Getting Old Is Criminal (17 page)

Today it’s “Who is she—that hussy in red?” “She’s only here a couple of days and she acts like she owns the place.”

And from the eager babbling of people at other tables, all of whom by now have noticed the absence of the new twosome, I conclude that they are the sole topic of breakfast conversation.

And we promised Hope Watson we would keep a low profile. Wait until the gossip mill reaches her ear; she’s going to have a fit. I eat quickly and excuse myself. Since my sister has made it clear I’m 1 6 4 • R i t a L a k i n

not needed, I’m heading back to Lanai Gardens to check on my girls.

*

*

*

I park in a guest spot, since my old Chevy is in its own space, and head for the entrance to my building. I’ll check the mail and then I’ll listen to my answering machine. Maybe Jack called, I think, but in my heart I don’t believe it.

“She’s not there, she’s here, stop dialing.” I hear my cell phone ring just as I spy Bella hanging over the rail of her floor. Bella waves agitatedly to me.

Then I see Ida come out of Bella’s apartment.

“Come up, hurry.”

I cross the courtyard to the building opposite mine, where Evvie and Bella have their apartments, and hurry up the stairs. I’m too nervous to wait for the elevator.

Hy and Lola, who live next door to Bella, pop out of their place as soon as they hear our voices.

Mister Buttinsky has to stick his two cents in. He announces excitedly, “Sophie’s gone nutsoid.” He whirls his finger around his head to make the point.

“What happened?” I ask the girls.

Hy insists on answering for them. “She called nine-one-one in the middle of the night.”

Ida shakes a fist at him. “Shut up, yenta.”

He shrugs. “I was only trying to be neighborly.”

With an injured last glance, he pushes Lola back into their apartment and slams the door behind him.

G e t t i n g O l d I s C r i m i n a l • 1 6 5

“That man,” Ida says. “I wanna string him up from the lamppost.”

“Never mind him. Tell me.”

Bella is quivering. “We’re just about to go to the hospital to visit her. Denny said he’d drive us.”

“Well, I’m here, I’ll drive. Let’s go.” As we hurry to the elevator, I say, “Talk.”

Ida catches me up. “She called for an ambulance at two a.m. We didn’t know. We didn’t hear anything. When we got up everybody was phoning or knocking on our doors. We called the hospital.

They said she was resting. She’s not in intensive care, so they said we could come at visiting hours.”

Denny is standing by his car. I thank him but tell him I’m driving over. He is as caring as ever. “I hope Miss Sophie is okay.”

I indicate that Bella and Ida should get into my Chevy. It’s closer than the Caddy.

“Where’s Evvie?” Bella asks as I start to drive.

“She’s very busy being a detective,” I say in a very cool voice.

Ida is sharp. “You both met Philip?”

“You could put it that way. I’m here and she isn’t. The red dress and boa did the trick. Get it?”

Ida’s eyebrows rise. “I think so.”

Bella looks puzzled but I don’t bother to explain.

“Fill me in. What’s been going on?” I ask.

Bella looks to Ida to do the explaining. “Where do I begin? A couple of days ago we all went for a 1 6 6 • R i t a L a k i n

walk. We get to that stop sign on the corner near Phase Three? And Sophie stops. We start to cross the street and she won’t go. We tell her it’s safe, no cars coming.”

“She won’t move. Like she was digging her heels into the cement.”

“We ask her why,” Ida continues. “She says she’s waiting for the light to change. I had to tell her twice that it was a stop sign, not a light.”

“How bizarre,” I say, now really beginning to worry. I don’t want to begin to think about how serious this might be.

Bella gets more excited. “Tell her about the ants.

You know how Sophie hates ants in her kitchen.

Or any bugs.”

Ida shakes her head. “I get a hysterical phone call from her. She’s screaming, ‘Ants!’ Bella was with me.”

“We were playing gin rummy,” Bella interrupts.

“We rush over to her apartment and she’s standing in the corner of the kitchen whimpering and swatting newspapers at the walls.

“She kept telling us there were ants everywhere, but there weren’t any.”

Ida’s eyes tear up. “It can’t be the onset of . . .”

She can’t even say the word.
Alzheimer’s.

Since the hospital is literally across the street, we are there in one minute. We could have walked it, but with Bella and her arthritis, it would have taken twenty minutes. We hurriedly find out G e t t i n g O l d I s C r i m i n a l • 1 6 7

Sophie’s room number, get visitor badges, and rush to her side as quickly as we can.

Sophie is not the put-together woman we know.

She looks bedraggled and frightened. And suddenly old. She is trussed up to IVs and other para-phernalia.

“Why didn’t you call us?” Ida demands. “We would have come with you.”

Sophie starts to cry. “I don’t know. I suddenly didn’t remember your phone numbers.”

Bella and Ida move closer, each taking a hand to hold.

I kiss her gently on the forehead. “Tell us what happened, why you called for help.”

“I just woke up and I felt really bad.”

“Where? Your heart?”

“I don’t know. Everywhere. I just didn’t feel like me. I thought I was going to pass out. Everything in my body was wrong, I don’t know! I was scared I was going to die. I didn’t want to be alone.” She starts to cry again, deep gasping sobs. I’ve never seen her like this before.

“Well, well, what have we here?” In struts her beloved doctor, Dr. Friendly, the one we call Dr.

Strangelove behind his back. He gives me the creeps. He is short and humped and wears large round glasses with black frames. And he always looks like he needs a shave. He’s mostly bald, but what few hairs he has left, he strings across the top of his head. What I hate the most is his smarmy smile. We move back from the bed, out of his way.

1 6 8 • R i t a L a k i n

“Sorry I’m so late. Emergencies happen all the time around here.”

With you as their doctor, I don’t wonder.

“What’s wrong with her?”

“Well, we won’t know until we take some more tests, will we?” He listens to her heartbeat, takes her blood pressure.

Oh yes, lots of tests, lots of expensive tests. “But what are her symptoms?”

“She doesn’t seem to have any that I can tell.

But I’m sure we’ll get her back in shape, presto ma-jesto, won’t we, darling?” He smiles at Sophie and she tries a small brave smile back. “Meanwhile, I’m giving you a little anxiety reliever,” he tells her as he makes another notation on her chart. “I don’t want my big girl to be worried.”

That’s some great idea, I think, something to mask the real symptoms.

“She already takes ten pills every day,” Ida says, with some anxiety of her own. “What’s really wrong with her?”

“We’re still working on that little mystery, aren’t we? We have our cholesterol and our arrhythmia and our blood pressure and our weak bladder, our osteo, and our restless leg syndrome under control. Now let’s see what’s new.”

He studies Sophie’s face and asks, “What’s this rash?” He checks her arms as he
tsk-tsk
s under his breath.

He briskly makes another notation on her chart G e t t i n g O l d I s C r i m i n a l • 1 6 9

and then pats Sophie’s cheek. “We might add an antibiotic while we’re at it.”

She smiles wanly at him.

“Gotta go, others need me.” With that, he trots out of the room like the white rabbit on his way to the Mad Hatter’s tea party.

As soon as he leaves, Sophie’s pathetic smile disappears and she sits there softly sobbing, clutching our hands, not wanting to let go.

*

*

*

“We have to call Jerome.”

Ida agrees with me, but Bella shakes her head back and forth. “She will be so mad if you bother him.”

We are sitting in my kitchen having breakfast.

When I arrived last night I quickly checked my messages. None from Evvie. I was hoping she’d realize I’d gone and she’d call.

Sophie’s son, Jerome, the jeweler in Brooklyn, has always seemed self-centered to me. The few times she has asked for something from him, he gave it grudgingly or not at all. He never comes to visit, but sends flowers on her birthday and syrupy Mother’s Day cards. Why am I sure he gets his wife to do it? “But he should know about this.

Something is very wrong. Sophie has never been like this before. She seems so fragile.”

“Maybe Dr. Strangelove is poisoning her,” Ida snaps.

“What—and lose all the money she can still 1 7 0 • R i t a L a k i n

spend on him? I doubt he’d want to kill the fatted calf.”

“You two are terrible,” Bella says. “You are so disrespectful. Besides, Sophie is not fat.”

“He doesn’t deserve our respect. I still believe Jerome should be told.”

Ida is worried. “Let’s think this through. He might come down here and decide Soph should move up north to some assisted-living facility.

He’ll dump her in some awful place and forget about her. We’ll never see her again.”

This stops us. Finally Ida scribbles on a piece of paper. “Glad, you call him, and if he mentions most of these words I’ve written, then we’re wasting our time.”

I glance at the paper. She’s written “Too busy to talk, maybe he should look into assisted living,”

“Can’t get down right now, busy season,” and

“Keep an eye on her, call me later.”

I look up Jerome’s store number. Bella pours more tea and finds some stale Oreo cookies to give us strength.

I dial the number. Jerome answers. “Jerome, it’s Gladdy Gold. I’m calling because your mom’s in the hospital.” I listen. “No, it doesn’t seem too serious, but your mother needs some help. Perhaps you could come down for a few days and assess the situation.” I nod at Ida and repeat what he’s saying: “Oh, it’s your busy season.” Ida holds up one finger. “I think she needs a little support from her family.” Again I repeat his answer for them: G e t t i n g O l d I s C r i m i n a l • 1 7 1

“You think she should be in assisted living?” Ida scowls and holds up two fingers. “But you can’t be sure of that unless you come and see her. Oh, it’s not possible for you to talk right now; we should just keep an eye on her. Yes, we certainly will do that.”

I shrug and hang up. Ida holds up three fingers, wiggling them now. Bella is amazed. “You must have ESP,” she tells her.

“No, I just know a lazy good-for-nothing son when I see one.” Ida speaks from experience. Unfortunately.

The ball is back in our court. “We have to figure out what’s wrong.”

“What can we do?”

“First, give her lots of love and attention. And then, maybe we’ll come up with something by ourselves.”

Ida says, “We always do, don’t we? After all, we only have one another.”

TWENTY-FIVE

TROUBLES

Conchetta and I sit in a cool spot behind the library on a couple of old patio chairs that have been there forever. It’s her lunch break and we’re catching up. She shakes her head as I tell her about Sophie and Dr. Strangelove. Sophie is home from the hospital now, but she doesn’t seem like her old self. More head shaking as I tell Conchetta about Evvie becoming one of the rich people overnight and taking up with a potential murderer.

“Incredible.” Her head is still shaking as I tell her that Jack and I no longer see each other. Jack’s choice.

“No, not Jack! He loves you.”

“Maybe so, but he’s out of my life.”

“
Madre mia!
And all that’s happened this week?” she marvels as we sip water and fan our-G e t t i n g O l d I s C r i m i n a l • 1 7 3

selves with back-issue magazines left on the small patio. “Bet things were never this interesting in the years when you were a librarian.”

“That’s for sure,” I say. “The plots were always in the books, not in my life. How’s your family?”

“Pretty dull compared to your comings and go-ings. My sister, Nina, is pregnant again. The family is hoping for a boy after three girls.”

“That’s great.”

“Never mind me. You seem so unhappy,
amiga.”

“I’m miserable. I’m so tired of trying to take care of everyone and their problems. I guess I need somebody for me to lean on.”

She angles her ample shoulder toward me.

“This one’s available.”

I take her up on her offer. I lean into her and we sit that way quietly for a few moments, listening to the sounds of ducks in the near distance. All the houses in this neighborhood back onto canals.

And ducks are ever-present.

Conchetta breaks the silence. “Let me quote my uncle Paco. No matter what’s wrong, he always says get a second opinion. The car won’t work, the mechanic wants to bill you five hundred bucks for a valve job. Paco’s advice: Get another opinion.

Sophie’s doctor is a quack at best, so get . . .”

I finish it for her. “Another opinion.”

“Yes. And this case of yours, ditto. Evvie is not thinking clearly right now. Discuss it with someone who’s not emotionally involved.”