There Was an Old Woman

Chapter Thirty-three


Brian arrived the next morning, hours earlier than Mina expected him. She was still eating her breakfast and reading the paper.

“You remembered I was coming, didn’t you?” he said. “You’re up to looking at residences?”

Of course she did. Of course she was. She took a drink of tea, scraped up a last mouthful of oatmeal, and walked the dishes to the sink.

“I’ve arranged for us to see a few places.” He read from a piece of paper. “Pelham Manor. Golden Oaks—”

She took the paper from him and adjusted her glasses. “I can read, for heaven’s sake.”

He had four addresses written down. Pelham Manor was where Annabelle had spent her final days. Golden Oaks was also in the Bronx. Briarfield Gardens was on Saw Mill River Road, over into Westchester. The fourth place she’d never heard of. Visiting four in a single day seemed awfully ambitious.

She handed him back the paper. “Have you eaten? Can I get you anything?”

“I’m fine.” He looked at his watch. “We’ve got to step on it, Aunt Mina. They’re expecting us at Pelham Manor in thirty minutes.”

Mina folded the newspaper, slapped it down on the table, and stood. “All right then. I’ll be ready in a minute.”

She closed herself in the bathroom, even though she didn’t need to go. Then she sat on the closed toilet seat trying to calm herself. She’d thought she’d be fine, visiting old age homes. But she wasn’t. She did not want to leave her house. Her neighborhood. Her marsh. Besides, she was nowhere near that far gone. Or am I? she wondered as she stared down at the backs of her hands, the veins popping beneath skin that was shriveled like loose latex.

“Aunt Mina, you haven’t forgotten I’m out here waiting for you, have you?”

“Not yet.” Mina reached back and flushed the toilet.

“Do you need any help?”

“Don’t be ridiculous.” She stood and checked her face in the mirror, relaxing the frown lines as much as she still could and smoothing her chins. She splashed her face with warm water and dried it.

From the other side of the door, Brian called, his voice sounding more urgent, “I’ll go start the car and meet you—”

She banged out of the bathroom. “Don’t bother. I’ll drive.” She found her purse sitting on the placemat in the kitchen, snagged her cane, and stumped out the door. Immediately she realized it had started to rain again. She should have picked up an umbrella, but she’d be damned if she was going to go back for it now.

She waited until Brian got in the car and had shut the door, too, before releasing the brake and slamming the car into drive. Let him sulk. He’d been doing that since he was three years old, whenever things didn’t go precisely his way. Once on the street she accelerated, holding on to the wheel to pull herself up a little taller to see over the steering wheel. Had she shrunk more? With relief, she noticed a cushion from the seat was on the floor. The girl must have left it there.

When they’d emerged from her little pocket of residential streets, Brian said, “So you know where you’re going?”

She harrumphed. Did he think she could forget how to drive to a place she’d gone every day for two years? When Brian put in an occasional appearance there, he’d acted as if he deserved a medal.

She bypassed the highway on-ramp, and he asked again if she knew how to get there.

“This is the way I go.” She wanted to say, Shall I let you off and you can take the bus? She chuckled to herself, imagining him standing on the street corner and receding in her rearview mirror.

Mina didn’t take highways. Not anymore. Whenever she tried to, it seemed as if they’d repainted the lines to make the lanes even narrower, while those big rigs that rumbled along at top speed and tailgated her had grown longer and wider.

She didn’t drive at night, either. Ever. It wasn’t so much that she couldn’t see, though that was a piece of it. She could swear that some oncoming headlights on new cars were brighter than brights. Apparently those new blue headlights were legal, though she couldn’t imagine why, because they were blinding. Those seconds it took for her eyes to recover from them were terrifying. Plenty of time to run someone over or give herself a heart attack.

No, she’d stick to daytime driving, thank you very much. As Mina drove up the street, the phantom smell of yeast teased her nose. A Wonder Bread factory had once been nearby.

“You’d better lock your door,” she told Brian as they passed a row of derelict houses. Those had been brand-new when she was in elementary school, but now their perimeters were surrounded by battered chain-link fencing. A stout dog, tied to a front porch railing, barked as they drove by.

It was a little farther to Pelham Bay Park, where her mother used to take Mina and Annabelle to play when they were little. There, in the distance, were the Co-op City towers, standing on the banks of the Hutchinson River on land that had been a broad flat expanse her father used to call “the dump.” He’d taken them there to swim back in the day when you still could.

Mina pulled into Pelham Manor’s familiar entryway. Could it be only six months since she was there? Her last visit had been a week after Annabelle died. Mina had gone in to remove what remained of Annabelle’s few possessions. She’d given away most of Annabelle’s clothes. Donated her unused medications. And left with a few forlorn cardboard boxes.