Thea wracked her brain trying to remember his first name. Liddle, she knew, was his last name. His wife, Char, had been a frequent visitor to the house in the past few days. Ron...Rich...something with an “R,” she was pretty certain. “Ah...it’s Ray, isn’t it?” she asked as they made their way toward a break in the hedge that separated the two houses.
“That’s right,” he responded. “And you’re...”
“Thea.”
“Sorry.” He glanced back at her. “I guess I’m just a bit, uh...disconcerted by this whole situation.”
“I understand,” Thea replied. “I’m more than a little disconcerted myself.” Now there was an understatement. Then, as the thought occurred to her, “Don’t you have a security system?”
“Yes, we do,” he said. Pushing forward through the hedge, he used his arm to hold back some errant branches for Thea to pass through. “But, Charmian, my wife, doesn’t like to arm it except when the house is unoccupied. There’ve been too many problems with the children and false alarms; the police department notified us that any further occurrences could result in fines.”
“How do you think my mother got in?”
He dipped his head. “I may have left the back door unlocked. Ordinarily, I check it before I go to bed, but tonight,” he rubbed a hand across his forehead, “I was tired. I’d spent most of the evening reading a very long, very boring brief.”
“Oh, yes, I remember now, you’re an attorney,” Thea interjected. Just her luck Mother would pick the home of a lawyer to break into. Would he be litigious and try to sue her for not properly supervising a parent with advanced Alzheimer’s?
As if in answer to her unspoken question, he spoke as she proceeded through the hedge, “So I have to take responsibility for not securing our home in the proper manner.”
Thea wondered if they’d start putting the alarm on after tonight’s unnerving experience. “George kept telling me he meant to get an alarm installed, he just never got around to it,” Thea said. At Ray’s sharp-eyed glance, she added, “Maybe I should do that now.”
Motion-detector lights came on as they entered the Liddles’s yard. “By the way,” Thea said, trying to make her tone as casual as possible, “did you happen to see anyone else in our backyard when you came through before?”
He stared at her. “What are you saying?”
Thea didn’t want to add to the strain this man was already feeling. “I don’t know,” she quickly amended, “I thought I heard someone when I went out looking for my mother and then I got knocked down.” Seeing the immediate shock on his face, she backtracked, “But I might have been mistaken. I may have just tripped over something on the ground.”
“Probably teenagers,” he muttered as they approached the back porch of his house, but it was clear he didn’t think any such thing. Thea guessed he was probably telling himself something along the lines of ‘like mother, like daughter.’
The house next door had been built in approximately the same era as George’s house, in the early years of the twentieth century, but was more of an undistinguished, square-block architectural style. Although George’s house had been updated and modest improvements made, the Liddle family had made significant changes, such as knocking out walls and completely modernizing the kitchen, which Thea had followed Ray into.
There were four Liddles: Ray, who, as the man of the house, had been the one designated to summon Thea; Char, the wife and mother, who had thus far been the kind of neighbor who brought vegetable soup and sugar cookies, but was now looking at Thea with eyes filled with consternation and pleading; and, two children, Brittany, who appeared to be about four and, Mike, somewhere around seven. The kids were sitting on stools at a dark-veined marble island in the kitchen having milk and graham crackers. They didn’t look frightened, but they had those flat, cautious eyes children get whenever adults do something they don’t understand. Char was hovering over them, tugging on the belt of her pink chenille bathrobe.
The kitchen was all sleek and upscale with maple cabinets and built-in stainless steel appliances, but its high-tech perfection had an overlay of anxiety that lingered in the glances that Char and Ray sent to each other. Evidently, some kind of signal had passed between husband and wife, because Char stepped forward to lead Thea up the back stairs to the children’s playroom, and Ray went to sit down with his children at the island, ruffling his son’s red hair that matched his own.
Maybe, Thea surmised, Char thought Ray, even in spite of the fact that he was an obviously successful attorney, would not have the diplomatic skills required to deal with the little old lady intruder who had awakened them all in the middle of the night. Thea wondered if she had enough of those skills herself.
Char whispered apologetically to Thea as they mounted the stairs, “I’m really sorry about this. I didn’t know what to do. Daphne acted as if she didn’t know me at all. And Ray, well, I’m afraid he upset her a little bit.”
Ah, that explained why Ray had been sent out of the house to summon her, Thea realized. To keep him away from Mother.
At the top of the stairs, Char turned to the left. “She’s in here,” she said. The door was shut, and she opened it with a tentative twist of the antique pewter door handle.
Mother sat tailor-fashion in her white-and-yellow-flowered flannel nightgown in the middle of the playroom, systematically going through a large, blue toy chest. She’d take out each toy—action figures, dolls, plastic puzzle pieces—and study them for a moment as if she were trying to ascertain what its function was, and then carelessly toss it away. On either side of her were piles of discarded toys, some of them looking a bit battered from her throwing them around.
So engrossed was she in this pillaging of the Liddle children’s possessions, she hadn’t even bothered to look up when Thea stepped into the doorway. Standing there, Thea realized she didn’t have the vaguest idea of what was the best way to get Mother out of the house.
A hissing sound caught Thea’s attention. In the corner stood a large, carpet-covered climbing tree, and on top of it was one very pissed-off white cat. “I’ve never seen Snowy so frightened,” Char Liddle whispered in Thea’s ear. “She won’t come down. I wonder if your mother did something to her.” She glanced up at Thea as if to apologize for the implication.
“Oh, I hope not,” Thea said. But she knew that Mother had a lifelong hatred of cats, so it was a distinct possibility.
Taking a step into the room, she was surprised when Mother looked up and grinned ingenuously at her. “Oh, Dot,” she said, “I’m glad you’re here. I can’t find your Barbie doll anywhere. I’ve looked through all this junk and it’s just not here.”
“My Barbie?” Thea nearly choked on the words, then stopped herself from saying more. God forbid that Mother should think she was doing anything wrong. Skirting the mounds of tossed-aside toys, she approached her mother and knelt down next to her. “I really appreciate you looking for it.” She patted Mother gently on the shoulder. “But I don’t think you’re going to find it in there,” she said, trying to seem as nonchalant as she could.
Mother was about to toss away a Harry Potter action figure when she paused, yanking her hand back. “Where is it?” she asked, her eyes narrowing ever so slightly.
“Uh, I think Beryl has it,” Thea ad-libbed. “She wanted to play with it, so I let her borrow it.”
Mother frowned. “Oh, you shouldn’t have done that.” She shook her head as if Thea was the stupidest child in the world. “You know how she is with your toys. You’ll never get it back.”
Thea nodded. At least Mother’s memories of her childhood were still on the mark. “I know.” She paused for dramatic effect. “That’s why I need your help to get it away from her.”
Mother tossed aside the Hobbit. “Ask your father,” she said, her voice flat with indifference.
Damn, Thea thought. She hadn’t seen that one coming. “Oh, Daddy’s not home right now,” she improvised. “He’s gone out to get us some ice cre
am.”
Mother’s head swiveled to face Thea. “What kind?”
“What kind do you want?”
Mother turned away, a maddening, coy smile on her face. “You know what my favorite is.”
“Chocolate, right?”
Mother chuckled. “No, you silly, it’s not chocolate, it’s—” Her face went blank, and it was clear that she could not remember any other flavors. This obviously upset her, as she suddenly began picking up and throwing toys out of the chest with wild abandon.
“Vanilla!” Thea crowed out as if she had just won a prize. “I remember now! Your favorite is vanilla.”
Mother gave her a sidelong look. “I don’t know.”
“How about vanilla and chocolate?”
Suspicion narrowed Mother’s eyes. “I thought you said your father was getting the ice cream. How will he know what kind to get?”
Oops. Walked right into that one. “Ah...well, he’s going to call so we can tell him what we want.”
Mother just stared at her.
“That means we need to go home to get his call.”
Mother tossed her head. “No, you tell him. I’m going to stay here.”
Aarrgh! “I’m sure he’ll only want to talk to you.”
Mother let out one of her “weight of the world” sighs. “Oh, you’re probably right.” She rolled her eyes. “I don’t know what that man would do without me.” She extended her arm as if Thea were her very own lady-in-waiting.
As obedient and solicitous as an old family retainer, Thea helped her up. Then, continuing the bowing and scraping—which Mother seemed to revel in—she escorted her out of the room, beginning a slow-motion descent down the back stairs past a frozen-faced Char, a grim Ray, and the watchful eyes of the children waiting in the kitchen.
With a glazed and starry-eyed expression on her face, Mother held her head high as if she were posing for paparazzi. Thea could have sworn she was channeling Gloria Swanson in that final scene on the staircase in “Sunset Boulevard.” Any second she expected to hear, “All right, Mr. DeMille, I’m ready for my close-up.”
CHAPTER 17
Mother was quite docile when Thea got her home, like a wind-up toy running down. She got her ice cream, but only wanted a scoop each of chocolate and vanilla. When she was finished, she allowed herself to be led up the stairs to her bedroom.
Feeling as if she were living out some bizarre role-reversal, Thea reached for the covers to tuck her mother in.
“My li’l Dottie,” Mother murmured, a contented smile on her face and her voice heavy with sleep, “You always were my good girl.”
Thea flinched. Yes, she always was the good girl, so why the hell didn’t her mother tell her that when she was a child and it mattered to her? Looking down at her mother’s sleep-slackened face, the familiar bitterness flooded through her, until she realized that all those old battles would never be won and the old scars would never be healed. So what was the point in dragging them into her consciousness? She’d never had the mother she wanted, and now she had been roped in to being a parent to that same inadequate mother. And she’d taken on this role with her eyes wide open, so there was no room for her to complain.
In her Psych 101 class at Northwestern, when she’d read the description of the Narcissistic Personality, tumblers had fallen into place in her mind: grandiose, lacks empathy, exploitative. Those words described the behavior she had seen from her mother all her life. Even George had—very reluctantly—agreed with Thea on that. But Mother was what she was. There was no changing her. And the Alzheimer’s was only making her worse.
Sighing for all those long-ago, yet still rapier-sharp childhood slights, Thea plopped herself down in the rocking chair in the corner of the room, wrapped herself in an afghan, and watched her mother sleep.
Tomorrow she would make a call about getting a security system installed. Mother might still get out, but if she did, she would rouse her daughter—and probably half the neighborhood. Thea couldn’t think of what else to do. She couldn’t bear the thought of using restraints on her mother or locking her in. She had guilt pangs every time she put her dogs on the leash, so how could she do anything that would restrict her own mother? She hoped that maybe the support group would have some ideas to help her deal with this nighttime wandering.
Dozing a couple of times during the night, Thea would then come back to consciousness with a jerk of her head. Needing to stay awake, she forced herself to go over the encounter she’d had with the unseen intruder.
She plumbed her memory for the sensations she had felt just before and just after she was knocked down. She’d heard a kind of rustle or low chuckle and then the intruder had come up behind her, shoving her violently to the ground. She shivered when she realized that it was probably a very similar motion to what had been inflicted on George when he had gone over Rivercliffs. Except for the fact that George had been facing his attacker and had known exactly who hated him enough to kill him. Thea really had no clue as to the identity of tonight’s intruder. One thing she could be fairly certain of, however, was their sex; Thea believed it was a man. The arms had hit her at a high angle and the running footsteps she had heard sounded weighty. Of course, it could always be a husky woman, but there was something about the thrust of the hands and arms in her back that made her think it was a man. The footsteps had reminded her of someone trudging in heavy boots and on the back of their heels, which was also something she associated with a man.
And in that case, George’s crazy cousin Bud came immediately to mind. Had he been hanging around outside pining away for the house he thought was so rightfully his? Or had there been something more devious to his nighttime surveillance? Was he plotting a break-in? An attack? Was it possible that he even had a key? After all, his family had lived in this house at one time, and it was quite likely that the locks were original equipment.
Thea added “changing the locks” to her list of things to do tomorrow. Of course, how she was going to be able to function with only a couple of hours of sleep was another question entirely.
A loving hand touched her face and a sweet, tender voice called “Dorothea.” She opened her eyes and saw Aunt Dorothy standing over her, smiling at her with the hazel-eyes that reminded Thea so much of her father. Jumping up, she stared at her mother’s empty bed. “Oh, my God! Where is she?” she cried, tripping over the afghan that had fallen to the floor.
Reaching out a hand to steady her niece and the other to pick up the afghan, Aunt Dorothy said, “She’s downstairs eating breakfast.”
“Oh.” Thea turned to stare at her. “What are you doing here?”
Aunt Dorothy shrugged. “Well, I got a call around 6:30 this morning from your neighbor, Ethel Driesen. She told me about Daphne going into the Liddles’s house last night. I thought I’d better get over here first thing, and see what I could do to help you.”
Thea groaned and rubbed a hand over her eyes. “The jungle drums have been working overtime, I guess.”
Aunt Dorothy laughed. “That’s one way of putting it, I suppose.” She put an arm around Thea. “Come downstairs and have some breakfast, and then you can decide what you need to do next. Although my guess would be that you could use a few hours more of sleep.”
“Can’t do it,” Thea protested, following her aunt out of the room. “Too much to do today.”
“Like what?” A voice came from the bottom of the back stairs. Annie stood there looking up at the two of them.
Thea let her aunt go down the stairs in front of her. That way Auntie D. couldn’t see the unspoken question that was written all over Thea’s face as she approached her friend: What are you doing here?
Annie, who appeared to be playing the part of Loyal Best Friend, said, “Your aunt called me right after she heard from Ethel Driesen. She knew I’d want to be here for you.”
And then she went through the motions of offering a hug to Thea, which to Thea felt like the hugging version of an “air kiss.” Totally phony. Wha
t was Annie up to?
As Annie stepped back, she gave Auntie D. an unseen, calculating look that instantly told Thea what her game was: Annie was acting as if there was no estrangement with Thea for the benefit of an audience of one. She was afraid Thea’s aunt would catch on to the rift between the two friends and press Thea to tell her the reason. And Annie didn’t want even one other person—especially someone as sharp as Auntie D.—knowing about the suspicions she was concealing about her daughter Heather. So she was willing to put on a show, to act as if everything was just hunky-dory between them. What a sham! But, for the time being, Thea was willing to play along.
“Coffee. I need coffee,” Thea said, turning away. “Preferably in an I.V.”
Annie gave her an appraising look. “How much have you slept?”
“It doesn’t matter.” Thea brushed past her and entered the kitchen. Her mother was sitting in the breakfast nook, happily scarfing up bacon, eggs, and toast covered with purple jam.
“So you say,” Annie commented, heading for the coffee pot. “Sit down and let your aunt and me take care of you.”
“How do you want your eggs?” Aunt Dorothy chimed in, opening the refrigerator door.
Thea sat down across from her mother. “No eggs, Auntie D. Just some toast. And lots of coffee.”
“Coming up.” Annie poured her a cup and brought it over to the table while Aunt Dorothy popped a couple of slices of whole wheat bread in the toaster.
As long as Mother was sitting in the breakfast nook the conversation was stilted. The three of them talked around the subject as well as they could, although Mother was so preoccupied with eating every single morsel on her plate that Thea thought they probably could have just spoken openly. But eventually Mother did finish eating, and abruptly got up and headed for the den, the recliner, and the all-important television set.
What Has Mother Done? Page 11