I laughed at that: my father had always been a good drinker, but he’d stuck to martinis or scotch and soda until Lil took him in hand. She knew wine, and she got him enthusiastic about grands crus and small wineries in the Napa Valley and monthly selections from vintage clubs. In return he insisted on a drink of the hard stuff at least once a day, whether at the cocktail hour or earlier in the afternoon.
The apartments were in the two-storey building furthest to my right: they had curtains, some of which were drawn, and individual balconies with patio furniture and window boxes. To the left was a four-storey building, which I guessed held the higher levels of care. In between was a low building that must be administration, the dining hall, and the kitchen. From where I sat I could see the dumpsters for garbage right next to a double door that probably led to the kitchen. I remember thinking it would be good to take a look in there, because you can tell a lot about a place from the kitchen.
A small, dark man came out and threw a couple of garbage bags in the dumpster. Someone in a motorized wheelchair came and headed down a path at the edge of the parking lot. Through the windows of the third floor of the bigger building I could see all the lights snap on inside. Then the sentinel lights set around the parking lot went off.
I checked my watch: slightly before seven o’clock. Too early for an official visit; they’d tell me to come back at a more civilized time if I went around to the main door and introduced myself as Mrs. Lillian Mercer’s stepson come to check the place out.
But I had to pee after all that coffee and the Coke, so I said to myself, I’ll go ask if I can use their restroom. Lil had said she’d told them to expect me sometime before she moved, she’d given us the name of someone who had been very helpful. If I went around and asked for that person I’d seem a little more businesslike, more like someone you’d give the key to the restroom to, whom you wouldn’t suspect of planning a crime.
What was the name of the person? I shook the contents of the manila envelope out on the seat beside me. Along with the brochure there were a summary of Lil’s investment income, a budget written in her large, careful teacher’s handwriting, and the letter in which she’d sent us all the details, including why she had decided she needed more help with living.
Jenny had cried when she read the letter. At that point she hadn’t had much experience with seeing the end of life approaching. Her own parents were just beginning to think of retiring—her father is only twelve years older than me. She loved Lil too, and Lil loved her, she’s the daughter that Lil never had.
But the letter had the name of Lil’s contact, and after Jenny had read it, she’d put it back, still wet with her tears, in the business envelope that it had come in. I fumbled with that envelope, trying to get to it open, but the flap had stuck shut again. To reopen it, I reached in my pocket for my knife and I slit the letter open.
Then I looked up.
A pickup pulled into the lot, followed by a station wagon and a van. Two heavy-set women got out of the wagon and the van and waved to each other. Each was dressed in pale blue scrubs and dark blue windbreakers.
The pickup’s license plates were vanity ones: “ANNIE.” The woman driving it took a bit longer to collect her things, and when she was out on the asphalt her arms were full of bags of something. She was also heavy, and her voice, when she called to the other two women to come help her, made me think of something that bothered me. Suddenly I was sad, angry, I don’t know what. Then one of the other women said something about Christmas before they all went in the building through a door next to the kitchen entrance.
That was when I suddenly found myself shaking uncontrollably.
Oh God, I hate hospitals, I have ever since the three long years it took my mother to die. I thought I had gotten over that, I thought all the times that Jenny had talked me down had been enough to shine a light in those shadows. I did not want to be here, the mention of Christmas made me think of all I should be doing back at home. This was the year that Chez Cassis had made it on the map. It had been featured in Gourmet, there’d been a profile about Jenny and me in the New York Times“ dining out” section, our New Year’s Eve celebration had been sold out since November 1.
I should be back home, planning and chopping and stirring and getting ready. I should be working on fulfilling the dream that was Jenny’s as much as mine. I was tired, I was God damn exhausted, and here I was, playing the good son for a woman whom I liked, but to whom I really didn’t owe much. I was angry, I was furious, I was ... I don’t know.
Then the motorcycle roared into the lot as if this were a bad movie with the Hell’s Angel taking possession of his turf, the place where payoffs get made. Oh shit, I remember thinking. What is this place? Who works here? How much money has Lil already put into it?
I had to go over and find out ... I had to ask somebody ... My head had started to hurt, I could hear myself panting and felt my face go red. I opened the car door and I started to stand. The pain shot upward from my knee and I had to grab the roof of the car with my free left hand.
How long did I stand there with my head whirling and my eyes ready to burst out of my head? A minute, two minutes. Long enough for the thug on the motorcycle to see me, to come over, to ... what? I wasn’t sure. Settle some kind of account, prey on someone injured, attack ...
He grabbed me, and I thought—I don’t know what I thought. I can’t remember clearly. It was as if some red curtain fell over me and I had to fight my way out. I still had, I realized, the knife in my right hand. His right hand was on my left shoulder, his jacket had fallen open. I moved forward, I stuck the knife, I stuck my lovely, extremely sharp French knife into him.
He fell to the pavement, and I fell back into the car. For a moment I sat there, looking out the open door at him. He looked up at me. He said, “What the hell? I was only trying to ...”
And I panicked. I admit it, I completely lost it. I was vanquished by all those hours without sleep, all those terrible memories ...
I shut the car door. I started the engine. I drove away.
Annie
He was lying on the pavement, just lying on the pavement. I thought he’d fallen, maybe. He limped, he had since he was a little kid and he had that accident on the cliffs, and I worried about him still. He was thirty-two years old, but I’d always been more uncertain about him than I had about the girls.
That figures, of course. It was just him and me for such a long time. Him and me against the world, whereas Chuck had always been there for the girls. Bless Chuck.
But of course I didn’t even know it was Will when the alarm sounded. I’d been on duty not more than ten, fifteen minutes, so I was still in the staff room, I’d just put down all the bags of Christmas stuff I’d brought and I started going over what had happened during the night with the team head. Sundays are quiet in some ways—you don’t schedule baths and physio as a rule, there are no routine medical or dental appointments to get folks ready for—but you never know what might happen. Visitors come and that can be good and bad. Sometimes they help feed the ones who have trouble eating, and sometimes they blow up at you because their mother’s socks don’t match. You never know, and I’d just as soon not work then. But this was just a couple of weeks before Christmas when we’re always trading around time, so that folks can get the days off they want over the holidays. Chuck and I planned to be away from December 27 to January 16, too, so I was working even more odd shifts than I usually do that time of year.
Will wasn’t supposed to be working. When he finally went back to school after knocking around for a while—he drove a truck and was a motorcycle mechanic for my father, among other things—he signed on at the complex to work Saturdays, Sundays, and a couple of overnight shifts during the week. He started out as a cleaner,