Angel of Mercy (13 page)

“Call you at home?”

“Disguise your voice if Jennie answers,” he half kidded.

“Frankie, just go home, will you.”

“Why is it everyone says the same thing? Even Charlie Porter thinks I’m nuts hanging around here.”

“Think about it,” Rosina said. “Maybe you are nuts.

I gotta go report to Nolan. Have a nice dinner.”

“Flores,” he called after her. She turned. “Your biological clock is ticking.”

“Vamos, git,” she said, waving toward the door. He laughed and left.

He was surprised when he turned into his street and saw Beth’s car parked in their driveway. The white LeBaron convertible was caked with mud and grime.

She had obviously driven through some storms. The backseat was covered with signs and posters denouncing antiabortionists and proclaiming the basic right of a woman to choose.

Beth and Jennie were sitting in the living room talking when he entered.

Beth took after Jennie when it came to her looks. She had Jennie’s beguiling green eyes, eyes that could take a strong grown man prisoner in a twinkle and get him to relent or promise and obey.

She had Jennie’s soft, sensuous lips that turned up just a smidgen at the center when she became thoughtful, curious, or skeptical and pressed them together; and she had the same cute small nose, the kind that would give a plastic surgeon a wet dream.

But her thoughts and her attitudes and her steel-vise determination made her assume Frankie’s authoritative demeanor, especially these days when she was being driven by her feminist causes. She was about two inches shorter than he was, but somehow she always seemed taller to him whenever they got into one of their frequent political arguments. The old adage about like poles repelling never seemed as true as it was in their case. How he wished she didn’t have his stubbornness and his grit sometimes. And then there were times, times he never openly acknowledged, when he stood off to the side and proudly watched her in action with others, plowing over their prejudices and narrow vision and trampling them into the ground with her bulldozer of facts.

“Hi, Dad,” she said. Since he had last seen her at the hospital, three days earlier, she had gotten her hair cut severely just below her ears, the bangs clipped back to reveal almost all of her forehead with its sprinkle of rust-colored freckles.

Her well-proportioned figure, shaped by an almost religious devotion to exercise videos and sensible eating, was buried under a NOW sweatshirt and a pair of those loose-fitting jeans he hated so much because they made her waist and rump look wider. He once had had the audacity to say they weren’t feminine, a remark that led to half an hour of accusations in which she compared him to a Neanderthal and finally to Dan Quayle, whom she considered the twentieth-century version of a caveman.

“Car looks like you went through hell,” he said.

“There was a terrible rainstorm in Arizona and so much road construction all along the way. If you want to get an idea how bad the infrastructure in this country is, just take a ride across it.”

“Oh, honey. Why did you drive all night?” Jennie moaned.

“I was juiced up, mom. We had a great protest. They thought they’d close down the clinic, but we were right there to stop them and protect any woman who needed it. Not one woman scheduled for an abortion had to cancel,” she said proudly.

“It’s a waste of time,” Frankie said. “The Supreme Court’s probably going to make it illegal someday.”

“Only for the poor,” Beth retorted.

Frankie shrugged.

“Nothing new about that.”

“And that makes you happy? You can live with that?” She looked poised, ready to pounce like a cat.

“Please,” Jennie pleaded. “No discussions. Let’s have a truce. No politics in the house tonight, okay?”

“You can’t cut it out of your life, Mom. You can’t ignore what’s happening out there by turning on a soap opera.”

“How about what’s happening in here?” Frankie snapped.

Jennie bit down on her lower lip and her eyes started to moisten.

“All right, all right,” Beth said quickly. “I’ll keep my mouth shut.”

“That will be a first,” Frankie muttered. She reddened, but stifled any retort.

“I was going to ask how you were feeling, Dad, but I see you’re the same old Dirty Harry.”

“Frankie,” Jennie warned him before he could respond. He nodded.

“All right,” he said, plopping into his easy chain “I’ll be good. I’ll sit here and read my paper and drink my Geritol cocktails and reminisce about the good old days.”

“As you see, your father is not taking his situation well. He’s not,”

Jennie said, emphasizing with her widened eyes, “rolling with the punch the way he always advises other people to do.”

“I’ll teach you how to meditate, Dad,” Beth said in a softer tone.

“Mark says most nervous conditions and even some mental problems could be cured easily if people would learn to meditate.”

“Sure, you and your mother will turn me into a cardcarrying senior citizen,” he said.

Jennie and Beth gazed at each other and laughed.

“Yeah, what’s so funny?”

With a second conspiratorial glance at Beth, Jennie replied, “Beth’s bought us some presents.” a?“llnn,”?”’

“Presents? You had time to shop on this protest trip?

I thought that would be considered blasphemous.”

“It’s not a twenty-four-hour thing, Dad. We do get time to be real people,” Beth said. Jennie kept smiling.

“All right, what’s the joke? What did she buy?”

“She bought me a nice house gift, that clay vase on the hutch.”

Frankie looked and nodded.

“It is nice.”

“And she bought you something nice, too. Go look.

Your present’s in the bedroom,” Jennie said. He gazed suspiciously at Beth and then got up and gingerly entered the bedroom to see the neon green Bermuda shorts and matching polo shirt laid out on the bed.

Beside them was a pair of matching green knee-high socks.

“Very funny,” he called from the bedroom. His wife and daughter roared.

He returned to the living room, the garments in hand. “And exactly where am I supposed to where this?”

“Anywhere, Dad,” Beth said. “It’s your new undercover uniform.”

“I’ll give you undercover,” he said. He couldn’t help smiling, however.

He held up the shorts. “Right size at least.”

“I know your sizes, Dad,” Beth said, suddenly growing serious.

“Aren’t you going to thank her, Frankie?”

He smirked.

“Thanks,” he said. “Did your mother put you up to this?”

“No. I just picked up a recent copy of Palm Springs magazine and looked at some of the pictures.”

“Great. You know what I’m going to do?” Frankie threatened. “I’m actually going to put this on. How’s that?”

“Doesn’t scare me, Frankie Samuels.”

“I’m not so sure about me,” Beth said.

“Stevie called from the car phone,” Jennie said.

“They’re about forty minutes away.”

“Great,” he said.

“So where were you all this time, Frankie?” Jennie asked with abrupt directness.

“What d’ya mean, where was I? I called you from the station.”

“And I called back just after you left the first time,” she said, her eyes small with suspicion.

“Jesus. Who’s the detective in this house anyway?”

“Never mind all that. Spill it.”

Frankie looked at Beth, who was smiling from ear to ear. She just loved to see Jennie handle him.

“An old man committed suicide. I did a simple follow-up,” he confessed.

When it came right down to it, he couldn’t lie to Jennie face-to-face.

“Why did he kill himself?” Beth asked.

“Wife passed away and he couldn’t face life without her.”

“Oh, the poor man,” Jennie said.

“Doesn’t surprise me,” Beth said. “Not with the way the elderly are treated in this country. The richest country in the world, and we have a segment of our older population eating pet food to survive. A couple of F-15s would probably end hunger in a dozen states, and vastly improve the health care they get…” She laughed. “I know people who get better care for their dogs and cats. No, what surprises me is more don’t commit suicide. In fact, it might do some good.”

“What good would that do?” Frankie snapped.

“It could bring more attention to the problem. One mass suicide …”

“Oh, Beth,” Jennie said, grimacing.

“I’m sorry, Mom, but sometimes, most of the time, unfortunately, the only thing that moves the power brokers in this country is a violent or dramatic action.”

“So a few dozen old people should be bused to the White House lawn and left there to cut their wrists?”

Frankie said.

“No, leave them here and let the indifference cut their wrists for them,” Beth shot back.

“Can’t we change the subject?” Jennie begged.

Frankie pressed his lips together.

“Yeah, sure.” He looked at the Bermuda shorts. “I’ll just change into my new uniform and take my place in my assigned rocker on the patio and wait for the suicide march on Washington.”

In his bedroom he stood before the dresser mirror staring at himself.

He recalled standing before the mirror after he had hit thirty, searching his face for the telltale signs of age. It was terrifying then, but something happened when he reached forty and fifty: he started to think of himself as well-preserved, one of the lucky ones who didn’t show age.

Even now, even after all that had happened, he didn’t look his age.

But he had to live a different sort of life now, and he was afraid that it had been the work that had kept him looking and feeling young. As long as he remained around younger people, around activity, as long as he had to be sharp and strong and quick, he would be so, but like a wild animal in the zoo, he could lose that edge, forget how to hunt, forget all that had to be done to survive, and before long, he would look his age, look like a man who carried a pacemaker and then…

That’s what growing old means, he suddenly thought. It means hating the truth. No wonder that old lady could understand Sam Murray committing suicide. The truth was too heavy a burden. Was he plodding along looking for some evil force, maybe just to give himself something to do?

Perhaps the truth itself was the evil force and the truth could be hunted and cornered but never captured, never locked away. It was the one monster from which everyone wanted to flee at one time or another.

He was fleeing it now, pretending the heart problem hadn’t occurred, wasn’t he?

He sighed. Then he slipped into the Bermuda shorts and polo shirt and put on his sandals and his sunglasses. Maybe he would take up golf after all, he thought. He went out to wait for the arrival of his son and daughter-in4aw.

Susie paused at the Kaufmans’ door and checked again to be sure the pills were in the left pocket of her uniform. Then she pressed the buzzer and waited.

“Coming,” she heard Tillie call. The Kaufmans had just finished their early dinner and Tillie was Still tidying up. She came to the door with a dish towel in her hand. “Oh, Susie, hello,” Tillie said. Susie eyed the towel.

“Faye told me that you needed to have some cleaning done. You’re not doing it yourself, are you, Tillie?”

“Oh no. Just finishing my dishes. I can’t do the heavy cleaning.

It’s so hard for me now with Morris sick. He runs me ragged as it is and by the time…”

“It’s okay. I have a little time now,” Susie said quickly as she stepped into the apartment. She had been in here .before to clean.

She knew where everything was kept and went directly to the closet in the kitchen, Tillie trailing behind.

“I heard your sister go out last night. By the time I looked out, she was already in her car and backing away. Was it an emergency?” she asked.

“Yes,” Susie said, not offering any more information.

“I thought so. I told Morris, but he said I exaggerated. An accident?

A heart attack?”

“If I’ve told you once, I’ve told you a hundred times, Tillie, I don’t discuss my sister’s patients. Medical information is personal. Some people don’t like other people knowing what’s wrong with them.”

“Sickness makes you ashamed,” Tillie Kaufman agreed, nodding.

Susie took out the sponge mop and pail and went to the sink.

“You think the floor needs it?”

“Of course it does,” Susie said. She paused and grimaced when she looked at the counter and saw the remnants of a pastrami on rye. “Who ate that?”

Tillie looked away guiltily.

“Morris?”

“He ordered it and had it delivered before I even knew,” she confessed.

“He ate so much, he had to go lie down a minute. Don’t tell your sister. She’ll yell.”

“She might; she might not. I know she’s disgusted with him,” Susie began to do the floor. Twenty minutes later, she was out in the living room dusting and straightening up. Before she was finished, Morris came out of the bedroom and plopped himself down in the La-Z-Boy.

“I can watch television while you work?”

“I’m finished in here,” Susie said. “I’ll do your bedroom now.”

“When I was a young man, I had beautiful girls like you do my bedroom all the time,” he said under his breath, and he laughed. Susie turned on him.

“What kind of talk is that with your wife in the apartment,” she snapped, her face flushed.

“Just talk,” he said, shrugging. “What do you think I can do now, more than talk?”

“You’re incorrigible,” Susie said. Morris laughed.

“When you’re my age, you can’t be anything else.”

Susie left him and gazed in at Tillie, who was shining silverware in the kitchen.

“I can do that for you when I’m finished with the bedroom and the bathroom,” Susie said.

“It’s all right. I’ve got to keep busy,” Tillie said.

Susie left her and went to the bedroom. She started to vacuum the rug and the windowsills and then paused when her gaze fell on Morris Kaufman’s pill bottle beside the bed. She listened for a moment and then took the pill bottle and went into the bathroom.

She dumped the contents into the toilet and replaced it quickly with the pills in her pocket, pills that were too close in appearance for Morris or Tillie to note the difference. Then she returned the pill bottle to the table and went back to her work.