CeeJay finally called on Friday morning. Greer had been up for hours, staring at the phone, willing it to ring.
“So?” Greer said brightly. “Is today the day I get to meet your mystery man?”
“Sorry, but no,” CeeJay said. “He’s still in New York, firming up some stuff with investors. I hate to call you with bad news, but now he’s saying it might be the middle of next week.”
Greer got up and closed her bedroom door. Not that it really mattered. Her grandmother had the television volume turned up so loud, Dearie couldn’t have heard a train wreck, let alone Greer’s private telephone conversation.
“Oh, God,” she moaned. “Midweek? I don’t think I can take much more of this insanity.”
“Why? What’s going on?”
“It’s Dearie. She got kicked out of her nursing home, and she’s staying on my sofa while I try to find her a new place. And she’s driving me batshit crazy. Keeps the television on, day and night. I haven’t had any sleep. And who knew an eighty-seven-year-old could eat like that? You can’t believe what I’ve spent on groceries, just in two days. I’m going broke here.”
“She can’t stay with your mom?”
“No. My mother has the good sense to live in an apartment on the second floor. Dearie can’t do stairs.”
“Oh, man. Your grandmother is such a sweetie, but I guess it would get old, having her living with you.”
“I adore Dearie, but I’ve only got eleven hundred square feet here,” Greer emphasized. “I’m telling you, CeeJay, I gotta find some kind of a job, before I do something drastic.”
“Well … I wasn’t going to mention it, because I was afraid it might be beneath you, but I’ve been working a music video shoot this week, and the production assistant tripped over some rigging and broke her ankle last night. We’ve got one more day left to shoot. I know it’s not what you’re used to, but the pay’s not bad. And it’s cash.”
“Where? Never mind. I don’t care where. Just tell me the address and what time to show up.”
“What about Dearie? We’re working twelve- and fourteen-hour days, trying to get it wrapped up. Can you leave her alone that long?”
“She’ll be fine,” Greer said. “She’s currently binge-watching I Love Lucy reruns. I made a grocery store run last night. There’s a week’s worth of junk food here. And I’ll get Lise to drop in and check on her later in the day. Text me the address.”
“I’ll do better than that. I’m in the car right now. Pick you up in ten.”
“I’ll be ready in five.”
* * *
The shoot was in a run-down warehouse in the shadow of downtown L.A. Greer had actually scouted it months earlier for a television cop show pilot. The band played heavy metal thrash music, the director was a baby-faced twenty-two-year-old, and most of the rest of the crew appeared to be barely out of high school. And slightly stoned. Greer was kept running nonstop until the director called for a lunch break at 3 p.m.
She sat down at the craft services table, inhaled a stale ham-and-cheese sandwich, and was still listening to her missed phone calls when CeeJay sat down beside her.
“You’re grinning like the Cheshire cat,” CeeJay said, dipping a baby carrot into a paper cup full of hummus. “Good news?”
“Fabulous news. Vista Haven, that’s the home I’ve been trying to get Dearie into, called. They might have a vacancy.”
“Wonderful!”
“Better than wonderful. It’s a miracle. They want me to take her over there first thing in the morning for an interview. And if everything goes okay, she could move in immediately.”
“Fingers crossed,” CeeJay said.
“Fingers, toes, knees, everything crossed,” Greer added.
* * *
Sunday morning, Dearie sat very still in the Explorer’s passenger seat. She’d taken pains with her appearance, changing her dress twice, fussing over her helmetlike hairdo, applying face powder and lipstick, even donning pearl earrings.
Greer glanced over at her. “You look very pretty,” she said soothingly. “I love that pink dress on you.”
Dearie pursed her lips and tugged at the hem of the dress. “You should see the seams on this thing. Whoever made it should be ashamed of themselves. If I still had my old sewing machine…”
“You’d make something ten times better,” Greer agreed. “I remember that dress you made me for my junior prom. I wish I still had it.”
“Copied it straight out of one of your mother’s magazines,” Dearie said proudly. “You looked gorgeous in it, too.”
She stared out the car’s window for a moment. “Maybe we should stop for lunch.”
“You had lunch, less than an hour ago. Breakfast, too. Why are you so nervous?”
“What if they don’t like me at this new place?”
“What’s not to like? You’re a sweet little old lady. As far as they know.”
“Hah!” Dearie said with a snort. “What if I don’t like this place?”
Greer gave that some thought. She was running out of options, but she’d never share that with her grandmother.
“Let’s just take it one step at a time, okay? It looks fine. The director, Mrs. Horan, seemed very nice on the phone, and I did some research on the computer last night. They’ve passed all their state inspections, and there are no complaints about Vista Haven that I can find on the Internet. And if you really hate it, we’ll keep looking.”
“What if they find out what happened at Pleasant Point?”
“It’s not like you actually succeeded in burning the place down,” Greer said. “Anyway, that’s all history. If they ask, you’ll tell them you won’t be smoking inside the building. Right?”
Dearie shrugged.
“Right? This is important, Dearie. It’s a big safety issue.”
“All right. I’ll only smoke outside.”
* * *
Joenelle Horan toured them around Vista Haven Senior Assisted Living Center. It was smaller than Dearie’s previous address. “Only sixty beds,” Mrs. Horan said proudly. “We keep it small because our residents are like family.” The main building was one story, with two wings jutting out from a central atrium that held the reception area, residential living area, dining hall, and a large multipurpose room where residents could play cards, watch movies, take classes, or do crafts.
After the tour, Greer sat anxiously outside the director’s office while Mrs. Horan and a staff physician’s assistant interviewed Dearie.
* * *
“I think your grandmother will be very happy here,” Mrs. Horan told Greer as she handed over a stack of paperwork to be filled out.
“I think so, too,” Greer said. “I was just wondering about the fees.…”
She blanched when the administrator quoted the monthly figure Dearie would be assessed. The number was almost a thousand dollars more than they’d paid at Pleasant Point. Dearie’s savings and her small insurance policy would just barely cover the cost at Vista Haven, with precious little left over to cover extras.
“One thing I wanted to mention,” Mrs. Horan said. “The unit we have available for Dearie—well, it isn’t technically available just yet. It’s what we call a sub-studio. It’s very cozy. She’ll have a bed and a sitting area, and her private bath, of course.”
“Just how cozy is it?”
Mrs. Horan hesitated. “Not quite eight hundred square feet. But we’re installing new carpet.”
“Does it have a window?”
“Um, no.”
Greer smiled pleasantly. “You’ve never used this unit for a resident before, have you, Mrs. Horan?”
“What makes you say that?”
“It’s a windowless cell. All the other rooms you showed me have windows, and they’re much larger than the one you’re offering Dearie. Isn’t that correct?”
“The other units are slightly larger, that’s true. But this sub-studio is still perfectly adequate.”
Greer leaned forward. “Mrs. Horan, you’re proposing to charge my grandmother almost a thousand dollars a month more than she was paying at her last address, for a unit that’s substantially smaller, and with no view. You seem like a fair-minded person, so I’m going to ask you—does that seem fair to you? Dearie is eighty-seven-years-old. She was a single mother, worked hard all her life, raised my mother, helped raise me, too. If you were me, would you expect your grandmother to live in that room—using up every single penny of her savings, with nothing left over at the end of the month for extras like an occasional magazine or a candy bar?”
Mrs. Horan colored slightly. “Most of our residents have family members who supplement their relative’s finances.”
“My mother and I have always helped Dearie out,” Greer said, bristling. “And we’ll continue to do so. But that’s not the issue. The issue is value. Can you honestly tell me you think we should pay the amount you quoted for the unit you’re offering?”
The administrator sighed. She opened her top desk drawer, pulled out a slim pocket calculator, and punched in some numbers. She frowned, then did some more calculations.
“All right,” she said finally. “Since the room is smaller than a standard unit, I can give you a discount of, say, one hundred and fifty less per month. But she’ll have to wait to move in until we get the new carpet installed next week.”
“Let’s say two hundred, and we agree to keep the old carpet,” Greer said. “And she moves in today.”
* * *
Dearie sat in a vinyl armchair while Greer unpacked her suitcases. It took only thirty minutes to hang the older woman’s dresses in the tiny closet and stack her clothes in the four-drawer dresser. She placed a colorful double-wedding ring quilt that Dearie’s mother had stitched on the bed, and stretched a linen runner with delicate hand-crocheted lace across the dresser top.
On the bottom of the suitcase, she found a cardboard box full of framed photographs. She took the box from the suitcase, placed it on the bed, and removed the cardboard top.
“Don’t worry about those,” Dearie said quickly. “I’ll sort out that mess later tonight. Just put the box on the shelf in the closet.”
“Okay,” Greer said, doing as she’d been asked. “You’re pretty quiet today. What’s wrong? You don’t like the new digs? I know it’s smaller than your last place, but I’ll get you some paintings and stuff to put on the walls, to brighten it up. Okay?”
“It’s all right,” Dearie said. “Did that Mrs. Horan say what time dinner is served?”
Before Greer could point out that it was barely three o’clock, there was a light knock on the open door. An elderly woman with improbably fluffy red hair and large rhinestone hoop earrings stood in the doorway. She wore a snap-front flowered cotton housecoat and sensible brown loafers with white-and-red-striped men’s tube socks.
“Hello,” the woman said brightly. “Are you the new neighbor?”
“I guess so.” Dearie slowly pulled herself up from the chair.
“Goodie!” the neighbor said. “It’s been pretty quiet on this end of the hall for the past couple of weeks, with Geraldine in rehab. She lives in that room right across from yours, but she fell and broke her hip. I’m Elsie Gruhmiller, by the way.”
“Dearie Kehoe.”
“Welcome to Vista Haven, Dearie. You don’t happen to play bridge, do you?”
Dearie gave it some thought. “I used to. Years and years ago. But I’m pretty rusty.”
“Honey, we’re nuthin’ but rusty around here. With Geraldine out of action, we’re desperate for a fourth. Let me ask you another question. You’re not a teetotaler, are you?”
“Hell, no,” Dearie said.
“That’s good,” Elsie said. “We usually gather for cocktails in my room at five thirty, if you’re interested. BYOB.”
Dearie gave Greer a meaningful look. “This is my granddaughter, Greer.”
“Hello, Elsie,” Greer said. “Dearie, if you want, I could run out to the liquor store and pick you up a bottle of gin and some olives.”
“And maybe some dry-roasted peanuts. Lightly salted.”
Elsie reached into the pocket of her housecoat and brought out a five-dollar bill. “Say, if you’re going out anyway, could I trouble you to pick me up a pack of cigarettes?”
“You smoke and drink?” Dearie smiled for the first time all day.
“Shhh!” Elsie looked over her shoulder toward the hallway. “My kids think I quit. We can’t smoke in the building at all. If they catch you, they’ll throw you out on your keester. But there’s a bench in the garden, we call it the lounge, where it’s allowed.”
“It’s been a long day,” Dearie said, pulling a lighter and a pack of Virginia Slims from her sweater. “I could sure use a smoke right now. Care to join me?”
“Don’t mind if I do,” Elsie said, winking.
Greer watched while the two women strolled, arm in arm, toward the front of the building. “Looks like the beginning of a beautiful friendship,” she mused.
When the two women had exited the building, Greer went to the closet and took down the cardboard box. She sifted through the framed pictures. Most of them were ones Dearie had always had sitting on her bedroom dresser. There was a yellowing wedding portrait of a couple Greer knew was Dearie’s parents, a hand-tinted baby photo of a pink-cheeked Lise, and another, a color headshot of Lise during her glory days on Neighborhood Menace. Greer’s own baby picture was here, too—she was a chubby, smiling tot with golden ringlets. There was a cheesy Kmart studios portrait of Lise and Greer, wearing matching mother-daughter dresses that Dearie had made for them, and a photo of Greer at her high school graduation, complete with itchy polyester cap and gown and an armload of gaudy red roses.
At the bottom of the box was a time-worn manila file folder. Most of the photos inside were nothing special; old snapshots of Lise as a baby, teenager, and young adult. There were publicity stills of Lise, even a very old one of Dearie herself from her short-lived career as an actress, dressed in a smartly cut sequined cocktail dress and feathered hat.
Greer smiled down at the photo she’d never seen before, and after a moment’s hesitation, set it aside. She sorted the others, her own class pictures, which, with their bad outfits and bad hairdos, made her wince, snapshots of Dearie with various coworkers in various studio workrooms, and finally, at the bottom of the stack, she found a tarnished silver double frame.
In one oval, she recognized Lise, gazing adoringly into the eyes of a young man with mutton-chop sideburns, and a ridiculous mustache. His arms were clasped around her waist. The colors of the photo were faded, but the couple’s obvious passion wasn’t. Greer felt her scalp prickle. This was either an engagement or a wedding photo of her parents. It was hard to know which, because she hadn’t seen a photo of her long-absent father in decades. Lise had been ruthless in removing all traces of her father’s existence from their lives.
The facing photograph was much older. It was a black-and-white snapshot, taken, from the looks of it, at a party, or maybe a nightclub or bar. She recognized a much younger Dearie, with her distinctive cupid’s bow lips, her light brown wavy hair swept back from her face, with a white flower pinned over one ear. She wore a pretty polka-dot dress and held a lit cigarette in one hand. The man with a proprietary arm thrown around her shoulder was dressed in an open-collared short-sleeved sport shirt. He had dark, glossy hair, a thin mustache above thin lips, dark, brooding eyes, and a serious expression. The table in front of them was littered with an ashtray, beer bottles, and highball glasses.
Greer stared down at the photo. This must be her grandfather. She knew little to nothing about him, only that he and Dearie had parted when Lise was very young, and that he’d been killed not long afterward, in a traffic accident.
She studied his face and felt nothing. This man was a cipher, a ghost whose name she couldn’t remember. Edward … something. His last name was Polish, and difficult to spell, so somewhere along the line, Dearie had reverted to using her maiden name, Kehoe.
Her mind drifted back to the rumors over the years, that Cary Grant was actually Lise’s real father, and therefore, her own grandfather. She sifted back through the photos and found Lise’s baby picture. She definitely had Dearie’s lips and nose, but other than that, she found no resemblance to this unsmiling mustachioed man in the nightclub. But then, she couldn’t see any resemblance to Cary Grant either, whose photos she’d studied closely, for years, hoping for clues.
Through the open door of the room, she heard voices. Greer tucked the silver frame in her purse, placed the lid on the cardboard box, and returned it to the closet shelf.