Millie glared at the woman outside her screen door. “What do you want?”
The woman, a crisp blonde wearing a white polo shirt and black slacks held a clipboard in one hand. “Mrs. Pepperdine, I’m Beth Jackson. I’m here to assess your home for safety modifications.”
“I’ll call the police,” Millie warned.
The woman held a business card up to the screen. “I’m with Safe Haven. Your son Marcus sent me?”
Millie blinked at the card, her memory reeling to last week’s phone conversation with Marcus, something about her not being able to live alone, too many trips to the emergency room, he lived five hours away. She had tried not to listen too closely. He’d always been such a worrier.
“I can call him if you’d like.” The woman held up her cell phone, but whether it was a gesture of peace or of war, Millie wasn’t sure.
“I gave at the office,” Millie insisted. “Now shoo.” She glanced at the living room, longing to return to the comfort of her couch and her cup of oolong tea. The doorbell had caught her mid-sentence in her favorite Maeve Binchy novel. It was her fifth time reading it and pages kept slipping loose from the spine.
The woman pressed a few numbers then pushed the phone toward Millie. “Here he is,” she said. “Here’s your son.”
Millie stared at the face of the phone through the mesh. “Ma!” it squawked. “Ma, what are you doing?! We talked about this. Ma? Ma, are you there?”
Millie sighed, her shoulders dropping, and shut the front door.
On the couch again, she propped her feet up on the turquoise ottoman and picked up her book but found she couldn’t concentrate. Everyone was nosing about in her business lately, trying to clean out her refrigerator and threatening to tear down her pergola. Expiration dates! they said. Termites! they said. She and Henry had lived in this house for over fifty years, and she knew every nook and cranny, how the lines of light through the plantation shutters slid across the Persian rug in the living room throughout the day, making slanted shadows at dusk across the oil painting of children playing jacks. The shudder of the second hand on the grandmother clock as it scraped past noon. The complaint of the pipes. In the hall bathroom, she had papered the walls with ticket stubs and programs from concerts and musicals she and Henry had attended through the years—Itzhak Perlman and YoYo Ma and The Boston Pops, The Mikado, Carousel, and Cabaret. She knew the placement of every single one.
On the glass-topped end table beside her, the phone rang. Marcus had bought her the contraption on one of his monthly visits. It had extra-large buttons that lit up, as if he thought she could no longer remember the numbers one through nine. She had lost her husband, she’d scolded him, not her mind.
The ringing wouldn’t stop.
“What?” she hissed into the receiver.
“Ma, you’ve got to let her in. We talked about this, Ma. She’s just going to look around, take a few measurements, make some recommendations.”
“You know I don’t like strangers in my home, Marcus. I’m a very private person. You should know that about me by now.”
“This isn’t about privacy, Ma. It’s about your safety.” She sensed the threat teetering on the tip of his tongue, the “facility” he’d found where she could live in an apartment the size of a shoe box and have access to bland sit-down meals and a shuttle bus that would take her on field trips to the store, like those disabled kids she was always seeing being herded through CVS.
“Fine,” she relented. “But I want her in and out.”
As she ushered Beth Jackson into the narrow kitchen, the cat, who had been sunning itself on the window sill, fled down the hall in a blur of gray.
“Watch out,” Millie warned the woman, wishing she could dive under the bed with him. “He’s a sneaky one.”
Before Millie could stop her, the woman took Henry’s old chair at the bistro table by the window. The cushion still held the shape of his behind. Millie could almost hear the clatter of his coffee cup as he set it in its saucer, the rustle of the newspaper as he shook out the pages. Sometimes at night, the house ablaze with light, she thought she heard his voice. “Madam,” he said. “Sir,” she responded. Their little joke.
“I don’t have anything to offer you,” Millie said, meaning cookies or crackers.
Beth Jackson gave her a sympathetic look. “I’m sure you have a lot to offer.”
Despite herself, Millie felt pleased. She offered a faint version of a smile then stared, assessing the woman. About forty, she thought. Beth Jackson had a serious manner, a lean face with a long nose, and a boyish bob, one of those practical cuts that women got when they were too busy to tend to their hair every morning. It was the kind of cut Millie herself had, although her own hair was white. With Henry gone, she had seen no point in keeping the long braid that for most of her life had swung against her back. Her signature, her pride. That had been who she was but now, against her will, she was someone else. Still, at times she missed it terribly. When she was feeling frisky, she had draped it over her shoulder. When she was worried, she coiled it about her hand. In her quiet moments, she had absently stroked it, as if it were a pet snuggling against her. Foolishly, she had thought chopping it off would make her feel lighter, would free her of the terrible weight that pressed down on her in Henry’s absence, but without the braid her neck felt exposed and vulnerable, and so did she.
The woman took in a breath then began to speak. “How long have you been alone, Mrs. Pepperdine?”
“Henry passed three months ago.”
“I’m sorry for your loss.” The voice was soothing, kind, but Millie knew better. There was something false in other people’s sympathy, something dutiful. She snatched her hand away before the woman could reach over and pat it.
“Do you make your own meals?”
“Henry was the cook in the house.”
The woman looked at her with concern. “Meals on Wheels?”
“Blech.” Millie made a face and found herself suddenly with the memory of Henry in his hospital bed that last day, the gut-wrenching sight of his gaunt and sallow face, the backs of his hands bruised from IV needles. She was furious at him for leaving her. Her widowhood still felt as if it did not belong to her, as if someone had forced her to audition for a part she didn’t want.
“A friend comes by once a week,” she said, bristling, “and takes me grocery shopping. My microwave and I are well acquainted.”
The woman nodded and made a note on her clipboard.
One point in my favor, Millie thought. She noticed the absence of a wedding ring on Ms. Jackson’s slender, practical fingers. “You’re not married.”
Beth Jackson gazed past her to the upper kitchen cabinets and shook her head.
“Smart girl. I was married for almost sixty years. Can you imagine tolerating another person for that long? The things you find out about him, and then he dies and you realize you never really knew him. Did you know my husband was a member of the Masons? Or that he had a bank account in New York? Neither did I.” Millie blinked. “Are you a lesbian?” This was one of the few joys of being eighty-two, this ability to be blunt. No point in wasting time beating around the bush when there was no time to be wasted. “We knew lesbians once. They were a lovely couple. Carol was an actress and Polly played the violin. Poor as church mice but happy. We used to meet them for lunch whenever we were in San Francisco visiting Marcus, my son. But then they broke up. Very sad.” She scanned the woman’s face. “Any kids?”
Ms. Jackson met her eyes with a look that said she was a busy woman on a mission and would be willing to tolerate no more questions. “One.”
Millie nodded. “Children are highly overrated.”
The woman stood, pushing back Henry’s chair. “Okay if I take a look around? I’d like to see where you keep things.”
“Where you would expect,” Millie said, then wanting to quiet Marcus’s anxious voice in her head, added, “Help yourself.”
“What are you, about five foot one?” Ms. Jackson opened the upper cabinets, where the plates and glasses were kept. She tugged at a stubborn door.
Millie shrugged. “Last I checked.”
“How do you reach these?”
“That little footstool you’re about to trip over.”
“Fall hazard. We can move the dishes to a lower spot.” The woman picked up the footstool and looked around for a place to store it. Finding none, she set it down then patted it as if telling it to stay.
“I only need one plate and a glass,” Millie said. “Wash, rinse, and repeat.”
Next, the woman went to the door behind where Millie sat, the one leading to the patio. She wriggled the locked handle, peered at the patch of lawn and hedges beyond. “What about out here? Do you ever go outside?”
Millie shook her head. “Never.” She decided not to mention the clothesline around the corner where she hung all her undergarments to dry. She wanted to hang onto the crunch of the gravel beneath her slippers as long as she could.
“What’s through here?” The woman pushed back a beaded curtain that separated the kitchen from the converted garage.
“The Happy Hour room.”
Henry had dubbed it that. The teak bar they had had custom built, where they had served their friends Mai Tais and Cuba Libres, was there, as were Henry’s easel and brushes, all stiff now, poking out of empty pickle jars on the shelves. On the wood-paneled wall was the framed photo of Henry in his cap and gown, with his salt and pepper beard and his gold-rimmed glasses. A believer in never giving up, he had attended classes at the community college after he retired from the fire department, and Millie and Marcus and Marcus’s wife, Cheryl, sat in the auditorium proudly applauding as he walked the stage to receive his diploma. The washer and dryer were there too, and the Pachinko machine they had brought home from a trip to Japan that Marcus, once a lonely, pudgy boy with few friends, used to play for hours after school until the sound drove her mad and she ordered him outside. As far as Millie was concerned, none of it was this woman’s business.
“Why couldn’t the pony sing in the choir?” Millie asked, trotting out one of Henry’s silly puns in an effort to throw the woman off her game, forgetting for the moment how much they used to annoy her.
The beaded curtain clacked as the woman released it. She turned toward Millie, the frown slipping from her face, replaced by a glimmer of amusement.
“I don’t know. Why?”
“Because he was a little horse.”
Ms. Jackson let out a small groan.
“You have to have a sense of humor about life, you know,” Millie scolded her. “You’ll never get out of it alive.”
“How about you show me your routine, Millie,” Ms. Jackson continued, calling Millie by her first name as if they were friends now. “From the moment you get out of bed.”
“I wake up, I eat, I get dressed.” And then the day faded away into gradations of gray until her stomach reminded her it was time to eat again and she mustered the energy and desire to get up from the sofa and traveled into the kitchen and stared into the refrigerator, craving something that wasn’t there. Henry’s lasagna. Leftover pizza. A chocolate éclair. It was hard to believe now that her days had been anything else, that she and Henry had once had a schedule full of Sierra Club hikes, volunteer shifts at the food bank, museum outings, plays at the community theater. Now her family was just Marcus. The best thing about her son’s visits was lunch at her favorite Chinese buffet, where she ate ravenously, sending him to replenish her plate four or five times until she finished her meal with a contented burp. Afterward, he propped her up in his Tesla and drove her out to the beach for a peek at the ocean from the parking lot. On their return to the house, they stopped at the park to say hello to the birch she had planted in Henry’s memory. “Hi, Pop,” Marcus always said awkwardly to the tree, his keys still in his hand, making it clear he didn’t plan on staying more than a minute.
On the table, the woman’s purse buzzed. Millie raised her eyebrows.
“I’ll let it go to voicemail,” Ms. Jackson said. The purse fell silent and then a moment later Millie’s phone rang. “Do you need to get that?” she asked Millie.
“It’s just Marcus,” Millie said with a sigh. “It’s always Marcus.”
“Hm, yes.” The woman tapped her clipboard. “I’d like to see your bed,” she said.
“You want to watch me sleep?” Millie snapped, her patience exhausted.
“Just how you get in and out of bed.”
“Are you a voyeur?”
“What?”
“A Peeping Tom? Is it some kind of fetish?”
The woman’s lips twisted, irritation spreading like a rash across her face. “I can assure you, Mrs. Pepperdine, that I’m just here doing my job. I—I care about seniors.” She looked at Millie head on. “I care about your independence.”
Independence. That was the word that Marcus had used, and her doctor too. As if they were sovereign countries and she was their territory. As if they, and only they, could grant her the power to fly her own flag.
She heard an annoyed sniff escape Ms. Jackson’s nostrils. She couldn’t afford to get on this woman’s wrong side. If she did, Marcus would have a moving truck here in the morning.
“Oh, for Pete’s sake,” Millie said. “Follow me.” She led Beth Jackson down the short hallway into her bedroom. Along the way, the woman reached down to scoop up an area rug, announcing, “Slip hazard.”
The bedroom was as it always was and yet today it looked different to Millie, seeing it through this intruder’s eyes. The window shade that she had to tug at by standing on a wooden chair, the door-pull missing from the teak hutch, the wobbly stack of books beside the bed. An hour ago, it had seemed secure, but now everything was a hazard, even the empty space where Henry’s pillow should have been.
“If you could lie down,” Ms. Jackson said, “it would help me see if any changes are needed in here.”
Weighing her options, Millie folded her arms and pursed her lips. She sensed the cat cowering somewhere in the room. “Do you want me to put my jammies on too?”
Color rose in the woman’s cheeks. “I don’t mean to be intrusive. This is really just to make sure you’re safe.”
“A strange way to make a living,” Millie huffed. “Snooping around people’s homes.”
They stared at one another a long moment. “Trust me,” Ms. Jackson insisted, “you don’t want to break a hip and end up in the hospital. It’s a one-way ticket from there to a nursing home.”
Millie let out a long sigh of surrender. With the woman still watching her, she eased herself down onto the edge of the mattress.
“Is the bed too high, do you think?” the woman asked.
“It’s brand new.” Sometime after Henry died Millie had replaced the mattress with one that did not carry his shape or scent. Two strong young men had carried out the old one, and it was as if it they were discarding Henry himself. She had thought it would be a relief to have it gone, thinking grief would go with it, but as they dragged it out the front door she had to look away. Now, giving into a weariness she hadn’t realized she felt, she let gravity pull her down until she was on her back.
“You’re a runner, aren’t you?” Millie said to the gold sparkles on the cottage cheese ceiling.
“Yes, yes, I am.” The way the woman’s voice faded then swelled, Millie could tell she was moving about, poking around where she didn’t belong.
“I knew by your physique,” Millie added, proud of having found the right word. There was so little chance to use words lately. Friends came by now and then, talking to her as if she were five years old and in need of her blankie. “What are you running from?”
“I do marathons,” Ms. Jackson said. She seemed to be on her knees, looking at the tangle of cords behind the dresser maybe.
“I’ve never seen the point of going somewhere without stopping to enjoy things along the way.” Millie’s voice reverberated in her ribs, hollow and distant.
“There’s a finish line.”
“Of course. There’s always a finish line.”
Millie detected the cat scrambling around beneath the bed, assessing its options for escape. She closed her eyes a moment and heard the bathroom door open then the fan clank and whir. The shower door slid open then shut.
“We can install a grab bar in the shower,” the woman called. “And a nonslip mat. Do you ever take baths?”
Millie reached to clutch her braid before remembering that it was gone. At the hair salon, the stylists had gathered around her chair in a show of support. “Now, before I cut, are you absolutely sure?” asked her hairdresser, a tiny Puerto Rican woman with sparkly talons for nails. Without Henry to consult with, Millie was sure of nothing. She saw her reflection give a nod. She had asked for the braid to be removed whole, having decided she would donate it to one of those organizations that made wigs for cancer victims. She shut her eyes tight, hearing the rhythmic sawing of the blades as they made their way through her thick hair. When the stylist was done, the severed plait was ceremoniously laid across Millie’s open hands. “Beautiful!” the stylist exclaimed. “You’re absolutely beautiful.” Millie had reached up to touch her nape and found the skin there alarming, as if she had bumped up against a naked stranger.
On the bed, Millie sat up. “No!”
The woman poked her head around the bathroom door. “Did you say something, Mrs. Pepperdine?”
“You tell my son I said No.”
“No what?”
“He’ll know what I mean. And I want you gone.”
The woman looked about to say something but instead gave a resigned nod. “I’ll send him my report.” She approached the bed. “At least let me help you up before I go.”
Before Millie could respond, the woman let out a little yelp. “Ow! Your cat just clawed my ankle.”
“Good for him!”
Millie watched as Ms. Jackson hurriedly gathered her tape measure and clipboard then paused in the bedroom doorway.
“I’ve been divorced two years, and I have a ten-year-old daughter who misses her father every day.” Ms. Jackson caught her breath. “And I run because if I didn’t, I’d fall flat on my face and never get up.”
Millie gulped. She would not feel guilty about other people’s problems. She wouldn’t. Besides, the death of a husband eclipsed divorce any day.
She watched the woman turn to go. Not trusting her to actually leave the house, Millie slid off the edge of the bed until her feet touched carpet and then made her way down the hallway. She heard the woman retrieve her purse from the kitchen and then the screen slap shut. Millie watched from the door. The woman was in the driveway, on the phone. She muttered the words “Your mother,” “the most difficult,” and “obstinate.” When Millie heard “next steps,” she knew that the war wasn’t over, she’d only won the battle.
Millie shut and bolted the door, then stood in the entryway, uncertain which way to go. “It’s okay,” she called to the cat. “You can come out now!” But she wasn’t sure everything was okay. Something had shifted. The light inside was different now, the shadows deeper. The house itself felt as if it was tilting slightly, as if everything she had so carefully placed inside it over the years was about to crash to the other side.
Photo by Pacto Visual on Unsplash
