“Hurt how? Their feelings?”
“Well, yes. That too, I guess.”
“She’s not what I’d call a people person. She has her moments.” Her voice didn’t lower its volume when she said, “She likes to win. Take it from me. And if it means cheating . . .” She added a sage nod.
“Jacqui at the desk said Mrs. Lavoie was having her hair done.”
“She does that every week. I’m only here till my foot heals. The turkey broke some bones. It was only a breast, but it was frozen.”
“Do you know if Mrs. Lavoie is more or less here for the duration?”
“She’s not going anywhere! She tells me she’s eighty-five, but she’s more like ninety.”
I said, “No harm in a little white lie like that, I suppose.”
It was then that a tall, smiling, tattooed man with a shaved head wheeled the ancient, unsmiling, perfectly coiffed Mrs. Anna Lavoie into room 111. If I had any question about her wits, it was answered by her sharp “Who’s this?”
The man said, “We heard you had a guest. Isn’t that nice?”
Mrs. Lavoie was dressed in the manner of a head librarian, in skirt, blouse, and jacket. There was a triple strand of pearly beads around her neck, and a rhinestone Scottie on her lapel.
“What’s she gaping at?” Mrs. Lavoie snarled.
I said, “You’re . . . you’re . . . dressed so elegantly.”
The helper explained, “We like our residents to dress, not to stay in their pj’s and robes. Right, ladies?”
“Not me,” said Ruthie. “I’m one of the invalids.”
“Only temporary!” he said. “Anna? Where you wanna be now?”
“There.” She pointed to the sole chair on her side of the room.
He said, “How about if you stay in this chair for now, and your guest sits in the visitor’s chair? You call me when you need a lift.”
“Do I know you?” Mrs. Lavoie asked me.
I didn’t answer until she’d been wheeled in place, the brake hit, and the helper had drawn the curtain that divided the room.
I said, “I live in 10 Turpentine Lane. I bought the house from your daughter, Theresa.”
“You bought it from me,” she snapped.
“My understanding was . . .” I refrained from saying that you were dead, so I finished with “that you were possibly comatose.”
“Who told you that?”
Who had told me that? Tammy the real estate agent? Mrs. Strenger next door? Theresa herself? I said, “It was my mistake. I misunderstood whatever they told me about your . . . reason for selling.”
“Did they tell you not to buy it? That it’s a deathtrap?”
“Not before the closing . . .”
“I lost three husbands there. One from pneumonia. And the other two . . . they had accidents.”
I expressed my insincere condolences then asked the nature of the accidents.
“They fell.”
“By any chance, down the cellar stairs?”
“I didn’t push them,” she announced. “But God works in mysterious ways.”
“How so?”
“I didn’t believe in divorce. Then they died. Things happen. I couldn’t stand it anymore.”
“Do you mean that you did take matters into your own hands?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. Raymond had pneumonia. He was my daughter’s father. He died in that house.” She looked down to the wheelchair’s footrest. “They make us wear sneakers,” she said. “They think we won’t slip and break a hip.”
“Then you remarried, I understand.”
“I suppose so.”
“Then you were widowed two more times. You told me that yourself just now.”
“Mistakes, both of them.”
“The accidents, you mean?”
“No. Getting married to people I didn’t know very long.”
“And when you got to know them, you weren’t happy?”
“They wanted to go to bed with me,” she said.
I heard a snicker from Ruthie’s side of the room. I said, “But isn’t that what all husbands want?”
“I told them when we married there would be none of that.”
Oh, dear. What now? “Did they both die falling down the stairs?” I asked.
“Sure. They were very steep. The second one went to the hospital.”
“And died there?”
Her expression did not convey Tragically, yes, but quite clearly Took him long enough.
Keep in mind I am hearing this from a ninety-plus-year-old woman wearing a tweed suit and crepe de chine blouse. I had not come to play detective about the conjugal, marital aspect of her criminal past. I’d brought with me both photographs of her possible twin baby daughters. Having hit her in a confessional mode, I took the Polaroids from my pocketbook. “Who are these babies?” I asked.
She reached for the photos, but I held on to them. “No, just look,” I said.
After hardly a glance, she said, “I don’t know.”
“Is it possible these are your babies? Did you give birth to twins in December of 1956?”
“I don’t know. Did I?”
“I think you did. And I think their father might have been . . . well, now we say person of color, but back then, maybe you’d have referred to him as colored.”
“Oh,” she said. And stopped there. She turned her face rather resolutely toward the window.
“I didn’t mean there was anything wrong with that . . .”
The overhead TV went silent. I said, “These pictures were taken in your kitchen. I recognize the counter. Possibly you had these twins, and for some good reason, maybe you were under pressure, social pressure, and possibly between husbands at the time, you gave them up for adoption.”
“No, I didn’t,” she said. “I wouldn’t give my own flesh and blood away.”
Ruthie called over. “She visits.”
I stood and stuck my head through an opening in the dividing curtain. “Who visits her?”
“The colored girl.”
I returned to my chair, and asked, “Did you hear what Ruthie said? Colored girl? Who is she?”
“My friend.”
“Really? What’s her name?”
“How do I know?”
“You said she was your friend.”
Ruthie called over. “Jeannette.”
“Jeannette?” I asked Mrs. Lavoie.
“If she says so.”
“Does the other one have a name?”
“There’s only one.”
I asked Mrs. Lavoie again, “Did you have twins you gave up for adoption?”
“What’s it to you?”