“Eleanor,” she says now, her voice quivering. “Is that you?”
“It’s me, Granny.”
“I’m frightened.” She is crying. I have never heard her cry before.
“Granny, what is it? What’s happened?”
“I don’t know where I am.” She starts to sob.
“Don’t cry, Granny, please don’t cry.”
“They’ve put me in this place. It’s cold here. I can’t find my reading light. Where is everyone? I’m scared, Elle. Please come get me.”
A rage rushes through me, crimson-red fury. “Wait. Where are you, Granny? Who moved you?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know. They came and brought me here.” Her voice is frail, childlike.
“Who came?”
“Mary and her friend. She said my blood pressure had spiked. She said I had a doctor’s appointment at the hospital. I called Henry. He told me to go with her. I don’t know what to do. Where are my blankets?”
“Granny, I need to call Dad. I’ll sort this out. You’ll be out of there by tonight. Don’t worry.”
“It’s dark here. There’s no window. I can’t breathe. You must come now!” She sounds confused, panicked, like a tethered horse in a burning barn.
All I want to do is hug her frail, bony Granny self. “I’m going to fix this. I’m coming to get you.”
“Who’s there?” she says.
“I’ll be there in a few hours. Just try to stay calm.”
“I don’t know you,” she says.
“It’s me. It’s Eleanor. I’m calling the nurses’ station right now. I’ll make sure they move you to a room with a window.”
“I don’t know you,” she says again.
Now I hear a man’s voice in the background, telling her to stay still. The phone drops, but I can hear her thrashing in her bed. “Get away from me,” she screams. Whoever it is hangs up the phone.
When I get to Avis, there’s a line. The woman behind the counter seems to think she works at the post office. A manager wanders in from a back office and we all breathe a collective sigh of relief. But instead of opening up a second line, he taps some override code into her computer, says something that makes her give a nice, round fake laugh, and then disappears into the back.
“Excuse me?” I call out. “Can you get someone else to help?”
“Ma’am, I’m working as fast as I can.” As if to underline this point, she gets off her stool and, slow as mud, walks over to the printer. Waits for a contract to spool out.
“Sorry,” I say, hoping to get back on her good side. “I need to get to my grandmother in the hospital. I don’t mean to make a fuss.”
“We all have places we need to be.” She turns to the man in front of her and gives him a long-suffering smile, rolls her eyes. She’s on his side, she wants him to know, just not on mine.
* * *
—
I arrive at the nursing home with fifteen minutes to spare, grab my purse, and run. I’m breathless when I get to reception.
“I’m here to see my grandmother.”
The woman behind the counter stares at me blankly, as if she has never seen a visitor before. She looks at her watch. “Visiting hours are over.”
“No. I still have fifteen minutes. Myrtle Bishop?”
She sighs. They don’t pay her enough to deal with this crap. “Sorry,” she says. “You’re too late.”
I practically stamp my foot. “I just drove up from New York. It was bumper-to-bumper traffic. She’s old and frail, and she’s waiting for me. Can you just be nice?”
“Ma’am,” she says, “Mrs. Bishop passed away an hour ago.”
* * *
—
Granny is buried next to my grandfather in the old cemetery across the road. It occurs to me that she spent most of her life looking out at the place where her body will rot. We stand under a threatening sky next to a raw hole in the ground. The graveyard has expanded up the hill. The old suicide grave where Anna and I used to play is now surrounded by the tombstones of nice, normal people. Anna stands beside me, looking elegant and thin in a black wool dress. Granny would approve. She squeezes my hand tight as the first shovel of dirt thuds heavily on ebonized wood. Rain begins to fall, tat-tatting the coffin like an accompaniment. My father stands across the grave from me, shoulders heaving with tears. His umbrella lists away from him. Raindrops land on his black felt hat. I have been sick at heart since Granny died, my mind stuck in a loop of regret and self-recrimination. Why didn’t I act sooner, rush to protect her the minute my father and Mary threatened to move her? She was the one person in my life who made me feel safe when I was a child, who protected me from ghosts, read me to sleep, fed me protein and a vegetable, whose love never wavered. And I failed her. She was, literally, scared to death.