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Edgewater Cares Retirement Community
Chicago, Illinois
January 8, 2016
9:20 am
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Andrea met Brigid in the Edgewater lobby after Drew dropped her off. They rode up the elevator together, had the car to themselves. Brigid was so comforting, but she kept saying it was a blessing Robert died in his sleep, that his suffering was over.
Andrea blurted out, “He didn’t die in his sleep. Lamar killed him.”
“You know what I’d like to do,” Brigid said, as if Andrea had been talking about the frigid weather. “Skip this whole funeral home thing and take care of his body ourselves. We could do it together. Wash him, wrap him in a shroud, keep him in my apartment for a few days. The way people used to.”
Brigid could not be serious. She was just avoiding the question.
“Did you hear what I said? Lamar killed Dad.” The elevator door opened. “And it’s not your apartment, it’s Dad’s. I mean, it will be yours, but not yet.”
Brigid tilted her head and waved her hand at Andrea. Was she dismissing her accusation of Lamar or her reminder that she didn’t own the apartment? “Robert said he was fine with leaving out the funeral home. Whatever you and the kids want, he said.”
“Won’t the body start, you know, decomposing? Get stinky?”
Brigid walked into the sixth-floor lobby, but Andrea stayed in the elevator. She had pushed Drew to drive as fast as possible to get to Edgewater—she had to see her father—but now that she was here, she hesitated. The staff had moved her father’s body to an empty room.
The elevator door started closing. She had to push the button to open it again.
She got off, but stopped at the nurse’s station. On the wall where the activities and menus were posted was a dark rectangle she’d seen hundreds of times. The story was that some bright soul had put up a plaque commemorating the residents who had died, and it fell off one day and they never put it back, leaving a shadow that was not as faded as the rest of the wall.
Brigid waited until Andrea caught up with her. “I saw this video,” she said. “You use dry ice to keep the body cool. Hell, we could leave him out on the fire
escape, it’s so damn cold out there.”
“But where? What, you’re going to lay him on the couch?”
“I’ll put him on my bed,” said Brigid. “I’ll sleep somewhere else for a few days.”
“That’s too creepy. No way. You don’t think Lamar did it?”
“I don’t see how he could have,” Brigid said. “Pierre said Robert was alive at two in the morning.”
“Really?”
“Apparently, Clay had some outburst and Pierre sang lullabies to calm him down while Robert sawed away.”
Andrea knew in her gut it had been Lamar, but it was possible she was wrong.
She stopped again. Brigid was waiting in the doorway of the room at the end of the hall. “Are you coming? He looks like he’s sleeping.”
Andrea lifted her shoulders, swallowed, and strode down the hallway and into the room.
He did look like he was sleeping. A white sheet came up to his chin, but there was no up and down of his breathing.
She leaned over her father and kissed his forehead. When she stood back up, she wobbled. Brigid hugged her, then sat her down in the chair by the bed. By then, Drew had arrived. He said he couldn’t find a parking space and then he had to eat something because his blood sugar was low.
The room faced the lake. There were icicles melting just outside the window. The sun was shining. She thought she was going to cry, but she didn’t.
She asked Brigid and Drew to give her some time alone with her father. For one more goodbye.
She had spent countless hours sitting with her father the past several years. He had never been much of a gabber, not like her mother, so she often brought videos or audio books with her from the library. That had been Lamar’s idea, though she had chided him at first, said they should be talking with their father, not watching videos.
Andrea brought popcorn and those chocolate mints she used to buy at the movies. Her father didn’t always follow the story, but when they watched Terms of Endearment, they were both tearing up toward the end. If he didn’t understand it, he felt it.
She kept waiting for her father to take a breath and sputter back to life. She couldn’t do this. She couldn’t.
But.
She had wished, more than once, that he would die. When he went off about how he couldn’t stand it. She hadn’t meant it. It had only been a couple times. It hadn’t been a wish, more of a what if.
Now he was gone. Now the tears flowed. She didn’t sob, though she wanted to. The door was closed, but who knew if Brigid or Drew were listening in the hallway.
Why would it matter if they heard? Wasn’t a girl allowed to cry for her father? And why was Brigid so calm? Maybe she didn’t love him as much as she said.
Oh God, her heart felt like it was going to explode.
“Dad, thank you for everything.” She touched his cold cheek. “I wish we had more time.”
After lunch with Drew, she sat in the first floor lobby of Edgewater, making a list of what else she had to do. She was a project manager. She made lists. Who knew there were so many bureaucratic and logistical details that came with death?
Drew kept following her everywhere she went, which was sweet, but she told him he should go to work, that she’d let him know when she needed him.
She was on the second page of her list when Alicia, one of the food service workers, approached and asked if she had a minute. No, she didn’t, but she nodded yes.
“I heard you say your brother killed Robert,” she said. At least she dispensed with small talk. “I know someone who can help you. From my church.”
Her church. Of course. Alicia, never without the black cross around her neck. Alicia, whose English was excellent, but somehow Andrea had never talked to her before. Barely noticed her.
“Her name is Paula and she’s fighting to stop euthanasia, like what happened to your father. I can ask her to call you. You know you have to demand an autopsy. To determine the cause of death.”
“I’ve been going through the day in a daze,” Andrea said, “signing papers, doing what people tell me. You mean they won’t do an autopsy if I don’t say anything?”
“People die here all the time. They stop breathing. Their heart stops. They’re sick. They’re old.”
Paula called two hours later while Andrea was at the Mariano’s on Golf Road. She was in the produce section, sorting through potatoes and onions. All the potatoes had bruises or blemishes. The garlic bulbs were huge and pungent. Drew was driving to O’Hare to pick up Lamar, and he had just texted her that the flight was delayed.
Once Lamar arrived, they would all head to Edgewater for a gathering at Brigid’s, and then tomorrow would be another full day. She asked Paula if they could meet right away, at Starbucks by the Woodfield Mall.
When Andrea arrived, Paula was sitting up straight sipping black coffee, her heavy coat on the back of the chair. Young and fit, with short black hair and glasses. Her face, though, not exactly pretty. Thin lips. Pockmarked cheeks. Not that Andrea was some beauty, but she had decent skin. When they shook hands, Paula flashed a tight smile.
Straight to business. “You said on the phone you wanted to meet now because your brother is arriving this evening, and there won’t be a good time tomorrow. You said you don’t want him to know. But if you’re convinced your brother killed your father, you have to be comfortable saying so out loud.”
“But what about Lamar? Won’t he cover his tracks?”
Paula pulled a stack of colored index cards from her purse, bound by a thick blue rubber band, like the ones that came with broccoli.
“Either your brother killed your father deliberately, trying to make it look like natural causes, in which case, we have to do some digging, or he was careless, in which case, it might be open and shut. Of course, this is about evidence and the law, but it’s much more about appearance and narrative. I have to warn you, however, that you cannot make accusations like this, no matter how well founded, without backlash. If you’re not comfortable with unwanted attention, you’re best off letting this go.”
“I’m convinced. I’m committed,” Andrea said, with more confidence than she felt.
Paula followed with a barrage of questions, taking notes in tiny block letters on her color-coded cards. How do you know your brother committed this crime? Where did he stay when he visited Chicago? Did he rent a car? Did he bring a computer with him? What browser did he use?
Andrea was tempted to defend Lamar at one point, and say she suspected him, but wasn’t positive. But she was positive. There was no doubt in her mind. If she had any doubt, it was about herself. Was she up for a public fight? Yes, she decided. She could feel herself getting incensed, and it felt right. Her father still had life in him until Lamar took it away. Took him away. From her.
Now she was an orphan.
But she was doing this for her father, not for herself.
When she said Lamar would be staying with her in Schaumburg, Paula pulled a thumb drive from her pocket and handed it to her.
“You say he has a Mac laptop. I want you to stick this into the USB port and copy everything you can onto this drive. You said you’re an IT manager, so I assume you know how to do that.”
“Yes, but what if he has a password? What if he sees what I’m doing?”
“Do you want to do this or not? Accusing your brother is not for the faint-hearted.”
Andrea bit her upper lip, the thumb drive still in the palm of her open hand. What was Paula’s story? What was her agenda? Was this really for her church? What was in this for her?
“I do.” She closed her fingers over the thumb drive. Lamar probably didn’t even have a password. If he did, it would be easy to guess.
“The first thing you’re going to do now is call the police.” Paula handed her two index cards, one green, one blue. “Here’s what you say.”
“Now?”
“Now.”