Erased From Memory (23 page)

Then she has to tell us the story of how the sheep got into the copper sulfate. And were cured.

Out in the car I say to my father, “Daddy, we have to move back to the Manor. They need us there. Tomorrow.”

My parent fusses with his seat belt. “I can’t go back to the Manor.”

He’s in the front seat; I’m in the back. I lean forward and Rob, also in the front seat, leans across; we pile on him with,
Of course you can. It’s what you need to do. It’s time for everyone to go back. That’s what happens at the end of a visit. I, Carla, have to go back, too.

“No,” he says, not angry at all.

He looks at me blandly. He doesn’t get shrill or excited; he is quietly flinty. No.

Rob and I confer after we get my father to his apartment. It’s not a good conference. Both of us are cross. Rob is blaming me. I’m blaming myself. “I can’t just kidnap him.”

“You’ve got to lure him back.”

“He wants to feel needed.”

“Think of some problem. Some duty. Something to offer.”

I’m completely stymied. There are no problems or duties at the Manor. There are three meals a day and television and bedtime. “Get him to start on his memoirs,” Rob suggests.

“Oh, ha ha.”

We get wilder in our suggestions. “Someone there has a translation problem.” “A message from the gods.”

“My mother,” I say. I look at Rob and say, “Something or other about my mother.” Then, pretty quickly, I’m glad to say, I counteract that. “Hell and hell. What’s the matter with me?” I get up and start marching around. We’re in the Resident Scholars’ Lounge. I pull down a couple of books and slam them back into their slots. “I know better.” After a minute I sit down again.

Rob is pitched forward in a lounge chair, not lounging. He’s watching me moderately calmly. I guess he looks sympathetic. “Sure you know better.”

“The only way is honesty.”

“Uh-huh.”

I start mapping a campaign.
Daddy, this is really important. I don’t ask for much, here’s something you can do for me. I do a lot for you
.

“Lay it on, right?” I ask.

“Well, it’s true.”

“He loves me.”

“Sure, he loves you . . . Say it’s just for a while,” Rob adds.

Even that’s sort of a lie, but yes, I’ll try it for now. “Sure, just for a while.

“Something you can do for me,” I improvise. “Just for a while.”

You should be honest with your Alzheimer’s parent, but only moderately honest.

“Rob, thank you.” I look at him, and he looks good. Reliable, helpful Rob. Handsome, too. He looks almost good enough for me to feel friendly toward him again and to decide that his fling with an elderly blonde is okay. Just human nature.

“Cherie will be really worried,” he announces. “And concerned. She loves Ed.”

Which ends my friendly feelings. I hustle him out of there fast and go down the hall to see if Scott is still up and would like a drink.

 
 
We sit in Egon’s kitchen, all stainless steel and marble, and share a bottle of Egon’s vodka. I tell Scott the story about the copper sulfate and he gets at first incredulous—“Jesus!
Un
believable!”—and then really mad. “My God,” sloshing vodka and pacing around between the reflecting surfaces. “Carla, this has got to stop.”

I agree that it has to stop but Scott says, “No, it
has
to stop,” with a force that makes me feel he can arrange it. “Damn it, kid, you’ve had too much. Ed’s had too much.”

He leans forward to kiss me and does it with a lot of energy and precision. I stand up and we kiss some more. Then I sit down on one of Egon’s marble surfaces with my back against one of his reflecting surfaces and we continue kissing. Except that I wouldn’t call it kissing exactly. It keeps on and becomes more of an all-out experience.

“Let’s go upstairs,” Scott says. And I say, “No.”

And he says, “Let’s.” And I say, “No.”

He’s forceful and clean and handsome and he smells good. The idea is totally attractive.

We get upstairs and I’m ready for something more to happen, and while it almost does, it doesn’t.

That’s my fault. But I’m surprised that Scott pays that much attention to what I say.

 
 
The next morning at breakfast Bunny says, “You’re leavin’? You didn’t ask me was that okay . . . Well,” she adds, “I’ll just have to come and see you, won’t I? I mean”—she’s been staring at me; is it possible that even Bunny, whom I think of as excessively dim, can read my expression?—“I got to come over and see Pop. That is some real sweet guy. I will miss him.”

Rob telephones. “I have to come by sometimes to pick up Ed for his calcium injection,” he reminds me. He is sufficiently defensive to add the sentence about how he is one of Daddy’s oldest friends.

And Cherie telephones, “Darling, you’re clearing out of there? Pretty wise, I guess. They’ll find out; that place will be a morgue without you. And I’ll be by the other place, the Manor, is it? I think I got great news, prob’ly real heavy news, can’t wait to see you, we’ll have a grand old gossip, can’t wait.”

And when I get upstairs I find that Scott has slipped a note under my door: “Tomorrow night, eight o’clock, rescue mission? I’m glad for your sake you’re going, not for mine. I like your hair when you just let it hang.”

Was that what my coiffure was doing last night? I may have had it scrunched up in a ponytail that came undone. It had plenty of encouragement.

Chapter 18

My father and I are back at the Manor, and he is enormously apologetic. “My dear. I had no idea it mattered so much to you. Of course I am glad to be here. As long as that is what you want. Glad to be back here with you.”

He looks around his room with its bay window and shelf full of Egyptian figures. “I had forgotten. My Egyptian collection. Here, a very nice shabti, ready to watch over me.” He holds up the little figure, its arms folded, a row of hieroglyphs down its front.

“Somehow I forgot.” He frowns at the rest of his room. “It seems smaller. It’s not as nice a room as that other one. In the other hotel. I think I miss that other hotel.”

I protest, “But you have so many wonderful things here.” And I get into a listing of what is wonderful at the Manor, all of his books and artifacts and care and love. He looks troubled and uses the word
needed
. “Truly needed, I think I was truly needed.”

“These books here were written by you,” I say, pointing to the ones in the blue jackets. He examines me as if I am speaking ancient Urdu. He suggests that maybe I was the one who wrote them.

And finally he climbs into his window alcove and announces that now he will take a nap. This traveling around has been tiring. Good night, Carla.

He’s depressed already. I’m depressed, too.

That night I try to make a list, but fail. I’m not good at lists. I tend to fixate on one aspect and get unable to move beyond it.

This is supposed to be a list of subjects to investigate. Anything to chase in connection with the murder or murders, because I haven’t left those events behind by moving back to the Manor. The deaths are still present at the bottom of my psyche; if I can solve them, I can solve all my other life problems, including where to go with my career and how to keep my father content. But (I’ve said this before) I’m not good with lists. They start out well and end in one- and two-word cries. Marcus . . . The sheriff . . . Rita . . . Hypnotism . . . Copper sulfate . . . When I get depressed or frantic, my handwriting changes.

 
 
“Hello, darlin’.”

It is the next day, and my fan calls have started. This is guess who, my principal bane, the lady of my bad dreams.

I wish I could decide definitively how I feel about Cherie. If I didn’t really hate her, I might really like her. Maybe someplace in another galaxy we’d be best friends.

“Darlin’, I am coming over to see you. Dynamite news. Real electrifying. Some good, some bad. I am dying to share.”

She sounds too good, her dynamite news can’t be that she has broken up with Rob. She wouldn’t be panting to spread that around.

“Come for lunch, Cherie.”

“Absolutely, beautiful girl. Can’t wait. You’re gonna be blown away.”

 
 
Well, as Cherie has said, dynamite. That is, Cherie herself, ensconced in triumph at a Manor luncheon table, is dynamite. She sparkles and doesn’t patronize. She calls everybody darling as if she means it. She asks sympathetic, insightful questions. Her airy bubble of a voice floats above the clink of silverware; it says all the right things. “Oh, my God,” she declares, “I just adore this place. Look at this wonderful meal,” (a choice between fish or steak). “Imagine you-all, living here. Right here in this terrific decor.” Her gesture encompasses carvings and plaster, high ceiling. “And the gorgeous view.” A lawn, bright green, splashed intermittently by a rotating sprinkler.

Maybe it’s Cherie’s voice, I decide, squinting at her. That Southern warble indicates big-time joy and commitment. She gets believed where others get questioned. The dining room ladies love her. They nudge each other and eat their ice cream and look happy.

I have a hard time tearing her away and off to Daddy’s apartment, where we can shut the door and share her dynamite news. My father, of course, wants to come, too. But I’ve forestalled that with a schedule in the library of two hours of country and western DVDs. He’s transfixed by country and western.

“You will never guess,” Cherie starts as we get the door shut. “No, no tea. Vodka? Oh, my. Well, I guess I could. Just a teensy glass.

“Now then, listen”—she takes a healthy slug—“listen up, this is so totally amazing. I knew all along something was wrong, didn’t you?”

“Where?” I ask. Sure I knew something was wrong. I think about it. “Who with? With whom?”

“Dear heart, of course. With Slimeball. Our sheriff.”

I say yes and wait. Cherie is set to continue.

“Well, dear, turns out he has a record. Back in 1980. Car theft. He was a naughty young man in his last year of high school and he didn’t actually steal this car, his friends did, but he was along and, well, real boring story but not to the governor’s office when I went up there and showed them the records.”

“Wow,” I say.

Then I realize that this is a very partial tale. “I guess I don’t get it, Cherie. Somebody had to check his record before he got to be sheriff. They don’t just pull a name for that out of a hat.”

“You bet they don’t. Like, usually the sheriff ’s elected. This time it was an appointment, because your previous guy resigned and went off to Alaska. The governor’s office gets to appoint somebody. Some friend of a friend. And sure, they check the records, but I guess this time a little arranger managed to lose those records.”

“And you found them.”

“Oh, darlin’, I did. I am real good at finding things.” Cherie takes a self-satisfied slurp of vodka and settles back into Daddy’s easy chair with one foot under her. Today is one of her pink days; she is wearing her pink pantsuit with the rhinestone buttons, her size-four feet sparkle in matching sling sandals. Her hair glistens glossy and bright. I wish I could make my hair sit close to my head like that.

“You didn’t ask,” she says, “what’s gonna happen now. Well, this governor we have now is a prize horse’s ass and just about his only program is war-on-crime. He thinks he’s gonna eliminate crime from California. Especially teenage crime. He had a fit when he heard about this. He fired our friend, like yesterday. So now we don’t have any sheriff at all.”

I’m silent, trying to imagine either of the sheriff ’s deputies as interim officiants. One is tall and one is short and both are blocky. Both look as if they’ve been stuffed with horsehair.

“Do not fret, darlin’,” Cherie says. She sets her glass down and dusts off her knee in a proprietary way. “Although I do not like this here governor one tiny particle, there are some people in the lower offices that got left over from previous administrations, you understand? And these people are friends? If you follow me?”

“And they’ve been telling you that . . .” I peruse Cherie’s face. She looks too satisfied for her news to be the simple fact that she knows who the next sheriff will be. “Cherie!”

“Yes, love?”

“You wouldn’t!” I say.

She smirks.

“You don’t even live here.”

Is that a smirk? Maybe more a triumphant smile.

Both of us understand that I am saying,
You wouldn’t accept the appointment as Sheriff of Del Oro County
, and she is saying,
Oh, yeah? Why not?

“You don’t even live here,” I repeat.

“I do now.”

I gawp. There’s something wrong with this idea. It takes me a minute to catch on to the flaw. She lives here now. Are the domestic rules like the international ones, and can Cherie become a resident of the county by marrying—well, by marrying a resident, namely Rob?