The only one left, p.7
The Only One Left, page 7
My mother assured me not to worry. That by reading, whole worlds could be explored without ever leaving home. My father, on the other hand, warned me to get used to it.
“It’s our lot in life, Kit-Kat,” he told me. “People like us toil. The rich bastards running everything make sure of that.”
I believed him. I think that’s partly how I ended up a caregiver, so willing to put others’ needs before mine, not even daydreaming about a bigger life.
“I don’t get out much, either,” I tell Lenora. “I’ve basically been stuck inside for the past twelve years.”
Phrasing it that way startles me. Twelve long years. Not as long as Lenora, but stuck all the same. Only the rooms and patients have changed. I try to remember them all and am surprised when I can’t. How strange it is to have spent so much time in a single place with someone and forget everything about it. About them. I chalk that up to monotony. The people and places were different, but the job was the same. Day after week after year until it all became a blur. It dawns on me that, probably like Lenora, I completely missed the seventies. All those touchstones everyone else got to experience passed me by like a speeding car. I never went to a disco. I didn’t see Jaws until it was shown on TV. I breezed through both gas crises without ever waiting in line to fill my tank. Watergate and all the political upheaval that came afterward was mere background noise as I spoon-fed patients and gave them their pills and sponged their withered bodies.
A brief pain pierces my side. Like a knife poking into my ribs. Longing, I realize. For a life I’ve never had—and likely never will.
“You ever feel that way, Lenora?” I say. “That there’s a whole life out there you could have lived but didn’t?”
Lenora taps twice against the mattress.
“I thought so.”
Soon we’re done with the exercises and on to the next task—bath time. In the bathroom, I start filling the tub before wheeling Lenora in next to it. When it’s full, I reach for Lenora’s left hand but can’t bring myself to grasp it. Just like that, I’m back to being nervous touching her.
Mentally cursing Mr. Gurlain, I force my hand around Lenora’s and dip it into the water. “Too hot?”
Lenora raps once against the tub. No.
“Are you sure?” I say, stalling, not wanting to face what’s next—slipping Lenora out of her clothes.
After two taps signaling the affirmative, there’s no more avoiding it. Lenora Hope and I are about to get intimately acquainted.
At the start of my career, I used to avert my eyes when undressing a patient. Out of respect for them, yes, but also because I didn’t want to see what the future had in store for me. All those wrinkles and blotches and saggy breasts. Now I’ve come to terms with it. This is what I’ll eventually look like. What everyone will look like. If they’re lucky, that is. Or maybe if they’re unlucky. I’m still on the fence about that.
Seeing a patient naked is simply part of the job. It’s the same with bodily fluids. In the past twelve years, I’ve encountered most of them. Blood and urine. Puke and snot. And shit. Way too much of that.
I use the Hoyer lift to get Lenora into the tub. A task made more difficult by the cramped bathroom, my ill-fitting uniform, and that lingering urge to have as little physical contact between us as possible. It all leaves me awkward and fumbling, to the point where I accidentally knock Lenora’s elbow against the tub’s edge. She flashes a narrow-eyed look of annoyance.
“Sorry,” I say.
Lenora sighs, and for the first time I sense frustration that she’s not able to speak. The feeling is mutual. There’s so much I want to ask her. So much I need to know. Because I don’t think I can continue like this. Nervous in her presence. Afraid to even touch her, which is pretty much the reason I’m here—to do all the things Lenora’s right arm and legs can’t.
“We need to talk,” I say. “I mean, I need to talk.”
I pause, as if Lenora can respond. Instead, her silence fills the bathroom like steam, making it feel small, almost oppressive.
“You’re right. I’m scared. I’ll try not to be. But it’s hard. Maybe it would be easier if I knew why—”
I catch myself before I can finish the sentence. Why you killed the rest of your family. Lenora knows what I mean anyway. I can sense it as I squeeze shampoo into my hands and start to lather her hair.
“Because I might understand.”
I cup water into my hands and pour it over Lenora’s head, taking care to keep soapy water from getting into her eyes. My mother did the same thing when I was young. I returned the favor when, years later, I had to bathe her. The act has always struck me as something sacred. Like a baptism. Doing it now, in this stuffy, silent bathroom, puts me in a confessional mood.
That’s something my father suggested, right before he all but stopped talking to me. Go to the priest. Confess my sins.
I didn’t then. But I attempt it now.
“It turns out, we’re a lot alike, Lenora.” I cup more water, splash it onto her head, let it trickle down her hair as if the act will absolve us both. “We both like books. We haven’t been anywhere for years and years. And I know what you’re going through.”
I pause, unsure if I should continue. Or if I even want to. But then Lenora gives me a sidelong glance, looking as curious about me as I am about her.
“That’s the biggest thing we have in common,” I finally say. “That everyone thinks I also killed my mother.”
EIGHT
Even though I would have cared for my mother for free, my parents insisted on hiring me through Gurlain Home Health Aides. My mother’s idea. Such a proud woman. There was no way Kathleen McDeere would accept charity. Even though stomach cancer was eating away at her—and even though everyone knew it was far too late to do anything about it—she insisted on paying.
So I left the patient I had been caring for, a rather boring octogenarian with chronic arthritis, and moved back into my childhood bedroom. At first, it was weird treating my own mother like one of my patients. They all seemed so old. She didn’t.
Not that she was young. My mother was thirty-four when she had me and my father thirty-nine. I always assumed that one day I’d be expected to care for them. I just didn’t think it would be this soon.
Or this brutal.
That was something I wasn’t prepared for, no matter how many other patients I’d cared for. It’s different when it’s your own mother. It matters more. It hurts more, too. But none of the hurt I felt could compare to what my mother was going through. She spent the first few weeks of her illness in a daze, gobsmacked by all the ways in which her body had betrayed her. Then came the pain, so sharp it sometimes left her doubled over and weeping. I urged her doctor to prescribe fentanyl, even though he wanted to wait.
“Just a few more weeks,” he said.
“But she’s in agony now,” I said.
He wrote out the prescription.
Two weeks later my mother was dead of a fentanyl overdose.
To an untrained eye, it might have looked like a tragic accident. A sick woman rendered mad by pain taking more pills than she should have. To a trained eye, however, it was worse than that. Because of her condition, it could be argued that my mother was not in a sound state of mind. Which meant that I, as her caregiver, was responsible for making decisions on her behalf and in her best interests. Since I’d left a drug known for its overdose potential within her reach, one could also argue that I was negligent in her care and therefore responsible for her death.
That’s what Mr. Gurlain thought, once I admitted I forgot to put the pill bottle in the lockbox under my bed. He didn’t tell me this, of course. He simply contacted the state’s Department of Health and Human Services, who then contacted the local police.
A day after my mother’s funeral, a detective came to the house. Richard Vick. Because he and my father had been friends back in the day, I knew him slightly. He had the look of a sitcom grandfather. Full head of white hair. Friendly smile. Kind eyes.
“Hello there, Kit,” he said. “My deepest condolences on your recent loss.”
I looked at him with confusion, even though by then I should have known why he was there. “Can I help you with something, Mr. Vick?”
“Detective Vick, if you don’t mind.” He gave a half smile, as if apologizing for the formality. “Is your dad around?”
He wasn’t. My father, stoic in his grief, went to work as usual that day, off to fix the clanging pipes in old Mrs. Mayweather’s house. I told this to Detective Vick, adding a polite “I’ll tell him you stopped by.”
“I’m actually here to see you.”
“Oh.” I opened the door wider and told him to come in.
Detective Vick straightened his tie, cleared his throat, and said, “It might be better if we did this down at the station.”
“Do I need a lawyer?”
I was told no, of course not, it was just an informal chat about what happened. I wasn’t a suspect because there was nothing to suspect. All lies, as I learned when I followed Detective Vick to the station and was escorted into an interrogation room with a tape recorder he turned on the moment we sat down.
“Please state your name,” he said.
“You know my name.”
“It’s for the record.”
I stared at the tape recorder, watching the reels turn and turn. That was when I knew I was in trouble.
“Kit McDeere.”
“And what is it you do, Kit?”
“I’m an in-home caregiver with Gurlain Home Health Aides.”
“How long have you been doing this?”
“Twelve years.”
“That’s a long time,” Detective Vick said. “I assume you’re probably an expert at it by now.”
I shrugged. “I guess.”
Detective Vick opened a folder in front of him, inside of which was the coroner’s report on my mother’s death. “It says here your mother died of an overdose of prescription painkillers and that you, acting as her caregiver, had been the one to find her body.”
“That’s correct.”
“How did you feel when you realized your mother was dead?”
I thought back to that morning. How I woke early, took one look at the gray-streaked sky, and just knew my mother was gone. Before crossing the hall to her room, I could have woken my father, who had taken to sleeping on the couch to give my mother more space in bed. We could have checked on her together, sparing me the burden of being the one to find her dead. Instead, I peeked into her bedroom and found my mother with her head on her pillow, her eyes closed, her hands folded over her chest. Finally, she was at peace.
“Sad,” I said. “And relieved.”
Detective Vick arched a brow. His eyes were no longer kind. Instead, they radiated suspicion. “Relieved?”
“That she was no longer suffering.”
“I suppose it’s natural to think that.”
“It is,” I replied, with more bite than was appropriate under the circumstances. I couldn’t help it.
“Your employer, Mr. Gurlain, told me it was standard procedure to lock away all pills while you’re asleep to prevent patients from having access to them. Is that true?”
I nodded.
“I’ll need you to answer that, Kit,” Detective Vick said with a nod toward the tape recorder.
“Yes,” I said.
“But Mr. Gurlain also told me you confessed to not doing that with the pills your mother overdosed on.”
“I didn’t confess,” I said, thrown off by the word.
“So you did put the pills away?”
“No,” I said. “I left them out. But I didn’t confess. That makes me sound guilty of something. I simply told Mr. Gurlain I left them out.”
“Have you ever left medication out like that before?”
“No.”
“Never?”
“Ever.”
“So this was the first time you forgot to lock away the pills like you’re supposed to?”
“Yes,” I said, sighing the word as my frustration increased. I looked again to the tape recorder and wondered how the sigh would sound when played back. Impatient? Guilty?
“Did you intentionally leave them out?” Detective Vick asked.
“No. It was an accident.”
“I find that hard to believe, Kit.”
“That doesn’t mean it’s not true.”
“For the twelve years you’ve been a caregiver, you’ve never once left medication within a patient’s reach. The one time you do, the patient just happens to overdose. But not just any patient. Your very own mother, who was in so much pain that you begged her doctor to prescribe the very drugs that killed her. And when she died, you admit to feeling relieved. That doesn’t sound like an accident to me, Kit.”
I continued to eye the tape recorder, the reels turning and turning and turning.
“I’d like a lawyer,” I said.
After that, everything fell like dominoes. A formal police investigation began, Mr. Gurlain suspended me, and I was assigned a public defender who told me I’d likely be charged with involuntary manslaughter at best and homicide at worst if the police thought I forced those pills on my mother. He recommended I take whatever plea deal they offered. The last domino—the final straw for my father—was when the investigation made the front page of the local newspaper.
Police Suspect Daughter Caused Mother’s Fatal Overdose
In the end, though, there was no way to prove I left those pills out on purpose or that I made my mother take them. I have no doubt that lack of proof is the sole reason I’m walking free today. I know Detective Vick thinks I’m responsible. Everyone does.
“Including my father,” I tell Lenora after giving her my sad story as I lifted her from the tub, toweled her off, put her in a clean nightgown and fresh adult diaper, and tucked her into bed. “He might never speak to me again. That’s why I’m here instead of there.”
I collect her medication from the nightstand and drop the bottles into the lockbox, which then goes back under my bed. Even though there’s no way Lenora could reach them on the nightstand, I can’t be too cautious. Not after what happened with my mother.
Back in Lenora’s room, I place the red call button next to her left hand so she can easily use it.
“I’ll be right next door if you need me,” I say, which is what I also told my mother every night I was caring for her.
Lenora looks up at me, apprehension dulling her green eyes. My stomach clenches as I realize what it means.
Even she thinks I’m guilty.
I guess that makes us even.
My birthday dinner was unbearable. Such an unhappy affair, despite all the effort put into it. There was spring lamb, leek soup, and potatoes roasted in rosemary.
The dinner was attended by only me, Miss Baker, my father, my sister, and a special guest at her request--Peter. Although there was a place setting for my mother, she sent her maid to inform us that she felt too weak to come down to dinner.
For dessert, the kitchen staff wheeled in a massive three-tiered cake with pink frosting and birthday candles ablaze. I tried to appear enthusiastic as I blew them out. I truly did. But since everything felt so awful, I couldn’t quite manage it.
Not that anyone noticed. My sister was preoccupied by flirting with Peter and my father was too busy ogling the newest maid, Sally. I could have grabbed a handful of cake and shoved it into my mouth and only stern Miss Baker would have batted an eye.
After dinner, I went upstairs to see my mother. She was in bed, of course, the duvet pulled to her chest. She looked so small and pitiful that it was hard to believe she had once been a great beauty.
“The most beautiful girl in Boston,” my father liked to boast back when my sister and I were younger and my parents had at least pretended to love each other.
I know he was telling the truth. In her youth, my mother had been astoundingly beautiful. It didn’t hurt that she also hailed from one of the wealthiest families in New England. That fact, combined with her good looks, made her irresistible to my father, who was New Money through and through. A striver of unchecked ambition, he set his sights on Evangeline Staunton.
It didn’t matter that all of Boston whispered about how she had taken up with one of the servants, scandalizing her family and edging herself to the brink of being disowned. My father still pursued her with vigor.
My mother, of course, enjoyed the attention. More than once, I’d heard her described as a rose blossoming in sunlight. My father’s sun must have shone bright, because in a matter of weeks they wed. My mother got pregnant immediately after and my father built Hope’s End.
Years later, when his attention began to wane, my mother--like any flower removed from the light--withered. There was nothing roselike about her the night of my birthday. Pale, shriveled, and thin to the point of gauntness, she was all thorns.
“Hello, my darling,” she said, using the term of endearment meant only for me. My sister and I each had one, chosen by our parents the day we were born. My sister was dear. I was darling.
Although that night, my mother murmured it in a way that made me unsure if she was addressing me or the brown bottle of liquid resting on the pillow next to her.
Laudanum.
Her cure-all, although as far as I could tell, it cured nothing.
