Rebecca dunked the cloth into the hot water, soaped it lightly, and unceremoniously but with a light hand went over Bernard’s limp body, including his genitals. Soaping the cloth again, she went over his face and neck. Once or twice he moaned weakly, most of his pain blunted by the morphine drip he was attached to.
Afterward, Rebecca picked up some newspapers Gracelyn had left on the seat of a ladder-back chair near the back-stairs landing and sat down. She began a thorough perusal of the news, pausing to look up when she heard a thud coming from Timothy’s room. She waited to see if further noise would accompany what was either his falling down or knocking something over. Not hearing any wailing, she continued to read, finishing the local Peoria paper and going on to the Chicago Sun-Times to check on her stocks.
Rebecca started when Jake wandered from his room into the hallway. Even in his impaired mental state, Jake managed to dress himself nattily every day, sometimes wearing a tie and gold cuff links.
“You have to go to the bathroom?” she asked him.
“Such a nice day, I wanted to go outside. Can you take me out back, Rebecca?”
“Go on back inside there and rest,” was his wife’s no-nonsense command. “Lucy will take you out when she comes Saturday. Go sit in your chair. You’ll get some sun that way.”
Jake mumbled confusedly, “Who is Lucy?” before obediently turning around and slowly going back to his room.
Rebecca waited for him to be out of sight, then sprang up from the chair to look in on Bernard and Timothy. Timothy had indeed fallen from his bed and was sleeping soundly on the floor, saliva dribbling from the corner of his mouth. Rebecca hoisted the tall, angular man first onto his knees, then back onto his bed. She looked at him sprawled on top of the covers in an odd position. Shaking her head, she spent the next few minutes arranging his limbs so that they were less akimbo.
Looking in on Bernard, she noted that he lay still and was breathing evenly. By the time Gracelyn ambled back up to the second floor, a tray filled with medicines, glasses of apple juice, a plate of cheese sandwiches for Timothy and Jake, and soup for Bernard, Rebecca had finished her reading and torn off several pages from both papers.
“Everything’s quiet. Jake was wandering around, but he’s peaceful now. Timothy’ll need a few more hours to sleep it off from last night. I heard him come in just before daybreak. Haven’t heard a peep from yours since I checked him, but he’s breathing. If they don’t want to eat, don’t force them. No point troubling yourself. Don’t think anyone stinks too bad right now. Let’s get going with that medicine before anyone else pees on himself.”
Rebecca followed Gracelyn into Timothy’s room, waiting just inside the door while the younger woman deposited a sandwich next to his bed table. It would be there when he awoke, and he might eat a few bites from it before performing his brief ablutions. Later in the afternoon, he was sometimes awakened by delirium tremens. If not, he slept through most of the day. At night, he headed out to purchase liquor.
Jake still sat listlessly by his bedroom window when the women entered and did not turn his head when Gracelyn offered him his lunch plate. “Leave it,” Rebecca supplied, and Gracelyn unceremoniously set the plate down on Jake’s dresser.
Feeding Bernard was the last task for Rebecca and Gracelyn. Rebecca took charge of spooning the liquid into his mouth, oblivious to his faint moaning, as Gracelyn opened capsules of pain killers and vitamin supplements and stirred them into his juice.
The women tended directly to their men for the first portion of the day, checking their rooms and personal cleanliness, then provided them with a late supper. In between, things could get helter-skelter. As he became more and more immune to the effects of morphine, Bernard’s intermittent wailing might fill the rafters of the big house. Startled and disturbed, Gracelyn put on Mattie Cates’s classical music or Reuben’s delta blues to drown out Bernard while she continued her light housecleaning chores and dinner preparation.
Rebecca told her repeatedly, “Nothing you can do about that; we’ve got to go on. Put it out of your mind.”
Though shaken, Gracelyn always complied. For tonight’s dinner, she decided on spring lamb, a watercress, endive, and radish salad, and wild rice. Before seasoning the lamb and dredging it with flour, she thought fleetingly that Bernard would miss all this and again have soup.
Jake wandered about the house with surprising deftness, rarely breaking things or hurting himself. However, Rebecca monitored his movements for the occasional odd activity his poor mind led him into. Once, she found him seated at the library desk convinced that all of the fountain pen cartridges needed to be refilled. Interrupting his earnest concentration, she led him perfunctorily back upstairs, thankful that the oriental carpeting had not been stained by a leak from one of the pens. Rebecca admonished him about coming downstairs again, but realized that he would quickly forget what she said to him and whatever had happened minutes before.
Returning from her errands, Claudia would make certain Timothy had not fallen to the floor, and if the sandwich was untouched, she would carry it downstairs and throw it in the garbage. Afterward, she disengaged herself as he came and went in his intermittent stupor, habitually making forays into town well after midnight. In his absence, she wiped streaks off hallway mirrors, misted Rebecca’s floral arrangements, and filed receipts from her drugstore and grocery market purchases.
When Lucy returned, she would see an orderly house, ample medical supplies, and a store of clean linen. Based on the neatness of the house, including the men’s bedrooms, she invariably reported to the Cates’s neighbors that the sisters were circumspect in their caretaking. Once, when Lucy noticed that Jake was bruised slightly, Rebecca reacted with genuine surprise, thinking that he might have tripped on the stairs. When, in his conscious moments, Bernard muttered something about his wife not tending to him properly, Lucy uttered a “Tsk, tsk,” as she shook her head and pitied the poor man’s morphine-induced delusions.
In the few hours the sisters stole from their daily caretaking duties, they were busy keeping the massive house in order, determined to preserve the lifestyle Reuben and Mattie had worked hard to establish for their offspring. Each had ongoing projects. Rebecca never neglected her income-producing orchids and kept busy overseeing workmen doing the continuous small repairs inside and landscaping of the two-acre grounds. Her keen eye noticed any imperfection in ceramic tiles or molding, and a slightly sunken floorboard or tarnished mirror frame in the well-lit hallways would get her immediate attention. This month her concern was an army of bag worms that had invaded the pristine hedges lining the long walkway from the street to the front door. Alerted to the problem by Wayne, her landscaper, she researched the species in detail before calling an exterminator, so was able to thoroughly instruct him on the proper pesticide.
Wayne stood near Rebecca, an amused look on his face, as she gave her detailed overview to the befuddled man.
“Is all of that clear, sir?” she asked when she finished speaking.
“Yes, ma’am, I understood everything.”
“Well, that’s good. Wayne can show you which bushes are the worst. I declare, these creatures will be here long after we’re gone.”
“That’s for sure, ma’am.”
“Call me Rebecca.”
“Oh, sure. Thanks, Rebecca.”
As the two men headed off to attend to the row of bushes framing the front and side lawns, Wayne looked over his shoulder, his handsome face grinning at Rebecca. Rebecca grinned back. He had worked for her for fifteen years and understood her perfectionism. He was the same way about his landscaping, and Rebecca thought of him as a true artist. She felt close to Wayne in a sisterly way. She knew he had no family and his life hadn’t been easy, although she did not have any details about his experiences. She remembered the day he rang the front doorbell and asked to show her some photographs of work he had done at other large estates. The man standing in front of her was well spoken, regal, and immaculate, and somet
hing about him had made her instantly trust him. He proved to be hardworking and a superbly talented designer, incorporating her suggestions when he thought they would enhance the undertaking, and letting her know sincerely and regretfully when he thought they would not.
Mattie’s collections of sterling silver gleamed from inside the Jacobean cabinet in the dining room, owing to Claudia’s diligent inspection and upkeep. Twice a month, she dutifully polished all of the flatware and spent as much time as she could arranging stemware, dessert dishes, jelly jars, and candleholders so that the light from one of the side windows would refract from the mirror directly opposite, illuminating the sparkling contents. On top of the breakfront under the mirror, she rotated displays of cups and saucers from Mattie’s numerous china patterns. A year ago, Claudia had one of Rebecca’s workmen install dimmer lights for the chandeliers in the living room, dining room, and hallway. Since then, every evening at dusk, she adjusted the dimmers to a soft, even glow.
Over the years, the Cateses had accumulated photographs of Reuben and Mattie before and after their children were born, family outings and community events, and each of the three girls at intervals during childhood, adolescence, and their adult years. Gracelyn was fascinated with these artifacts of the family’s culture and spent hours cataloguing shots of school functions and picnics. She made certain to frame photos of her parents’ parents, grandparents, and other relatives now deceased, and maintained a genealogy chart recording both sides of the family’s migration from the South.
For the next few weeks, the sisters would be busy enacting the strategy Rebecca had presented to them at their morning meeting, their energies fueled by the freedom completion of their goal would provide them.
IV
BY TEN WEDNESDAY morning, Rebecca had checked on her flowers and made the first round of attending to the men. In a few minutes, Claudia would relieve her from sentry duties on the men’s floor and wait for Gracelyn to bring the lunch tray upstairs. Sitting pensively in the ladder-back chair in the second-floor hallway, Rebecca thought her beige linen suit and a navy cloche would serve her purposes well when she went to visit Reverend Wilson that afternoon. She decided to carry a pair of tan kidskin gloves, one of many that had belonged to Mattie. She knew she had sedate oxford pumps to match the gloves. The gold studs in her ears she wore daily would be the extent of her jewelry.
Never frilly, Rebecca knew that today especially a muted though impeccable outfit would both display her wealth and keep her femininity part of the equation. Catching Wilson slightly off guard, and for now having him think of her as a disgruntled matron with an unthreatening agenda, was critical to her overall strategy. By the time Wilson understood Rebecca meant to depose him, Bernard and Timothy would already be in facilities and, since Jake was still living in the Cates mansion, the reverend would not be able to point a finger accusingly at Rebecca. She would have plenty of time to discredit Wilson before carting Jake off to Sacred Lamb Rest Home in Springfield. She was not certain how she would bring this about, but she was certain she would.
Decided on her attire, Rebecca went back to reading the Sun-Times, expressly looking for the ad she had placed for laelia blooms. The Chicago market for her flowers was usually very strong this time of year with many of the leading downtown florists ordering from her throughout the spring months. When she and her sisters went farther upstate in July to deposit Timothy, she planned to check in with several vendors. A personal touch always increased her orders. Jake would be out of the house, she calculated, no later than mid-August. That meant a longer Chicago trip for the Cates women, with Claudia lunching with friends and Gracelyn able to do some extensive book browsing.
“Gracelyn, I’m gone,” Rebecca shouted down the back stairs as soon as she heard her sister’s footsteps coming up with the lunch tray.
“See you at dinner! Want a full report!” was Gracelyn’s excited reply.
Rebecca hoisted herself up to the third floor to bathe and get dressed for her meeting. She had ample time to soak in a tub of pine-scented salts, then rub herself luxuriously with eucalyptus oil. Rebecca giggled at her reflection in the standing mirror adjacent to her bureau. With her softly corpulent build and abundant gray-streaked hair, she reminded herself of a grandmotherly sylph. Feeling fresh and lubricated, she pulled the linen suit still hanging in a plastic cleaning bag out of the closet. At 12:45 P.M. with military precision she drove her Mercedes down the long driveway and proceeded on to the parsonage.
Arriving at the Wilsons’ home, Rebecca was guided through the entry hall by Julia Wilson. Stately and composed as they went through preliminary greetings, Rebecca accepted Julia’s offer of tea. Once seated opposite Wilson in the living room, Rebecca noted the pastor’s curious hand gesture as they made small talk. He persistently balled his left fist and, moving his forearm up toward his left shoulder, thrust his hand downward in a rhythmic swing, as though he were pounding on an invisible table. Rebecca thought Wilson might be unaware of this gesture and presumed he would not be aware of much else during their visit.
“Pastor Wilson, it was so good of you to make time for me today.”
“Sister Cates, you are one of our outstanding churchwomen. I only wish you would visit with me more often.”
“I intend to, Pastor. There are a few situations I believe we should work on together.”
Reverend Wilson paused in mid-gesture and looked at Rebecca with the faintest surprise before asking, “What might those be, my dear?”
Rebecca had already decided to throw out a few things casually, but not to drive home any strong points. It was important that she be able to mention in conversations with other members that she had been having talks with the pastor, but that he not think it necessary to counteract any of her moves and lobby members to his own positions. At the moment, she intended that he have only a surface grasp of her motives.
“I am so grateful for your leadership. However, my sisters and I have felt somewhat neglected here lately. Our men keep us pretty much homebound throughout the week, and it would be so helpful to have you come by and bring us a spiritual message throughout the month to keep us going. Knowing how busy you are, it occurred to me that some of our committees could help you carry out your other duties. That way, you could have more of a personal touch with members going through hard times, such as my family.”
Wilson cleared his throat, and resuming his hand gesture, responded nonchalantly. “I see, I see. Well, perhaps I’ll look into doing more visiting with you girls. Things do slow down a bit over the summer months.”
Just as Wilson finished speaking, Julia appeared in the doorway carrying a service tray.
“Julia, see if Ms. Rebecca would like more tea.”
“No, thank you, don’t trouble yourself,” Rebecca responded directly to the timid woman. “I’m doing just fine.”
Julia nodded her head briefly. As she walked away, she glanced over her shoulder a few times at Rebecca.
“Oh, it would be so kind of you to come see us girls,” Rebecca continued. “Of course, we wouldn’t want to take away visiting time from other sick and shut-ins.”
“I’m certain you won’t, Ms. Rebecca.”
“And if you discover the slightest shortfall in our church resources, you just let me know. My parents intended for me to continue providing for the church as much as they did when they were alive.”
“Why thank you, Rebecca. I’ll be in touch with you on that.”
“Especially doing things for the children, Reverend. My sister Gracelyn just discovered a play about Harriet Tubman that would be a perfect activity for our summer youth program. I believe she intends to speak about it to Lucy Sims and see if they can’t put on a big production with costumes and lighting and such. With your permission of course.”
“Hmm,” Wilson said with a degree of interest. “That sounds like a very good project.”
“Then we will count on your support. It is so very important to keep our young people occupied. And
I do believe my dear sister will need this sort of consolation soon.”
“How’s that?” the reverend asked, unable to follow Rebecca’s flow of conversation.
“Well, you know that her poor husband, Bernard, is failing as we speak, and Gracelyn has decided that a hospice might make his last days less painful.”
“I believe menfolk should die at home,” was Wilson’s succinct reply. “My mother tended to my father for seven long years before he passed on. She sat right at his bedside every night comforting him until he could sleep.”
“How wonderful.”
“Is Brother Bernard in his right mind?”
“He is lucid sometimes, Pastor. But the pain is very great now, and truly, I don’t think my sister, being the delicate sort, can bear to watch him expire. In any case, please keep us in your prayers in these dark moments.”
Silence built between the two as Wilson reflected on Rebecca’s statements. Pulling a pipe from his shirt pocket, he waved it in front of his visitor.
“Mind if I smoke?”
“You go right ahead. I was just about to leave,” Rebecca replied as she stood up. “And do thank Julia for her wonderful tea service. I will look forward to seeing you both this Sunday.”
Wilson, slightly baffled, realized just then that their conversation had ended, and that Rebecca had not sought his approval of Gracelyn’s actions. As he led Rebecca to the front door, he thought to himself that the Cates women were a peculiar lot; probably all that money made them too damned independent.
Rebecca’s cheeks flushed with temper as she left the parsonage and climbed into her Mercedes. But she had been careful not to openly defy the authoritative man. Pulling away from the curb, she shifted her steely focus to how she would use the remainder of the day. After supper with her sisters, she would do some research on the church’s finances during Wilson’s tenure. She had a copy of the church budget from last fiscal year, and she would compare it with the budgets in Reuben’s extensive files on church matters under Reverend Simmons.
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