Howard Shrier - Buffalo jump

“Girl gives pride a bad name. She usually saves it for Fridays,” Jenn said. “But she’s too smart to work outside on a day like this.”

“Where does that leave you?” I teased.

She fixed me with a glare.

“Sorry. What’s the assignment?”

“You know that place out by Cherry Beach where they tore down the old refinery?”

“Where the new sports complex is being built?”

“Yup. Construction doesn’t start until August,” she said. “Meanwhile, someone has been dumping barrels of PCBs and other toxic waste there. We’re trying to catch whoever’s doing it so the owner can sue their ass and recover the cost of cleaning it up. I’ve been hidden in a little blind in the brush that overlooks the site, baking, sneezing and donating blood to mosquitoes.” She pulled a bottle of spring water from her knapsack and drained it. “At least I’m not doing the night shift,” she said. “Bugs’ll be ten times worse.”

“Why don’t you go down to the gym and grab a shower.”

“Oh, I’m sorry, am I offending you?”

“Only if you still smell like that when I take you to lunch.”

“Ooh, lunch,” she crooned. “My other favourite L-word.”

“Well, a fast lunch, anyway, and then a drive.”

“Where to?”

“Deepest darkest Scarborough.”

“What’s there?”

“A place called Meadowvale.”

“Sounds cool and shady.”

“How shady is the question,” I said.

So who are we?” Jenn asked.

“Allan and Linda Gold. Good friends of my parents. My brother’s godparents, actually.”

We were stuck on Kingston Road in the eastern beaches, as a kid with a scruffy blond chin beard tried to back a beer truck into the narrow alley beside a pub.

“Okay, Al,” Jenn said. “Whose parent are we committing?”

“It’s not a mental institution,” I said. “We’re placing my mother there.”

“And where do we Golds hail from?”

“Same as in real life. I’m from Toronto, you’re from Feedbag, Ontario.”

“That’s Fordham, city boy. Will they want to know what we do?”

“They’ll want to know we have money.”

“And do we?”

“A family fortune.”

“I like it,” Jenn said. “How much?”

“As long as we’re fantasizing, let’s go big. Five hundred thousand, left to us by dear old dad when he passed.” As opposed to the zip, zilch and bupkes my dad had left us.

“How long have we been married?”

I looked at Jenn in her yellow floral-print sundress that showed her tanned arms and legs to enormous advantage.

“Three years,” I suggested. “Three rapturous sex-crazed years.”

“In your dreams.”

Indeed.

“So what are we looking for?”

I filled her in on what I had learned so far. “Let’s see if they pressure us to accept Bader as Mom’s doctor. And where they keep their records.”

Ten minutes later, we parked in front of a ranch-style building of fieldstone and stucco with large windows and well-kept grounds. There was neither a meadow nor a vale in sight, but as nursing homes went, it was less bleak than I had imagined. It could have been a golf course clubhouse.

“Linda, darling?”

“Yes, Al?”

“Just to avoid any slips, let’s not use names in there.”

“Terms of endearment only?”

“Yup. Call me honey, sweetheart, dear. God of Thunder.”

“Dickhead okay?”

“Regrettably, I’ve been called that more than God of Thunder in my time.”

We crossed the parking lot toward the main entrance where a man who had just exited was lighting a cigarette. This guy was short but solidly built, with a round face a grandmother would want to pinch. His cigarette had the distinctive smell of American tobacco.

Jenn said, “Oh, dickhead dear?”

“Yes, honeypants?”

“The door?”

I held it open for her and we walked into the lobby. It was airy and inviting, with a terrazzo floor and fieldstone walls and light pouring in through floor-to-ceiling windows on three sides. A fountain burbled water into a small pool on the left side; on the right was a security desk where a burly man in a navy blazer watched a bank of monitors showing closed-circuit feeds. His name tag identified him as John. I signed us in as Mr. amp; Mrs. Allan Gold. The cameras, from what I could see, covered all entrances to the building, as well as a number of corridors and common areas.

When we asked John about a tour of the facility, he pointed at a slim, handsome woman of fifty or so across the lobby. She wore a cream silk jacket and skirt, and her blonde hair was pulled back into a chignon. “Ms. Stockwell is the administrator here. She’ll just be a moment.”

Alice Stockwell was engaged in a serious conversation with an earnest young man in a gorgeously tailored lightweight grey suit. I wondered if he was here to place a parent, or already had one in residence. Either way, he seemed displeased, lecturing Stockwell urgently through tight lips. Maybe he was another dissatisfied client like Errol Boyko, who feared something was amiss with his parent’s care. But Stockwell must have allayed his concerns because they finally shook hands and he headed out the glass doors.

She came clicking over the tile floor toward us, hand extended, and we introduced ourselves without any flubs.

“Did you have an appointment, Mr. Gold?”

I shook my head apologetically. “Ms. Tunney did say we should call ahead but I’ve had so much on my mind since Mom’s stroke…”

“Darlene Tunney referred you?”

“Oh, yes.”

“She had great things to say,” Jenn added. “You should be proud.”

“Then I don’t see any problem,” Stockwell said, all sympathy but for the one quick look she flashed Jenn: taller, younger, blonder than she. Like one Siamese fighting fish finding another in the same aquarium.

“Before I show you the facility, tell me about your mother. You mentioned a stroke. Would you say the effects are mainly physical or cognitive as well?”

I had decided to make “Mom” sound as incapacitated, and therefore vulnerable, as possible. “Both.”

“Oh, I am sorry,” Stockwell said.

“She can’t remember things from one minute to the next,” I said with a downcast look. “I’m afraid if she’s left alone she’ll turn on the stove and forget about it, or take her medication more than once-or not at all.” Jenn put her hand on my shoulder and patted it for support.

“And she’s on so many medications,” I added. “Even before the stroke she was dealing with diabetes and high blood pressure. I take it the staff here is well trained in dispensing medication?”

She smiled coolly. “As good as you’d find in any hospital.”

Given the state of health care in Ontario these days that was hardly a ringing endorsement, but I smiled back as if reassured.

“Let’s start our tour at the front desk, with our state-of-the-art security system,” Stockwell said. Big John took his cue and stared intently at his bank of monitors. “We watch every exit and entrance around the clock to ensure no one wanders. That’s very important for clients like your mother, Mr. Gold. If they leave the home-which does happen at less vigilant facilities-they die of exposure, hypothermia, dehydration. They get hit by cars. It’s terrible. And it simply will not happen at Meadowvale, will it, John?”

“Not on my watch, ma’am.”

The script was corny but I gave them points for tight execution.

Stockwell led us across the lobby toward three glass doors, our steps echoing off the stone walls. “Through the door on the left is a locked ward where clients with cognitive deficits reside. In addition to the cameras, all the doors in that wing are alarmed for extra security. Straight ahead through the middle door are the common areas: the dining room, day room, games room, clinic, dispensary and so on.”