Revenge of a Not-So-Pretty Girl (26 page)

And so I whisper the opening line of my monologue. I try not to fall asleep as the phone rings and rings and rings in the nurses’ station. I’m really praying here, because I only have four more listings left after this one.

“Nurses’ station,” this Spanish-accented voice says.

“Hi, I’m trying to reach Delaine Lawson,” I whisper.

“Delaine Lawson?”

“Yes,” I say. I know what the next line will be, so I beat them to the punch. “She is not a patient.”

“I hope not,” the lady on the other end says. “But she’s not here. She was on an earlier shift today.”

Hearing those words makes my tired, cramped muscles spring to life again. I straighten up a little too quickly and bang my head against the top of the table. I hold real still, making sure Mama didn’t hear anything, making sure she hasn’t started shuffling around.

“She works there?” I whisper before I realize how ridiculous I sound. After all, I did call for her. “I mean, earlier. She worked there earlier?”

“Yes,” the person says.

“Okay, thank you,” I say, and I hang up the phone.

I point the flashlight at the Xerox of the phone book page, circle the address for Ridgeway Nursing Home, then let out a deep breath. I’m feeling incredibly nervous all of a sudden. This could actually happen.

Well, I already know
this is going to be a bad night. I guess I didn’t think it would take me so long to get into the city. The thing is, I don’t go into Manhattan that often, so I’m not all that familiar with train lines or that convoluted subway map with all the color-coded connections. I thought I had it all down, but did I ever make a mess of it. Right after school, I hopped on the number 2 at Franklin Avenue, then transferred to the number 1 local at Times Square/Forty-Second Street, which took me to West Seventy-Ninth Street. Seemed to make sense to me, since the nursing home is on Seventy-Seventh Street. Problem is, it’s on
East
Seventy-Seventh. Doesn’t sound like that much of an issue—just walk a couple of streets over. Unfortunately for me, there’s a slight obstacle in getting from West to East Seventy-Ninth: Central Park. The last thing I wanted was to get lost in there and become one of those statistics you read about—attacked by some homicidal maniac or beaten up by some deranged homeless guy. Anyway, I ended up having to
get really creative to link up with the East Side local train, which finally let me off near where I needed to be.

I’m usually only in Manhattan for some school function, like when they take us to a Broadway show or to the Met or Guggenheim Museums to broaden our cultural horizons. And it’s pretty corny to admit, but I’m kind of in awe of the place. I can’t look up at those skyscrapers without wondering how they were able to build them that high. And everyone always seems so important and in such a hurry, especially those businesswomen in their skirt suits and Reebok tennis shoes. There’ll be three hot dog vendors on the same street corner fighting for the same customers, and cars and cabs zoom by, all trying to out-honk each other. It’s fast and wild and noisy and wonderful. Only, today, it barely has any impact on me. I’m so nervous and hopeful that everything will go well with the old lady’s daughter, I walk the four blocks from the subway station to the nursing home hardly noticing a thing.

When I get to the address I scribbled down, I just stand there staring at the building. It’s not exactly how I pictured a nursing home. I guess I thought it would look more like an old manor, like what Batman lives in, with a nice green, tree-filled yard out front where all the people being nursed could sit out and garden, or take in nature, or inhale from their oxygen tanks. I’m aware it’s in the middle of the city, but still. This place reminds me of the apartment building the Jeffersons live in, not much different from any of the other high-rises on the street.

I walk into the lobby and some extra-plump, overly
happy lady seated behind a desk greets me. And I’m wondering how she can have a job at a health-care facility when she could be a poster child for hypertension and diabetes.

“Oh, aren’t you a little cherub? Look at you. Look at you,” she says as I walk up. She keeps wiggling her nose like Samantha on
Bewitched
and talking in this odd baby voice. I actually have to look behind me to check to see if there’s a toddler in the vicinity. But it’s just me. Once again, I know I might be a bit smaller than average, but seriously!

“Are you here to see your grandma or grandpa?” she asks.

“My grandparents are long dead,” I say. I guess I’m harsher with my words than I intended, because her eyebrows shoot up to the top of her forehead. The good thing is, she begins speaking to me in a normal-person voice.

“I came to see Delaine Lawson,” I continue. “She’s a nurse here.”

“Let me call the nurses’ station. Is she expecting you?”

“Not exactly.”

“Maggie,” she says into the phone, “is Delaine there? Uh-huh … uh-huh … Oh, I see.”

I’m not so sure I like the way she said “Oh, I see.”

“Honey, what’s your name?” the woman asks me.

“It’s Faye Andrews.”

“Well, she has a guest,” she says back into the phone. “A little girl named Faye Andrews. Uh-huh. She’s here in the lobby. Okay.” She hangs up the phone and wrinkles her nose again.

“She’s on her rounds.”

“What does that mean?”

“She’s looking in on patients. Once she’s done, she’ll come down.”

“Once she’s done?” Doesn’t this woman know I don’t have all day? “Well, when will that be?”

“Shouldn’t be too long,” she says. The phone rings and she goes to pick it up, but looks over at me again before she starts speaking to the person on the other end. “Just make yourself comfortable.”

I really have no choice, so I go and sit down in this waiting area that has the hardest padded chairs ever. The backs slope a little, so I’m forced to sit at this weird angle. I look around at the large framed photographs hanging on the walls. Pictures of mountains and rivers and forests and streams. I wonder if they hung them to counter all the concrete and asphalt and brick the patients are forced to look out at every day.

Two male nurses wheel out these two people who are Moses-coming-down-from-the-mountain old. I’m really not all that certain they’re still alive. The nurses maneuver them over to the front windows and just leave them there—I guess so they can look out onto the street, or at least the small outdoor patio area. I watch them for a while, wondering if they’re about to have a conversation and talk about, oh, I don’t know, whatever it is people who are too old to walk and eat by themselves and pee by themselves talk about. But they don’t say a thing. They just sit there staring straight ahead. This place reminds me of that clinic Ms. Downer had me meet her in, only it’s about ten times
more depressing. I swear, over the past couple of months, I’ve been around more old people than I’ve been around the whole rest of my life put together.

When a couple of female nurses round a corner, I start to stand up. One is younger, but the other, well, she looks like she could be in her fifties. She’s a little dumpy, with tan skin, frizzy gray hair, and greenish eyes like the old lady’s. I’m pretty certain it’s her daughter, so I straighten out my jacket and take a few deep breaths. I’m so excited even my palms are starting to get sweaty. I cross my fingers, because I want this to go as well as I dreamed it would.

I smile and step forward. Only, the lady with the frizzy hair doesn’t walk over to meet me. She just laughs real loud at whatever her friend is saying and walks through the front door without ever looking in my direction.

I sit back down, realizing I have no idea what this woman is going to look like. Maybe she’ll look like the old lady. But maybe she’ll look more like the old lady’s husband. Maybe she’ll be lighter. Maybe she’ll be darker. Maybe her hair will be straight. Maybe curly. I just have to be patient. But when I look down at my watch, I see it’s almost twenty minutes after five. It’s going to take me at least an hour to get back to Brooklyn. I guess it really doesn’t matter much at this point. I’m doomed.

About twenty-five minutes later, I see this other lady walk into the lobby with purpose. She glances my way, then walks over to the information desk and talks to
Bewitched
. Then she looks over at me again. She just stands there for a while before she starts coming forward. I’m
getting a bad feeling. This woman definitely shops at the big-and-tall store, and she’s tough-looking to boot. I’m thinking Delaine’s supervisor is about to throw me out of the nursing home.

“You’re Faye Andrews?” she asks once she’s standing in front of me.

I nod slowly. “Should I know you?” I ask.

“I don’t know. You asked for me.”

“I asked for Delaine Lawson.”

“I am Delaine Lawson.”

Okay, so maybe I could have played off my surprise a little better, but I’d need to have taken some serious acting lessons. See, I’m figuring I got the wrong Delaine Lawson because this woman does not look like she could be any relation to the old lady. Everything on her is just kind of in-your-face: big ol’ eyes, a wide nose, round lips. Even her voice is big, and deep, and intimidating.

“I’m looking for the Delaine Lawson who is the daughter of a woman named Evelyn Downer, who also has another name, Evelyn Ryder.”

And just like that, the puzzled smile that was on her face completely disappears. It’s as if a set of imaginary fingers latches on to the corners of her lips and tugs them downward.

I give her a second to process. But that second turns into about a minute, and she still hasn’t responded, and I’m realizing that maybe this isn’t the wrong Delaine Lawson after all. Finally, her eyes shift a little, and I see the muscles in her face tighten.

“What’s going on here?” she asks.

I’m suddenly getting the feeling that if this Delaine Lawson person could have taken my words and stuffed them back into my throat, she would have. And she wouldn’t even use her nursing skills on me as I stood there choking.

“Your mother is dying,” I blurt out. Can’t help it. It’s the only thing I can think of to keep her from walking away. And the way I see it, it’s not really a lie. I mean, the old lady is like a thousand, so she’s closer to dying than she is to anything else. Besides, Uncle Paul once said that after you’re born, you spend every single day afterward inching closer to death. So you’re going downhill from the moment of birth. If you think of it that way, I’m totally telling the truth.

“How do you know my … How do you know her?” she asks. I can’t tell if she’s softening a little or if she’s just in shock.

“She’s my friend.”

“Your friend? What are you, twelve?”

“Fourteen, thank you,” I say with just enough attitude to let her know I don’t appreciate her incorrect estimate. And personally, I don’t think it’s that weird—a teenager and an eighty-year-old person being friends.

“So … she knows where I am?”

“I don’t think so.”

“What do you mean, you don’t think so? Didn’t she send you here to relay this story about her dying? To try to clear her conscience?”

“She didn’t send me anywhere.” After I say that, the
daughter kind of looks me up and down, then pushes her plum-painted bottom lip out a little. I’m sensing that she doesn’t believe me.

“Where are your parents?” she asks.

“In their skin, right where they’re supposed to be,” I answer. But then it hits me that I shouldn’t piss her off, ’cause then she’ll just leave and never go see the old lady, so I backtrack.

“My mother’s at work.”

She pulls me over to the waiting area, puts her hand on my left shoulder, and presses down so that I’m forced to sit. Then she sits. She even angles her chair a little so she’s turned toward me.

“How do you even know who I am? How did you find me?”

“This man’s writing a book about her.”

“Oh, that,” she says, easing back in her chair. I watch her every move, and I start thinking about how slight the old lady is, especially compared to this Delaine woman, who’s not fat big, but big-boned big. Like she’s been working in a field somewhere lifting haystacks and rolling giant logs. But I guess her size works for her, being that she’s a nurse and probably has to move half-dead patients around all day.

“You talked to him?” I ask.

“By phone. And only long enough to say I didn’t want to talk to him.”

“How come?” When she doesn’t answer me, I ask again. “How come you didn’t want to talk to him?”

“Because if he’s writing a book about her life, I’m the last
person who’d know anything about it. She left when I was still a baby.”

“She must have had her reasons.”

“She did. Money, fame, and greed. A career meant more than her family.” She lets out a deep breath, then does something really weird. She pats my head, like you would your cocker spaniel.

“This doesn’t concern you,” she says as she starts to stand.

“It does, ’cause she’s gonna die and all. She really doesn’t have very long.” Again, not a lie, considering how many days she’s already spent on this earth. “And she feels guilty about things with you and, well, she doesn’t know I’m here, but I don’t want her to die with regrets. And you should want to see her before she goes, even if it’s only for a little while. Even if it’s only to hear her side of things. ’Cause you probably are curious. I know I would be.”