When her mother’s Alzheimer’s had been diagnosed nine years ago, Thea did some research on the disease. But as time passed, she came to rely more and more on George to keep her informed. He thought of himself as somewhat of an expert on the disease, running a support group, and spending hours on the Internet looking for any medical breakthroughs. Thea talked to him nearly every day, but as her mother’s condition deteriorated, Thea found it more and more difficult to make the trip home to Rockridge.
Her last visit was at Christmas, and George assured her then that there had only been a slight decline in Mother’s condition. He’d seemed so confident that she was fairly stable, even though Thea thought she’d seen glimpses of a bit more memory loss on her mother’s part.
Then, on the way to the airport for Thea’s return flight to Los Angeles, Beryl commented that she thought George was kidding himself—Mother was clearly getting worse. “Don’t you think we should start talking to him about finding a home for her?” she asked.
Thea had heard questions like this from Beryl before. “No, not yet,” she said. “George isn’t ready. He tells me she’s still got plenty of lucid moments—”
Beryl scoffed, “I haven’t seen any of those since I can’t remember when.”
Rising to George’s defense, Thea retorted, “Ah, I think I saw a couple of those moments this past week. They only seem to happen when she’s with George.”
Beryl took her eyes off the road for a moment to stare at Thea. “You know,” she said, “if anything happens to George, we’ll have to put her in a home right away. I know I’m not up to taking care of her.” She turned her attention back to her driving before adding, “And I’m betting neither are you. Right?”
Thea hadn’t answered her then, because she hadn’t known what to say. She still didn’t.
Now George was gone, and it was no longer a hypothetical question. Could she be the caregiver? She was fairly certain Beryl would be true to her word and push to put Mother in a home ASAP—so she could get on with her much more important life. Aunt Dorothy would probably volunteer to be the caregiver, but Thea knew her aunt was simply not physically capable of taking care of Mother more than a few hours at a time.
Thea was uncomfortable with the prospect of packing her mother off to a home so precipitately. Mother was already disoriented enough by the loss of George; Thea had seen her looking at some of the male visitors at the house as if she were expecting them to morph into her erstwhile husband. How much worse would she be if she were abruptly moved into a strange environment? That bothered Thea, and she knew it would go against George’s wishes as well.
She had a vague memory of a night a year or so ago when, over a couple of glasses of single-malt Scotch, George had told her he lay awake at night worrying about the fate of her mother if anything should happen to him. In fact, he had gotten quite mawkish. “I just don’t want her shipped off to a home,” he’d said, eyes misting up. “At least not until she’s in the final stages.”
“Don’t worry, George,” Thea had soothed. “I’ll never let that happen.” It had been easy to make the promise. Back then it had seemed so unlikely that George would die before her mother.
But now he was gone, and she had no idea if she was capable of carrying out his wishes. Because she knew in her heart that George would want her to be the caregiver. Thea had never told him she would be, but she knew he trusted her more than Beryl. Unfortunately, George had been so blinded by his love for Mother that he never realized Thea did not share the same feelings.
Yes, she loved her mother, but her love was only the palest approximation of George’s. His love was unconditional, patient, endlessly forgiving. Thea’s was the dutiful love of a child for a parent. Growing up, she had reserved her more genuine love and devotion for her father and Aunt Dorothy. In Thea’s mind, Mother’s harsh, demanding nature had earned her only the most grudging, perfunctory affection. Period.
So if Thea were to become the caregiver, it would be out of a sense of duty—and the promise she had made to George to not ship her mother off to some sterile, dead-end institution. She was afraid that she would be trapped into becoming the caregiver; in fact, she had expected it from the moment Aunt Dorothy had called her the day before. Was it only yesterday that her life was so simple, so ordinary?
She had eaten a late lunch and was still in the kitchen clearing away the dishes. Out the window over the sink she had watched her two black Labradors, Cheech and Chong, chasing each other around the swimming pool. Within a few minutes her young neighbor, Chrissie Taylor, would be showing up for their usual Monday afternoon horseback ride along the eucalyptus-bordered trails.
When the phone rang, she glanced at the Caller ID and was a bit surprised to see ‘George Prentice’ on the readout. She and George talked pretty much every day, but it was usually in the evening when George had Mother settled down for the night.
“Hey, George,” she answered cheerily. “What’s up?” Down the slope, past the boisterous dogs, she spotted Chrissie’s shiny new 16th birthday-present SUV hybrid chugging up the canyon road to her house, and added, “I can’t talk long, I’ve got somebody coming.”
“Dorothea.” Not George. It was the voice of her father’s sister, Aunt Dorothy, and her tone was dire.
“Auntie D.! What’s wrong?”
Aunt Dorothy’s voice cracked. “There’s been an accident.”
“What, a car accident?”
“No. It’s George…he fell off the overlook at Rivercliffs.”
An image sprang into Thea’s memory: a high, rocky promontory above the river. No one could have survived a fall from its heights. “Is he…?” Throat choking with emotion, she couldn’t finish the sentence.
Aunt Dorothy’s voice was strained and flat. “I’m afraid he’s dead.”
Not George! Not George! Thea reached out to grab the edge of the kitchen counter to steady herself. “What about Mother?” she managed to get out.
“Your mother was there, but she’s all right.”
Thea heard Chrissie’s little SUV pull into her driveway and, seconds later, a car door bang shut. She straightened up to pull herself together. “Hold on just a minute,” she said into the phone as she walked to the side door and opened it to the blonde teenager, who was just ending a call to someone on her cell phone headset. The dogs had come running, so Thea gestured to Chrissie that she should stay in the yard and play with them. The girl gave her a puzzled look, then turned her attention to the jumping, leaping canines.
With the door closed, Thea apologized to her aunt for the interruption. Then she took a deep breath and asked her for the details about George’s death.
According to Aunt Dorothy, George had taken Mother out for a walk on the Rivercliffs path, a wide ribbon of asphalt running through a local park that bordered the Ridge River. The path was popular with joggers, bikers and walkers, but on a cold, blustery March day it had been deserted.
The police surmised that George and Mother had stopped at the overlook point above the river, where the cliff was about fifty feet high. According to his physician, George had been suffering from a sinus infection and the medication he was taking sometimes caused dizziness, so the police speculated that he might have lost his balance and fallen over the guardrail.
There were no witnesses, but two calls had come in to 911: the first was from a pay phone—and so garbled that the operator thought it was a prank—but the second call was from an irate woman who lived near the park and called to complain about a car horn honking incessantly. That had been Mother’s doing; she had managed to get back to the car and was sitting in it, honking the horn with a fury. When the police came, she couldn’t tell them her name and could only point to an ID label sewn into her coat.
“Luckily, George was so thorough,” Aunt Dorothy explained. “He had put my phone number in addition to his on the ID. When they called, I was there within minutes and was able to calm her down. Then I asked them where George was, and it was only then tha
t the police realized he was missing.”
Her aunt added that Mother pouted and seemed put out that George wasn’t there to take care of her, but after a few minutes of prodding about her husband’s whereabouts, she waved her hand in the vague direction of the river—and the overlook. The police found George right away—within a quarter hour—but it was far too late to save him.
“We’re at the house now,” Aunt Dorothy said. “I asked the police if I could please bring her home, as she was growing more and more agitated with their questions. She’s fairly calm now, and the neighbors have all been very helpful, but…”
“I’ll get there as soon as I can,” Thea told her.
When she hung up, Thea told Chrissie what had happened, and the teenager stepped into the breach. After one phone call to her dad, she promised Thea that they would take the horses to a nearby stable and bring the dogs to their house. Relieved, Thea called the airlines and got a seat on the red-eye to Chicago.
Beryl lived in the city, so she met Thea’s plane, and in the breaking dawn they drove the two hours to Rockridge, the small Midwestern manufacturing city that was once their home. Tired and wrapped in their own grief, they talked little during the drive.
Thea sighed, shifted her nearly frozen buttocks on the wall, and came back to the present. She realized there was something else bothering her about what Jerry Anderson had told her. It didn’t sit well with her that he thought Mother had pushed George in an Alzheimer’s-driven rage. Thea knew that Mother had sometimes struck out at him, much like a child having a tantrum, and that those blows sometimes left marks.
But shoving George hard enough to send him over a guardrail and to leave bruises through his overcoat? It seemed so unlikely. His tenderness and patience gave him a special ability to calm Mother down, so her snits were over in a matter of moments—hardly enough time to muster the overwhelming fury it would have taken to push a 200-pound man over a cliff.
Something else was tugging at Thea’s consciousness, too—but she couldn’t flush it out. Something that didn’t add up about George and Mother being out there at that overlook.
Her long-ago training as an investigative reporter seemed to be stirring. But she hadn’t used those skills and her instinct to find the truth in such a long time, was she kidding herself into thinking that maybe there was more to this situation than met the eye?
Hours later, the last visitor had gone and Aunt Dorothy, Beryl and Thea were sitting in the breakfast nook sharing a pot of chamomile tea. They had just put Mother to bed, and it hadn’t been an easy job.
“Okay,” Beryl said, giving them both pointed looks. “I hope the two of you agree with me that Mother needs to go into a nursing home just as soon as we can find a place to take her. That policeman today, what he said makes it even more urgent.”
Thea shot a glance to her aunt. “I’ve been thinking…” she said, not quite ready to complete her thought.
Beryl groaned. “No, don’t tell me.” She gave her head a barely-disturb-the-coiffeur shake. “I don’t want to hear it.”
Aunt Dorothy looked at Thea and held her gaze for several long moments. “What is it, Dorothea?” she said. “What have you been thinking?”
Thea smiled at her aunt’s use of her full name. She and Thea’s long-dead father were the only ones who ever used that name. She had been named for her aunt, but growing up had answered to Dottie and then later, Dot. She hated both.
“Auntie D.,” she began and then, glancing at her sister, added, “Bear, I want you to support me in this, too.”
Another groan from Beryl. “Like my opinion matters.”
Thea sighed. “Well, it does.” Even to her own ears she sounded false, defensive.
“Huh!” Beryl snorted. “That’s a first.”
Aunt Dorothy reached out and patted the back of Beryl’s hand. “Let’s just hear what Dorothea has to say before we start criticizing her.”
Beryl rolled her eyes. “All right, Auntie D.,” she said. “It’s just that I have a pretty good idea what’s coming.”
“You’re probably right,” Thea countered. She took a deep breath, exhaled. “I don’t want to put Mother in a home immediately,” she said. “I promised George I wouldn’t—”
“What!” Beryl interjected. “When did you do that?”
Thea shrugged. “I don’t remember now—a year or so ago.”
“First I’ve heard of it,” Beryl muttered.
“I never dreamed it was a promise I’d have to keep,” Thea retorted.
“I’m sure George never intended you to,” Beryl said. “She’s gone downhill a lot in the last year, and we have to think of what’s best for her.”
Thea didn’t respond, but reached for the teapot to refill her cup and then held out the pot to pour for the others. Beryl shook her off, but Auntie D. moved her cup toward Thea’s outstretched arm.
“I mean,” Beryl went on, “she’ll get better care than any one of us can provide. Don’t you see that?”
Thea finished pouring and exchanged a glance with her aunt. “You might be right, Bear. But they’ll all be strangers. Mother doesn’t do well around strangers.”
Beryl sighed. “Well, I can’t do it. I need to be in Chicago. My divorce…it’s, well, you know.” She circled her wrist in the air, the gold bracelets jangling like small bells.
“We do know, Bear,” Thea said, smiling at her younger sister and then including her aunt in the gaze. “Your divorce is getting complicated—”
Beryl tapped her manicured nails on the side of her teacup. “Don’t patronize me, Dot.”
Thea ignored her. “Look, what I’m proposing is that I take over the caregiver role—for the time being, anyway. If I can’t hack it, well, then we’ll have to see. I don’t know if I’ll be anywhere near as good or even as protective as George was, but I’m willing to give it a try.”
Beryl opened her mouth, but Aunt Dorothy startled them by slapping her flattened hand on the table. “That’s it!” she exclaimed. “Something’s been bothering me about George and Daphne being out there at the overlook.”
Thea felt an electric rush up her spine. “What?” she asked, her voice hushed. Did Auntie D. share her concern for whatever it was that was bothering Thea about that day?
Aunt Dorothy’s face was bright and animated as she looked from one niece to another before settling on Thea, who was staring at her with eager anticipation.
“Why did George take Daphne out there? It was such a horrible day—cold and windy. Ordinarily, he would have taken her to the mall for a walk on such an inclement day.”
Thea could practically feel the synapses in her brain firing up. Yes, this is what had been pecking away at her thoughts ever since Auntie D. had told her about the “accident.” George was so protective of Mother; he would never have exposed her to such bad weather—not without a good reason. But what reason? She could sense her reporter’s instincts kicking in, her thoughts racing ahead of the facts, her gut telling her to leap into the unknown.
“Maybe he went there to meet someone,” Thea burst out. “Isn’t that what you’re thinking, Auntie D.?”
Her aunt cocked her head, considering. “It’s poss—”
“What!” Beryl cut her short. “Oh, please, you two! Are you trying to make some big mystery of this? Mother shoved him! Maybe she didn’t mean to, but she did it. She was the only other one there. It’s so obvious, let’s just get past this and deal with it.”
“Deal with it!” Thea exploded. “This is our mother we’re talking about. She may not have been June Cleaver, but she sure as hell deserves more consideration than shipping her off to some uncaring ‘facility’ just because you don’t want to be bothered!”
Beryl scowled at Thea. “You b—” she started to say, but was cut off by Aunt Dorothy.
“Stop it, you two!” She took a deep breath. “Dorothea, did Jerry Anderson say that the police are continuing the investigation into George’s death?”
Thea shook her he
ad. “No. He seems to think they’ve got it all wrapped up.” She paused before adding, “That really bothers me.”
“That’s quite typical of the Rockridge police department,” Aunt Dorothy commented. “They’re content with the obvious.”
“Well, I’m not,” Thea said. “I think something else might be going on here.”
Beryl let out a groan. “I can’t believe this.”
Thea ignored her sister. “Do you think there might be a political aspect to this?” she asked her aunt. “George had his fingers in a lot of pies in this town. He might have made some enemies.”
“Enemies!” Beryl sputtered. “What, are you crazy? This is Rockridge, not L.A. People don’t kill each other over politics.”
Responding to Thea’s question, Aunt Dorothy said, “I don’t know. But I doubt the police will do anything more.”
“Well, somebody should dig a little deeper into this,” Thea exclaimed. She could feel her aunt’s eyes on her, prodding her, pushing her thoughts into an area she wasn’t certain she wanted to go. “Auntie D.,” she protested. “Not me. It’s been years since I’ve done any investigative reporting, not since college.”
“But you’ve never lost the instinct for it, have you, Dorothea?” Her words cut straight through to Thea’s core.
“I don’t know…” she began.
Beryl broke in. “I thought you gave up on your Woodward and Bernstein fantasy a long time ago.” Her tone was snide, biting. “You did all those interviews with big stars like Madonna and Arnold Schwarzenegger, weren’t you satisfied with that?”
Thea picked up her cup. The tea was lukewarm but she sipped it anyway.
“You can’t do it,” Beryl continued. “This is a small town. People will know what you’re doing; they’ll gossip about you, say you think you know so much better than they do. And nobody will talk to you about it—they’ll shun you.”
What Has Mother Done? Page 2