“Thank you for your concern, Vince. Lane is doing okay,” I say, suppressing more confrontational urges. “She got a little frightened.”
“Nevertheless, I feel it would be best for you to go. She needs a calm environment, maybe a sedative. You seem to be exacerbating whatever is troubling her.”
What pops into my mind is, No way that I’m leaving Grandma. I don’t like or trust Vince. I don’t understand the keen interest he’s suddenly taking in us. I’m also struck that I’ve no idea what are my legal rights.
“Give me a few minutes to say goodbye to her,” I say, adding after a pause, “in private.”
He looks at the guard and back at me.
“We’ll wait outside. Five minutes.”
They leave and shut the door.
“Grandma, you said you trust me, right?” I whisper.
“I have since you appeared on this earth and I started changing your diapers. And do you want to know something?”
“What, Grandma?”
“You were a big pooper. Explosive. Oh goodness you could go through diapers.”
She smiles. I pat her hand, and smile back.
Grandma has a semi-private bathroom. It connects through a locked doorway to the room of Victoria Xavier. She’s a guileless former romance novelist, five years Grandma’s junior, whose family lost most of her money in the dot-com bust. Over the last two years, she and Grandma have become good friends, sufficiently so that they have exchanged keys so that they can get into each other’s rooms late at night to chat.
In Grandma’s nightstand I find the key to Victoria’s room.
“Mr. Idle,” Vince says through the door.
“I’m settling her down,” I declare. “A couple of more minutes.”
I quietly walk to Grandma’s closet. I open it, loosing the smell of mothballs and cheap detergent. Inside, I find a wheelchair. I unfold it, roll it to the bed, and lower Grandma into it. From the closet, I pull out her knee-length wool jacket and drape it over her legs.
I put my finger to my lips.
“I’d like the thingy,” Grandma says. “Please.”
I’m bewildered by this request. Again, I put my finger to my lips. “Please, Grandma.”
She swivels her head around, looking for something. She pauses and I follow her gaze to the dresser. On it sits the phone Grandma uses to play video games.
“Your thingy,” I whisper, handing her the phone. I stuff the charger into my pocket and grab my backpack.
“Mr. Idle,” Vince says from beyond the door.
“Just changing her shoes,” I say.
Grandma cradles her video game as I wheel her into the bathroom. I put the key into the lock of the door to Victoria’s room; I turn the key. The door opens.
Victoria sits in bed. She faces in our direction. She’s watching a soap opera on a flat-panel television that is a few feet to our left, volume up high. She looks surprised, then smiles widely.
“Idles!” she exclaims. Thanks to her ongoing Botox treatments, her forehead remains relatively placid, despite her enthusiasm. She’s still handsome, long hair flowing over her shoulders scrubbed of gray and tinted brown. It’s mid-morning but she hasn’t changed from her flower-patterned nightgown.
Grandma waves.
I put my finger to my lips. “Shh. Please, Victoria. I’ll explain in a second.”
“Are you okay?” she responds, just above a whisper. “Can you believe how much nonsense there is on television?”
“May I ask a favor?”
I hear the guard knock his baton loudly on Grandma’s door. Apparently, he and Vince didn’t hear Victoria’s initial outburst over the TV. I return to Grandma’s room, shout, “Just another minute. Please!”
I return to Victoria, and close the bathroom door behind me.
“What’s going on?” Victoria asks.
Victoria’s royalties pay for a nicer room than Lane’s, and it has a sliding glass door that leads to a patio and the property’s lawn.
“Can Grandma and I go out that way?” I ask, pointing at the patio door.
“Sure, but . . .”
I interrupt her. “When Vince comes in here, tell them that we left through the door to the hallway.”
It is unlikely this gambit will work, or that Victoria will be able to pull it off.
“Is Lane okay?”
“Fine,” I say, pushing Grandma to the patio doors.
I pull out a business card and hand it to Victoria. “Call my cell phone and I’ll explain.”
“You’re scaring me, Nathaniel,” Victoria says.
“If her other friends ask, just tell them I took Grandma to a family reunion. Vince is being nosy.”
“Where are you taking her?”
Then I hear the shouts—coming from Grandma’s room.
“To a family reunion.”
“Oh,” she says, then adds almost as an afterthought. “Speaking of family, I was just thinking about my first husband, Clinton. You should have seen him at our wedding. He wore a crisp blue suit. Pinstriped. Stop me if I’ve told you this story before.”
“You haven’t and I’d love to hear it. How about next time I visit?” I say.
I feel the cloak of Victoria’s loneliness as Grandma and I exit through the glass doors, and I slide them closed. I roll Lane through a gate on the patio and onto a cement path that winds through the gardens in back.
Minutes later, I’ve piled her into the car. I push the wheelchair behind a small bush in the median of the parking lot.
Twenty minutes later, we’re sitting outside a nondescript office building. Inside, is Grandma’s neurologist, Dr. Laramer.
I don’t know if I’ve broken any law by absconding with Grandma. But it’s another question whether I’m defying common sense. I’ve been shot at twice in the last twenty-four hours, gotten a home visit from G.I. Chuck, and have a meeting in a few hours with someone who sent me a mysterious thumb drive warning me of danger.
“Grandma Lane?”
“Nathaniel.”
“Let’s get inside that head of yours.”
Dr. Laramer may prove a useful guide, even if getting his help entails provoking a few of my own demons.