There Was an Old Woman

Chapter Twenty-nine


Mina turned down Evie’s offer to stay and help clean up. It was the last thing the poor girl needed after the day that she’d been through. Besides, Mina was far too embarrassed by what had happened.

With all the windows and doors open, the smoke began to clear, though the odors of burned chicken and tomato were still pungent in the air. She scraped what she could into the garbage. Filled the pot with hot water and a few squirts of dishwashing liquid. Maybe it was salvageable. She stood there, staring into suds that rapidly turned black. Maybe not.

How could this have happened? She always, always, always set the burner to low when she made chicken cacciatore. But when she’d fought her way through the smoky kitchen to turn off the burner, she found the dial cranked well past medium.

On top of that, despite thick smoke, the alarm hadn’t sounded. Hadn’t it gone off yesterday when her teapot went up? Wasn’t it supposed to reset itself automatically? Mina took out a broom and jammed the end of the stick up into the smoke alarm’s test button, expecting to hear the shrill alarm sound. But nothing happened.

Maybe the battery had run down, though that made no sense either. It was supposed to at least chirp for a while before it died. She was sure she had a replacement battery, and she knew exactly where it was in the storage closet in the bag where she kept lightbulbs. But even standing on her kitchen step stool she wasn’t nearly tall enough, never mind steady enough, to reattach the wires and replace the battery. Tomorrow, she’d get someone—Brian or Finn—to give her a hand.

She wrote a reminder on a Post-it and stuck it to her refrigerator door. Then, wearily she took down her calendar and continued the list she’d started, writing more items in today’s block:

5. Burned chicken

6. Smoke alarm dead

She hung her calendar back on its hook. Maybe it was just as well that she’d broken down and agreed to visit nursing homes with Brian. She hated the idea that she’d end up in one of those places, but at least there she wouldn’t be burning down the neighborhood.

Back when Annabelle was still lucid most of the time, Mina had taken her to visit several nursing homes that took care of people with dementia. Annabelle had chosen Pelham Manor. True, it was a bit shabby, but it was clean and well run, and she’d wanted to be nearby, so Mina could get there easily. Annabelle had been fortunate to have had particularly kind caregivers.

Mina remembered the day she’d moved Annabelle into a freshly painted room. She’d loaded her sister’s few meager suitcases and some boxed-up framed photographs and personal items into the trunk of her car. Even though it had been swelteringly hot that day, Annabelle insisted on riding with the car windows rolled up. She had sat bolt upright in the passenger seat, her eyes bright as buttons, to use one of their mother’s expressions, as their old neighborhood streamed by.

“Are you sure there’s enough gas?” Annabelle had asked. She asked the same thing every time she got in the car with Mina—or in a cab, or even on a bus, for that matter.

“We’re going to run out of gas,” Annabelle said for the third time as they passed a gas station. A half block later, “Shouldn’t we get gas?”

“Look,” Mina said, pointing to the needle that showed well over half a tank. “There’s plenty. Relax.”

But relax was one of the many things that Annabelle could no longer do. Sitting there in her coat, sweat streaming down her face, she’d clutched the armrest and twisted in her seat, watching the blue-and-yellow Sunoco sign recede behind them, so agitated that the knuckles on the hand Mina could see turned white. With the other hand, she pulled at her hair, yanking out pins that Mina had so carefully put in not twenty minutes earlier.

Irrational anxiety—the doctor had already warned Mina about that and told her that it was likely to increase as dementia deepened. Mina had learned from experience that it was immune to reasoning or hard evidence. Distraction was the only strategy that seemed to work, even temporarily.

So, when they came to a stop at a red light, Mina pointed to the opposite corner. “Oh Annabelle, look. What happened to the movie theater that used to be over there on that corner?”

It took Annabelle a few seconds to refocus—as if gears were shifting and cogs falling into place. But when she did, her expression softened, and the lines of tension eased from around her eyes. “Oh yes, the Halcyon.”

Mina had forgotten that the movie theater, with its gilded ceiling and massive crystal chandelier, had been called the Halcyon—from halcyon days, how appropriate. The light turned green, and Mina accelerated.

“Popcorn,” Annabelle said. “Can I get a large?”

At least Annabelle had died first, as Mina had hoped and prayed she would, with Mina sitting by her side and holding her hand. Would anyone be there with Mina to hold her hand at the end?