is how high the mountains are. The Sierra Nevada, which form the backbone of the state, are the stars: Mount Whitney is the highest mountain in the continental U.S., and the long range of granite peaks capture so much moisture from the ocean that everything on their east side is near desert. But the ranges of mountains that run the length of the state not far from the coast are impressive too, especially when you consider that they rise from near sea level. Mount Palomar—the one with the big telescope—is over a mile high. So is Mount Cuyamaca, where we used to go in the wintertime to see the snow.
I don’t think you can see either of them from the complex, but what I saw that morning were shadowy, purple-grey cutouts of mountains with the sky pink and orange behind. The Camino Real Care Complex sat on the edge of the valley where the highway ran. I couldn’t see the bottom, though, because the low places were still filled with fog. Above, the air seemed more or less clear, although it was tinted with something—smog, maybe. Nevertheless, it was all very pretty, and I sat for several minutes, taking it in.
However, I was there to get a fix on the complex, not the landscape. Lil had written that this place looked the best of all the assisted living facilities she had visited. Built about fifteen years previously, it had forty-five apartments for people who could get around on their own, who only needed help with the housework, two meals a day, and the backup of having staff on the premises twenty-four/seven. The place also had two other levels of care: one for people who needed help with personal stuff like dressing and bathing, and another for those who had to have full-time care.
“As you get more and more ancient you can just go from one level to another,” Lil had written. “But not all the people have one foot in the grave. They do a lot of rehabilitation on people after accidents, and I saw quite a few young faces in the dining hall. That should liven the place up, it won’t all be bingo and Alzheimer’s.” She’d added on the phone that there was a liquor store with a good wine selection in a strip mall nearby that made deliveries on telephone orders, “so I can have a drink before dinner and a glass of wine during it.”
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
