Importance of Being Urnest

by Sandra Balzo

  ‘That’s certainly not your fault,’ Christy said. ‘Taking care of both your mother and her friend – you’re a saint in my book.’

  ‘What book would that be?’ Sarah asked, joining us. ‘You’re an unbeliever.’

  Christy’s bottom lip jutted out again. ‘I told you, I believe everything.’

  ‘And that I believe.’

  ‘This is my partner, Sarah Kingston,’ I told Hannah.

  She smiled a greeting. ‘Christy exaggerates. I’m just doing what anybody of good conscience would.’

  ‘Well, aren’t we holier than—’ Sarah stopped as I elbowed her in the ribs.

  ‘Not at all, I’m afraid,’ Hannah said with a patient smile. ‘My mother doesn’t have anybody else and Nancy is my mother’s longtime companion. Almost a second mother to me.’

  ‘Companion? You mean—’

  I elbowed Sarah in the ribs a second time. ‘Can we make you a drink, Hannah?’

  Sarah threw me a dirty look, but the newcomer didn’t seem at all put out at my partner’s cross-examination. ‘I would love a non-fat latte. I didn’t get to drink mine earlier.’

  ‘One non-fat latte coming up,’ Amy called from behind the counter. ‘And it’s our treat.’

  I sensed Sarah’s scowl.

  And ignored it. Giving away a drink or two wouldn’t kill us. ‘Hannah, have you met Amy Caprese?’

  ‘Not formally. Good to meet you, Amy.’

  ‘Hannah bought the house next to Christ Christian.’

  ‘Oh, up that little lane,’ Amy said, confirming my hunch that I was the only one who didn’t know there was a house there. ‘Welcome. Have you met Langdon Shepherd, the pastor of Christ Christian yet? He should be here this morning.’

  ‘He stopped by the house to say hello just after we moved in,’ Hannah said. ‘Such a nice man. I was sorry to have to tell him I’m Catholic.’

  ‘Not to worry.’ Amy twisted the portafilter onto the espresso machine as the sleigh bells on the front door jangled, signaling a new customer. ‘Father Jim will be here today, too.’

  Langdon was the kind of guy who loved to say that recruiting members was his ‘soul mission.’ And then spell out s-o-u-l. Father Jim thought that was corny but wouldn’t hurt Langdon’s feelings by telling him that. The two facts pretty much summed up the respective pitchers in this friendly theological rivalry.

  ‘Oh, good. I have a message for him from Nancy. She— Vickie!’

  Vickie LaTour had come in and was looking around expectantly. Her bright burgundy hair was a color that did not appear in nature but she looked remarkably good for her seventy-seven years. It might be worth asking about those ‘treatments’ she was always talking about.

  ‘Well, look who’s here!’ Vickie said, giving the younger woman a quick hug. ‘Maggy, I assume you’ve met Hannah? We’re so happy to have her – and her ladies, of course – at Angel of Mercy.’

  Christy joined us. ‘I didn’t finish telling you, Maggy. Vickie took that job I was considering at Angel of Mercy.’

  Vickie grinned, though nothing on her face budged but her lips. ‘I’m Catholic – we decided it was a better fit.’

  I said, ‘Christy says you were a student of hers. I had no idea you played the piano.’

  ‘There are many things people don’t know,’ Vickie said, waving her hand. ‘Some of which I’m just fine about keeping hidden. For example, I played the accordion when I was young. But an accordion is just a keyboard attached to a big bag of air, when you think of it. Christy helped me brush up to move on to the piano and organ.’

  Sarah, who’d been listening to the goings-on in silence, raised her eyebrows. ‘And now, in Christy’s new job, she’ll be helping even more people move on.’ Whistling the X-Files theme, Sarah slipped away into the back of the store.

  ‘… Think Father Jim will be here,’ Vickie was saying to Hannah. ‘Do you know if there’s anything else I can help with? We were trying to balance the church books but she said trying to find the discrepancy was giving her a headache so we decided to call it a night.’

  ‘Oh, dear. When Nancy sets aside a balance sheet you know she’s not feeling well. In fact, she’s come down with the flu. I hope you don’t get sick.’

  ‘Oh, heavens, don’t worry about that,’ Vickie said. ‘With the people I come into contact with at the manor and the church, I’m constantly being sneezed or coughed on. I have the constitution of a horse.’

  I thought I heard a whinny from in the back. Sarah might have snuck away, but not far enough.

  ‘… Didn’t mention anything,’ Hannah said. ‘Though she did say I should tell Father Jim in no uncertain terms that he needs to check his messages.’

  Vickie laughed. ‘I’ve been telling the man the same thing ever since I took over the office job. After meeting Nancy, I have a feeling she could shape him up in no time if she was able to get out of that house and into the office.’

  ‘She is a force to be reckoned with – or was, when she was managing my mother’s chain of boutiques.’ Hannah laid her hand on Vickie’s shoulder. ‘And thank you for coming to the house last night. It’s been months since I’ve been able to go out on a Saturday night. Especially without worrying.’ She glanced my way. ‘I run errands for an hour or two during the day. But late afternoon into evening are difficult for both my mom and Nancy, so I don’t like to leave them alone if I can help it. And since we’re new to town …’ She shrugged.

  ‘Well, I was just happy to help,’ Vickie said. ‘And even happier to have her help with the books and the committee reports. The least I could do was drive over with what she’d asked for and try to answer any questions she might have.’

  ‘It’s good that she has something to occupy her mind,’ Hannah said. ‘Nancy’s as sharp as a tack. Sharper, even, with a tongue to match sometimes. She ran my mother’s company and my mother, most days.’

  Vickie chuckled. ‘I saw your mother in the living room last night as I was waiting. I think she was dozing so I didn’t say hello, but what a beautiful woman.’

  ‘Even now,’ Hannah said a little wistfully.

  ‘And quite the fashionista, too, in her silk evening pajamas. Not a blonde hair out of place.’

  ‘Wigs. She has a half-dozen that she rotates and she’d have more if I let her. They are easy, I must say.’

  Vickie patted her own perhaps too thick and certainly too red hair. ‘Nothing wrong with wigs or anything else we do to keep ourselves looking good.’

  ‘You know, you should throw one of your make-over parties at our house,’ Hannah said. ‘Nancy would make fun but Mother would love it.’

  Vickie pulled out her cell phone, likely to send out the invitations on the spot. ‘Collagen, Botox and maybe makeup?’

  ‘What, no boob jobs?’ I was kidding.

  ‘My mother already has better boobs than I have,’ Hannah said with a grin. ‘Or, at least, newer ones.’

  Amy laughed as she set Hannah’s latte on the counter. ‘Brew of the day, Vickie?’

  ‘Please.’

  Hannah moved on to the condiment cart as Amy poured Vickie’s coffee and Christy sidled in next to me. ‘I can only imagine how tough it is on Hannah. Her mom is failing a bit and Nancy had a stroke last year that limited her mobility. Neither has anybody else to take care of them.’

  ‘Wah, wah, wah. People have strokes or heart attacks every day,’ a voice declared from behind Christy. ‘Or so it seems at the manor. Last night it was Matilda. Or was it Berte? They all look alike.’ Sophie Daystrom blew a curl of gray off her forehead and held out her cup for a refill.

  Sophie had moved into Brookhills Manor to be with her paramour, Henry Wested, who already lived there.

  ‘I guess you have to expect that,’ Christy said. ‘It is a senior home.’

  ‘Do you know there’s a panic button in each room for emergencies? Even the residential apartments like ours have them, even though we’re far from the “Help! I’ve fallen and I can’t get up!” st
age of life.’

  ‘Until you do take a fall or something,’ Christy reasoned. ‘It’s not like you have to use the button. It’s just there if you need it.’

  ‘They do force some people,’ Sophie said. ‘They have to flip a switch every morning so the desk knows they aren’t dead. Can you believe it?’

  ‘Again, it is a senior—’ Christy started.

  But Sophie wasn’t through grousing. ‘God’s waiting room is what I call the place.’

  Christy tilted her head to one side. ‘I thought that was Florida.’

  ‘Old is a state of mind, not a state of the union, is what I tell Henry,’ Sophie said, nodding across the room. ‘Especially these days when he’s going on about his heart.’

  I turned to see Henry Wested moving his signature fedora from the next chair to make room for Vickie with her cup of coffee and cell phone. ‘I didn’t know Henry was having heart problems.’

  ‘Oh, don’t you start fussing now,’ Sophie said. ‘He’s doing enough of that for all of us.’

  ‘That’s men,’ Christy said. ‘Ronny had a cold last month and you should have heard him complaining about the quality of the tissues in prison.’

  My heart went out to the lunatic. But I was still thinking about Henry. ‘What exactly is Henry’s heart problem?’

  ‘Oh, just a little angina.’

  At least Henry still had a heart. I wasn’t so sure about Sophie, given how she was talking. ‘Are you and Henry doing OK?’

  ‘We’re fine. I’m just sick to death of living at the manor. Though I don’t say that out loud there in case somebody hears me out of context and delivers it from my lips to God’s ears.’

  As she said it, the sleigh bells on the door rang and in came Brookhills’ pipeline to God, Langdon Shepherd, pastor of Christ Christian Church.

  ‘Over here, Pastor Shepherd,’ Vickie trilled, setting down her phone. Langdon was tall, thin and a little stooped – think Ichabod Crane in a church collar. He lifted his hand in greeting to us as he passed on his way to the table.

  Sophie signaled with a chin-cock that we should come closer. ‘I’m starting to think that there’s a wormhole between Brookhills Manor and Langdon’s stomping grounds.’

  ‘Christ Christian?’ Christy asked.

  ‘Not the church. Heaven and hell, depending on which direction one is heading.’ Sophie shrugged. ‘I like to think I’d be going up, of course, but let’s face it: nobody really knows until it’s too late.’

  ‘As in dead.’ At least that part I was fairly sure I understood. ‘By a wormhole, do you mean like in sci-fi movies? Shortcuts between space and time?’

  ‘Or in this case, between Brookhills Manor and the after-life.’

  ‘You yourself called the manor “God’s waiting room,”’ I told her.

  ‘True, but it’s getting creepy. Somebody falls and breaks a hip or gets a cough and, whoosh, off they go.’ She scuttled her fingers across the countertop. ‘Hurried off into the light like in that movie.’

  ‘Ghost Story?’ I guessed.

  ‘That’s the one, I—’

  ‘Martha,’ Christy interrupted.

  We both looked at her.

  The former piano teacher’s bottom lip was trembling. ‘The woman who had the heart attack last night and died – her name was Martha. Not Matilda. And not Berte.’

  ‘And she was a friend of yours?’ I asked, concerned.

  ‘No, but people treat the elderly like they’re invisible. We’re handling the arrangements for Martha Anne Severson. She was ninety-three years old, had three children, ten grandchildren and two great-grandchildren. She deserves to have her name remembered.’

  ‘I didn’t mean any disrespect,’ Sophie said in her own defense, ‘but I can’t tell one of the old biddies from another. They all have gray hair, wrinkled skin and flirt with Henry.’

  What was this all of a sudden? ‘Flirting with Henry? Is that what this is about?’

  ‘You mean am I jealous?’

  ‘Well, yeah.’

  Sophie didn’t answer the question, at least not directly. ‘If we’d moved into my house, instead of Henry convincing me to move in with him, it wouldn’t be an issue. Thank God we’re in the residential section facing the Poplar Creek woods, which is nice and private.’

  ‘Is that a separate entrance from the nursing home and assisted living?’ Christy asked.

  Sophie ducked her head. ‘Yes, though the new rehab wing shares our entrance. At least people like Gloria are mostly too impaired to go after my Henry.’

  Sheesh.

  ‘Are the residential units subsidized by the county?’ Christy asked.

  ‘Some of them,’ Sophie confirmed. ‘Which is one of the reasons why Henry was so adamant about staying there. It’s cheap, though there’s also the downside.’

  ‘The women?’ I asked.

  ‘No. Well, yes,’ Sophie said, ‘that does bug me. There must be a dozen females for every male there. Feels more like a harem than a home, with Henry one of the only sheiks still standing. And technically he’s single, so they figure he’s fair game.’

  ‘Have you ever discussed getting married?’ Why was I, of all people, asking? I was having enough trouble sorting out my own affairs.

  ‘I have.’ A flush crept up her cheeks.

  ‘But Henry …?’

  ‘Thinks things are just fine the way they are, thank you very much,’ Sophie finished for me.

  I felt my own face get warm. ‘Just because he doesn’t want to get married doesn’t mean he doesn’t love you.’

  ‘You wouldn’t know it by the way he preens under a little female attention.’ She was trying to get Amy’s attention.

  An ill-timed laugh from Henry in response to something Vickie had said punctuated the point.

  ‘But you were saying the downside of the residential facility isn’t the male-to-female ratio?’ I asked.

  ‘Probably more the junkie-to-senior ratio,’ Christy said.

  While I appreciated the former piano teacher abetting my attempted change of subject to get poor Henry off the hook, once again I wasn’t sure what she was talking about. ‘Junkie?’

  ‘“Recovering.”’ Sophie made air quotes. ‘They have to let them in because, like I said, the county provides subsidies for the manor’s residential units and finding housing for the addicts in the rehabilitation program is part of their mission. But before long, recovering turns into relapsed and they have to be evicted. And don’t get me started on the outright criminals like the guy next door to us.’

  ‘How do you know he’s a criminal?’ I asked.

  ‘Because he freely admits serving time like it’s some kind of badge of honor that he’s come out the other side.’

  ‘It is, in a way,’ Christy said. ‘Assuming he’s now leading a productive life.’

  ‘More reproductive, if you ask me.’ Sophie was building a low burn. ‘The man is nothing special but can certainly turn on the charm when he wants to. Has women over there practically every night. And don’t think we can’t hear every moan, groan and butt slap through the cardboard they call walls there.’

  Lovely.

  ‘No doubt those prison groupies,’ Sophie continued. ‘Never understood why women fixate on those lowlifes. Write them letters in prison, visit—’ She broke off as she seemed to realize there was a groupie in our very midst.

  But Christy was rocking forward on the balls of her feet. ‘Oh, Sophie, you’re so right. Like when I visit Ronny.’

  Sophie and I glanced at each other. ‘Oh?’

  It seemed a safe response given that we didn’t know where Christy was going to take this.

  ‘Oh, yes. Ronny’s cellmate is a serial killer and you wouldn’t believe how much mail he gets. And the visits.’

  Ronny was no angel, but, ‘A serial killer? Last time I heard, his roomie was a drug dealer or something.’

  ‘That one got shivved,’ Christy said, waving it off. ‘This one’s a much better fit.’

>   ‘Like, how?’ I couldn’t help myself.

  ‘Well, you know how creative Ronny is. Remember how when we met him he was dressing to celebrate a different era each day of the week? Greaser Tuesdays, Disco Wednesdays?’

  How could I forget? Earlier this year, Ronny’s Elvis Sunday had nearly put a permanent end to my week.

  ‘He does that in prison, too?’ Sophie seemed fascinated now, too.

  ‘Not quite to that extent. Prisoners have to wear their jumpsuits, you know, so creativity is limited. But Ronny likes to do small things that signal the era. Like wearing his jumpsuit collar up for the nineties or wearing a work glove on one hand for the Michael Jackson look. Other inmates get a kick out of it and have started helping. Especially Lionel, the serial killer. He loves to sew, believe it or not.’

  ‘All that practice making lampshades,’ I said without thinking.

  ‘Lampshades?’ Christy asked. ‘Isn’t that what Jeffrey Dahmer did?’

  ‘No, he ate people,’ Sophie said. ‘Maggy is talking about Ed Gein, a Wisconsin serial killer back in the fifties. He—’

  ‘But please,’ I interrupted politely. ‘Tell us more about your serial killer, Christy.’

  Pink rose in Christy’s cheeks. ‘He’s not mine. Or Ronny’s. And I probably shouldn’t call him a serial killer. They’ve only found two bodies so far.’

  I cleared my throat. ‘How does a guy like this get hold of needles?’

  Christy looked blank.

  ‘For sewing,’ I explained, since needles might have other connotations, especially in prison. ‘Needles and thread for alterations?’

  ‘Honestly, I don’t know,’ Christy said, eyes wide. ‘But the prison population is amazingly creative. Ronny says—’

  Time to turn the conversation away from Ronny & Company and back to semi-sanity.

  ‘Interesting,’ I said in response to whatever Christy had just finished saying. ‘Speaking of prisoners, Sophie, your neighbor – the one with the noisy sex. Is he older?’

  ‘Older than who exactly?’ Sophie seemed offended. Or prepared to be offended. ‘Are you insinuating people our age don’t have noisy sex?’