Part Four: Four Weeks
She moved in that Saturday.
I picked her up from her house in my SUV. She had a cast from her ankle to her knee and a walker with tennis balls on the feet. Her neighbor had packed a suitcase for her. Two suitcases, actually. And a big canvas tote bag she wouldn’t let me carry.
“Just some things to keep me busy,” she said, holding it on her lap the whole drive.
My house is a little brick ranch in the Alger Heights neighborhood. Three bedrooms, one of them on the main floor, at the end of the hall. It used to be Shane’s office when we were married. After the divorce, I turned it into a guest room.
I’d put clean sheets on the bed and fresh flowers on the dresser. Ivy had made a sign with markers and taped it to the door. WELCOME GRANDMA ELORA! With a drawing of a cat, because Ivy draws a cat on everything.
Elora cried when she saw it.
For four weeks, I took care of her.
I cooked. Soups and casseroles and the pot roast she likes. I cleaned. I did her laundry. I helped her shower, with a plastic chair in the tub and a bag over her cast.
I drove her to her orthopedic appointments at Spectrum Health. To physical therapy twice a week. To the pharmacy and the grocery store and the hair salon, because Elora would sooner die than go a month without having her hair set.
Ivy loved having her there.
Every night after dinner, they’d sit at the kitchen table and play gin rummy. Elora would teach her a new knitting stitch. They watched old movies on the couch. The Sound of Music. Mary Poppins. Singin’ in the Rain.
Ivy would fall asleep with her head on Elora’s shoulder.
It was nice. It really was.
For two weeks.
Part Five: Strange Things
Halfway through her stay, I began noticing strange things.
The first time was a Tuesday. I was supposed to work a twelve-hour shift, seven to seven. But the hospital was overstaffed that day. My supervisor sent me home at noon.
I pulled into the driveway at twelve-thirty.
My neighbor Patricia’s car was parked in front of my house.
Patricia Okafor lives next door. She’s sixty-eight, a retired paralegal who worked thirty years at a law firm downtown. She’s a widow. She has a garden full of tomatoes and a cat named Judge who sits in her front window and glares at the mailman.
She and I have been neighbors for eight years. Friendly but not close. We wave. We trade zucchini in August.
I didn’t know she and Elora knew each other.
When I opened the front door, I heard voices in the back hallway. Elora’s and Patricia’s. Low and fast.
Then they stopped.
I walked down the hall. Elora was sitting on the edge of her bed with her cast propped on a pillow. Patricia was standing by the dresser.
They both looked at me like I’d caught them stealing.
“Mara!” Elora said. Too bright. Too loud. “You’re home early!”
“They sent me home,” I said. “Hi, Patricia.”
“Hi, Mara,” Patricia said. “I was just bringing Elora some tomatoes. From the garden.”
She held up a paper bag.
There were three tomatoes in it.
That evening, Elora asked me what my schedule was for the rest of the week.
“Thursday and Friday,” I said. “Seven to seven.”
“Both days?” Elora said. “The whole day?”
“The whole day,” I said.
She nodded. She looked relieved.
The next week, it happened again.
I came home early on a Thursday because I’d forgotten my badge. Patricia’s car was out front again.
When I came in, I heard a thump from upstairs. Like something heavy being set down. Then footsteps.
Elora was on the couch in the living room, with her cast up on the coffee table and a magazine in her lap. Upside down.
Patricia came down the stairs a minute later. Brushing dust off her slacks.
“Just using the bathroom,” Patricia said.
There’s a bathroom on the main floor. Right off the kitchen.
I didn’t say anything.
I told myself it was nothing. Elora was lonely. Patricia was a widow who lived alone. Maybe they’d become friends. Maybe they didn’t want me to feel left out.
But Elora kept asking when I’d be out. Every single day. What time is your shift tomorrow? Are you going to the store after work? When’s Ivy’s soccer practice?
And every time I came home unexpectedly, she seemed nervous. Jumpy. She’d laugh too loud. She’d change the subject too fast.
Once, I found a smear of dust on the shoulder of her cardigan. Gray, gritty dust. The kind that comes from an attic.
Elora hadn’t been upstairs in three weeks. She couldn’t climb stairs.
Still, I figured she was just uncomfortable. Staying in someone else’s home. Recovering from an injury. Living with her ex-daughter-in-law.
That would make anyone a little strange.
