by Nevada Barr
“Mom wouldn’t let you use foul language in front of the child?”
“Izzy wasn’t like that,” Rose answers, sitting beside Mel on the sofa. “She never made me do anything—or even told me not to do anything. When I’d do or say something too random, she had this way of dropping her jaw and making her eyes really wide, like she was so shocked she didn’t know whether to burst out laughing or run from the room. Then, because Izzy was Izzy, whatever out-of-line thing I was doing, I kind of sort of just didn’t want to do it anymore.”
“I remember that look,” Mel says wistfully.
“I’m glad I’m wearing your mom’s things on this junket,” Rose says. “It makes me feel less scared, more confident.”
“I’m glad, too, I guess,” Mel says. “Mom wouldn’t have approved of what you’re planning to do.”
“Probably not,” Rose agrees.
“Mom would have told you to call the police.”
“Your mother was a woman who had great faith in the system. She knew how to work and play well with others. Your granddad was like that. It worked for them. Not me. How the real world works has always been a mystery to me.”
They don’t speak for a while. Mel goes back to her cell phone.
Finally, Rose rouses herself. “I guess this is it,” she says. “Let’s get me wired.” Rose holds her hand out for Mel’s iPhone.
“Wait,” Mel says. “Let me make sure the ringer and vibrator are off. Dad usually calls around eight.”
Dad calls. Of course he does. “Did you talk to him last night?” Rose asks.
“Every night,” Mel replies without looking up.
“Did he mention Longwood? Me?”
“Nope. I haven’t told him anything. You asked me not to, remember?”
Rose does remember. “Longwood should have called him,” she says slowly. She hadn’t thought of that back in the fog-laced times.
“They must not have,” Mel says.
“After that first aborted escape, Nancy came, and Stella,” Rose recalls. “You’d think Longwood would have called Flynn. He’s the man on all the paperwork.”
“Maybe they did, and he called Grandma Nancy,” Mel says.
That is possible, but Rose thinks it odd. If Flynn knew she’d gone missing and stayed missing, he would have said something to his daughter. No, Flynn would have flown home the instant he could get away.
Unless he wants her to go missing, die, and be written off without a murmur.
Now there is some nasty food for thought.
“Cell phone,” Rose says, putting that idea away. She holds out her hand. Mel hugs the phone to her chest.
“You won’t answer it?”
“No.”
“You won’t read any texts?”
“No.”
“Or look at the photo gallery?”
“Oooh, what’s in the photo gallery?” Rose asks avidly. Mel is not amused. “Only kidding. No, I will not pry, peep, listen, or trespass in any way.”
“And call me the second you get out,” Mel insists.
“Can’t.”
“Oh! That’s right. You can’t call me because I don’t have a phone. I can’t call you. This so completely sucks.”
“I’ll come to your house as soon as I can,” Rose promises.
“How will you know whether Uncle Daniel is there when you can’t call me? This is not going to work.”
Anxiety, a classic symptom when the addict fears losing her source.
“How about I come to the playhouse and hide there until you tell me the coast is clear?”
“How can I tell you when I don’t have a phone!” Mel is almost shouting.
“I’ll put a pillow in the window so you’ll know I’m there. When Daniel is gone, you come get me. How does that sound?”
Mel clearly isn’t impressed with the pillow idea. Rose watches as the girl tries to put together an argument against it.
At length, Mel blows out a long derisive breath. “Before cell phones, did you guys have to be all Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew all the time?”
“All the time,” Rose says.
“Talk about early childhood mortification,” Mel says, but she lets Rose pry the phone from her warm living hand.
Chapter 15
“Did you get the Kleenex box?” Rose asks.
“I had to go to three stores,” Mel says as she leans over the arm of the sofa to retrieve a plastic bag. From it she takes a square box of tissues. The box is tan with an intricate black repeating pattern.
“Perfect,” Rose says. “You are a girl in a million. Empty it out, but don’t mess up the tissues.”
While Mel busies herself with that, Rose goes to the pillaged art supplies box and digs around in its disheveled contents. Armed with a #12 X-Acto knife and a roll of packing tape, she returns to the couch.
“Okay, put it in,” she tells Mel.
Her task of tissue deployment complete, Mel has picked up her cell phone again.
“Do I have to talk you down one more time?” Rose asks.
“I can quit anytime I want,” Mel says. She puts her phone into the empty tissue box.
“Hold it snug against the side,” Rose says. When Mel has the phone and box stabilized, Rose presses her fingertips along the cardboard until she feels an indentation. In that soft spot, she inserts the X-Acto knife. The tip of the blade clicks against a hard surface. “Got it on the first try,” she crows. “You can take the phone out now.”
Holding the box between her knees, Rose cuts a neat square about the size of the tip of her finger where she’d marked the cardboard with the blade. “Put it back in,” she says, handing the tissue box to her granddaughter.
“Wait a sec,” Mel says. “You are the one who is going to do this. Focus, Gigi. The phone will be on. You’ll have to unlock the screen, okay? Push this. The numbers come up. What’s my code?” Mel quizzes her.
“One zero four zero,” Rose answers.
“Good. And don’t think I’m not changing it the instant this is over. With all due respect. No offense meant.”
“With all due respect. None taken,” Rose says.
“Once it’s unlocked, press this. That’s home. Okay. Find the camera icon.”
Rose finds it.
“Touch it.”
Rose touches it.
“That’s all there is to it.” Mel’s fingers are clamped around the device.
“Put it in the box,” Rose insists.
“I am, I am,” Mel protests. She puts the cell phone into the tissue box, the screen facing the interior, the back of the phone pressed against the side where Rose cut the small hole. Holding the box on its side, several inches above her knees, Mel jostles the phone around while peering in the oval cutout where the tissues are meant to come forth. “Got it. The lens is perfectly aligned with the hole,” she says after a minute.
Rose leans over to look inside the box. On the screen of the phone a video of Mel’s knees is running.
“Let me tape the cell in place, so the image doesn’t get blocked.” Rose plucks up the packing tape from where she’s set it on the couch.
“That will leave my phone all sticky,” Mel complains.
“Windex will take it off,” Rose assures her.
After several attempts, Rose gets the phone taped securely to the side of the box, the camera lens aligned with the hole.
“Bluetooth,” Mel says, fishing a heavily packaged item out of the plastic sack.
The earpiece is not a great fit. Rose’s ears are small. Having pushed it in as far as it will go, she tapes it in place with pink cloth tape. In her early teens, that kind of tape was used to set pin-curls in front of the ears. The rest of the hair was rolled on juice cans to get the ideal bubble coif. Rose is surprised the stuff is still available.
Mel helps Rose get the wig back on straight. The hair covers the Bluetooth device and tape. But for a small pocket on the top, the scrubs offer nowhere to carry anything. During her raid on Izzy’s closet, Me
l has taken a small dark-green fanny pack made of ripstop fabric. “Mom used to wear it to work sometimes, so it should be okay to have it.”
“Thank you, Mel. Thank you, Izzy. Here we go,” she says. She turns on her phone, then calls Marion.
“It’s me,” Marion answers.
“Are you ready to do this?” Rose whispers.
“I suppose,” Marion says.
“Don’t whisper, Gigi,” Mel advises. “Everybody walks around talking to their phones at the top of their lungs. Whispering will make you look suspicious.”
“Got it,” Rose whispers. She drops her own cell phone into the fanny pack and zips it closed. “Got it,” she repeats firmly.
“Don’t press your palm to your ear,” Mel says. “Again, suspicious.”
Rose lowers her hand. “Can you hear me now?” she asks Marion.
“Is that a joke?” Marion snaps.
“Not a joke,” Rose replies.
“Well, don’t ask it out loud.”
Rose wonders how else she could ask it. “It’s on,” Rose says, turning the camera on. “Can you see anything?”
“Boxes and dark corners,” Marion replies.
“Hi, Great-Aunt Marion.” Grinning, Mel sticks her head in front of the hole in the tissue box.
“Yeah, okay, hi,” Marion says. “Turn it off to save the battery. Turn it back on before you go in. This isn’t going to be instantaneous.”
Rose does as she is told. Marion has routed the whole process through one of her addresses in Croatia, or some off-the-wall little country, so the transmission from Mel’s phone can’t be tracked back to her.
Mel carefully replaces the tissues into the box while Rose runs upstairs. She returns with a good-sized shoulder bag, shell shaped and beachy. Reverently, Mel stows the tissue box containing her social life into the bag. Rose returns to the art supplies and drags out a clipboard. She tears a couple of blank pages from a sketchbook and snaps them under the clip.
“What was that click?” Marion demands.
“A clipboard,” Rose tells her. “I thought I’d look more professional if I carried something.”
“Okay,” Marion says grudgingly.
“Will you stay with me while I do this?” Rose asks her sister.
“Do you promise if hospital security catches you, you will eat that phone before they can press redial?”
Marion really is paranoid.
Rose worries that she has good reasons for it.
Chapter 16
Regarding the ride with Rose to Longwood’s MCU, Mel will not negotiate. Shortly after seven P.M. Rose is deposited half a block from the entrance. Sufficient light remains in the evening sky to see clearly. Rose does a quick search of the bush where she’d discarded the cola-nurse’s keycard. Odds are against it working a second time. Though Rose doesn’t know how it is done, she knows electronic keycards at hotels are nullified if lost. Still, if it works, life will be easier.
The card, on its snipped lanyard, is caught in the spiky arms of the shrub a couple of inches down. Rose retrieves it.
With Mel’s assistance, Rose turned on the camera during the ride from Applegarth to Longwood. Taking her cell from the fanny pack, she calls Marion.
“Here,” Marion answers curtly.
“Are you ready?” Rose asks, resisting the urge to press her palm against the ear device.
“As I’ll ever be,” Marion says. Her voice sounds hollow. She is on speakerphone.
“Dread Pirate Marion,” Rose says, “prepare to board.” Back straight, chin up. Eyes alert, she holds the clipboard in the crook of her arm and walks with what she hopes is casual purpose to the sliding glass doors of the MCU. She steps on the sensor mat and they slide open. Once inside, she lets them close, then tries the keycard on the black plastic reader. No luck. She drops it behind a potted ficus tree and walks into the foyer.
To her left is the dogleg of a hall, windowless, if she remembers correctly. A sign she hadn’t noticed on her last trip reads SECURE COMMUNITY. Beneath it an arrow points in the direction of the lockdown ward.
To the right is a reception desk. A woman sits behind it playing solitaire on the computer. She glances up. Before Rose has the opportunity to use the lie she’s rehearsed, the receptionist registers the scrubs and turns back to her game.
Heartened by this success, Rose loses no time ducking into the blind L-shaped hall. “I’m in,” she says. “The keycard is a dud.”
“Lose the purse,” Marion says. “I’m blind.”
“Right, right.” Rose was so preoccupied with getting in, she’s all but forgotten why she is doing it. She takes the tissue box out of the bag. She turns it until she can see the hole. “Hi,” she says.
“Don’t dick around,” Marion growls. It isn’t fair that Marion is having fits of nerves. She isn’t within a thousand miles of the action. Rose should be the one allowed vapors. She puts the clipboard back in the purse. “Bless the ficus-tree epidemic,” she says as she hides the beachy tote behind another potted tree gracing the bend in the hallway. “I’m putting—”
“I see it,” Marion says.
“Okay. Good. I’m going to wait—”
“We’ve been over all this. Stop talking.”
A shudder, like a horse ridding its coat of flies, runs over Rose. Placing her feet hip distance apart, she laces her fingers loosely in front of her abdomen. The box with the camera she anchors securely between her thumbs. Concentrating on her breath, she waits. Her monkey mind scampers madly up and down the hall, in and out of the lockdown unit, even out onto the greenway, snatching at fragments of memory, bits of speculation, images of capture, speeches of conquest.
Each time, she catches it gently and brings it back, only to have another monkey caper out and begin reinventing her wardrobe, predicting her future. The attempt at calm abiding is about as fun as a barrel full of monkeys would be in actuality, showing their fangs and slinging excrement.
Breathing, Rose perseveres.
A particularly nasty monkey is screeching that tonight schedules had changed, MCU patterns been reorganized, all is doomed, when Rose hears a soft tread on the hall carpet. She puts her back to the sound, and prepares to appear as if she’s being surprised in midstep.
“Oh, hi!” she says, turning around half a second prematurely to face the candy striper. The girl doesn’t act as if she notices anything off. “I was just coming to get you,” Rose says somewhat breathlessly. “Here. Let me get that for you.” She lifts the snack tray out of unresisting fingers. “There’s been a bit of a disaster in the dining room.” Rose grimaces. She is shooting for an oh - yuck - somebody - tossed - their - cookies, not an oh - God - dead - bodies look. “Find Linda, she’ll tell you what to do.” Surely there is at least one Linda on the premises.
“Linda?” the girl says, either confused or stupid.
“Brownish hair, cut so,” Rose suggests, shrugging a shoulder in the general direction of her ear. “You’ll find her.” Rose turns and steps into the corner where she can see both back toward the reception area and the door into the lockdown unit. She mimes being in a predicament with both hands holding the tray, tissue box tucked awkwardly beneath her arm. “Buzz me in?”
The girl slaps her card onto the reader. The door slides open.
“Thanks, Lily,” Rose says, reading the girl’s name tag. “Go on now.” Another smile, warm but dismissive.
Obediently, Lily leaves. Step one of the plan is complete. Rose’s window of opportunity is open.
Hoping these early successes bode well for the mission, Rose walks into the SECURE COMMUNITY. Hearing the door slide shut behind her, she is hit with a wave of panic. Again she is trapped among the living dead with no way out. Until that moment, she hadn’t understood how terrifying it would be. Her mind dulls, the lights waver, fog begins to form. For an awful moment she is afraid she will be sick. Or insane again. The tray of snacks trembles, a small quake rattling the juice boxes against each other.
Rose s
ets the tray down on a table at the end of the couch, taking time, letting the terror ebb. In her peripheral vision, she can see one nurse behind the desk, the other outside the high counter, leaning on it companionably. Presumably the night nurse come to relieve the day nurse. That, or maybe, since Rose poisoned Karen, they have taken to working in pairs.
With the cola-loving nurse in ICU, the night nurse will be new, will never have seen Rose. With a start, Rose realizes it is the day nurse, Shanika, at the computer. Shanika will leave before the residents are put to bed, unless the schedule has changed. Rose recalls that the day nurse saw her, as in saw Rose’s humanity, through the cloud of dementia. A woman like that might not have much trouble penetrating makeup and a wig.
Keeping her face away from Shanika, Rose begins serving the snacks. “Hey,” she says over her shoulder. “Lily had a mini-emergency in dining. Tonight you get me.” There. Her explanation is delivered with only a slight quaver.
“Anything serious?” Shanika asks, moving from behind the desk.
“A spill,” Rose says. She doesn’t try to change her voice. As a resident of the MCU, she had scarcely spoken. Besides, when she tried it in rehearsal, she sounded like a bad actor. As soon as Shanika leaves, Rose will commence her charade, luring the night nurse from the MCU with an imaginary summons from the man at the employee parking lot regarding “towing or something.” People run when their vehicles are threatened.
Neither nurse pays her further attention. Taking her time, willing her pulse rate down, Rose removes the tissue box from beneath her arm and sets it on the table behind the snack tray. The last thing she wants is one of the residents grabbing tissues.
Even in dementia, people remain creatures of habit. Each citizen is in the same place they were when Rose jumped ship. The woman who sat atilt, like the Leaning Tower of Pisa, and her vacant-eyed companion are on the sofa where Rose last saw them. Both perk up at the advent of snacks. Rose feels a stirring of joy at having brought them a piece of life they still have the capacity to enjoy.
“Holy smoke,” Marion breathes in Rose’s ear. “Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come. Promise me you’ll kill me and see that my cats get good homes.”