Mixed Messages (A Malone Mystery) (33 page)

“Stop feeling sorry for yourself, old woman,” she whispered, fluffing her pillow and straightening the chenille bedspread
.
“You’re sixty-
nine
years old and you’ve worked hard your whole life
.
You’re bound to have some aches and pains
.”
She
knew that once she got moving,
her muscles and joints would loosen up and
she’d feel better
.

She
reached
down,
under her mattress
,
and pulled out a small, leather
bound book. She had kept a journal since she was a teenager, when writing in a diary was something most young girls did.
She’d discovered that writing down her p
rivate thoughts and
feelings every day made her feel better; it was a way to unleash her emotions without acting them out.
It worked most of the time.
She hid the completed journals in the attic because she never wanted anyone to read them. After I’m gone, she thought, David will find them but, until then, there are too many things I don’t want him to know. She sat down on the edge of her bed and wrote for the next several minutes.

Usually,
writing in her journal
calmed her but this morning, as she stood up and
stashed the book back in its hiding place,
she couldn’t shake the feeling that something was wrong
.
I’ll visit both of my boys today, she decided, because I need to know they’re all right
.
She
went
into the bathroom and stood in front of the mirror, pulling Bobbie pins from her thin, gray hair
.
It was time to get ready to go to work
.

She bent over the bathtub to turn on the water and a pain shot down her back
.
How much longer
will
I be able to work? she wondered
.
Then what will I do
?
She
worried constantly that her
monthly
social security check wouldn’t be enough to live on if she got sick
and that Medicare wouldn’t cover all of her medical expenses, but she
couldn’t
afford
supplemental
insurance.
That would be stretching her budget too thin, way beyond her comfort zone.

Without her part-time job at the Church, she was afraid she would have to give up her house and go into government housing
.
Prices went up every day for essentials like heat, water and food and, even though
the Social Security Administration adjusted her monthly allotment
each year for inflation, her Medicare bill increased each year too and the price of prescription medicines was staggering
.

It angered her that the pharmaceutical companies were getting rich while the elderly in this country were, in many cases, living in poverty.
She wanted to throw something at her TV and shatter the screen when she saw the constant barrage of advertisements for one pill after another
to treat everything from depression to a leaky bladder
. The only thing that stopped her
from destroying her television set
was knowing how much it would cost to replace
it
.

Moving to government housing would be bad enough, she thought, but what happens if I get to the point where I can’t even take care of myself
?
It would be worse to live in an old
folk’s
home where underpaid nurses and orderlies, total strangers, would be responsible for my care
.
I’ve seen the kind of care that is and I want no part of it, she thought.

She cringed, remembering how her father had spent his last days
.
She could still picture him with spittle running down his unshaven chin as he sat for endless hours, slumped in a wheelchair in front of the television set in the lobby of the nursing home
.
It was the best my sisters and I could do for him,
she
remembered
.
The other facilities, the ones that really do provide quality care, were way out of our price range
.
Anyway, he really didn’t deserve any better.

The good places are out of the question for me
too
, she thought
.
And I refuse to go on Medicaid
!
Oh, I could get quality care but, after I died, my house would go to the state as
payment for my medical expenses. No
!
I worked too hard to pay off this house. I want my son
and his children to benefit, not the state of Ohio
!
It’s not fair
!
I’ve always been
independent
.
I raised David all by myself with no help from anyone
.
It wasn’t easy, she
remembered, but I did it
.
I’ve definitely had some hard times in my life but this is the worst of all
.
Getting old is hell
!

A thought occurred to her. David! If she got to the point where she couldn’t live alone anymore, David would take her in; he would take care of her just as she’d always taken care of him. But what about his wife? Would Ann go along with that? Doubtful. She and Ann had never been on the best of terms and, lately, they’d had more than a few disagreements. No, with Ann in the picture, there was no way, she decided, that David would be in a position to help her.

She
got into the bathtub and leaned back
.
The warm water began to soothe her aching body
.
She closed her eyes and willed herself to relax
.
You have some savings, she reminded herself
.
However,
she knew in her heart that she wanted what little money she had in the bank to go to David and her grandchildren after she was gone
.
She needed to be sure that both children would be able to afford a college education so they could get good jobs
.
After all, money was security
.
She didn’t want them to end up like her, in a low paying, physically demanding job
.
But
, she’d had no choice;
she’d done what she had to do under the circumstances
.

I should have
gotten my GED and
gone
on
to college, she thought.
Who knows what
I
could have accomplished
if I’d had a decent education
?
I could’ve gotten a job making good money.
If
my
father hadn’t forced
me
to quit school to care for
my
two younger sisters
while my mother was hospitalized with a nervous breakdown
, things might have been different
.
But she knew that it was pointless, wondering what might have been and, in her day, women weren’t encouraged to
further their education. Back then, more often than not, they were told, “You’ll get married.” As
if that were the answer to everything
, as if that would solve all of life’s problems
.

With
only a
ninth
grade education,
it wasn’t easy to find a job
, she re
called
.
So, as soon as she turned eighteen,
she
took a job in Home Health care
.
Her father hadn’t wanted her to work
but she was determined to break free of his control. The work was hard and the hours were
terrible
, she
thought
, but at least I was making some money of my own
.

She
remembered standing at the bus stop in all kinds of weather, often in the dark, waiting for a bus that would take her to an elderly person’s home
.
It wasn’t easy, caring for her patients. It was physically exhausting because she often had to lift a patient into his or her wheelchair in order to bathe her or just to be able to change the sheets on his bed.

It was difficult emotionally
too
because so many of the patients were
irritable and demanding. Sometimes, to alleviate the stress, she’d gone into another room and screamed into a pillow; other days she pummeled the pillow with her fists because that’s what she’d felt like doing to her patient.

However, as
hard
as it often was
cleaning up after and
d
ealing with the
elderly
patients
,
sometimes it was
the relatives who had hired her
who
were the most trouble
.

“What did you do with my mother’s diamond ring?” the daughter of one of her patients had screamed at her.
“Did you steal it? It’s worth a lot of money. You have no right to take things that don’t belong to you.
”

Louise had adamantly denied the accusation. Still, the woman threw her hands into the air and shouted, “I don’t care what you say. I don’t believe you and
I will not have a thief taking care of my mother!”

Fortunately, the ring turned up the next day but the whole experience was humiliating and frightening. Not only could Louise have lost her job, she could have been arrested for a crime
that she didn’t commit.
No, she recalled, it hadn’t been easy.

When she turned sixty-two,
she retired from her full-time job
and began to collect her meager social security check each month
.
She’d planned to work another three years
to increase her social security benefit
to its full amount
but
she was fed up with putting up with other people
.
Still, s
he knew
that
she had to find a way to make extra money to supplement her social security.

She searched through the want ads in the
Cincinnati Enquirer
and the
Western Hills Press
but couldn’t find a job
that she was qualified for
and
that
was accessible by bus
.
She’d learned to drive and gotten her
driver’s
license when she was in her early twenties but
she was never at ease behind the wheel.
W
hen she stopped for gasoline one
morning
and
barely
missed going through the plate
glass window of the service station,
she
vowed
never to
drive again.
She never had, which meant that she was dependent on the bus service and her own two legs to get to where she needed to go.

Then, one day, as she entered the church vestibule to say her daily prayers, she’d stopped to pick up a piece of paper that had fallen from the bulletin board and there it was: “Housekeeper needed. If interested, call or see Father Andrew for details.”

The church was close to home and she was willing to work hard and physically able to do the work that the position required. And,
most important to
her,
she could come and go as she pleased, working whatever hours she chose as long as her earnings didn’t exceed the amount allowed by social security.
Father Andrew left her alone most of the time; he trusted her to do her job at the church without constantly looking over her shoulder.

“God has always taken care of you, hasn’t he?”
the priest
asked her once when
she’d
gone to him, worried about the future
.
“Well, Louise,” he’d said, “do you think he’s going
to stop now
?”

Another voice popped into her head, a louder, more adamant voice
.
“God helps those
who
help themselves
!”
It sounded a lot like the voice of her father.

All of a sudden, she remembered that it was Halloween
.
She recalled that, as a little girl, she wasn’t
permitted
to go trick
-
or
-
treating
.
Her father,
a fanatic
Jehovah’s Witness who interpreted the Bible
his
way, had not allowed his family to observe any holidays
.
He believed that par
ticipating in Halloween rituals
was the same as worshipping the Devil
.
Her parents had always turned out all the lights in the front of the house to discourage anyone from ringing their doorbell
.
She and her sisters had been sent to their rooms to read the Bible and pray, “to be saved from the evil temptations of Satan
.”