Ready, Scrap, Shoot

by Joanna Campbell Slan

  “Mom!” I hissed. “What are you doing?”

  I yanked her hem down to a modest level. “It’s almost curtain time. Let’s move along.”

  “I was a chorus girl!” she trilled over her shoulder to the stunned onlookers. “And I still have gorgeous legs! Want to see them?”

  “Not now.” I took her by the arm. She smacked at me, but I dodged her slap and slipped my arm around her waist. I wanted to wait for Lane, but my mother was quickly getting out of control. I had one option and one option only: “Come on, Mom.”

  “I want Claudia!” wailed my mother. “I miss her!”

  “Time to go, Mom.” I steered her toward the blinking red EXIT sign.

  “Claudia? Where is Claudia?” howled my mother.

  Who the heck is Claudia?

  And where the heck was Lane Carlée?

  Forty-three

  It was tough to tear Mom away from her awestruck audience. Finally, one of the funeral assistants must have noticed my distress because he sent Mr. Killian my way.

  “I don’t believe I’ve met this charming young lady,” Mr. Killian crooned to my mother. “Are you new in town?”

  Mom responded with a girlish giggle.

  Mr. William Killian was smooth, very smooth. Cary Grant had nothing on him. He pulled Mom’s hand through his arm, patted it gently, and led her toward the parking lot. They chatted merrily the whole time. Actually the sight of the two white heads tipped toward each other tickled me.

  After he helped her buckle herself in, he gently closed the passenger side door. “Adieu, dear lady! Until we meet again.”

  He straightened, tucked in his tie, and smiled at me.

  “Your mother must have been a great beauty … once. We are all of us fading, not so much dying as simply evaporating into the greater cosmos. Our bodies are betraying us.”

  I thanked him for his help.

  “Any time. Although this is my business, I am not immune to grief. I pray I never shall be, either.”

  “But my mom didn’t know Mrs. Fitzgerald.”

  “No, but your mother realizes what is ahead. That’s the difference between us old farts and the teenagers. They think they’ll never die, and we know death is just around the corner. Their lack of knowledge leaves them giddy. Our surfeit of knowledge makes us sad.” With a courtly salute, he bid me farewell.

  Mom fell asleep on the ride back from the funeral home. I cranked back the passenger seat, and she continued to snore loudly. When I pulled up at CALA, I cracked the windows, parked in the shade, locked the doors, and left Mom to her slumber while I ran inside.

  Okay. I confess: I’d had about all of my mother that I could take. I secretly hoped someone would steal the car with her in it, but that was unlikely. CALA’s parking lot is full of new BMWs, Land Rovers, Mercedes coupes, Escalades, and Mazda Miatas. And those are the kids’ cars. No one at CALA would be caught dead in my old beater.

  Teachers had their own parents to deal with, presumably. They would have noticed my snoring mother and thought, “I’ve got one just like that at home.”

  “Excuse me,” I said to the receptionist at the main desk. “I was supposed to meet Lane Carlée at Edwina Fitzgerald’s funeral. But I didn’t see her.”

  “She called in sick this morning. Lane gets nasty migraines. You can’t imagine how sick they make her,” said the receptionist.

  I decided since I was there, I’d return the alumnae materials to Ruth Glazer. I ran back out to the car, checked to see that Mom was still asleep and comfortable, grabbed the materials, and ran back into the building and down the hall to the Alumni Office.

  “What happened to Elsa?” I asked.

  “Elsa? Elsa who?” Ruth looked confused.

  “Peter Fitzgerald’s younger sister. The one with Down Syndrome. She appeared in a few early pictures, but that was all.”

  “Goodness, I’d forgotten all about her. Mind you, this was very hush-hush. I never knew he had a sister until one day when poor Peter started crying in class. They were reading Where the Red Fern Grows, I think. Miss Mitchell took him out in the hall. That’s where I saw him. I was an English teacher then, so my classroom was nearby. He told Sandra Mitchell how just that morning at breakfast two men showed up and took Elsa away. He was sure he would never see her again.”

  “Doctors?”

  “Two men in white coats. Probably they were orderlies. All I know is that he was terrified. Absolutely beside himself. The poor boy was a nervous wreck.”

  “How frightening it must have been, to see your sister taken away!”

  Ruth nodded. “He was shivering and crying, poor boy. His mother told him to finish his oatmeal. His father had already gone to work. Neither of the orderlies would answer any of his questions and his sister was shrieking with fear.”

  “I realize they used to advise families to send children away, but still, it must have been heartbreaking for him to lose his little sister!”

  Ruth nodded and played with her tea bag, mashing it with her spoon. “Until the mid-1960s, experts counseled parents to institutionalize their Down Syndrome children before they bonded with them. It was Gergen who wanted to bring Elsa home. He had hired a special nurse to care for her. But Edwina was embarrassed. She viewed their daughter as a personal failure, I guess. I never heard her speak of the child. Not once.”

  “Is it Down Syndrome or Down’s Syndrome?”

  “In the ’60s, it became properly known as Down Syndrome since the possessive implied ownership by Dr. John Langdon Haydon Down.”

  “So did Elsa ever come home?”

  Ruth shook her head sadly and coughed a little, the way you do when you can’t find your voice. “A fire swept through the institution, and Elsa and twelve other children perished. Neither Gergen nor Peter ever forgave Edwina. Later it came out that one of the boys in the home was a firebug. He loved playing with matches, and he set the fire accidently. They were all improperly supervised. The boy perished, too, of course. This was before sprinkler systems.”

  “Oh, my gosh. That must have broken Peter’s and Gergen’s hearts.”

  She sighed. “Actually, Peter was incredibly angry. He turned violent. Punched his locker door in so badly it had to be replaced. Broke a bone in his right hand. Told his guidance counselor he wanted to change his last name. After that, he acted out in class. Spent a lot of time in detention. Poor Peter.”

  I agreed. “Poor, poor Peter.”

  Forty-four

  Mom woke up when I opened the driver’s side door.

  “I need to tinkle.” I took her back inside the school. After a long wait, she came out of the ladies’ room and said, “I couldn’t go.”

  I drove to my mother-in-law’s home, helped my mom out of the car, and walked her upstairs. She sat on the toilet.

  “I still can’t go,” said Mom, staring down at herself.

  It was hard to reconcile the woman who was once so private with this sagging, elderly person sitting on a porcelain throne and showing no signs of embarrassment because the bathroom door was open.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I have to go, but I can’t.”

  “I’ll run some warm water in the sink. Why don’t you reach over and put your hand in it?” I’d used this trick when I was potty-training Anya.

  It worked, but I could tell by the abbreviated splashing that she hadn’t released much urine. Mom accepted my help to get up from her seated position. I braced myself for her weight, but she was light as a kite on a windy spring day. Beneath my fingers, her bones were sharp and her musculature was meager.

  Who was this woman masquerading as my mother?

  Was her need to visit the bathroom frequently an affectation? A bid for attention? Or a sign of a physical problem?

 
The import hit me: I didn’t know much about her health. I’d text-messaged Amanda for Mom’s records because I worried about Alzheimer’s, but now I considered how important it might be to have a complete set of her records.

  “I hate these hose,” said my mother, plucking at the nylon.

  “Why don’t you do like all the fashion magazines suggest and go without?”

  “They do? All right. I’ll try it.” Mom struggled to step out of her panty hose.

  I moved to the laundry basket; it was totally empty. “Mom? Don’t you have any dirty clothes?”

  She waved an airy hand of dismissal at me. “I wear things twice.”

  That accounted for the smell of dirty hair and old perspiration that followed her around. I rummaged through her suitcase and her closet and collected an armful of garments.

  “I’ll take care of these for you.”

  She shrugged. “I’m tired. I think I’ll take a nap.”

  As I was sorting Mom’s things in the laundry room, the front door opened. Sheila and Anya walked through, chatting merrily. The two of them giggled over a joke. Sheila had picked Anya up from school and then they’d gone to Bread Co. for a healthy snack. I could smell the roast turkey and the whole wheat bread.

  “Homework, first,” I heard Sheila remind Anya. “You know the rules.”

  Indeed, she did know the rules. They were the same in Sheila’s house as in ours. Sheila had become my co-parent, caring for Anya in a responsible, thoughtful way. Our disagreements about child raising had been few and far between. Sheila always backed me up when I put my foot down or told Anya, “No.”

  I turned to Sheila for help, relied on her for insight, and generally took her advice. In return, the void in Sheila’s life (the one caused by George’s premature death) was partially filled by her time with Anya and with me. An unlikely trinity, the three of us pulled together to be a functional family unit.

  “Kiki?” Sheila popped her head in the laundry room. “Have you eaten? I bought extra at Bread Co. If you start that load, I’ll dry and fold it for you.”

  “That would be great.”

  Blue liquid laundry detergent spilled over the clothes in a design like cracked marbles. As I watched it, I marveled at the complicated strands of connection that turn strangers into families. No one would have blamed Sheila if she had ignored me or if I had turned my back on her after George died. But instead of turning away from each other, we had slowly turned toward each other.

  In a strange sad way, the death of the man Sheila and I both loved forced us to really see each other. To take a long, hard look. By unspoken mutual consent, and in his absence, each of us set about to discover for ourselves the qualities George had seen—and loved—in us.

  Odd. If he had lived, he would have always stood between us, the filter for our relationship. He would have always been the peacemaker and the conduit. His love/approval would have been a prize we both coveted. Without him to win or lose, we were on our own. We were forced to deal honestly with each other.

  O, Lord, I am grateful that my daughter has at least one grandparent who can encourage and love her, I thought as I hit the ON button and heard the water flood into the washer. Is it too late for us to have a good relationship with my mother as well? I’m not asking for love. I’d settle for mutual respect. Is that too much to ask?

  Forty-five

  Robbie Holmes came home early. Sheila had phoned him and picked up his favorite roast beef panini from Bread Co. He dug in with the sort of gusto that announced he hadn’t eaten all day. Anya elected to take her food into the great room where she and Seymour could watch the latest installment of American Idol.

  “I dropped by the alumni office at CALA today to return the information I borrowed about the Fitzgerald family,” I said. I hoped my tone sounded desultory, not like I had a mission in mind. Which I did. “You know, everybody calls that guy the same thing. Poor Peter. I mean, it’s practically his nickname, isn’t it?”

  Sheila shrugged and swallowed a spoonful of minestrone soup. “I guess.”

  “Did you know him, Sheila? I mean, do you know him? Or did you know Edwina?”

  Robbie kept his eyes on his plate as he chewed slowly and thoughtfully.

  “Well enough, I guess.” Sheila blew on her soup.

  “What does that mean?” It wasn’t like Sheila to be coy.

  “We both belong to Bellerive Country Club. We served on CALA committees together. Harry served on the Lichbaden board of directors.”

  “Really? That’s interesting.”

  “Why?” Sheila frowned at me. “Harry worked with a lot of boards. He had a talent for that sort of thing.”

  My turn to shrug. “I’ve heard that the board wasn’t all that happy with Peter’s performance. Just scuttlebutt. Nothing solid.”

  “What difference would that make? Look, are you suggesting he shot his mother and then shot himself in the leg? Really, Kiki. That’s far-fetched even for someone with a vivid imagination,” said Sheila. Her voice turned huffy, as she added, “Leave the police work to Robbie. That’s his bailiwick, not yours.”

  Robbie put down his sandwich. “We’ve heard the rumors about his impending demotion, Kiki. But as Sheila says, he certainly couldn’t have shot himself in the leg. I mean, you were there. It was physically impossible for him to be the shooter.”

  I agreed. “I guess I’ve been thinking about his relationship with his mother. I don’t think anyone could call Edwina warm and fuzzy. Or nurturing.”

  “Huh,” Sheila snorted. “Especially after she broke her son’s hand.”

  “What?” Robbie and I echoed in chorus.

  “Of course, she didn’t break his hand personally … she paid a creep to do it,” Sheila said.

  “Honey, that’s gossip. We heard about it down at the station. But that’s just hearsay, and I’m surprised you’d repeat it.” Robbie took a swig of his root beer.

  Sheila sat back and crossed her arms over her chest. “I do not repeat gossip. Robbie, you know better.”

  “But that can’t possibly be true, can it? I mean, what mother breaks her own son’s hand?”

  “A desperate woman whose son has won a full-ride scholarship to art school in Chicago,” replied Sheila. “A frustrated woman who has planned her whole life around her son succeeding her in the family business. A woman pushed over the edge. And I know it’s true because I was in the ladies’ room when she admitted as much to Ditsy Keenor.”

  I knew Ditsy. She lived up to (or down to, depending on your logic) her nickname. Her given name was actually Dorothy, but Ditsy was a complete nut-case, probably because she drank like a fish. (Do fish actually drink? If so, do they pee? Inquiring minds want to know.)

  Two times in the past year, we’d called cabs for Ditsy when she showed up pie-eyed at our crops. Scissors and craft knives in the hands of a drunk do not inspire confidence.

  Ditsy was a notorious blabbermouth who kept up a running commentary on everything she knew, thought she knew, and didn’t know but thought she knew.

  As if reading my mind, Sheila added, “Ditsy followed Edwina into the ladies’. I was already there in a stall. I heard Ditsy ask Edwina point-blank if she’d hired those two thugs who mugged Peter and smashed his hand in a car door.”

  “What did she say?” asked Robbie, picking apart a piece of lettuce on his plate.

  “Edwina said to Ditsy—and I quote—‘I would do anything to secure my son’s future. That goes double for making sure our business stays in the family.’ Then Edwina got this really nasty tone in her voice and she said, ‘Ditsy, no one would ever believe I hurt my own child. But here’s the honest truth: It’s better that he cry now than I cry later. We all do what we have to so our children lead successful lives. I haven’t done anything you wouldn’t have done if you were in the sam
e situation’.”

  “You watch,” Sheila said. “There will be times ahead when you are forced to make decisions. Horrible, painful decisions. You’ll do what you need to do. You’ll do things that Anya won’t like and won’t understand. You’ll do whatever is necessary and be willing to take the blame, because you know what’s best for your child.”

  “Or think you do,” Robbie said, pushing his plate away and leaving the table.

  Forty-six

  I wanted to take the rest of the day off, but I couldn’t. I had to load up supplies and take them to Faust Park, because I had my faux fight with Johnny to look forward to. Because Margit was so incredibly inflexible, and Dodie had a doctor’s appointment, Clancy was working the late afternoon/evening shift alone, except for Gracie, my dog.

  The Great Dane started a high-pitched whine the minute I walked through the back door. Instead of going docilely from her playpen to the back door for a potty break, she bee-lined around me and into the sales area.

  “Gracie, no!” I yelled, racing after her. She knew the sales floor was off-limits. I’d never seen my dog make a dash into that forbidden territory.

  Clancy sat at the work table, her head in her hands. Even before she glanced up, I could tell she’d been crying. Gracie whined and stuck her nose against Clancy’s face. Clancy reached up and petted her. The Great Dane looked from her to me and whimpered. “Good old Gracie,” she said, dabbing at her eyes, “you are such a sweetheart.”

  “What’s wrong? Are you sick? Hurt?”

  “I’m okay. I have to leave. I’ve been calling you.”

  “Oh my gosh. I am so sorry, Clancy. I forgot to turn my ringer back on after I visited the funeral home.”

  “It’s not your fault. You didn’t know I’d need you.” Clancy dug in her purse for her keys. “It’s Mom. She fell. A neighbor found her on the floor. We think she broke her hip. Maybe her arm, too. No telling how long she was lying there. I’ve got to go—”

  “You sure you’re okay to drive? We can close the store if necessary and I’ll take you there.”