Лори Касс - Gone With The Whisker

“Well, if you insist . . .” Donna pursed her lips and gazed off into space. “Did you realize,” she said, “that Tonedagana County’s most populous demographic is people over the age of fifty? And that it’s our only age group increasing in population?” Her face lost its faraway look and she fastened her gaze on me. “Wouldn’t it be great to have the biggest, best, most recent collection of large print books in the area? Even the entire state?”

“Um, sure.” I didn’t know where we’d put it, but the idea was attractive.

“Think of it, Minnie.” Excitement colored her voice. “Think of what a draw that would be. Yes, I know, e-readers let you bump up type sizes, but lots of the elderly prefer print, and I even know kids your age who like to read large print books while on the gym’s treadmills.”

“Really?” The concept of going to a gym was foreign to me, but if I could read while I was working out, maybe there was a reason to go. I told Donna I’d present her idea to the board if I got an opportunity—unlikely, but you never knew—and headed to my office, where a multitude of tasks awaited me.

“E-mails to answer before I sleep,” I said, smiling at my reworking of the Robert Frost poem. It didn’t quite scan, but it wasn’t bad.

The door to the stairway opened and Graydon came through, coffee mug in hand. “Good morning,” I said. “Guess what, I have another staff idea for Stan’s money.”

“Oh?” Graydon slowed.

“I’m making a list,” I said. “Just in case the board asks.”

He nodded. “Excellent plan.”

Which didn’t sound like he’d be willing to take the list to the board, but at least he knew the list existed. “Say, when you have a minute, could I talk to you?”

“Sure,” he said. “Just come on up. My door is always open for you.”

“Well, it’s something personal.” I inched closer. “My niece. Kate. I’ve mentioned her before and I could really use some advice on—”

He snapped his fingers. “Minnie, I am so sorry, but I forgot. There’s a phone call I have to make.” One quick U-turn, then he was back through the door, and his footsteps headed up the stairs.

“That was weird,” I said to the empty air. But weird bosses were something I was used to, so I shrugged and went to my office. To answer e-mails.

* * *

My most fun task for the day was Reading Hour up at Lakeview. The Medical Care Facility had a list of volunteers that read out loud to a group of residents, and I’d long ago signed up to be part of the rotation.

Since difficulties with short-term memory were an issue for many of the residents, the books were read as quickly as possible, and I started compiling a list of shorter books for the group to choose from. Max, of course, always voted for anything by John Sandford, but to date he’d been outvoted every time. Though he tended to grouse that he was being discriminated against, he always showed up to listen, no matter what book was chosen, a habit of which I tended to remind him every time he complained.

“Tell me,” he said as we entered the living room–style space where the group met, “what book would you want read to you?”

“Today? Or when I’m your age?”

He looked up at me and squinted. “Hmm. You will be a very hot-looking old lady, Miss Minnie.”

Since I’d never been high on the “hot” scale ever in my life, I didn’t see going higher as I aged. Not that I cared. Well, mostly. “How do you figure?”

“Because as you get older, your character gets more and more visible.” He made a horrible face. “Remember when your mother said not to make faces because someday it’ll freeze that way? She was right. Oh, sure, you laugh at me now, but look around. You’ll see what I mean.”

“Okay, I promise to look. But I don’t remember seeing any twisted-up faces. Certainly not in the book group.”

By this time we were entering the room where the group assembled, and Max suddenly started coughing. Hard. Concerned, I turned to look at him, and saw that he was holding his hand to his mouth, but was also using his index finger to point.

“Face,” he gasped out between what I now understood to be a completely fake cough. “Her.”

I patted him on the back. “Wow, Max, that’s quite a cough. Maybe I should call the nurse. She’ll probably take you back to your room and you’ll miss Reading Hour, though.”

Max gave one final guttural cough. “I’m feeling much better, thank you,” he said, glaring at me. “How about you, Doris?” he asked the woman to whom he’d been pointing. “How are you feeling today?”

Doris, white-haired and thin, with a crocheted blanket across her wheelchaired lap, frowned. “How could I be anything but awful? I’m in here, aren’t I? Imprisoned by my ungrateful children who are far too busy to stop in and see their mother.”

During my visits to the facility, I often crossed paths with other visitors and it was easy to fall into conversation with folks you saw more than once, so I happened to know that Doris’s two sons came by weekly and her daughter stopped in two or three times a week. Plus, Doris had multiple medical issues that made home care difficult, and, her youngest son had said, “This was what Mom wanted. Didn’t want to be a burden on any of us, she said. And now . . .” He’d shrugged.

Max waggled his eyebrows at me and tapped the corner of his mouth. I looked at Doris and, now that she’d stopped talking, saw what he meant. The down-curved lines she’d made in her face when talking were still there when she wasn’t. Her face had indeed frozen that way.

Shaking my head, I settled myself into a chair and pulled the current book out of my backpack; Karen Thompson Walker’s The Dreamers. We had a few minutes to go before it was time to start reading, and people were still trickling into the room. Some walked with the aid of canes or walkers, some pushed their own wheelchairs, and some were pushed by CNAs. The chatter grew in volume, but most of it involved food and medications until I heard someone say, “Did everyone hear about that woman who was murdered?”

I looked up quickly. The speaker was Clella, a woman in her mid-eighties, who’d had a decades-long career as Chilson’s postmistress. Sadly, I’d never known the post office under her control, but I’d heard a story about the diminutive Clella facing down a giant of a man who shouted that if he didn’t get the package that was supposed to be delivered that day, he’d hurt someone. In the end, she had reduced him to apologetic tears.

“What woman?” the man rolling in the door asked. Lowell, the CNA steering the wheelchair, parked the man next to Clella and came around to lock the brakes and flip up the foot plates. I’d met Lowell a few months earlier and had fallen in love with his last name of Kokotovich. He’d laughed at my delight and said it wasn’t so much fun when learning how to spell it at age five.

“Summer folk,” Clella said. “Her family had a place up here since God was in short pants. Used to have mail come general delivery, back in the days when people did that.”

“What was the name?” he asked.

I almost said it, but Clella was talking again. “Her family name was Rodriguez, but she married a man named . . . oh, let me think.” Clella drummed her polished fingernails on her wheelchair’s arm.

“Well, where was she from?”

“Detroit area,” Clella said absently, the pink fingernails continuing to tap out a rhythm. “She was a high school teacher, school name is the same as the town, starts with an M. Macomb, Madison Heights, Melvindale, Milan, Milford . . .”

I smiled at her alphabetic recitation. A woman after my own heart.

“Monroe!” she announced. “Nicole. From Monroe. Don’t remember her married name, though.”