do I. But my son said she had probably gone home, and at my age it’s pretty easy to doubt your own judgment on things.”
“I imagine so. Good afternoon, ma’am.”
It was Thursday. She went to see Richard in the nursing home. She took, as she always did, one of the photo albums from when they were children. She parked in the parking lot, crossed the street to the coffee shop, and bought a large vanilla latte. She carried it into the permanent pee smell of Caring Manor, through the “parlor” with its floral sofa and dusty plastic flower arrangements, and went down the hall, past the inhabited wheelchairs parked along the walls. The hunched backs and wrinkly necks of the residents reminded her of turtles peering out of their shells. A few of the patients nodded at her as she passed, but most simply stared. Blue eyes faded to pale linen, brown eyes bleeding pigment into their whites, eyes with no one behind them anymore. There were familiar faces, residents who had been there at least as long as the three years that Richard had been here. She remembered their names, but they no longer did. They slumped in their chairs, waiting for nothing, their wheels a mockery to people who had no place to go.
There was a new nurse at the desk. Again. At first, Sarah had tried to greet every nurse and aide by name each time she visited Richard. It had proven a hopeless task. The nurses changed too often, and the lower echelon of aides who actually tended the residents changed even more frequently, as did the languages they spoke. Some of them were nice, chatting to Richard as they cleared away his lunch tray or changed his bedding. But others reminded her of prison guards, their eyes empty and resentful of their duties and the residents. She often brought them small gifts, jars of jam, squash from her garden, fresh tomatoes and peppers. She hoped those small bribes spoke even if they didn’t understand all her words as she thanked them for taking such good care of her brother. Sometimes, when she was wakeful in the night, she prayed that they would be patient and kind, or at least not vindictive. Be kind when wiping feces from his legs, be kind when holding him up for his shower. Be kind while doing a task you hate for a wage that doesn’t support you. Can anyone be that kind? she wondered.
Richard wasn’t there that Thursday. She sat with the man who lived in his body, showing him pictures of when they went camping, of their first days of school, and of their parents. He nodded and smiled and said they were lovely photos. That was the worst, that even in his confusion, his gentle courtesy remained. She stayed the one hour she always stayed with him, no matter how heart-wrenching it was. When no one was looking, she gave him sips of her coffee. Richard wasn’t allowed liquids anymore. Everything he ate was pureed and all his drinks, even his water, were thickened to a slime so that he wouldn’t aspirate them. That was one of the problems with Alzheimer’s. The swallowing muscles at the back of the throat weakened or people just forgot how to use them. So doctor’s orders for Richard were that he could no longer have coffee. She defied that. He’d lost his books and his pipe smoking and walking by himself. His coffee was his last small pleasure in life, and she clung to it on his behalf. Every week she brought him a cup and helped him surreptitiously to drink it while it was still hot. He loved it. The coffee always won her a smile from the creature who had been her big, strong brother.
Cup empty, she went home.
Linda’s disappearance was in the Tacoma News Tribune the next day. Sarah read the article. They had used an older photo, a calm and competent woman in a power suit. She wondered if it was because they had no snapshots of a wild-haired old woman. But then, no one had pictures of the grin she had worn when she’d turned her garden hose on the ten-year-old Thompson twins for squirting her cat with Super Soakers. It could not capture her smothered giggles when she had called Sarah at two in the morning and they’d both crept out to let the air out of all the tires of the cars parked outside Marty Sobin’s place when her teenager had the drunken party while Marty was out of town. “Now they can’t drive drunk,” Linda had whispered with satisfaction. Linda from the old days. Sarah remembered how she had stood in the street, flat-footed, her teeth gritted, and forced Marsha Bates to screech to a halt to avoid hitting her with her dad’s Jeep. “You’re driving too fast for this neighborhood. Next time I tell your parents and the cops.”
That Linda had hosted neighborhood Fourth of July barbecues and her house had been the one where the teenagers voluntarily gathered. Her Christmas lights were always first up and last down, and her Halloween jack-o’-lanterns were the largest on the street. That Linda had known how to start up a generator for the outdoor lights at the soccer picnic. After the big ice storm twelve years ago, she had taken her chain saw and cut up the tree that had fallen across the street when the city said no one could come for three days. Russ had opened the window and shouted, “Heads up, people! Crazy Norwegian lady with a chain saw!” and they had all laughed proudly. So proud that they could take care of themselves. But that Linda, and the cranky old woman she had become, were both gone now.
Her family put up posters. The police brought in a bloodhound. Robbie came by to visit and ask what she had seen that night. It was hard to meet his eyes and explain why she hadn’t called the police. “I called your house. Twice. I let the phone ring twenty times.”
“We turn the ringer off at night,” he said dully. He’d been a heavy boy when he played goalie for the soccer team, and now he was just plain fat. A fat, tired man with a problem parent who had turned into a missing parent. It had to be something of a relief, Sarah thought, and then bit her lip to keep from saying it aloud.
As the days went by, the nights got cooler and rainier. There were no reported sightings. She couldn’t have gotten far on foot. Could she? Had someone picked her up? What would someone want with a demented old woman with a baseball bat? Was she dead in the blackberries in some overgrown lot? Hitchhiking down Highway 99? Hungry and cold somewhere?
Now when Sarah awoke at two or three or four fifteen, guilt would keep her awake until true morning. It was horrid to be awake before the paper was delivered and before it was time to brew coffee. She sat at her table and stared at the harvest moon. “Boys and girls, come out to play,” she whispered to herself. Her strange hours bothered Sarge. The pudgy beagle would sit beside her chair and watch her with his mournful hound eyes. He missed Russ. He’d been Russ’s dog, and since Russ had died, his dog had become morose. She felt like he was just waiting to die now.
Well, wasn’t she, too?
No. Of course not! She had her life, her schedule. She had her morning paper and her garden to tend, and her grocery shopping and her TV shows at night. She had Alex and Sandy, even if Sandy lived on the other side of the mountains. She had her house, her yard, and her dog, and other important things.
At four fifteen on a dark September morning, it was hard to remember what those important things were. Steady pattering rain had given way to silence and rising mist. She was working the sudoku in yesterday’s paper, a stupid sort of puzzle, all logic and no cleverness, when Sarge turned to stare silently at the back door.
She turned off the light in the kitchen and peered out the back door window. The street was so dark! Not a house light showing anywhere. She clicked the switch on her porch light; the bulb was still burned out. Someone was out there; she heard voices. She cupped her hands around her face and pressed closer to the glass. Still couldn’t see. She opened her back door softly and stepped quietly out.
Five young men, three abreast and two following. She didn’t recognize any of them, but they didn’t look like they came from her neighborhood. The teenagers hunched along in heavy coats and unlaced work boots, moving like a pack of dogs, their eyes roving from side to side. They carried sacks. The leader pointed at an old pickup truck parked across the street. They moved toward it, looked into the bed of it, and tried the locked doors. One peered through the side window and said something. Another one picked up a fallen tree branch and bashed it against the windshield. The rotted limb gave way in chunks and fell in the littered street. The others laughed at him and moved on. But the young vandal was stubborn. As he clambered into the bed of the truck
