Tips for Living

by Renee Shafransky

  WHAT are you thinking? Are you insane?

  Chapter Eleven

  I closed my black-and-white composition notebook, put down my pen, and finished my coffee. I’d woken up in the morning, reassured. All the lights were still off. Nothing out of place. No new marks on my skin. And for the first time in ages, I felt rested. I’d slept deeply and well. It was good to be back in the world feeling human again.

  After dressing, I walked out of the Coop under a sunny sky of saturated blue—the rich hue of an old Technicolor film. A blanket of white spread over the front yard. Glimmering, gossamer white. I stopped short, exhaling cloud puffs. That lacy covering on the lawn was frost. It meant there was no chance to plant daffodils anymore—the earth was too hard and unwelcoming. The bag of bulbs would have to stay in the garden shed until next year. My mood took a dip.

  As I backed the Toyota out of the drive, “Unknown Caller” rang. Another reporter, I was sure. It rang again moments later. My landlord. What did he want? Had he seen my statement on TV? Did he suspect me, too? Would he make up an excuse about why he couldn’t rent the Coop any longer? I let the call go. Another ring as I reached the paved road. Grace again. I picked up.

  “Listen, you really need a break from all this stress. The kids and I are going to Charlotte’s Cove Farm this afternoon to walk the corn maze and watch them make cider. It’s their reward for not biting the dentist’s fingers. We miss you. Come with us.”

  I wished I could. It would be a soothing distraction.

  “I’d love to, Gracie, but I’m going to see Aunt Lada today.”

  “Oh, I’m glad, Nor. That will be really good for both of you. Then let’s plan on Pilates tomorrow.”

  “I don’t know . . . the thought of facing everyone in class . . .”

  “I get how you might be nervous about going. But you can’t give up exercising and turn into a slug. Besides, exercise helps fight depression.”

  “Um. Let me think about it.”

  “The women there know you. They’ll be supportive.”

  “I hope you’re right.” Grace usually was.

  “So you’ll come?”

  “Okay. But let’s meet out front. I want to catch up before we go inside.”

  “Seven thirty in the lot?”

  “I’ll bring the coffee.”

  I spotted Lt. Crawley on the opposite shoulder.

  “Gotta go. Phone bust.”

  I dropped the phone into my lap and put on my poker face as I drove past him, even though I was certain he’d seen the cell at my ear. Crawley lived for the cell phone traffic stop, the easiest bust aside from speed traps. But when I checked the rearview mirror, his car hadn’t moved. What a mensch, I thought. He’s giving me a break. He knows the trauma I’ve been through. But by the time I reached the bridge, I decided Crawley was a spy. The police never monitored speeders that close to my house—not enough traffic. Crawley must be keeping tabs on my comings and goings for Detective Roche. If I was right, then Gubbins was wrong about me being off the hook.

  Flustered, I crossed the bridge and drove through town without stopping for breakfast at Eden’s. I’d rather avoid the stares, and I felt anxious about running into Ben. He often grabbed breakfast there. Another distressing thought popped into my head: if Ben hadn’t called because he woke up mortified about the kiss, would he fire me to avoid dealing with me at work? No, he would never do that. We’d both have to find a way to cope with the discomfort and embarrassment.

  Thirty minutes later, I was driving up the tree-lined drive of The Cedars, a collection of sprawling stone buildings set atop a wooded hill. The largest had a castle-like arched entrance (albeit with wheelchair ramp and automated doors), balustrades and multiple chimneys. Think Manderley in Hitchcock’s Rebecca. The developers purchased the thirty-two-acre compound in 1973 during the first US oil crisis, probably for a song. It was a Buddhist monastery in a previous incarnation, and before that a Jesuit one. But the heating bills daunted even austere monks who dialed their thermostats down and exalted their shivering.

  Going from the visitors lot to the main building required an uphill hike along a cedar-chip path that cut through a large stand of cedar trees. The preppy young sales rep had pushed the cedar thing heavily when I’d attended the open house.

  “The Cedars was named for the magnificent cedar tree—worshipped in ancient Sumeria,” she said. “We’ve planted one hundred fifty cedars around the main building. We want the trees to be an inspiration for our residents. It’s often called The Tree of Life and can live to be one thousand years old.”

  “I don’t expect my aunt will be interested in living nearly that long,” I’d said.

  She ignored me and went on with her sales pitch.

  “We’ve added three other buildings in the same architectural style for a total of one hundred twenty beautiful apartments, all with the option of supervised home care. Residents and their loved ones can feel secure knowing there’s an on-site clinic, rehab center and hospice.”

  At $75,000 a year. Plus extra for the clinic, rehab and hospice. At least Lada had quit smoking the Balkan Sobranies, which would improve her chances of staying healthy. The challenge was how to afford to keep helping her pay for her longevity.

  I entered the lobby, a grand oak-paneled room with a sweeping wooden staircase and two giant, intricately carved fireplaces you could walk into if you got the urge to self-immolate.

  Yvonne, the sunny, buxom Jamaican receptionist fond of hair accessories, waved from the front desk. Shiny orange and yellow beads bounced at the ends of her dreadlocks as she moved her head. A carved wooden turkey wearing a pilgrim’s hat stood on the counter next to her. NO FOWL LANGUAGE read the sign that hung around its intact neck. I wondered if Yvonne had caught me on the news and how she’d react.

  “Ah, Nora, dare ya are.”

  “Hi, Yvonne. How’ve you been?”

  “The lord shinin’ his love on me. Giving me extra shifts. Yourself?”

  Yvonne seemed unaware of my drama. She was probably much too busy to watch television with all the hours she worked.

  “Good. I’m good. How is my aunt?”

  “She’s been missing ya. Acting a bit spacey. Mostly she go to a happy place, but sometime she go paranoid. She call security yesterday evening. Say someone stole her can opener. Turns out she put it in her refrigerator.”

  It was always a blame game with Lada lately. Always a mysterious “someone” responsible for petty crimes against her. But there’d been nothing really alarming yet.

  “Here you go, child. Sign on the line,” Yvonne said, pushing the registration book toward me before she buzzed Lada’s apartment.

  I be no child, I thought, tracking the brown spot on my hand as I wrote my name. Was that a freckle or a liver spot? Whenever I came to The Cedars, my fears of aging bubbled up.

  “Nobody home. Try de Panic Room,” Yvonne said, hanging up the in-house phone.

  That was what residents had dubbed their lounge area, the place they went when they couldn’t bear spending any more time alone in their apartments but didn’t have the energy to entertain.

  “If I invite people over, I’ve got to serve coffee and a nosh, at least. Then I have to clean up after them,” Lada told me. “Old age takes it out of you, Nora. Syakomu ovoshchu svoyo vremya. Every vegetable has its time. Mine is over. I’m rotting in the bin.”

  My heart broke when I heard her talk like that. I wished I had something to say to make her feel better—some sage advice, some really useful tips for living. But Mad as Hell was right. I was glib. If Ben had published the letter and I had the guts to be totally honest, I would have written this response:

  Dear Mad as Hell,

  Here’s why I write the column in the way that I do: I’m covering up for the fact that I have no idea how to deal with the reality of people’s pain and fragility. I don’t have a fucking clue how to help with my own, let alone theirs.

  Nora Glasser, alias Total Fraud.

  I
thanked Yvonne and took the elevator to the second floor, where I walked down a corridor whose walls featured decorative paper cutouts of smiling Native Americans in headdresses, pilgrims and cornucopias. The Cedars wasn’t exactly politically correct. My spirits lifted as they always did as soon as I entered the Panic Room. It reminded me of New York’s Algonquin Hotel—the dark wooden paneling, clusters of high-backed Edwardian chairs, antique tea tables and velvet couches. Back when I lived in the city, I used to hang out in the lobby of the famous old hotel for inspiration. I’d imagine Dorothy Parker and her New Yorker friends trading witty stories at their Round Table luncheons there.

  The Panic Room was full of character, but it was also redolent with the stink of mothballs—all those wool sweaters and shawls that residents had pulled out of storage with the arrival of the cold weather. Surprisingly, the cedar-obsessed owners hadn’t installed cedar closets when they renovated. My nose started running from the sickly sweet odor of naphthalene.

  Aunt Lada and another white-haired woman were playing cards near the window. Even from across the room, I could see that Lada had a “tell.” She looked so much like my mother in that moment that I had to stop and catch my breath. It wasn’t just that Lada and Sally Levervitch had prominent Russian foreheads, feline eyes and similar wavy hair (though my mother dyed hers strawberry blonde to hide her ethnicity, while Lada had lived to see her brown hair go completely gray), it was the astonishing height to which Lada’s left eyebrow could arch when she disapproved of something. My mother had the same ability. Lada’s eyebrow was aimed at her cards, and it said, “I don’t like the hand I’ve been dealt.”

  “Nora!” Lada exclaimed, lighting up when she saw me. “I told you she’d come,” she said to her card-holding friend.

  I didn’t recognize Lada’s companion—a handsome Asian woman with unusual ethnic bracelets and earrings that complemented long silver hair she wore twisted into a bun. She must be a new resident, I surmised.

  “Nora, this is Ann Kogarashi. She took a one-bedroom on the third floor. She’s an anthropologist.”

  Ann looked me over and smiled.

  “Anthropologist, long retired. Lovely to meet you. Your aunt raves about you,” she said. There was no hint of her having seen me on the news, either. Was she just being discreet out of respect for my aunt?

  A whirring sound came from behind as Mort pulled up. Mort, who was eighty-nine, had a tube running from his nose to an oxygen tank strapped to the back of his wheelchair.

  “How are you, Mort?”

  “Woke up on the right side of the dirt, so I can’t complain,” he answered, smiling.

  Mort used to be a Madison Avenue ad man. He was still mentally sharp and plugged in to current events.

  “Sorry to hear about your troubles with the law, Nora,” he said softly. “You doing all right?”

  I glanced over at Lada, certain that this would start a conversation about the murders, but she was smiling, oblivious. Ann just looked at me with concern. I nodded at Mort.

  “Maybe you’ll come with us to the film today? Take your mind off things,” he said. “They’re showing Hairspray. John Travolta plays a woman. Wears a fat suit.”

  I’d gone to see No Country for Old Men with Lada and Mort a few weeks back; The Cedars screened movies in the downstairs lounge. The two of them fell asleep about twenty minutes into the film. Holding hands.

  “Sorry, Mort. I’ve got to work after lunch.” I gave my arm to Lada. “I have to steal my aunt away for a little bit. Nice to meet you, Ann. See you soon, Mort.”

  I fully expected Lada to bring up the murders as soon as we were out of earshot, but she didn’t. She really seemed to be off in another world.

  “I’m so happy to see you,” was all she said as we ambled down the hall to the elevator. She was walking slowly but still walking, thank God.

  We had a salad bar lunch in the dining room, but Lada didn’t bring up the murders there, either. She flitted from topic to topic: “Here’s something Ann told me. Did you know Vladimir Putin is a very rich man? Ann says he’s worth billions. And still he acts like a baboon thumping his chest!” Seconds later: “Mort’s daughter is a social worker. She was so upset about a case. A couple put a lock on their refrigerator. They made their fourteen-year-old daughter pay for her food using money she earned babysitting.” Lada looked distraught. “They’re worse than the Stalinists. What’s wrong with them?”

  I remembered Stokes’s story of his in-laws presenting him and Kelly with their grocery bill.

  “I don’t know, Aunt Lada,” I said, patting her arm. “There are some very sick individuals out there.”

  After finishing lunch, we went back to Lada’s apartment, and I shampooed her hair in the sink. She always said, “It comes out so much better when you do it, Nora.” But I knew the real reason. She liked being touched. She purred while I massaged conditioner into her scalp. Her silver hair turned soft as corn silk. I set it with curlers made from empty orange juice cans—a recession-proof method as effective and about three hundred times cheaper than a Brazilian Blowout.

  While Lada’s hair dried, I made her some tea and then returned to the closet in the entrance hall where I’d hung my coat. The large, cellophane-covered cardboard box sat on the shelf above the coatrack. On every visit, I’d think about what to do with it—a carton full of mementos of Hugh. Things I hadn’t been able to throw away, but couldn’t live with anymore. When I started over in Pequod, I’d left them in Lada’s care.

  I looked up at the box, reviewing the seemingly endless hurts Hugh inflicted. Helene’s pregnancy. A painful and public divorce. Moving to Pequod with Helene and reopening the wound. Now I was a suspect in his murder investigation. What was there to debate? I pulled out the stepladder from the back of the closet.

  Lada stared at the cellophane-covered box as I set it down on her kitchen table. There was enough tape on it to wrap a mummy, as if I’d been afraid the detritus of my marriage would claw its way out and hunt me down.

  “Nora.”

  Suddenly present and mentally alert, Lada was looking at me fretfully.

  “Tell me about your talk with the police,” she said.

  “The police . . . yes.”

  I thought I’d escaped this conversation. Damn. It was probably best not to tell her the whole story. Why stress her? I wasn’t under arrest.

  “I spoke with them briefly, but I don’t think it helped them very much. Where do you keep your scissors, Aunt Lada?”

  “In that drawer by the stove.”

  I walked to the cabinet next to the stove and opened the drawer.

  “What’s your bra doing here?”

  Bunched up between the garlic press and the chicken shears was one of Lada’s military-grade brassieres. I lifted the white nylon bra out with two fingers. Lada gaped at the dangling DD cups, and her expression darkened.

  “I’ve been looking for that! Someone put that in there. Someone is playing tricks,” she said angrily.

  Someone.

  She grabbed the bra out of my hand, shoved it in the pocket of her sweater and sat back down in a huff.

  “What if you’d put it in the microwave, Aunt Lada? It has metal in it. You could’ve blown yourself up!”

  There was no way around it. I’d have to talk to The Cedars about graduating her to supervised care. It would cost.

  Lada muttered words I couldn’t make out before she went silent, as if a storm had passed. She stood up, walked to the refrigerator, took out a jar of kosher pickles and picked up where she left off.

  “Do the police think you killed them?”

  “Of course not.”

  “Well, that’s good.”

  She opened the jar, stuck her fingers in and eased out a big, fat pickle.

  “Do they have a suspect?”

  “They’re working on it. I’m sure they will.”

  She snorted and took a big bite. “Don’t count on it,” she said, chewing. “They never even looked into your father�
�s death.”

  “But Daddy wasn’t murdered,” I said gently. “He fell down the stairs in that basement apartment, remember?”

  “Eat, bubbala.” Lada offered me the jar. “They’re delicious. Kosher.”

  I shook my head. She shrugged.

  “I think someone maybe pushed him,” she said.

  “What?”

  This level of delusion was new and worrying. No one pushed him. I’ll never forget that day. I was working at New York Spy when I got the call from my father’s landlord, who lived upstairs from him. He told me he had seen my dad come in with groceries. Seconds later, he heard the tumble and shout. He rushed down to help, but death was instant. A broken neck. My chin trembled for a second thinking of it.

  “They should have investigated,” Lada said.

  I wasn’t sure how to respond in a way that wouldn’t agitate Lada further. Should I challenge her? Ignore her? If she could think logically enough to play gin rummy, she couldn’t be that far gone. Maybe it made sense to explore her fantasy first, and then appeal to her powers of reason.

  “Who would kill him, Aunt Lada? Who do you think would do that?”

  “The men he stole from. The mobsters.”

  “But he paid them back. You know that. That’s why he lived in a basement. He was broke. He had nothing.”

  “What if they killed him anyway? To pay him back.”

  “That didn’t happen.”

  “That’s what some people are like, you know. Some people never forgive a betrayal.”

  A tall, brown metal dumpster sat at the back of the main building near the health clinic service entrance. Filled with God knows what. Ensure cans. AARP magazines. Empty pill bottles. I set the cardboard box on the ground, opened the top and stared inside at our wedding invitation and wedding photos, and the framed pressed daisy from my bouquet. For a second, I saw Hugh at the reception, laughing as friends lifted my chair into the air and the white satin train of my wedding gown covered their heads. I heard my father’s sad refrain.