach said.

  Nothing. And then finally, ding.

  We rushed in, jostling Lillian recklessly over the edge of the elevator floor. Peach pushed the button, shutting the door behind us.

  “Oh, my God,” I said. My underarms were two huge masses of wetness.

  “Let’s hope your mother’s got the front covered.”

  Elevator music played gentle and slow. “The Girl from Ipanema.” It made you feel that every second since the beginning of eternity was passing once more. Five hundred zillion years later the doors opened. A couple waited to get on, the woman clutching her husband’s elbow. They stood pleasantly aside as we left. Another woman carrying a bouquet of flowers was coming through the front doors to visit. No Delores.

  “Head down and go,” I whispered to Peach. There was no sign of my mother or the receptionist. The front doors opened and shushed behind us. When they closed, my body felt so infused with energy, you could have hooked me up to wires and lit up a small city. Chip Jr. stood right outside the doors. He still had his camera around his neck. He took our picture.

  “All clear out here.”

  “Jeez, put that away. We’ve got to move,” I said.

  “You got some pair of wet armpits,” Chip Jr. said helpfully.

  Miz June was waving her arm out the window. “Get in the car! Get in the car!” Peach and I heave-ho’d Lillian in. I felt bad, my wet shirt against her lovely sweater.

  As I backed myself out of the car, Mrs. Wong appeared outside the doors. She looked exhausted, but beaming. She had a scrape mark down her arm, and her glasses, when she peered in the window, were smudged with fingerprints.

  “Grandfather Wong earned his Playboys today!” she said.

  “He was great,” I agreed.

  “He threw his water glass at the television,” she said. She seemed proud of him.

  “I hope he got his Almond Roca anyway,” I said.

  “The large can,” she said. “And Aplets & Cotlets. Left over from Christmas, but he won’t care.”

  Peach settled Lillian with a few of her things, then shut the door. “You know what I just realized? We’re going to need that wheelchair.”

  She was right. “Can’t we stop and get one on the way?” I said. I was thinking about the man with the plaid robe, still waiting to go outside.

  “Sure, there’s a Wheelchairs R Us on every corner.”

  “Put it in the trunk,” Miz June said. “We’ll figure it out later. We’ve got to get in the car. We can’t stand around here in plain sight.” I’m sure Miz June never so much as stole a sugar packet from a restaurant before.

  “No problem. I’ve got some at home,” Mrs. Wong said. Wheelchairs weren’t something you thought that people would have spares of lying around, but okay. “I will bring it and leave it right here.”

  “How do you fold this thing?” I asked.

  “Let me.” Peach expertly collapsed it. “I know all about these from when Henry was sick.” We lifted it into the trunk, laid it on top of our bags. Peach’s chest was heaving in a worrying fashion. That Lincoln trunk was so big it could have held a marching band.

  “Get in! Get in!” Miz June said. She revved the accelerator to make her point. We got in, shut the door. Mrs. Wong sat in the front seat for a moment.

  Whew.

  “Now we just have to wait for the others.” Miz June said.

  “How are you doing, Lillian?” I said. I patted her knee. “Sorry about the stinky shirt.”

  “Apologize to me too,” Chip Jr. said. “I’ve got to sit next to you.”

  “Can’t they hurry up?” Miz June said.

  Our eyes were fixed on the door. I could see Anna Bee, still on watch, standing on the lawn by the Golden Years sign, where she had a good view of any cars that might be arriving.

  My mother came out. She carried a stack of pamphlets in her hands. She held them up in victory. Mrs. Wong got out of the front seat and Mom got in without missing a beat. “I almost bought a room. Hi, Lillian,” she said over her shoulder. “Are you ready?”

  “We’re still waiting for Harold,” I said.

  “He’d better hurry. There’s no telling how soon they’ll discover Lillian is missing,” Miz June said. “I’ve got a bad feeling about this.”

  “It was a brilliant plan, Mrs. Wong,” my mother said. Mrs. Wong, with her smeary glasses, leaned inside my mother’s window. She beamed.

  But my mother should have known better than to say something like that at that moment, before we’d completely made it out of the parking lot. She knew enough about fate to know it had a thing about being taken for granted. Right then, Anna Bee waved her arms from her post. Her eyes looked alarmed. She jogged over the grass. Good thing we picked a bike rider to man that post; she was fast. She jabbed a finger in the air. First the direction of the street, then toward the back of the building.

  “Delores. Oh, hell, Delores. I knew she was coming. I could feel it,” Miz June said. I’d never heard her swear before. Even when something bad happened, like Beauty throwing up on the settee, or Harold spilling grape juice on the carpet, she always had impeccable manners.

  “Around the back,” my mother said.

  Miz June shot down on the accelerator and all of us in the back veered to one side. I looked over my shoulder at the suddenly abandoned Mrs. Wong. With her ever cool head, she walked toward her own car. Peach pushed Lillian down across our laps to hide her. Lillian was counting on us. My heart was starting up again. We had to get out of there.

  “Where do you hide a Lincoln?” Miz June said. We were in the back of the building, near the Dumpsters and service doors. I saw a window-cleaning truck. I wondered if it belonged to that creepy math sub with the soft drink vendetta.

  “Just stay here,” my mother said, although she didn’t sound too sure.

  “Goddamnit, where is that goddamn Harold?” Peach said.

  “Maybe we should leave without him,” Miz June said. “This is too dangerous.”

  “We’ve got maybe five minutes before they find out that Lillian is gone,” my mother said. “Maybe less.”

  “What is taking him so long?” Peach said. Lillian looked worried down there on our laps.

  “Okay, one minute more and we leave, Harold or no Harold,” my mother said.

  I thought of how happy Harold had looked on our grass that morning. He had to go. He’d be heartbroken if he missed this.

  Miz June had turned the car around. We were ready to speed out of there. “Thirty seconds,” my mother said.

  “Delores is riding up that elevator this very minute!” Peach said. “We’ve got to get out of here!”

  “Harold would want us to get Lillian there,” Miz June said. “Above all else.”

  “All right, gang, it’s been a minute,” my mother said. “Hit it.”

  Miz June stepped on the gas. Right then, the service doors opened and some young guy came out to light a cigarette. He watched us as if he saw Lincolns driven wildly by old ladies every day. He probably did.

  We drove around the corner to the front parking lot.

  �
�Wait,” I said.

  Anna Bee had Harold by the elbow. She was running him our way across the parking lot.

  Mom opened the front door and he got in. Anna Bee was breathing heavy. She had leaves and junk all in her hair. “We had to hide in the hedge,” she breathed. “Go! Go!” She slammed the door.

  Miz June hit the gas pedal. I saw Mrs. Wong’s arm, flashing gold jewelry, waving goodbye. I was sad to leave her and Anna Bee behind. But after that day, they would be grateful for a good, long rest.

  “She wouldn’t let me out of her clutches, that nurse,” Harold said. He was panting heavily.

  “Mrs. Connors?”

  “The soon to be ex-Mrs. Connors. I did what we agreed, told her that Mr. Fiorio had started breathing funny. She checked him out, said he was fine and started asking me all kinds of things.”

  “Like what sound Mr. Fiorio had made?” Peach asked.

  “No, like what I did in my spare time. She went to get her pad to take my phone number.”

  “I can vouch for that,” I said. “She came out and almost saw us.”

  “She thought you had money,” Peach said.

  “She had the hots for me. One thing’s for sure,” Harold said and snapped his fingers. “I’ve still got it.”

  “Floor it, Miz June,” my mother said. “They’ve got to know by now that Lillian is gone.”

  It was what Miz June had been waiting to hear all day. She screeched down the street, ran a yellow light.

  Up and over a neighboring hill, and then a crawl through town as we headed toward the beginning of Cummings Road. Once at the other side, we’d have arrived at the freeway entrance.

  “What’s this?” Mom said. I craned my neck over the front seat. The car in front of us had stopped, brake lights shining red. In the other lane, a semi-truck had also stopped at the head of a growing line of cars.

  “Police barrier,” Peach said. “We’re caught.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” Harold said.

  “It’s an eagle,” Chip Jr. said.

  And sure enough, it was. A bald eagle, standing in the middle of Cummings Road, picking at a red scarf that had been thrown to the ground. Just picking at it, as if it had come across something so unexpected that traffic would just have to wait.

  “Honk or something,” Peach said.

  “No,” Chip Jr. said. “That would scare it.”

  “I think that’s the point,” I said.

  “Delores will be on our trail!” Peach said.

  “I don’t know what to do,” Miz June said. “It’s an eagle, after all.”

  “This is nuts,” Mom said.

  “Imagine our plan failed due to a bald eagle in the middle of the road.” Harold sighed as if it had already happened.

  The semi-truck waited patiently. The line behind it was growing long. Cars were stacking up behind us, as well. A few people in cars leaned their heads out of the window to look. Chip Jr. did the same. He stuck his shoulders out and watched.

  “Hurry up, bird,” Miz June said.

  The eagle continued to examine the scarf. People turned off their engines. He had all the time in the world. He had not just stolen an old lady from a rest home.

  Chip Jr. remembered his camera. He stuck the lens out of the window. As he did, the eagle took the scarf in his mouth and lifted up, his wings huge and reaching, the scarf swaying, a joyful banner. The semi-truck driver started to honk in glee, and other drivers did the same. Chip Jr. started to clap, and Miz June gave the Lincoln horn a few beeps of celebration. As I’ve said, you never know what you’re going to see on Cummings Road.

  The cars started up again and we were on our way. We were filled with the giddiness of discovery and the freedom it can bring. Then, we had no idea that time was against us. We did not know that our mission required speed and the most direct route. We were not thinking big thoughts—how fate has its own reasons, how time can turn without warning into something horribly selfish, stingy. Instead Chip Jr. tore a flat stick of gum in half and handed me a piece, and Peach and Harold argued about whether or not he could roll down the window. You could still see that red scarf, getting smaller and smaller in the distance.

  “Mrs. Wilson-now-Mrs. Thrumond would be jealous enough to spit,” Peach said. She kept taking a compact mirror out of her purse and reapplying her lipstick as if she were just about to be apprehended on America’s Most Wanted. Lillian had fallen asleep. Chip Jr. took a picture of her with her mouth hanging open. Some old guy was grooving on the radio.

  “I just love Tony Bennett,” Miz June said.

  Okay, Tony Bennett was grooving on the radio. It had been switched on as the energy for conversation had finally dwindled. We talked endlessly at first, teasing Lillian about finally being with her Charles, as she beamed and smiled and made little croaks of words and animated hand gestures as if she was coming slowly out of a long sleep. We each recounted our escapades at Golden Years (“Considering the level of care, it is actually very reasonably priced,” my mother had said), talked books (“I must confess that every year at Christmastime I read passages of Little Women aloud to Beauty,” Miz June said), and the pros and cons of donating one’s organs (“I’ll donate my organ and my old saxophone, too,” Harold had chuckled). But now the only ones talking were Peach and Chip Jr., who’d been infused with sugar energy after we’d stopped at a 7-Eleven for Slurpees and a bathroom break.

  “Think about it,” Chip Jr. said. “We’re not seeing the light from right now. Stars are really pictures of the past. That light was coming to us from the time of cavemen, or before.” He was getting worked up.

  “That’s amazing,” Peach agreed.

  “It’s weird, don’t you think? There is all this drama going on in space all the time. Explosions and stars dying, and we’re just down here doing things like deciding what drink to have with our Quarter Pounder Meal.”

  “Just pulling weeds and clipping our toenails,” Peach said.

  “Harold, would you watch the elbows?” my mother said. He was eating his Slurpee with the little spoon end of the straw. I could see that my mother’s jaw was tight, the way it got when she descended into crankiness. I’m not sure if it was the long car ride, or if worry had made her irritable. Back at 7-Eleven she’d had to help Peach get Lillian to the bathroom.

  “God, Ruby, I don’t want to get old,” she’d said after they’d emerged. Peach was as chipper as ever, but Mom looked worried, as if the truth of Lillian’s deterioration had hit home. If anything happened to Lillian, if it didn’t work out at Charles Whitney’s, she would be the one who would feel ultimately responsible.

  “You’re the one that’s shifting around every two seconds,” Harold said.

  “I’m trying to avoid your constant swirling of the Slurpee cup.”

  “Children,” Miz June scolded.

  We all retreated to our own worlds for a while. The car radio still played, but no one spoke. Mom stared out the window, and so did I. I don’t know what she was seeing, but I was imagining phone booths, all of the phone booths that were out there just beyond the window. I could hear the dial tone, and then the rolling clank of coins dropping in a telephone slot. And then there would be Travis’ voice. I could make sure he was okay. His voice would fill the need I had to hear it. What had happened that night at Johnson’s Nursery was the most painful, shameful event of my life, and I’d like to be able to say that I never thought of him again afterward. But I did. He had a way of creeping in my mind, just like we had crept into that dark house. He walked around inside, took things that didn’t belong to him.

  “Maybe we should think about finding a place to stay,” Miz June said. “Everyone is getting tired.”

  “It’s only six o’clock,” my mother said.

  “It’s been an eventful day,” Miz June said. “And we need to call Mrs. Wong to see what’s happened at Golden Years since we left.”

  “There might be a warrant out for our arrest,” Peach said. She sounded hopeful.

&
nbsp; “We haven’t done anything illegal,” my mother said. “Not exactly. One doctor declared Lillian incompetent, but that doesn’t mean another will. Lillian can give Charles power of attorney.”

  “The girls will fight that.”

  “I’m turning off at the next exit,” Miz June said.

  “We’re not even over the Oregon border,” my mother said. She sighed. Miz June took that as an okay, and she put on her turn signal a good half mile before the exit.

  “Look, a Denny’s!” Harold said. For a chef, he sure wasn’t fussy about food.

  “Senior meals,” Miz June said.

  “I love menus with pictures,” Peach said.

  The Denny’s was right by one of those motels with the little bear in a nightcap and pajamas on its sign. Mom went to check availability and prices of rooms and to call Mrs. Wong and Charles. I wished I were the one on that phone, I admit it. Instead I followed the old people into the restaurant, and we got a table. As if we hadn’t had enough closeness for one day, we sat on one of those curved booths, with Lillian and her wheelchair on one end. It took Peach a really long time to scoot around to her end of the vinyl bench. The table was sticky on the bottom of my arm, and it smelled smoky in there. An older woman with a coffeepot in one hand and a water pitcher in the other came to our table. CINDY her name tag said, a name much too cheerful for her disposition. I bet she was wearing someone else’s apron. Cindy had lost her smile probably twenty years ago.

  “Coffee,” Cindy said. It was probably a question.

  Harold held up one hand. “Keeps me awake.”

  She poured some for Peach, and then disappeared again, the bow of her apron looking pert and cheerful.

  “The picture of happiness,” Miz June said. She’d noticed too. She already had her glasses out and was staring down her nose at the large pictures of baked potatoes and breaded chicken steaks. Peach was pointing things out to Lillian, who was awake and looking chipper. Harold was on the breakfast page.

  The couple next to us ate without talking to each other, which is one of the most depressing public sights, if you ask me, right up there with cars abandoned in people’s yards. Two tables away, a young couple with three small children also didn’t speak—he concentrated on his meal as she wiped the chin of one child and fed the baby in the high chair, and tried to get the other to stop staring at us. When Mom arrived, she looked much happier. Her cheeks were rosy from the evening air and her eyes were relaxed.