“Mimi?” Darcy dropped to her knees beside the older woman, who lay facedown in the grass, her blue frock twisted all around her body.
Awkwardly, Mimi turned her head. “Oh, Darcy, dear. I’m so glad to see you. I was sitting in the lawn chair, and got too warm, and stood up to go inside, and bam, down I went like a villain on TV.”
“Did you break anything? Do you hurt anywhere?”
“I might have twisted my right ankle. It hurts like the devil when I try to stand. I use a cane because of my wonky left ankle, so I do seem rather…grounded.”
“Where’s Clive?”
“Off buying groceries, doing errands. I promised him I wouldn’t come outside on my own, but a day like this is irresistible….”
“Let’s see if we can turn you over and get you into a sitting position.”
“I’d appreciate that.”
They discussed the logistics of the maneuver—should Darcy push on Mimi’s left side or her right? If Mimi could lift up a bit, Darcy could give her a gentle heave with one hand on her hip and one on her thigh. They counted to three and Darcy pushed. In vain. Mimi weighed a good one hundred eighty pounds, and many of those pounds were good healthy padding, perfect for protecting her when she fell but difficult to shift. Also, Darcy discovered that Mimi’s upper arm strength was more or less nonexistent. All this meant that when Darcy shoved on Mimi’s hip and leg, she managed to rotate the lower half of Mimi’s body backward, but the upper half of her body stayed put and the lower half was finally, inexorably, pulled by gravity back down to the ground.
Mimi was trembling. She muttered something incomprehensible. For a chilling moment Darcy feared the older woman had had a stroke and lost her ability to speak. Darcy knelt close to Mimi’s head and gently touched her neck. She didn’t know what she was doing. All she could think of was what she saw on television cop shows: If someone was incapacitated, moving her head could cause injury to her neck.
“Did I hurt you?” Darcy asked.
Mimi spoke again, more slowly. “I have grass in my nose.” She was laughing. Her whole body shook as she laughed.
Her laughter was contagious. “Shall I move your head sideways? Does your neck feel okay?”
“Please move my head sideways.”
Carefully, unable to stop laughing, Darcy lifted Mimi’s head and turned it sideways. A sprinkling of dirt and a few stray filaments of grass coated the older woman’s nose and cheeks.
“Shall we try again?” Darcy asked.
“Yes. This time pretend I’m a rug, one of those heavy Persian rugs. Just unroll me.”
They had both gotten giddy and breathless, giggling like children. Darcy positioned herself with her knees firmly on the ground, one hand on her shoulder, the other on her hip.
“On the count of three,” Darcy said.
“Mimi!” Clive was suddenly there. “What happened? Are you okay?”
“I fell, darling, that’s all,” Mimi, still planted facedown in the grass, assured him. “Darcy’s been trying to help me roll over, a Sisyphean task, it seems.”
“You shouldn’t be out here. You promised you’d stay in your chair in the living room.”
“Dear boy, don’t lecture me while my face is in the dirt. It’s hard for me to concentrate.”
“Sorry. Okay. Let me get you up.”
“Can I help you?” Darcy asked.
He studied the situation. “No, thanks. I’ve got this.” Straddling his grandmother’s recumbent body, he wrapped his arms around her upper torso and gently lifted her, turned her, and brought her into a sitting position, her back against the lawn chair. Darcy held her breath, watching to see if there was anything she could do to help. And noticing, in spite of herself, Clive’s body. He was of medium height but had large, wide bones; wide shoulders; large, long-fingered hands. He looked sturdy, strong, brawny; and he gently lifted his grandmother up and into her chair as if she weighed little more than a child.
When he got Mimi settled, he wasn’t even winded.
Mimi was. While Mimi caught her breath, Darcy hurried to rearrange the flurried mess of Mimi’s skirt and slip. She wore white sneakers with Peds.
“You have such pretty ankles,” Darcy told her.
“I do, don’t I! How nice of you to notice.”
Clive looked at the two of them as if they were lunatics. “Pretty ankles? Mimi, your pretty ankles won’t support you, and you know it.” He glared at Darcy. “Did you bring her out here? Because obviously, she’s not really ambulatory.”
“Stop it, Clive,” Mimi ordered. “I came out here myself, and I was ambulatory enough to get here. My cane is right there, just out of reach. I sat in the lawn chair in the sun for a while, and it was so pleasant, feeling the sun on my face, hearing the birds sing. Only when I decided to go back inside did my ankles give out on me, and down I went, all nicely cushioned by my blubber. Darcy saw me from her window and rushed over to help me.” She grinned. “We were just getting started when you arrived.”
The tension left Clive’s shoulders. He smiled at Darcy. “Well, then, Darcy, thank you for helping her. I’m sorry if I was abrupt. She is such a bad patient, always getting into trouble when she should stay quiet—as her doctor has told her many times.”
Before Darcy could respond, Mimi chirped, “We’re all here now and no harm done. Why don’t you fix a nice cold pitcher of margaritas and the three of us can enjoy the evening?”
“Another time, Mimi,” Clive said. “You’ve had a fall and you know you should rest. And I need to put away the groceries.”
Darcy could see a small lump beginning to grow right where Mimi’s cheek had hit the ground. She knew some things about the elderly, because of her own grandmother, and one of them was that their bodies were more fragile than younger bodies. Mimi was probably bruised elsewhere from her fall. She did need to rest.
“Thanks for the offer, Mimi,” Darcy said. “I’d better get home.”
“Thank you for helping me, dear. We must do it again sometime.”
Darcy grinned. “We’ll get you over to my garden some afternoon. I’ll serve margaritas.”
Darcy rose, made a humorous salute, said goodbye, and walked out of their yard. Mimi, she thought, was just plain adorable. Clive was gorgeous, but kind of severe. Still, she didn’t know all that he knew about Mimi’s condition.
Besides, Darcy thought as she stepped into her own house, it never had been her habit to get involved with her summer neighbors. This neighborhood was not like those on the mainland where neighbors called to each other from yard to yard and became familiar, family with family. Many of the people who had rented houses around Darcy were astoundingly rich. They sent their kids here with nannies and a housekeeper and arrived on island themselves only to throw fabulous parties before taking their private jets back to New York.