The next hurricane to hit Seaside was going to sweep the Imperiale out to sea. If you placed your aged loved ones in that assisted-living facility, you were secretly hoping for a good-sized storm surge.
Lester led the way. He signed the register at the front desk and announced, “We are here to see Barbara Miller. This is her grandnephew Eberhard Wilmot from San Diego. He has recently arrived in town and discovered that she is a resident here.”
The receptionist was a college-aged girl with Korean features and slightly protruding eyes. She took in Lester’s rumpled suit and stained tie. “And you are?”
“Mr. Wilmot’s factotum. We would like to see her immediately. Mr. Wilmot is concerned that she is not being treated as a lady of her means and station deserves.”
Ted couldn’t remember ever hearing anyone using the word “factotum” in conversation before. Apparently, neither could the receptionist, who seemed to be impressed with Lester’s performance. She tapped at her computer.
“Miss Miller is listed as having no known relatives,” she said.
“Well, that is an obvious mistake,” Lester said. He had center stage and all the best lines. “Her nephew is standing right here.”
That seemed to satisfy what little curiosity the girl could summon. “She’s playing bingo. Down that hallway, the game room is on your left.”
Surprised at this easy victory and relieved that he had not been asked to provide ID for Eberhard Wilmot, Ted hustled down the hall. “How am I supposed to remember an alias like Everhard Pillpot?”
“That’s the point,” Lester said. “No one will remember.”
“What were you going to do if she didn’t buy it?” Ted asked.
“Improvise.” Lester’s face was a mask of inscrutability.
“You’re scaring me, Lester.”
“Who breaks into nursing homes? Through the front door? Somebody shows up to visit at a place like this, the staff will lay out a path of rose petals for them.” He made a show of examining their surroundings. “Nice digs.”
The furnishings in the lobby were all a touch ornate but not well-made. At first glance, the place looked both grand and inviting, but the eye quickly picked up the chips in veneer, the worn fabric. Ted thought management must have picked up the furnishings used—and cheap.
However, his only frame of reference was the nursing home where his mother had lived her last few years while he was finishing college. Medicaid had picked up the tab. This place was a palace in comparison, though Ted was sure that hidden behind the pleasant furnishings and the Febreze-scented air was the same loneliness and despair.
The game room had a half-dozen round tables, a smattering of unmatched chairs, and plenty of room for the twenty or more wheelchairs and their occupants. On the long wall facing the players was a big flat-screen television showing a vibrant checkerboard arrangement of black numerals, some highlighted in red, others in yellow. Most of the faces were intent on checking the board against game cards. Along the far wall was a single line of wheelchairs alternating with folding chairs. All of the residents in the wheelchairs were fast asleep, curled forward, heads hanging down. The other seats were taken by aides, who were all busy playing bingo.
“B seven. B seven.” The number caller was a fleshy twentysomething brunette in a baby-blue pantsuit. The outfit made her look about thirty years older. Ted imagined that this was the desired effect.
“Bingo,” a dull voice murmured.
A sense of relief washed across the room. The grueling bout of concentration was over. Another would begin soon, but for the moment the contestants could relax.
The emcee meandered over and checked the old woman’s card. A moment later, in a voice devoid of any celebratory emotion, the girl announced, “We have a winner.”
This was the signal for two young black women in dark grey scrubs to dash about the room collecting nickels and handing out fresh cards to the clients and the aides. The clients were uniformly white, mostly women, and all well-dressed. The aides were all dark skinned, a mix of men and women, and they spoke in accents rooted in developing nations around the globe.
Ted took advantage of this lull in the inaction to sidle up to the emcee. “Excuse me. Could you direct me to my great-aunt? Barbara Miller?”
She stared him down like a professional. In the split second before she spoke, he saw past her boredom. This was not the job she had dreamed of a year ago as she completed her BS in social work, but nevertheless, she was going to take it seriously. Times were tough. Jobs scarce. The country was on a full-out assault upon health-care costs, and labor was an expense. He felt for her. “You don’t recognize your own aunt?” she said.
His sympathy lifted and his vision cleared. A bossy bureaucrat stood before him.
Lester intervened, speaking in a confidential whisper. “Mr. Filbert grew up on the West Coast. There was a rift in the family. They haven’t seen each other in thirty years or more.” He sounded like a funeral director discussing prices of coffin linings. Concerned, discreet, sincere, but embarrassed at the necessity.
Ted was worried that in order to uphold Lester’s narrative he might have to fall weeping on the old woman’s breast. As soon as he knew who she was.
“Barbara? Barbara, you have a visitor,” the young woman said to a sleeping woman in a wheelchair. Then, turning to the aide beside Miller, she said, “Anora? Miss Miller has a visitor.”
Anora was a round-faced woman with an island accent. Ted guessed Trinidad. She was thrilled that her charge had company. She said something else after expressing that, but he missed everything but the pronoun “she.”
“I understand,” Ted said. “We were never close.”
That non sequitur earned him a microfrown of confusion and another round of rapid-fire, heavily accented English. He looked to Lester for help, but judging by the way his suddenly quiescent partner was intently studying a bingo card, he had cut Ted loose.
Barbara Miller had a pinched face with papery thin skin. The bones of her skull were her dominant feature, around deep-set eyes and sunken cheeks. She was long past looking old; she’d graduated to ancient.
Anora shook her arm gently and murmured. Miller’s eyes popped open and bored into Ted’s. “Who are you?”
“Is there somewhere we can talk?” Ted asked.
For a moment Ted caught suspicion behind those glaring eyes. But she was also intrigued. Bored beyond all reason, ready for an adventure.
“Take me to the library,” she ordered.
Lester and Ted followed as Anora wheeled the crone out of the great room and down the hall. The library wasn’t an ideal forum for private conversation. A wide archway was all that separated it from the main lobby, but as there was no one else there, Ted thought it was as good as they were going to get. Three walls were covered from floor to ceiling with mahogany shelves holding thousands of bestsellers. Someone had a budget for books and kept the room stocked. Ted wondered if anyone but the staff ever read them.
“How are you, Miss Miller?” Lester pulled over a chair and sat next to her.
Ted sat facing them. Anora took a couch on the far side of the room.
“My name is Lester, and this is my friend Ted. How are you doing?”
“Do I know you?” Miller asked.
“We’ve never met.”
“I didn’t think so. Who’s this Ted? I heard what you told Little Miss Smiley Face back there, but that’s horse hockey. I don’t have any family out west. Or anywhere else.”
Ted thought she was sharp enough—and tough enough—to weather another ninety-three years. “My name’s Ted Molloy.”
“Never heard of you.”
“Would you like some cake, Miss Miller?” Lester asked, holding up the pastry box.
“What kind?”
“Yellow,” he said. “With mocha-walnut frosting.”
“Buttercream?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“How’d you know?”
“I didn’t. It’s my favorite.”
“You I like.”
Anora must have been following every word, because at that point she jumped up and scurried out of the room. She was back in seconds with paper plates, plastic forks, and a long serrated bread knife.
“I’d offer you coffee,” Miller said, “but the crap they serve here doesn’t deserve the name.”
Lester cut the cake. Miller watched him closely. “That’s from Lulu’s,” she said. Her expression was deliberately neutral.
“Yes?” Lester asked, for the moment unsure of how to read her comment.
She sniffed. “I’ve always preferred Andre’s.”
“I’ll remember for next time.”
“Give me a small piece,” Miller said.
“I thought it was your favorite.”
“It is, but my stomach doesn’t let me enjoy a lot of anything. Small servings or else I’m on the damn pot all night. Don’t get old.”
Lester patted the back of her hand and passed her a wedge. “Getting old isn’t for sissies.”
The woman made a sound like a throat-clearing cough—her version of a laugh. “Damn right.”
“Miss Miller,” Anora said in a cautioning tone.
“Excuse me, dear,” Miller said, smiling thinly. “Sometimes I forget you’re there.” She turned to Ted. “Or at least I want to.”
If Anora was offended by this verbal slap, she kept it to herself, smiling politely as one might in the presence of a toothless tyrant.
They each took a bite of cake, and for a moment the silence was broken only by the sounds of forks on plates.
“Good cake,” Miller said. “What do you want?”
Ted could tell he had zero chance of getting anything over on this woman, and he was becoming impatient with Lester’s extended schmoozathon. He laid it out straight:
“You lost a few buildings to foreclosure this year. There’s now a big chunk of surplus money sitting waiting to be claimed. I can get it for you. We split whatever I get. There’s enough for you to move someplace that’s got decent coffee.”
Lester’s eyes widened. He probably thought he’d been getting somewhere with his butter and sugar, but Ted knew better. Miller was as sharp as any squinty-eyed New York landlord he had ever come across.
She’d thrust her jaw forward, but she’d let Ted finish his pitch. “That’s a load of manure,” she said when he was done.
“I don’t think so,” Ted said.
“Then you’ve got the wrong Barbara Miller.”
She was so adamant that for a moment Ted considered that she might be right. Could Lester have made a mistake?
“You own property in Corona,” Ted said.
“And Jackson Heights,” she said. “All over. It’s been in the family for generations.”
“We can show you the foreclosure file. Some of it, anyway. The buildings went for taxes and water. Two years unpaid.”
“And I’m telling you that’s impossible. I’ve got a management company that runs all my buildings. I’ve worked with them for thirty years. They wouldn’t let that happen.” She was angry and the words were starting to tumble and slur.
Across the room, Anora began to shake her head and make “Stop” motions with both hands.
“The last time I sold a building was 2007, because I thought the market was getting toppy. I was goddamned right,” Miller said. The t in “toppy” projected a fleck of saliva. Ted watched it soar across the intervening space and come up short, landing a foot or so in front of him.
He was beginning to regret the whole encounter. He tried another, less confrontational tack. “How long have you been here, Miss Miller?”
“Oh, don’t try your tricks on me, young man,” she said. “You’re a sharpie. I can tell. Asking direct questions like that and expecting me to shout out an answer. That’s not conversation. We’re having conversation.” She was no longer spitting mad, but her face was bright red. She wasn’t giving an inch.
Anora murmured, “Three, almost four years.”
Miller drew herself up and glared at Anora hard enough to raise welts. “I don’t like you interrupting all the time. I’ve mentioned that before, I think.” Miller looked at Ted thoughtfully for a moment before saying, “I’ve been here three, almost four years.”
Ted felt his resolve dissipating. Barbara Miller was a tough old bird and was covering up well, but the signs were clear. Early-onset dementia had taken both his mother and grandmother; he knew the signs and all the tricks the women had used to cover their errors, confusion, and emotional outbursts. And though the progression of the disease had been erratic, with plenty of good days mixed in with the bad, the end result had never been in doubt.
Even if he could get Barbara Miller to sign an agreement, it would not stand up to a challenge in court.
In a futile attempt to convince Ted that her memory was much better than it appeared, she began telling him all the things that she did remember. What remained unclear, however, was whether these events had actually happened.
“That’s when the girl brought me here. Social said I couldn’t live on my own anymore. I don’t know why they said that. I kept a clean house, took my pills on schedule, and ate regular. I ate better than I do here. The food used to be better here, but they’ve been cutting corners. I think they’re not getting deliveries, so they have to make do. It’s the companies. The companies are in trouble. They don’t advertise anymore. They have to advertise.”
He tried to sift through the barrage for specific facts. A pattern was starting to form, and the picture was ugly. “Who called social? Your doctor? A visiting nurse? Home companion? Someone must have brought them in.” He shot a look at Lester, who frowned.
“No,” Miller said. “They showed up one day. Two women. Not very nice. Asked too many damn questions, so I told them off.”
“But they came back?” Ted asked.
“With the girl. She can tell you. She knows the whole story. Where is she? Where’s my girl?” She was becoming agitated again and beat her hand on the armrest of her wheelchair. From the cracked and worn look of it, she often did so.
“She’s right here, ma’am,” Lester said.
“Not her,” Miller spat. “This one’s useless. She changes my diapers. I want the girl. The girl with all my papers.”
Ted wanted to shake it out of her. Who was the damned girl? “Tell me about her, Miss Miller. The girl. With the papers. Legal papers? Was she a lawyer?”
“She was very young. And blonde.”
At ninety-three everyone under seventy-five must seem young.
“Am I very young?” he asked.
“No,” Miller said. “But you’re close. If you were a doctor, you would be. Are you a doctor?”
Ted was losing her. Pushing too hard. Direct questions threatened her. Frightened her. He looked to Lester for help.
“Have you finished your cake?” Lester asked.
She looked at her plate. She had taken only a few bites. “Oooh. No more for me. I still have plenty.” She carved a large bite with the edge of her fork and carefully brought it up to her mouth. No sooner was she chewing it than she began speaking again. “She was very pretty. And tall. For a woman, I mean.”
Ted gave Anora a questioning look. She nodded and said something that he thought he understood. “She was a lawyer,” he said. “Right?” Anora flashed him a tight smile. They were communicating. Ted wanted two minutes alone with the aide.
Ted knew of a tall blonde woman lawyer whose name was on the case file. Jackie. The only part of the description that Ted would have disputed was “very pretty.” But he allowed that his opinion on that subject might be skewed.
“I’m sorry, Miss Miller. We didn’t mean to trouble you. We’ll be going. Can Anora show us out?” He stood. Lester gave him a questioning look and rose slowly.
“The girl,” Miller said. “You find that girl.”
Ted stopped. He didn’t want to rattle her again, but if one or two more questions might get at the full story, he was going to try. “I’ll need something to go on,” he said. “Do you know her name?”
“Questions. All you have are questions. I don’t have all the answers.” She was adrift again.
“Was the girl’s name Jackie?” A last forlorn hope.
Miller’s distress evaporated. She set her plate thoughtfully on Lester’s empty chair and leaned back, eyes closed. “No,” she finally said.
Ted silently cursed his own stupidity. “Jacqueline? Jacqueline Clavette?”
The woman repeated the pantomime of thinking hard. “She had very good diction.”
Ted looked to Anora for help. She shrugged.
“She had you sign some papers.” He was close and could feel it.
“Hundreds,” Miller said. She was back. Clear. The lapses in her memory were no longer threatening.
Paper always leaves a trail. “I’m going to pursue this, Miss Miller.” Another thought occurred to him. “I’m going to have Lester stop by again tomorrow with another paper for you to sign.”
She looked at Lester. “Are you bringing cake?”
He smiled. “If you like.”
“Go to Andre’s this time,” she said.