Derailed (17 page)

“Well,” said Karl, “Mattie sure needed lots of help, but she didn't get it from anybody around here. Of course, her son tried to help by remodeling the place so she could rent it, but . . .” He turned his stiff body a few degrees and looked out of the corner of his eye at his wife.

She nodded. “Then it got snatched right out from under her.” She might as well have added,
by you thieves
!

That was too much for me. I stood up. “Well, it's been good to meet you.” I touched Estelle's shoulder. “We better be goin' now. But like I said, if there's anything we can do, just let us know.”

I couldn't wait to get out on the sidewalk.

“Whew!” said Estelle, glancing back over her shoulder as the Molanders' door closed behind us. “That was something.”

“Yeah,” I said, chuckling, “but now we know there's another Christian family on the block.”

“Ha! Lord have mercy! I'll just let him be the judge of that.” She was silent for a moment. “You know, it's like they blame us for the old lady's accident.”

“More like they're accusing us of takin' her house from her. But it wasn't us who did it. It was the bank.”

The next family was Hispanic—David and Maria Morales and her brother Roberto Jimenez—and very gracious. If we'd run into someone else like the Molanders, I might have mutinied on Estelle.

As we approached the house on the corner, we met the family coming down their front steps—obviously Jewish, probably Orthodox, given the man's flat-brimmed black hat, long black overcoat, and untrimmed beard with ringlets hanging down by his ears. The woman wore a long black dress extending below her winter coat and had her hair tucked up under a black knit covering. They stopped long enough to exchange names and hellos. Isaac and Rebecca Horowitz had three children, a girl about five and a younger boy, maybe four, wearing a yarmulke on his head. Rebecca was pushing a stroller with the third child—a grinning toddler cuddled under blankets. “Thank you so much,” Rebecca said as she took the cinnamon rolls and hurried up on the porch where she deposited them in their mailbox.

“Yes, thank you,” said Isaac. “I wish we could invite you in, but we are on our way to Shabbat services, and we're running a little behind.”

“Oh,” said Estelle, “is there a synagogue near here?”

Isaac told us where the nearest
shul
was. “We're barely just within the
teḥum Shabbat
—walking limitations, you know. If we lived next door”—he shrugged as he thumbed toward the Molanders' house—“we'd be too far.”

We wished them well and crossed the street. When they were out of earshot, Estelle said, “You think she left the rolls in the mailbox because they can't have yeast in their house? The cinnamon rolls have yeast in them.”

I shook my head. “I think that's only for Passover.”

The family in the house on the other side of the street was from Congo. Three generations—a grandfather, a mother who worked at Abbott Laboratories, and a teenage boy.

Next to them lived a white family with two young children, a girl and a boy, and as soon as we introduced ourselves, the husband said, “Oh yeah, you're the people who got the old lady's house.” It
was beginning to sound like the whole neighborhood considered us opportunistic vultures, and I had to bite my tongue. Estelle graciously changed the subject and asked about the children, who the mother proudly announced were homeschooled. Soon they were demonstrating all the fascinating things they'd learned just that week.

Alejandro and Corina Alvarez lived in the only other two-flat on the block. Apparently several other family members or friends also lived in the building. I couldn't quite figure it all out, or perhaps they didn't want to be too specific about the relationships. Maybe some of them had immigration issues or something. That was none of my business, but it might explain a strange thing Alejandro said. After expressing how glad they were that we'd stopped by, he said, “We've lived here six years, and we don't know anybody on this block. People wave, but they don't talk to each other.”

What was going on in this neighborhood?

No one was home at the next house, a fine-looking yellow brick bungalow with four leaded Prairie-style windows across the front divided by arched columns. And it was getting dark by the time we got to the little house where Estelle said the other person had “pulled the drapes” on her. No one was home there either.

“Well, we better quit for today,” Estelle said. “Wouldn't want to arrive at anyone's suppertime. I'll do the rest tomorrow afternoon.”

“Yeah, well, only if you let me go with you to that McMansion at the end of the street. I want to know who lives in that big ol' thing.”

We hadn't visited my mom in several days, and
I wanted to see her, but when we got home from church on Sunday, Estelle said she had to finish delivering the cinnamon rolls that afternoon or they'd get stale. “What would our neighbors think of us if we gave them stale rolls?”

“Ha! I'm not sure cinnamon rolls will either make or break us. Seems like most of 'em have already made up their minds. They may not know each other very well, but apparently that doesn't stop the gossip.”

“Now, Harry, we don't know that for sure. We haven't met everybody yet.”

“Yeah, but how many made some kind of snide remark about us stealing ‘the old lady's house'?”

“Harry, only the Molanders said anything like that. A couple of others may have said something about us moving into ‘the old lady's house,' but they didn't mean anything by it.”

“I don't know. The Molanders may have been right about the relationships breakin' down in this neighborhood, but I'm beginning to think they've kept the gossip lines open.” I rolled my eyes. Wouldn't have minded going with her to meet the rest of our neighbors—in fact, I was kind of curious—but had no idea how much of my time would be tied up next week training with Corky, so I really felt I should go to the hospital.

“Okay then. You go see Mom,” Estelle said, “but you be sure and give her my love. Ya hear?”

I promised . . . provided Estelle would fill me in on what she found at that McMansion. She laughed. “I keep seeing these big
ol' limousines drive up to that place. Very fancy people goin' in and out.”

“Ah, maybe it's a private club or something.” I waggled my eyebrows at her like Groucho Marx.

Rodney and DaShawn were willing to go with me to the hospital, which I knew would please Mom. And I wasn't disappointed. She was napping when we got there, but the nurse encouraged us to wake her up. “It's okay. She sleeps too much anyway.”

Mom opened her eyes and smiled when I took her hand, looking from one to the other of us. Maybe it was wishful thinking, but her smile didn't seem as crooked as it had earlier, and the sparkle had returned to her eyes.

I realized I'd picked up her left hand. My heart skipped a beat. I couldn't recall whether the paralysis on her left side had also made her arm and hand numb. But at least this time she'd felt me touch her. It had awakened her. Was the rehab working? Was she getting better?

I patted her hand, but her hand didn't move or grip mine. Maybe she hadn't really been asleep and just heard us. But she did look pretty good, and she was definitely happy to see us.

We stayed a couple of hours, and I felt proud of DaShawn for how hard he worked to decipher what Mom tried to say. Sometimes he got it, and that delighted Mom no end. But the process also showed me she'd made very little progress in the speech department. And even though she was thrilled when DaShawn guessed what she meant, it was also terribly frustrating to her when he didn't, and the process wore her out.

“Hey, Mom, we're gonna go now. Estelle sends her love. We'll be back.” I paused, wanting to tell her how much I really loved her—hadn't done that for who knows how long, and I wanted it to be more than the “Love ya” messages people often say to each other, but I couldn't put together the words.

Mom reached out with her right hand and her eyes got big, but when she tried to speak, she had to say it three times before I understood her moans: “When?” It broke my heart to realize how lonely she felt. It definitely was different than being alone in her apartment. There she was free to do for herself, get out to the market when she felt good enough, and she looked forward to us taking her to church. But in the hospital she was trapped among strangers in a body that made communication, let alone travel, difficult.

As we came out of the hospital, DaShawn claimed “Shotgun” and climbed into the front seat beside me while Rodney got into the back. We'd no sooner pulled out of the parking lot when Rodney's cell rang. “Yeah? . . . No, no. Can't! . . . Not now. . . . Why? . . . Don't give me that crap. . . . I'll get back to you.” And then he hung up.

He didn't offer any explanation, and both he and DaShawn rode in silence, staring out their respective windows as my thoughts returned to Mom. It was time to put the last scraps of my dream for her quick recovery to rest. She wasn't going to be moving into our first-floor apartment anytime soon . . . probably not ever.

So, what does that mean, God? We need to get a paying renter into that unit
.

Most of our family tension had eased now that Rodney had moved downstairs, but he didn't have a job and couldn't pay for the apartment. Even if he did find a job, it was unlikely to pay enough to cover a place of that size.

As I pulled my RAV4 into the garage beside Corky's Dodge Durango, Rodney turned to me. “Say, Harry, you think Miz Estelle would mind if I took DaShawn out to dinner this—”

“All right,
Dad
!” DaShawn exploded from his window-gazing reverie and turned around to face Rodney. “Where we gonna go?”

“Just hold on, now. I'm askin' your grandpa somethin'. Whaddaya think, Harry?”

I pushed the button to lower the garage door, and we all got out. “Well, let's go in and see. Unless she made some kind of a big meal, I can't think of any problem. With all the bakin' she's been doin' lately, I'll be lucky to get a bowl of soup.”

“So where we goin', Dad? Huh? Where we goin'?”

“Baker's Square okay? We can walk there easy enough.”

Estelle had cooked—honey-baked lentils over rice. But it was the kind of meal that made great leftovers, so she had no problem with DaShawn and Rodney going out. After they left and we both sat down at the kitchen table, Estelle said, “What's up with those two?”

“I have no idea. While we were driving home, Rodney got this strange phone call, and then they were both as quiet as a couple of mannequins until we pulled into the garage. That's when Rodney asked DaShawn if he wanted to go out to eat.”

“
Hmm
. Guess it's a good thing for a dad to be taking his son out.” She wiped the corner of her mouth with a napkin. “So, how's Mom?”

I shrugged. “Guess she's doin' okay, but I don't think she's makin' any progress with her recovery, and she really hated to see us leave.”

“Lord have mercy.” She stared at her plate for a moment and then she looked up at me. “Doctor say anything more about home rehab?”

I shook my head, but I was too depressed by Mom's situation to talk about it, so I asked Estelle how the rest of her neighborhood visits went.

She chuckled and took a deep breath as though she too was glad to change subjects. “They were great! Wish you could've joined me. Though there still wasn't anyone home at that yellow-brick place across the street. But next door to them lives a young single gal who's a professional singer, Christian, no less.”

“Oh yeah? Someone we know about?”

“Grace Meredith.” Estelle shrugged and took a drink of water. “Never heard of her myself, but she must be pretty good. She travels all over the country.”