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AS CHELSEA’S mother rolled paint onto the last wall, Fideaux wandered in to give his owner The Look.
“My turn!” Chelsea exclaimed, eagerly setting down her paint brush. “Let's go, pal," she urged the dog, then hustled downstairs behind him.
When the duo reached the far right corner of the yard, Fideaux shot his hostess an almost audible, privacy-please glance until she turned away to survey her surroundings.
Now that she noticed, it was a lovely afternoon—blue sky, light breeze, a cabbage butterfly flitting around at random. The yard didn’t offer much to write home about, but it was hers and Bobby's and she enjoyed an unaccustomed sense of ownership.
Nearby a male voice began to sing scales the way Chelsea had been taught to warm up her voice in college.
Unaware that she was in motion, she gravitated toward Mrs. Zumstein’s detached garage. Situated halfway back from the house it sat snug up against the fence. Chelsea knew the small structure was stuffed with cast-off furniture and other junk; yet as she lowered herself cross-legged onto the grass, it became a theater.
"Oh boy, oh boy. Your pipes, your pipes are rusty..."
Eric Zumsteim. Had to be him.
A clearing of the throat and the song began in earnest. "Oh, Danny boy, the pipes, the pipes are calling/From glen to glen, and down the mountain side..."
Chelsea's jaw dropped. Even as a music major, she'd never experienced a live voice quite so heartbreaking. From a terribly expensive seat in the fiftieth row...maybe. Maybe.
"The summer's gone, and all the flowers are dying..."
No way could Chelsea exile herself from this. She crossed her fingers hoping her mother would understand.
"'Tis you, 'tis you must go and I must bide..."
She drew a deep jagged breath. Sure, the song was a guaranteed tear-jerker, but really! This guy was ripping her heart right out.
Next, "Ol' Man River," but like no other Chelsea had ever heard. Pulsing with pain, it filled her with empathy for the slave pulling the barge. Until Fideaux pushed between her arms and licked her face, she had been unaware that her cheeks were wet.
Then Eric launched into such an intimate “If I Loved You” from Carousel that she suddenly felt like a voyeur. Blushing to the roots of her hair, she rose from the grass and gently guided Fideaux toward the house. They slipped inside the backdoor with scarcely a click of the latch.
At the end of the day she held a trash bag open for her mother to stuff with soiled newspapers. "He's amazing," she repeated for the seventh time. "The guy should have an agent, a recording contract—fans!"
"Sounds like he already has one of those," Gin remarked.
Someone hammered on the front door.
Chelsea lowered the trash bag. "I’ll go. My house, my ten-year-old fundraiser."
Yet when she arrived downstairs, she was shocked to recognize Eric Zumstein’s profile through the window. For a second she feared he had come to scold her for listening to his rehearsal. But then he turned toward her, and she saw he was distressed about something much, much worse.
She opened the door.
"Is your mom still here?" he asked.
"Yes, upstairs.”
"Can you please get her for me? I've got an ambulance coming for Gram."
***
"MOM!" CHELSEA SHOUTED up to me on the third floor. "Eric needs you. It's an emergency."
I threw down my paintbrush and ran down the stairs.
"Gram fell," Eric told me before I even reached the foyer.
When we were face to face, he explained. "She's pretty shook up, and she's confused, too. Thinks I'm her ex-husband, who's dead by the way, but she hated the guy and won't do anything she thinks he wants her to do, which includes going to the hospital. Could you please try to convince her...?"
"Lead the way."
Eric ushered me into the gray Victorian’s front hall. “Thanks a million,” he said with a sigh. “I couldn't think of anything else to do."
"No problem."
Tucked under a blanket at the bottom of the stairs, Maisie Zumstein moaned with pain. In the distance we heard the strident approach of an ambulance.
"Maisie?" I said softly as I kneeled beside the woman. "My name is Gin. I'm Chelsea's mother from next door. It seems that you had a fall.”
Mrs. Zumstein met my eyes and nodded once. Tears trailed into the fuzzy hair that had fallen onto her face. I cleared her eyes and wiped her nose with the clean tissue I kept in my pocket.
"Don't make me go with him," the old woman begged. "Please don't make me go with him."
"I won't," I said, gently stroking her cheek. "But you should go to the hospital and get checked out. I can see that you’re in pain."
The fright in the woman's eyes emphasized just how bad the pain really was.
"What should I do?" Eric asked from a discreet distance.
I asked him to grab her insurance cards and any meds she was taking. “Then why don’t you follow us? Maybe ask Chelsea to follow you so I can get a ride back."
"You're going with Gram?"
"If they'll let me."
My stomach lurched to see the unnatural angle of Maisie’s right arm as the emergency crew maneuvered her onto their gurney. I’m sure they were handling her as carefully as they could, but she cried out pitifully with each change of position.
Hovering as near as he dared, Eric shuffled and twitched and desperately tried to tell the EMTs about his grandmother’s confusion. The two technicians were so focused on Maisie, I didn’t think they were listening. But without taking his eyes off the patient the older of the two men responded.
"To be expected," he reassured her distraught relative. "She's had quite a shock."
When the time came to decide whether I should go or stay, the same EMT convinced me to stay. "If she gets upset, we'll tell her we're doctors, although the drugs should knock her out pretty quickly."
Chelsea and I stood helplessly on the sidewalk watching the ambulance roar down the street, siren blaring.
When it was out of sight, Chelsea put her arm across my shoulders. "Maybe you should move in with us,” she said with mock earnesty. “My neighbors can’t seem to manage without you.”
I huffed out a little laugh, but that was all.
I was remembering Eric’s unsolicited remark. “I’m supposed to inherit the house.”