Flights of Angels Page 10

  “Tea’s in the canister on the counter. Tray’s in the cabinet beneath. Tea set in the glass highboy in the dining room. Who needs tea? Who’s here now?”

  “Mrs. Weiss and her cousin Robin Martin and myself,” I said. It was like having a séance or a palm reading. I was going to keep on being polite. That was all I knew for sure.

  “Help me up,” she said. “It’s too late now. They’ve woken me from my sleep. I know better than to try to sleep where they can find me. Phelan’s turned this place upside down. So much noise all the time. He’s the noisiest boy who ever lived. Always was noisy. I used to hear him three blocks away when he’d come and stay in the summers.”

  “What’s he doing here?” I asked. I am always gathering information. I think it’s because I never had any children of my own and have to fill in the blank spaces but Andria says it’s just in our bones, which is why she is a journalist.

  “He is here to keep her from dying.” Anabelle pushed down the footrest and let the Stratolounger bring her to a sitting position. She opened her eyes and looked at me. “He doesn’t want her to die so he has come to stop it.”

  “We thought he was after her money.” I took a chance on saying that.

  “No. He has come to keep her here. I knew it when I saw him at the door. We had all decided it was time. She thought it was time. Then Robin Martin called him. He was off in Africa somewhere. Came home with some terrible itch he’d picked up on a boat and had to be treated every day for a week after he got here. He came right here and then they started the card games. Now it’s that other thing. With the wooden dolls. It looks like voodoo to me and I told him so. Imagine having that in the living room of a proper house.” She was upright now, getting on her feet. She towered over me. She was one of the tallest women I have ever seen of her age. She moved to the cabinets and got a copper pot and filled it with water and put it on the stove to heat. Then she continued.

  “Don’t mess with Miss Louise and Phelan. She wants him here. She doesn’t like Crystal. We never did like Crystal, even when she was a little girl. Selfish little girl. Threw her clothes down on the floor. She’d wear three ironed dresses in an afternoon and throw them on the floor.”

  I moved back to the doorway. I was just watching all of this. I was not going to get in too deep and take a chance on drowning in this sea. This immense, old, sand-colored woman moved around her kitchen and I had time to examine how she dressed. She had on a uniform made of pale gray cotton but not like any uniform I had ever seen on a maid or nurse in New Orleans. It was hand made of some very fine cotton material and with it she was wearing long gray stockings and some soft flat leather shoes. She had ruby studs in her ears and on her hands were several rings with large yellow diamonds. She wore a man’s watch with a leather watchband.

  When the tea was ready she put it on a tray with three cups and saucers and linen napkins and silver spoons and a plate of English shortbread cookies she took out of a tin. She handed me the tray. Then she got back into the Stratolounger and pulled the lever and let the back down and the footrest up.

  “You tell her I’m leaving at six,” she said. “I am hired to come from eight to four in the afternoon but I am staying until six today if she wants supper started. I will have to know soon or I’m going back to sleep.” She closed her eyes. “Go on, before that tea gets cold.”

  I went back to the dining room processing all this knowledge. Perhaps he was here to keep Miss Louise alive. It made sense. She was something Phelan could not afford to lose, a woman who loved him no matter what he did. A woman who only asked that he love her in return, who did not question his passage through his life.

  “She sent him to college,” Crystal told me later. “She gave him a car and when he wrecked it she gave him another one. She has always liked him best. She never even pretended to like the rest of us as much, if at all. She liked Phelan from the start and she still likes him and I think I’ll just get on back to New Orleans and forget about North Carolina.”

  “That couldn’t be,” I answered. “No one could play favorites like that. No one would be that mean.”

  “She’s mean and he’s mean, that’s why they like each other.”

  Crystal and Phelan came back carrying the boxes with the pieces of the new equipment. Phelan and Robin Martin put it all together in the space in front of the old equipment and within an hour we were listening to Beethoven’s Violin Concerto.

  Robin Martin suggested drinks and got out a martini shaker. Crystal and I neither one drink alcohol but we got glasses of ice water and as soon as they started drinking they forgot we were sober.

  “So how are Grandmother’s finances?” Crystal asked, when Miss Louise had gone up to her room to rest. “Tell me what’s going on, Phelan. What is left to support her?”

  “We’ve got Medicare paying for nurses and for Anabelle,” he answered. “And she’s got Granddaddy’s Social Security check. There’s a rent check from the place on the coast and I’m going to sell some lots she has downtown before I leave. Don’t worry about it, Sister. I’m taking care of her.”

  “How is Medicare paying Anabelle?” She had sat up on the edge of the chair at that.

  “I got it done. I got Home Health Services to hire Anabelle. Then they send her back to us and Medicare pays for it.”

  “Where are the nurses then?”

  “Oh.” Phelan laughed and looked at Robin Martin and they laughed together. “Don’t worry about it, Sister. It’s details. Were taking care of her. You just live your life.”

  At six o’clock we all pitched in and got dinner on the table in the dining room. Phelan went to Miss Louise’s bedroom and got her up and wheeled her in to be at the head of the table. There was bread and lettuce and tomatoes and pickles and cold fried chicken and a plate of corn on the cob dripping with butter. Miss Louise drank a glass of vanilla Ensure and ate a little bread and a sliced peach. Phelan put a glass of wine before her and she winked at him and picked it up and drank it.

  The phone started to ring. It was several of Miss Louise’s grandchildren calling in from all around the globe. A grandson in Germany for the summer. A granddaughter in New York studying photography. I couldn’t help but think what a rich country we have that can take a family in North Carolina and spread them out all over the world having adventures and learning things.

  “I always hear from the grandchildren when I am eating,” Miss Louise complained. “I never get to finish a meal.”

  “I wouldn’t complain about that if I was you,” I answered. “There are a lot of people your age who don’t have so many people calling in to know how you are.”

  “My children don’t call,” she said. “Only my grandchildren. You’d think I was already dead for all my children care about me.”

  “That’s not so, Grandmother,” Crystal said. “Mother and Daddy came up here last spring.”

  “They came for one day and stayed at the hotel. They weren’t any help to me.” She turned and beamed at Phelan. As if to say, See who knows what to do. See who came to stay with me to ease my way into the afterlife. “Phelan is the one who got the money coming in from Medicare.”

  Crystal gives me a look and Phelan is on his feet to fill his grandmother’s wineglass and change the subject.

  After supper we all go in the living room to look at the new 35-inch Sony television set Phelan has had installed in front of the twin sofas that are exact replicas of ones at Monticello. He has bought a video of a film about the Muhammad Ali versus George Foreman fight which took place in Zaire where he has been many times and he is determined to make us all watch it. “I may take Grandmother to Africa,” he declares. “Last week I almost had her talked into it. She’s weakening. We’ll go to London on the Concorde and rest up for a week, then go to Johannesburg.”

  “Don’t be foolish, Phelan,” she says flirtatiously. “I’m not going anyplace but to the grave.” She was falling asleep and as soon as she was sleeping well we took her to her room and Phelan la
id her down on her bed and Robin Martin took Crystal and me home.

  “What is this about Medicare money?” Crystal asked, as soon as we got in the car. “He isn’t scamming the Medicare system, is he? I still don’t see how he got them to pay Anabelle. That sounds very fishy to me.”

  “How could he scam Medicare?” Robin Martin said. “He’s only been here six weeks. He’s just gotten them to hire the help she already had. It’s helping them. He’s done everyone a good deed.”

  Scamming them was really very simple. He got some women who needed some excitement to think it was all right to steal from the government since the government steals from us every time they make a new tax. Then he got everyone in so much trouble they couldn’t tell. Then he gave them all part of the money and kept the rest.

  “He is the light of my life.” Miss Louise was speaking. She and Crystal and myself were seated in her solarium having coffee from little blue-and-white china cups that were as fragile as the sunlight coming in the dust-covered windows onto the dust-covered plants. “I don’t know what I would do without him. He came in the nick of time. I had given up completely.”

  “I would love to take an hour and clean these plants for you,” I found myself saying. “I’m a green thumb if there ever was one. Crystal and I have a house full of plants I have nurtured. I clean them with a mixture of water and milk, using a very soft cloth. I think you would be happy with it.” I smiled up into her soft old brown eyes. The same eyes Crystal has, also Phelan and every member of that family I have ever met, including Crystal Anne.

  “Well, you are our guest. I couldn’t let you clean the plants.”

  “We want to,” Crystal said. “I’ll help her. It won’t take long. Let us do that for you, Grandmother. This is such a lovely room. It’s a shame. Let us spruce it up for you when you take your nap this morning.”

  “I don’t know,” she said but she was weakening and an hour later Crystal and I had been to the store and were in there with Windex and bleach for the marble tiles and new rubber gloves and a bucket and mop and Hyponex and outside in the driveway were some healthy ferns in pots to add to the dying ones inside.

  “It would be best if we could get someone to paint the wicker while were at it,” Crystal said. “But I’ll be content to get these rotting cushions out of here and replace them with the ones in the trunk of that car Robin Martin lent us.” He had given us the good car, a blue Oldsmobile, and driven himself to work in his old Camaro. He is a stock and bond salesman and should drive a better car than these but he has a weakness for gambling and that’s where his money goes, not to mention both his marriages.

  Crystal and I cheered up while we cleaned the solarium. Anabelle appeared in the doorway several times to sniff around but she didn’t say much except that if we killed the ferns there would be hell to pay.

  When we had done everything we could do (we didn’t go outside and clean the outside of the windows because we didn’t want to), we sat back to survey our work. I went in the kitchen and made us another pot of coffee without asking anyone’s permission and then we just sat in the clean room and marveled at it. So that is why we were there when the nurse from Home Health Services came to the door and began to talk to Anabelle. She was about thirty-five years old and heavyset. She was wearing a pair of long white cotton pants and a red smock and as soon as we were introduced I noticed the big yellow diamond ring on her hand. It had Phelan’s name all over it. Only Phelan Manning can find diamonds that big and that yellow and get women to wear them.

  The nurse’s name was Phoebe and she talked to Anabelle for five or ten minutes before she asked for Phelan. “He’s still asleep,” Anabelle said, although we had heard him getting up an hour before and then heard him go back upstairs. “He said to tell you he’d call this afternoon and let you know what was going on.”

  “Well, I guess I’ll talk to him then.” Phoebe smiled at Crystal and at me and left down the front steps and got into her car. As soon as she was gone Phelan came downstairs and admired our work in the solarium and asked if anyone wanted a glass of sherry.

  “Be careful giving that stuff to Grandmother,” Crystal began, but then she stopped herself. I could see her years of psychotherapy kicking in as she stood back and to the side of the situation and got a proper space. “We are leaving late this afternoon,” she added. “I’m glad you’re taking care of her, Phelan. Glad you’re here when she needs you.”

  “I need her,” Phelan said. “She’s my grandmother. I want to be here with her. It’s my pleasure.” Anabelle was standing off to the side holding a set of papers Phoebe had left for him and he took them and went back upstairs.

  “What are they doing?” Crystal asked, but she didn’t need me to tell her. Phelan had been cheating different parts of the government since he was twenty years old and Crystal’s father brought him into the family business to take over the income tax calculations. He had moved on from that to the stock market and international currencies. He had made fortunes several times and lost them. He had met the Mafia in Las Vegas and gone to their weddings. He had owned a gun factory in Texas and flown back and forth to Switzerland so many times that his seven children couldn’t use up all the frequent flyer miles.

  Running a little household Medicare scam and making his grandmother a hundred thousand dollars in nurses’ fees was chicken feed for his criminal mind. He was doing it. Miss Louise knew about it and Anabelle was getting five percent.

  Well of course we couldn’t prove any of that and we were in danger of being accessories after the fact so Crystal and I got on a jet and came on home that evening. We arrived at the New Orleans airport at half past eleven and Mr. Manny was there to meet us. Crystal Anne was coming home from sailing camp the next day so we all drove home in silence and went to bed to get some sleep. I don’t know what Crystal told him but I bet it wasn’t half of what we knew. Mr. Manny is a lawyer. She didn’t want him to be involved even by knowing what we knew.

  In the fall Miss Louise died. She was walking across her bedroom with a cane. They had just had dinner. She had eaten a tuna fish sandwich and had a glass of wine. They had been watching Broadway musicals on the video player. They had watched Camelot and My Fair Lady. Then they had dinner and Anabelle had a short fight with her about where they had put the old Strasbourg tea service. Miss Louise wanted to give it to LeLe Arnold for a wedding present for her marriage to the rugby player she’s been living with for five years. She thought Anabelle had hidden it so she wouldn’t have to polish it, but then Phelan found it in the linen closet and all was well. They parted friends.

  Phelan rolled her to her room and got her into her bed and kissed her. Sometime about an hour later she stood up in her nightgown and started across the room toward the window that faces the backyard. Then she died. Either she died and fell or she fell and died. It couldn’t have taken a minute, the doctor said. A massive stroke and hemorrhage, a swift and blessed end.

  “Where did she think she was going?” everyone asked at the funeral. “She was moving away from the door.”

  “She was going to the window,” Phelan said. “The same thing she did first thing every morning. She was an eternally curious person. She wanted to look out and see how the sun was doing. She told me she never took it for granted that it would return each morning.” Then he started weeping. You have never seen a grown man take on like that over the death of a ninety-four-year-old woman.

  He was in Europe by the time the agents started calling everyone and looking for the records of the round-the-clock nurses they thought they were sending to the house. They didn’t get anything out of Anabelle, who wouldn’t even answer their questions. Phoebe also clammed up. Crystal said she had no idea of any of it and finally they gave up and stopped calling us and asking her questions. “I have finally been drawn into a criminal conspiracy,” she told me right before Christmas. “At last Phelan’s insanity has managed to invade my life. I will be hating to open the mail for the rest of my life. How much do you t
hink they stole, Traceleen?”

  “Well, let’s see. Ten dollars an hour at twenty-four hours a day is two hundred and forty dollars a day. Take that times seven days a week plus whatever they were paying Anabelle, minus Phoebe’s cut, minus the French wine he gave her instead of the prescription drugs, plus the money they made for selling the prescription drugs.”

  “We don’t know they sold the drugs.”

  “That’s right. So forget the drugs and just concentrate on the nurses. Plus the computer he bought to create the nurses, plus whatever he paid the Mafia to do the rest of the paperwork. I don’t know. It was a good living.”

  “I hope he saved part of it,” she said finally. “I hope he has enough to live overseas for a while.”

  “I think you’re imagining all this,” Mr. Manny always says if we mention it. “All he was doing was taking care of his grandmother. Just because you didn’t see the nurses doesn’t mean they weren’t there. That’s a big house. They could have been asleep in the guest rooms.” Then he would laugh this laugh that reminds me of the looks Phelan and Robin Martin gave each other. I will never understand the male psyche. They are running a different course than we women are, they are sailing different seas, they dance to different tunes. Even Mr. Manny, who has never done an illegal thing or told a lie or been unfaithful in his life lives vicariously when Phelan is around. Forgives him and watches him and gets some kind of kick out of his exploits no woman can ever understand. Amen.

  A Sordid Tale, or, Traceleen Continues Talking

  I know it’s wrong to tell tales but someone has to keep a record. Some things just can’t go unnoted, like Phelan Manning going over to Monroe, Louisiana, and getting Crystal’s best friend from high school and taking her off to Las Vegas. They were traveling in Phelan’s old station wagon, which is all he has left after five wives and dozens of African safaris. He has killed every large animal that roams the earth and he has the heads to prove it. Well, they say he is trying to sell some of them to a museum but we don’t know that for sure.