There Was an Old Woman

Chapter Twelve


Back in the kitchen, Evie considered the man’s card with his name, address, and phone number. How nice that her mother had found companionship right across the street, someone who shared her twin passions: smoking and drinking. He’d probably upgraded her to Grey Goose.

Which reminded Evie of Seth, who was so particular about his martinis, sensitive to the nuances of vodka that completely escaped Evie. She slid her phone out of her pocket. One message. She played it.

“Hi, babe. Sorry to hear about your mom. Sounds like you’ve got your hands full.” There was a pause, and music and laughter in the background. “Listen, I scored a pair of Knicks tickets for tonight. Courtside seats. Meet you in the bar at the Club at six? We can get Chinese another time, right?”

Wrong. And what didn’t he understand about family emergency?

“Sounds like a narcissist,” had been Ginger’s take on Seth. Evie hated it when her sister turned out to be right. Her suggestion that perhaps he wasn’t the most generous of lovers had been uncomfortably on the mark, too.

Evie texted him back a terse Sorry, can’t make it, shoved the phone back in her pocket, and got back to work.



It was four by the time Evie left for the hospital. Even after a hot shower, she felt a miasma of stale alcohol and cigarettes clinging to her. The towels in the linen closet had been infused with that stench. She’d splashed herself with her mother’s Jean Naté and made a mental note to add laundry detergent and dryer sheets to her shopping list. With her mother’s car, she’d have the luxury of loading up at the PathMark a mile away.

She unlocked the little one-car garage and raised the overhead door. There was her mother’s Subaru. A taillight was broken. She walked along the driver side. The left front fender was scraped, too. Evie sniffed. Did she smell gasoline over Jean Naté?

Boxes were clustered near some old car batteries on the floor by the car door. One box contained cigarette cartons. Another was nearly full of liquor bottles. Evie pulled one out from between the cardboard inserts. More Grey Goose. Apparently vodka and cigarettes were being delivered by the caseload.

Evie pushed the boxes away from the car door and got in. The interior smelled sweet, like fermented apples. She looked around and found the source: a rotting apple had sunk into the drink holder. She gouged it out with a tissue and tossed it into one of the nearby boxes. Then she buckled the seat belt, slipped the key into the ignition, and turned it halfway.

The lights on the dash came on. She rolled down the window to let out the cloying smell. Adjusted the mirror. And then turned the key farther to start the engine.

It caught, gave a sputter and a wheeze, then died.

Evie sighed. She turned the key again. Wha-wha-wha. The engine cranked. And cranked. But no matter how much she pumped the gas, it wouldn’t catch. When she tried turning the key again, the engine barely roused itself and the engine light dimmed.

That’s when she realized that the needle on the gas gauge was pointing to empty.

She slammed her hand against the steering wheel. The horn gave a feeble bleat. She wanted to scream. It probably wasn’t the first time that her mother had parked the car and left it running until it ran out of gas.

Evie sat for a moment, pulling herself together, then popped open the glove box. She looked in vain for an AAA card. She was pulling out the owner’s manual when her cell phone rang. She almost didn’t bother to look, thinking it would be Seth, his feelings hurt by her brusque response.

But it was Ginger.

“Are you at the hospital yet?” Ginger asked.

“I was about to leave.”

“How bad is it?”

“Disgusting. Stinky. Garbage everywhere. Cockroaches. Pantry moths. Squirrels. I’d give it a twelve on a scale of one to ten.”

Ginger groaned.

“I started cleaning out the kitchen. Tossed out a mattress. Covered a broken window.” She gave the car key one more futile turn. “And now the damned car won’t start. So I’m going to have to take the bus to the hospital.”

Evie leaned forward and picked up a white paper bag from the floor of the passenger seat. It was printed with the black-and-red logo for Ruth’s Chris Steak House. Inside was a leftovers container that she didn’t dare open. Beneath it was an empty champagne bottle. Veuve Clicquot.

“It wasn’t bad when I was there last,” Ginger said.

“When were you here last?”

“Mom’s birthday.”

Two months ago. Evie had sent a card, but for the first time she hadn’t called. Now that felt mean. How big a deal would it have been to pick up the phone?

“I brought her a cake,” Ginger said, rubbing it in.

That explained the cake in the refrigerator. “Did you take her out for a steak dinner, too?”

“You’re kidding, right? I don’t even take myself out for steak dinners. I brought her a lasagna.”

And there was the baking dish with blue moldy stuff in the fridge. Maybe Frank had been the source of the steak dinner. How many bottles of champagne had they gone through before this now empty one for the road?

“The house was just the usual messy,” Ginger said. “And Mom was pretty upbeat. She was excited about how she’d be getting money each month, I guess because her Social Security kicked in.”

“So you haven’t seen her since her birthday?” Evie asked. That was surprising. Ginger had always been the “dutiful” daughter.

“We were supposed to get together, but she kept canceling. You know, that’s nothing new.”

Evie did know. “Guess what she’s drinking these days.”

“Vodka.”

“What brand?”

“I don’t know. Smirnoff?”

“Grey Goose.”

“So?”

“It’s expensive. There’s the better part of a case of the stuff in the garage. And a big flat-screen TV in the living room.”

“Really?”

“She didn’t have the TV when you were there?”

“Uh, no. I would have noticed.”

“So how come she’s got a brand-new TV but the place is falling apart? I mean really, literally falling apart. She didn’t say anything when you saw her at the hospital?”

“They had her so blitzed out on pain medication and tranquilizers and anticonvulsants, she barely even opened her eyes.”

Anticonvulsants would be for delirium tremens. Her mother had had those before, after she “fell down the stairs” and fifteen-year-old Evie found her unconscious.

“Ask her yourself,” Ginger said. “You are going over, aren’t you?”

“Right now,” Evie said, getting out of the car. She walked out of the garage and pulled the garage door down with a whump. “But I bet this will be just like the last time she crashed. And—”

“Yeah, right,” Ginger cut her off. “As if you even know what it was like the last time. Or the time before that. You’d cut and run.”

Evie didn’t say anything. Her fingers cramped around the phone as she walked toward the bus stop.

“You think she’s jerking us around again, don’t you?” Ginger said. “That this is one more fire drill designed to get our attention? Well, it’s not. So brace yourself.”