15
Liv
When my phone rings, I debate whether or not to answer it; I don’t recognize the number on the screen on my dashboard. I’m headed east, a circa-1840 pine fireplace mantel in the bed of my truck. It needs to be stripped and painted, but it was a great online find, authentic to the mid-nineteenth-century date of the Anselin house. The only drawback was that I had to drive almost three hours to pick it up, all the way on the eastern edge of the New Hampshire state line near White Mountain National Forest. I also picked up a couple of ladder-back chairs, which with some repairs I can do myself will be gorgeous, and an amazing picture frame that if I don’t use in their house, I’ll use it on another project.
The minute I signed the contract with the Anselins and realized I really was going into business for myself restoring old homes, I started worrying about whether there would be a second contract. Or a third. So, I’m flying pretty high this afternoon because a woman I’ve been talking on and off with for weeks called to say she and her partner had decided they had chosen me, out of two other contenders, to restore their eighteenth-century Cape Cod.
The house is north of Judith, near Lincolnville, so it will be a little longer drive than the Anselin house is, but I can make it to Terri and Louise’s in thirty-five minutes. Completely doable. And honestly, the way things have been at home, I don’t think I’ll even mind the drive. These days, I find myself postponing going home. When I’m working, when I’m standing in the middle of the room directing my demolition guys, I feel like I know what I’m doing. I feel like I know who I am. When I walk into my house, when I sit beside Oscar at the dinner table, across from Hazel, I don’t even know who I am anymore. I’m feeling like a complete failure as a mother and as a wife. But I’m discovering I really do have a knack for the restoration of old houses. A passion.
The phone continues to ring, and I realize it’s a local cell exchange. Local to home. Afraid it’s my mom calling from a stranger’s cell phone to tell me Dad lost her in the grocery store again, I touch a button on the steering wheel to answer. It only takes me two tries to connect. I’m still becoming familiar with my new vehicle. “Liv Ridgely speaking.”
“Liv, hi, er . . . this is Maureen Gray?” She says it as if she’s not quite sure. “I live down the street from your parents. On the corner. Cape, cedar shakes, red trim.”
When she says her name I vaguely recognize it, but I’m relieved she offers the additional clue. I immediately get a picture of her in my mind: short, round, a little older than me, with the typical forty-plus New England woman’s haircut and striking green eyes. “Right, hi, Maureen,” I say, wondering why on earth she’s calling me. She has a son younger than Sean but older than Hazel, so we’ve bumped into each other on occasion at school functions, but mostly I know her from waving to her as I turn the corner onto my parents’ street.
“I hate to bother you, but . . . I was wondering. Er . . . is your dad by any chance er . . . missing?”
“Is he missing?”
“Yes, I . . . Liv, I think I just saw him turning onto Bluebird.” She sounds flustered. “I hate to bother you but . . . Liv, he . . . er, he wasn’t wearing pants.”
Of all the things I was anticipating she might say, that wasn’t one of them. “He’s naked?” I’m unable to keep the shock out of my voice. My father is usually a very modest man. Always has been. A white crewneck T-shirt, oxford shirt buttoned up to the collar, robe over a full set of pajamas.
“No,” she says sweetly. “He was . . . er . . . wearing boxer shorts. Red plaid?”
She says it in a way that suggests I would know what pair of my dad’s underwear she’s referring to. I frown, knitting my brows. “You sure it was my dad?”
“Yes.” Again, the sweet, now almost apologetic tone. “It was Dr. Cosset all right, ayuh.”
“Did you speak to him?”
“No.” She sounds whiffy to me now. “I just saw him through my bedroom window; it looks out onto Wren Street. I was putting laundry away. Wednesday I do towels and sheets.”
A detail I’m not sure why I need, considering the circumstances.
I push the heel of my hand to my forehead, squinting behind my Ray-Ban aviator sunglasses. A gift from Amelia when I got my business license. She said every contractor needed a pair. “How long ago was this?”
“Er . . . fifteen minutes ago, maybe?”
I want to ask her why it took her so long to call me, but then it occurs to me that maybe she called Mom first. “Did you speak with my mom?”
“No answer.”
Great, I think. I’m two and a half hours from home and my father is walking through town half naked. The only bright side to this is that at least it’s not too cold out, though it’s certainly cold enough to be wearing pants and a jacket. “Was he wearing a coat?” I ask.
“Sorry?”
I shake my head, realizing it’s a silly question. Whether he’s wearing a coat or not doesn’t matter. The lack of pants is the critical bit of information here. And the fact that he’s gone for a walk alone. After he retired, he used to walk all the time: into town to get something at the grocery, to buy a newspaper, or have a cup of coffee. He used to sit in a coffee shop and talk with retired men his own age, but he got frustrated with them and stopped going two or three years ago. He said they never wanted to talk about anything except their prostate, or what they’d seen on Fox News.
“Thank you so much for calling me, Maureen,” I say. “It was kind of you.”
“You’re certainly welcome. Dr. Cosset was always such a gentleman. Have a good day,” she sings.
The moment she disconnects, I dial Mom and Dad’s house. It rings until I hear my voice on the answering system. I hang up and dial again. Three times is the charm. This time, Mom answers.
She sounds half asleep. “Hello?”
“Mom, where’s Dad?”
“Liv?”
I glance at the speedometer and bump my speed up five miles an hour. “Maureen from down the street on the corner just called me to say that she saw a man, who she thought was Dad, walking down the street.”
“He’s not supposed to go out without me. I was lying down.”
“Mom, Maureen said he wasn’t wearing pants.”
She’s silent for a moment, then I hear, “Oh, dear.”
It’s not funny but I can’t help myself. I crack a smile. “Yeah, that’s a problem.”
My mother sighs heavily. “He’ll come back. He always does.”
“He’s left the house without his pants before?” I ask. It’s the first time I’ve heard about it. Most times Dad tells on himself when he does something like this. I don’t even have to wait for Mom to tell me.
“Usually he wears his pants,” she quips.
I shake my head. Now my eighty-one-year-old mother has become a smartass. “Mom, could you check and see if he’s home? Maybe the neighbor was mistaken? Maybe it wasn’t Dad?”
“You want me to see if he’s here?” She sounds annoyed with me.
I hate to ask, but I don’t see any other choice here. “I think you better.”
She groans as if it’s a great imposition. “It will take me a minute to get out of bed and into my chair. I’ll call you back,” she tells me.
Ten minutes later, she calls. “He’s not here,” she says when I answer, and then she goes on without letting me get a word in. “I’m not surprised. He was a pip all morning and I didn’t have the patience for it. You know what he did before seven a.m.? Before I was even out of bed? He mowed the neighbor’s roses down with the lawnmower. And Jessop came out and yelled at him. Last time he was on the mower he knocked over Jessop’s mailbox.”
I hadn’t heard about the mailbox, either, and I wonder what else the two of them have been keeping from me. When Dad first started suffering from memory loss three or four years ago, Mom covered for him. She covered for him for almost a year before I finally realized my father was suffering from something more than absentmindedness due to aging.
“What was Dad doing on the lawnmower?” I ask. “I thought Oscar disconnected the starter so he couldn’t drive it anymore.” We have a lawn service that comes now that my father is no longer able to care for it himself.
“Good question,” Mom says. “I guess he hooked it back up again. He kept going out into the garage. He told me he was looking for a screw. Maybe to replace the one loose in his head.”
Again I crack a smile in spite of myself.
“He went out several times,” my mother continues. “He wasn’t bothering anyone, so I let him look. Liv, I know you don’t want to hear this. I know you think he’s perfect, but I’ve had it with him.”
It’s on the tip of my tongue to inject that I don’t think my father is perfect, that I never thought that, but she’s wound up now, and no one is going to stop her, least of all me.
“It’s day and night he’s into something. I tell him to sit, why don’t you. I tell him to play his game on his iPad. I offer to put the TV on for him. There are movies he could watch on Netflix. And if he’d leave the remote alone and stop pushing buttons, he might find that he could enjoy a movie once in a while. Now he’s mowed down Jessop’s fancy roses and Jessop isn’t happy with us. He—”
“Mom,” I finally interrupt. “You said you were lying down. Are you having a bad day?”
“I was having a bad day before your father went AWOL. I had to take a painkiller and lie down.”
Which meant she couldn’t drive if she wanted to. Even if she wanted to go look for him. Which doesn’t sound to me like she does right this moment. “Mom, I had to go to New Hampshire to pick up something for the house I’m remodeling. I’m still two hours away. Can you call Beth?”
“I hate to bother her, Liv. It’s her day off and she likes to rest on her day off. Do something fun. Her job can be very stressful, you know, dealing with everyone else’s stress.”
She makes it sound as if my sister is a social worker or maybe a psychiatrist. She’s actually a massage therapist who goes to people’s homes to give massages.
“Mom.” I try not to sound annoyed because I know she’s got to be exhausted. Dad hasn’t been sleeping much and he keeps her awake at night pacing and talking. Or he gets it in his head he wants to do something at two a.m. like start a pot of spaghetti sauce, one of his specialties when he had all of his faculties and still cooked for us. And this isn’t about Beth right now or about my lifetime resentment of her. I know it’s not Beth’s fault that she was always our mother’s favorite. That she was born of my mother’s DNA and I wasn’t. Actually I don’t think Mom even liked her better because I was adopted and Beth wasn’t. Mom just liked her better, pure and simple. No matter how many ways she screwed up, how many cars she wrecked, how many times she had to be bailed out financially. How irresponsible she was practically every day of her life. Mom gave her a pass at every turn. She held me up to a nearly impossible standard and those standards never applied to my sister.
But this isn’t about that.
This is about Dad. And my mom. I sigh. “It’s okay, Mom. I’ll figure it out. Why don’t you just lie back down? I’ll find him.”
“And exactly how are you going to do that, Olivia?” she responds, taking a little attitude with me. “You’re in New Hampshire.”
“I’m back in Maine now. I’ll give someone a call. I’m sure he’s okay. Make sure the door is unlocked. Someone in town has probably spotted him by now and he’s on his way home.”
“Wish the police would spot him. Do him good to let him sit in the pokey overnight.”
I laugh. I’ve never thought of my mother as funny, but she does say some funny things about my dad. “I don’t think an elderly man with Alzheimer’s is going to the pokey, Mom.”
“I can’t believe he mowed Jessop’s roses,” she says, talking over me. “Do you know what those are going to cost to replace? They’re some fancy hybrid from England. Your father wants me to use the same Ziploc bag three times. Just wash it out! he tells me. Wash it out, Bernice. Thrift comes too late if it’s at the bottom of your purse. That’s what he tells me, but then he wants to buy the neighbor new roses?”
“I’ll call you when I find him, Mom.”
She hangs up. Without saying good-bye. Something that’s annoyed me for . . . for as long as I can remember. Now it’s starting to amuse me. I dial my sister. I get her voice mail. “You know what to do,” says her recording. Then there’s a loud beep. “Call me back,” I say. “Dad’s missing.”
As I hang up, I try to decide who to call next. If Beth doesn’t pick up when I call her, the likeliness of hearing from her in the same day goes down significantly. Now who do I call? I speed up again, now going more than ten miles an hour over the speed limit. I can’t call Oscar. (A) He doesn’t pick up when he’s at work and (B) he and I had an argument this morning. Over the lack of coffee creamer in the refrigerator. He was really angry with me. Disproportionally angry. I did recall him asking me to stop for some yesterday, but there was an issue with a load of lumber I’d ordered and I completely forgot. And I don’t even drink it. Why am I stopping by on the way home from work for something he needs? Why couldn’t he stop for vanilla-flavored artificial creamer with aspartame in it on his way home from work? Oscar has adapted well to our daughter’s obsession over healthy foods in our house, but he drew the line on his fake-milk creamer. She poured it out once while going through the refrigerator, ejecting anything that didn’t meet her quality standards, and he threatened that if she ever threw away his creamer again, he was going to string her up by her thumbs in the barn. They both laughed about it. Hazel also never touched his creamer again, though.
So not Oscar. Not after Creamergate.
Amelia? I could call Amelia. Either that, or call the police. The Judith police force consists of six guys, three cruisers, and an old church turned station house. I’m pretty sure the donut-eating, coffee-drinking stereotype began at the Judith police station. I know four of the six guys. One I dated briefly while in high school. It wouldn’t be a big deal to call them. They help old ladies get into their houses when they lock themselves out. They return bicycles left in the park by absentminded middle schoolers. I know they wouldn’t mind taking a spin through town looking for him. It shouldn’t be hard to spot an eighty-five-year-old man in red plaid boxer shorts, with or without his L.L.Bean barn coat.
But who wants to call the cops on their dad? Especially if he’s walking around town in boxer shorts?
I auto-dial Amelia. She’s at work, but I call anyway, on the outside chance she’s available. Voice mail. I don’t leave a message.
I consider Oscar again.
If I can’t get him on his cell, I can call the ED and leave a message for him to return my call. I could apologize for the creamer and ask him to take off early and look for Dad.
I think I’d rather call the police.
But I don’t want to call the police any more than I want to call Oscar.
I groan out loud and reach for my cup of mint tea that was cold an hour ago. I know I’m being petty about the creamer, but he’s not being very respectful of my time. When I started playing with the idea of going into the restoration business a year ago, he was supportive of the idea, but he never really seemed into it. Maybe he didn’t think I could do it. And now that I actually have a client, he doesn’t seem to understand that time I spend working, contributing to our children’s college fund, takes away from time I could be spending picking up vanilla creamer for him. And making pasta. The other day he complained about boxed pasta. He probably meant it as an offhand compliment when he said he liked my fresh fettuccine noodles better, but I felt like it was a dig. I felt as if he was saying that since I started working again, I don’t have time to make my family fresh pasta anymore.
My list of who to call has gotten pretty short. In fact, short of calling Maureen back and asking her to look for my dad, I can only think of one person.
I pass two more vehicles, get back into the right-hand lane, and auto-dial Hazel. She’s in class so I know she won’t pick up, but I’m hoping she’ll call me back between classes.
She answers. “Mom? What’s wrong?”
“Why aren’t you in class?”
“Bathroom. I had to pee. Again.” Her voice is echoing. Sounds like she’s actually in the bathroom. “What’s wrong? Why are you calling me?”
“Your grandfather.” I groan. “He’s missing.”
I hear her peeing. “Missing?” She’s immediately alarmed.
“Well, not missing, missing. But your grandmother doesn’t know where he is and the neighbor thinks she saw him headed into town in his boxer shorts sans pants.”
“Did he have shoes on?”
I hear the toilet flush. “I don’t know, Hazel. She was mostly concerned about him not wearing pants.”
“Jeez,” she mutters. “I don’t ever want to get old. I start forgetting my pants, I want to be cryogenically frozen and brought back to life when we have the capability to reverse aging.”
I shake my head at that one but don’t respond to it. Definitely a conversation to be saved for another day. “I went to New Hampshire this morning to get that mantel. I was telling you about it last night. So, I’m still two hours from home. I’m sorry for calling you while you’re still at school, but didn’t know who else to call, hon.” I’m feeling a little out of sorts now. I’m so used to being in control of things. I know logically I can’t be in control of my father’s disease, but it still makes me uncomfortable realizing I can’t stop these things from happening. And that they’re probably going to start happening with more frequency. “Gran’s not feeling well enough to be driving around looking for him.”
“That’s probably not a good idea anyway. If he doesn’t have any pants on, she’s going to be pissed,” Hazel says. Now I hear water running. She must be washing her hands. “Gran’s gonna lose it with him.”
“Aunt Beth won’t pick up,” I continue. “Amelia must be in a meeting. Hazel, if I called the school office and said you had permission to leave early, would you mind going out and looking for him?”
“You call Dad?”
I feel myself stiffen. I know Hazel knows things have been tense between her father and me over the last two months, but I don’t want to draw her into our . . . into whatever is going on with us. “I didn’t want to bother him,” I say.
“I’ll call Dad.”
“Don’t,” I say.
She hesitates and then says, “No problem, Mom. I’ll find Granddad. You don’t need to call the school office. I’ll go to the nurse and tell her my baby hurts.”
“You’ll what?”
My daughter laughs. “It’s a joke, Mom. Adults act crazy when they see a pregnant teenager in school. All I have to do is put my hand on my belly and every adult within a two-classroom radius asks me if I’m in labor. I can sign myself out. I’ll just say I have an appointment. I’m pregnant. Everyone thinks I’m a loser now, anyway. No one cares if I leave school.”
There’s something in her tone that makes me think she’s not joking about being a loser. I debate whether or not to say anything, but decide against it. Like the cryogenics, it’s probably a conversation better left to discuss face-to-face. And right now, my dad is walking around town in plaid boxers, so we’ve got that to deal with. “Thank you, Hazel.” My voice is suddenly full of emotion. “Thanks so much for doing this for me.”
She’s quiet for a moment. “You okay, Mom?”
I hear teenaged voices now: talking, laughing. She must be out in the hall.
I adjust my sunglasses. “Yeah, I’m fine. Just . . . worried about your granddad.”
“His boxers, huh? That’s pretty nuts. Okay, I’m going to get my stuff in my history class and then I’ll go to the nurse’s office. Do you know which way he was headed?”
“The neighbor thought toward town, but she wasn’t sure.”
“I’ll find him, Mom.”
“Call me when you do? Or if you don’t,” I add quickly. “It’s getting dark so early now. If we need to call the police—”
“Mom, I don’t think we need to call the police just yet.”
Her tone makes me feel like she’s the mother and I’m the daughter. “Call me?”
“Ayuh,” she says, imitating her father. “Be careful driving home. I don’t want you to be one of those statistics for road fatalities on the billboards, Mom.”
I smile as I hang up.