Mr Toppit (5 page)

On the day that Laurie left for England, the worst thing had happened: Marge had seen her heading for the airport. She had already had a difficult good-bye with Alma at Spring Crest—difficult because Alma had pretended not to know that she was going on vacation and kept asking Laurie to take her over to the police station to check if they had more mug shots for her to look at. As Laurie was trying to leave, Alma kept shouting for one of the nurses to bring her a phone—“I need to call the police again.
This minute!”
—and then, either by accident or on purpose, she had knocked the tray of coffee onto the floor. In the end, Laurie stood up and said, “I’ll be back soon, Alma,” in a quiet, neutral voice that might have indicated nothing more than a trip to the bathroom, and got out of the dayroom as quickly as possible, just managing to avoid Mrs. D, who was heading down the corridor.

She drove back into town and stopped off at KCIF to leave some notes for Rick Whitcomb. Laurie did a half-hour radio show of local news every morning. Rick was the program controller and he was going to do her show in her absence. Then she drove downtown to Holy Spirit where she had arranged to leave her car. In the afternoons she organized the volunteers at Holy Spirit Hospital Radio and did an hour of requests. She carried her bag to the main entrance and left it outside while she went into the lobby to ask Maribeth, the receptionist on duty, if she would call a cab to take her to the airport.

As the driver was putting her bag in the trunk, she saw
Marge heading towards her with one of the doctors. She felt herself flush, and ducked into the back seat as quickly as she could. Out of the window, she saw that Marge had stopped walking and was standing in the middle of the parking lot looking right at her, then at her vacation bags being put in the trunk. Marge had had her hair cut and colored and the tight curls sat on her head as shiny as a new copper coin. Even when she wasn’t angry, which she was most of the time because the waiter had put sour cream on her baked potato without asking or the air-conditioning in the ward was on the fritz, her small mouth and the set of her chin gave her the appearance of a cross little dog, but now she had a look of amazement on her face. Briefly Marge seemed almost young, as she must have been before all the things in her life that made her want to explode joined forces against her, leaving her battle-scarred and weary from the fight, but then the cab turned onto the street and Laurie lost sight of her.

On the flight to London she suddenly found herself thinking about what had happened on that last terrible night of her vacation on St. Barts with Marge. To try to clear it from her mind she began to zing. She closed her eyes and repeated the word under her breath—“Zingzingzingzingzingzingzingzingzing”—until her head was pleasantly filled with white noise and the cuts through which the thoughts seeped were healing. She had a sudden sense of relief that she was going to England—she would be safe there—but by the time she arrived in London, exhausted after the long night flight, her confidence had deserted her.

When the cab deposited her in front of the hotel, she had to fight her way through a group of students sprawled across the entrance with their backpacks. They were speaking in a
language she had never heard before, and when she stepped over their bags to climb the steps, they watched her strangely. The lobby had an odd, sickly smell. It was filled with other young people jostling and talking, and Laurie had to edge her way through, carrying her bags. It was what she imagined a train station in a third-world country would be like.

When she got up to the room—what they called a “luxury double,” even though it was the size of a broom closet—having carried her bags up three flights of stairs, she lay down on the bed and closed her eyes. She felt her body sink into the dip in the middle of the mattress. It was clearly not designed for someone of her weight. She knew that Marge would have been out of this hotel in a second—even if she had made the mistake of booking it in the first place—would have had her guidebooks out and been on the phone arranging alternative accommodation while Laurie sat calmly and had a cup of coffee. The room they had shared in St. Barts had had a veranda and a view of the Caribbean and smiling, silent staff, who turned down the beds in the evening and left gold-wrapped mints on the pillows.

It was late afternoon now, and the air in the room was still and hot. She was hungry, but had already guessed that the Waverly Court did not run to room service. In her bag, she had some potato chips and a giant chocolate bar. She took off the paper wrapping and peeled away the silver foil underneath. She broke the chocolate into chunks and neatly re-formed them into the shape of the bar on the table next to the opened potato chips. Then, taking a deep breath, she began to eat the chips out of the bag. When she had finished them, she took the chunks of chocolate off the table and put them into her mouth one by one, starting at the top left-hand corner and working her way along
and down. When she had had enough, she put the remnants back into her bag, then cupped one hand at the side of the table and, with the edge of the other palm, brushed the crumbs into it and closed her fingers. She went to the window and, as if she was releasing a small bird, opened her hand and shook it. Then she felt well enough to call Alma.

“Spring Crest Retirement Complex. Good morning.”

“Barb? It’s Laurie.” Barbara was the senior administrator. Laurie was grateful to get her and not Mrs. Detweiler, who owned the place.

“Laurie! How’s the trip?”

“It’s fine, it’s great. How’s Mom?” She only called her “Mom” to other people.

There was a pause. “Well …”

Laurie didn’t want to hear what Barbara might have to say. “Is she in the dayroom? Could you plug her in?”

“Actually, Mrs. D needed to speak with you.”

This was what Laurie had dreaded. “I’m in England, Barbara. Could it wait?” But Barbara had already gone and left Laurie listening to empty space. While she was thinking whether or not to hang up, Mrs. Detweiler came on the line.

“Laurie, how’s London? My favorite city. Great time to be there with the royal wedding and all.”

“It’s beautiful.” She hurried on: “Mrs. D—”

“I love London. What have you seen today?”

“Oh … Buckingham Palace and …” Laurie’s mind went completely blank “…  Stonehenge.”

There was a pause. “Are you with a tour?”

“No, I’m … I rented a car.”

“Well, you have yourself a good time, you hear?” Mrs. Detweiler said brightly.

“I’m just heading out. To the theater. Could you put me through to Mom?”

“I need to schedule a meeting with you, Laurie. When are you back?” The sheen had worn off Mrs. Detweiler’s voice.

“I’m not sure. I’ve got an open return,” she lied.

“Oh,” Mrs. Detweiler said gravely. Laurie was running her hand over the wall, scraping the little bumps with her fingernails.

“I need for you to think some things over, Laurie. I think we should talk to the outplacement coordinator. About alternative care programs.”

Dread welled in Laurie. “Oh, Mrs. D, she just needs time to settle.”

“Laurie, she’s been with us for nine months.” Mrs. Detweiler was honing the edge in her voice. “Her personal-care needs might not be within our scope. I want you to think about that. Things haven’t been right since the Memory Box.”

Laurie closed her eyes. She had hoped they’d forgotten about that. In order to identify what they called “a resident’s personal area,” a small lighted cabinet was hung on the wall outside the door of every bedroom at Spring Crest. Alma’s neighbors’ Memory Boxes were crammed to bursting with family photos, pocket watches, jewelry, locks of hair, and little pieces of china. All Laurie could find to put into Alma’s was a photograph of herself sitting on a horse outside the schoolhouse in Los Alamos, an old postcard of Fisherman’s Wharf, and a ceramic Mexican salt-and-pepper set she had discovered at the back of a cupboard. After Alma had been at Spring Crest a week, she had taken the box off the wall and thrown it out of her window. It had smashed into the Japanese ornamental garden where Mrs. Detweiler had been holding
her calisthenics class. Laurie’s story—reluctantly backed up by Alma—was that it had fallen out of the window when Alma was trying to fill it with more mementos. Now Alma’s personal area was identifiable as the only one not to have a Memory Box outside it.

Laurie decided to take preemptive action. “Fact is, Mrs. D, she’s upset by the assault.”

“Oh, Laurie, take it from me, we’re all of us most concerned about that. It’s very worrying for our other residents to have the police visiting.”

“Well, I would imagine, Mrs. D, that it might reassure them. It must be disturbing to know that a man—a pervert—could get into Spring Crest. Just like that.”

She heard an intake of breath. “This is a gated community, Laurie. We’ve never had any problems with security before.”

“How’s Mom’s trauma counseling going?” Laurie asked. She felt awful doing this when she was pretty sure that Alma had made up the whole assault thing, but she was fighting for her life now. She couldn’t have Alma back living with her.

“Slowly,” said Mrs. Detweiler, tartly. “You know Walter Reinheimer, don’t you, Laurie? Officer Reinheimer? He called me yesterday to talk about Alma, told me some things. In fact, he’s coming over this afternoon to go over the incident again with her. He wants me there, too.” Laurie picked so hard at one of the bumps on the wallpaper that her nail broke and a piece of the paper came away in a curl. She put her finger into her mouth and sucked it. Yes, she did know Walter Reinheimer. This was the worst thing that could possibly have happened.

Laurie tried to keep the shake out of her voice: “Mrs. D, I’ve got to go. Tour bus is waiting. Can we talk about this when I get back? I just need a second with Mom.”

“Okay, Laurie, but we’ll have to talk, we really will. I’ll go get her for you now. You have a good time, you hear? What’s the theater?”

“Theater?” Laurie said.

“You said you were seeing a show.”

“Oh … yes.” There was a momentary silence. Laurie racked her brains.
“Camelot.”

Mrs. Detweiler sounded surprised.
“Camelot?
Is that on again? Really? I love it.”

Was it so unlikely? “It’s a revival,” Laurie said quickly. “Because of the royal wedding. You know, King Arthur and Queen …” Her mind went blank again.

“Guinevere, dear,” Mrs. Detweiler said reprovingly. “Mr. D and I saw it on Broadway with Richard Burton and Julie Andrews, oh … twenty years ago? A while, anyhow.”

Barbara came back on the line. “I don’t know where your mom is, Laurie. She’s not in her room. Or in the dayroom. Can you hold? I’ll have someone look for her.”

It was dusk outside now, and Laurie felt sick. The chocolate was sitting at the top of her stomach like a pool of lava. She wanted to get back into bed and go to sleep. She licked her finger and tried to stick the piece of wallpaper back to the wall with spit.

Barbara was back on the line. “I’ll be damned. You know where Alma was, Laurie?” Laurie didn’t want to know. “In the poolhouse. Smoking a cigarette.”

“Does Mrs. D know, Barb?”

“No, she’s back in the office.”

“Listen, Barb—don’t tell her. Please.” Laurie couldn’t stop herself sounding desperate.

“Oh. Okay. Your mom’s back in her room. I’ll put you through. You enjoy yourself now. Hey, and there’s the wedding!”

“Yeah—everyone’s talking about it,” Laurie said halfheartedly.

The phone clicked and began to ring. It rang and rang. Finally Alma picked it up.

“Alma?” Silence. Laurie could hear wheezing. “Alma?”

“Who’s that?”

“It’s me, Alma.”

“Who is this?”

Laurie wanted to scream. “Oh,
Alma
! It’s Laurie.”

“Where are you?”

“England.”

“England!”

Laurie tried to speak calmly. “I’ve only got a second, Alma. I’m going to the theater.”

“You hate the theater.”

“I know I hate the theater. It’s on my tour schedule.”

“Someone else is doing your radio show. I heard it this morning.”

“Of
course
someone else is doing my radio show. I’m in London, on vacation. Rick Whitcomb’s doing it.”

“You watch it, Miss Laurie Clow. He’ll take it over.”

“Alma, Rick’s the program controller. He stands in for anyone who’s away. Anyway, if he does take over my show, I’ll just work full-time at Holy Spirit.” She knew that would annoy Alma.

“That’s no-pay work, that’s
volunteer
work.” There was no worse category in Alma’s eyes. “Like that
Grapes of Wrath
stuff you used to do.”

Once, in college, to Alma’s fury, Laurie had spent a summer fund-raising for the Farm Workers’ Union in Salinas.
The Grapes of Wrath
seemed to be the only book Alma had ever read.
The abridged version, in an omnibus collection with
Goodbye, Mr. Chips
and
The Song of Bernadette
, had been in whatever house they had lived in since Laurie was a child. She should have put it in Alma’s Memory Box.

“I remember Rick Whitcomb in high school with you. Playing Curly in
Oklahoma!
Who were you? I don’t recall.” Laurie did. She had started off with a part and ended up without one. She didn’t even want to think about that particular humiliation.

“He had beautiful hair,” Alma said.

He didn’t now. The year before, he and his wife Jerrilee, who had also been in high school with them, had played Don Quixote and Dulcinea in
Man of La Mancha
at Townsend Opera and Rick had worn a hairpiece like a dead animal. Marge had insisted they went along to the opening night and, to Laurie’s horror, cried when Rick sang “The Impossible Dream.”

Laurie tried to move on: “Barbara told me they found you smoking. This isn’t negotiable, Alma. You can’t smoke at Spring Crest. Mrs. Detweiler will go crazy.”

Alma mumbled something.

“What?”

“Mrs.
Rottweiler,”
Alma snapped.

“Oh, Alma, you have to stop this.”

“The police are coming again. They’re bringing some more photographs to show me. They’re not too smart. Last time they kept asking me who the president was. Why should I tell them if they don’t know?”