The Ditto List (16 page)

D.T. sat obediently on the divan and saw Mrs. Preston watch him with what looked very much like amusement. “May I get you something, Mr. Jones?” she asked. “I have coffee and lemonade and some cookies I baked this morning.”

He began an automatic refusal, based on his dislike of eating in the presence of strangers, particularly from his erratic lap. Then he looked into her hazel eyes and changed his mind. “Lemonade would be fine,” he said. “And maybe a cookie.”

“How about two?”

“What kind are they?”

“Oatmeal.”

“How about three?”

“That's better,” she said with a quick laugh, then rolled out of the room like a charioted princess.

D.T. looked around, intrigued as always by being left alone in another person's house. Mrs. Preston had ringed herself with a pocket universe, edited to suit her tastes. There were dried flowers in vases and live violets in pots and a hollowed stone which served as an ashtray. The drawings and photographs on the walls offered birds, animals, stars, sunsets, snow-capped mountains, white-sand beaches, whales. The recessed niches were hives of sculptured miniatures—a brass bee, a porcelain rabbit, an iron frog, a pewter stag, a walnut stallion, and a plaster figurine of someone who looked a lot like Mozart. In the bookcase closest to him were a tiny leatherbound edition of Shakespeare's plays and prosaic odds and ends that ranged from
Pride and Prejudice
to
Fear of Flying
. Most prominent of all was a framed color photograph of the cathedral at Chartres, so precisely focused it seemed something beyond even the ken of God. Next to the cathedral, perhaps as evidence of Mrs. Preston's unbound psyche, was a small reproduction of Lautrec's gay and naughty Moulin Rouge, a line of girls with ruffles flying. D.T. smiled and began to relax. It seemed a place where he could do no wrong.

Gradually he noticed the adaptations. A device on the front door permitted opening and closing with an arm instead of fingers. Chrome rails were attached at various places to the walls, above the paths of rubber pads. The sturdy frame of an aluminum walker hid in the corner behind the bookcase. Long looped cords hung like nooses from the lamps. D.T. changed position and looked at his watch. He'd been in the precise and utile little house only five minutes.

When her wheels brought her back to him they made no noise, and he was caught thumbing through the heavy scrapbook that lay on the coffee table in front of the divan. All the clippings were photographs from magazines and newspapers, some glossily vibrant, others faded and yellowed with age. Each was of a ballerina, leaping and twirling or bowing and posing, all elegant and lithe and mesmerizing.

“My scrapbook,” Mrs. Preston said with twitching lips. “I began it when I was thirteen and my life was dance. I saw no reason to discontinue it just because my life became far less glorious than my dreams.”

“You mean your disease?”

She laughed and shook her head. “I gave up dance long before sclerosis came along. I'm afraid I lacked the courage to test myself against the art.”

D.T. put the heavy book back on the table. When he looked at her again she was inspecting him carefully. His eyes quickly strayed from hers.

“Please don't be embarrassed, Mr. Jones,” she said quietly. “I'm really not as ill as you probably suspect. I have very little pain, in spite of how I look. Other than the irritants of slurred speech and some occasional edema and diplopia, my problem is simply strength. I have none much of the time. But even though my body no longer functions well, it does function. One just has to anticipate its eccentricities.” She laughed in two syllables. “At one time I thought MS had been visited on me because I had wanted to dance too desperately. That it was punishment for my lust to be not as other beings.”

“And now?”

“Now I see it simply as a fact to be accounted for.” Her slippery voice was suddenly hollow. “There are so many facts to be accounted for in life, aren't there, Mr. Jones? I'm sure you encounter many of them in your practice. Perhaps even in your private life.”

She raised her brows and he nodded uneasily, thinking once again of Heather and feeling the way he always felt in the presence of the handicapped—unworthy of his health.

When she saw his look she immediately constructed a soothing aspect, like so many of the afflicted her function not to be cheered but to cheer. “Here you are,” she said, and rolled toward the coffee table. “Please take the tray.”

He lifted the tray from her lap and placed it in front of him, noticing in the process the suction cups on its underside. On it were a tall glass full of ice and pulpy pinkness and a small china plate, hand painted with roses, supporting three cookies of the diameter of hockey pucks. D.T. thanked her and took a bite.

“A bit too much vanilla, I'm afraid.”

“Couldn't prove it by me,” D.T. said, and moved to cookie number two.

“You really needn't rush, Mr. Jones. Unless you have another appointment.”

Mouth full, D.T. shook his head. “I'm not rushing, I'm just eating,” he mumbled. “You're not the first to confuse the two.”

She nodded happily. “Of course, there really
is
no need for you to be here. Other than the rather extortionate demands of Miss Holloway, that is.”

“Well, my social life for the week has already come to pass. And this is the best cookie I've had since 1954. Where is Miss Holloway, anyway?”

“She's seeing a patient. She said she'll be back to check on me at eight. She said she would only believe you'd been here if you left a card behind.”

D.T. took out his wallet and removed a business card and flipped it to the coffee table. “So much for my presence,” he said. “If she still has doubts you can show her the crumbs I seem to be spilling all over your floor.”

“Don't worry about it. Please.”

“Okay, I won't,” D.T. said. “Do you look after the place yourself?”

“The interior, yes. Outside, I have a wonderful neighbor who keeps things looking marvelous. I don't know what I'd do without him. Of course his efforts to please me seem to have backfired.”

“How's that?”

“He's made the place so attractive the landlord has increased the rent substantially.”

“They tend to do that,” D.T. said; then swallowed the dregs of the second cookie. “Which bring us to why I'm here, I believe.”

“Yes,” Esther Preston acknowledged. “It's quite simple, though, I'm afraid. My ex-husband is well and entirely rid of me, Mr. Jones. He performed all of his obligations under our property settlement agreement if not our marriage contract, and he has gone on to what appears to be, from the things I read in the papers, a dazzling life. I have no claim on him nor do I wish to pursue one.” Little lines sprouted above the set of her thin lips, bloomless stems of purpose.

“Do you have a copy of the settlement agreement?” D.T. asked her.

“Yes. Somewhere.”

“Could I see it?”

“I suppose so. It's in the bedroom, I think. I'll get it for you.”

“Can I help?”

“No. Everything is within reach, Mr. Jones. One learns to do that quite quickly.”

She rolled away again, and D.T. took advantage of her absence to finish off the lemonade and the final cookie. When she came back she handed him several sheets of legal-sized paper, stapled at the top and signed on May 21, 1965, by Mrs. Preston and her former husband. There was no indication what lawyer if any had prepared the document.

D.T. flipped quickly through the pages. “Did you have an attorney?” he asked.

“No. It didn't seem necessary. Nat and I discussed it and I felt I was being treated fairly.”

“Who prepared this agreement, then?”

“My husband's lawyer. The firm is Bronwin, Kilt and Loftis, I believe. A large one downtown. The particular attorney was a man named Grusen. He was a friend of Nat's. He died some time ago, I believe.”

D.T. remembered his chat with Jerome Fitzgerald of the day before. Jerome the litigator, partner in the same firm. D.T. examined the agreement a bit more closely.

The form was basic and familiar. After reciting the facts of the marriage—nine years, no children—and the prior division of personal property to mutual satisfaction and the remaining marital estate of the parties—a home of an approximate equity of six thousand dollars plus unnamed assets of a total value of twenty thousand dollars—the agreement provided Doctor Preston would assume existing debts and Mrs. Preston would receive quit-claim title to the house plus a single lump-sum payment of six thousand dollars plus alimony in the amount of two hundred dollars per month for a period of two years in final settlement of all claims by Mrs. Preston against her husband. Not generous, but not quite unconscionable, particularly for the year in question. About what he'd expected, which meant virtually hopeless. He looked up at her and thought he saw uncertainty in her eyes.

“May I ask you some personal questions?” D.T. asked, determined to do something, unsure of what.

“Of course.” The guileless eyes shone brightly.

“How much money do you have right now?”

“Savings?”

“Yes.”

“A bit over nine hundred dollars. Plus the interest that will be paid at the end of next month.”

“Any other assets?”

“Nothing other than the things you see around you. All of them valueless except to me.”

“Do you have any family?”

“No.”

“Any investments at all?”

“No, other than the savings account.”

“How much did you get when you sold the house you lived in with your husband?”

“Eight thousand net to me. All of it and then some went for medical bills.”

“Is that why you sold it? To pay medical obligations?”

“Yes.”

“Have you worked since the divorce?”

“For a short time. I had a job in a bank during my marriage and after. In fact that's the way I first discovered that my illness was something other than a lingering cold. I could no longer operate a calculator accurately.”

“And since you got MS you haven't worked?”

“No. I made one effort some years ago but it was far too embarrassing for all concerned. My employer was a friend, and he was willing to keep me on, but only out of sympathy. I was entirely useless to him as an employee, as I would be to anyone.”

“Do you receive Social Security?”

“Disability. Yes.”

“How much is that?”

“Four hundred and twenty-nine dollars per month.” She smiled sadly. “I have just received notice that my status is about to be reviewed. The result may be termination of my benefits.” She paused. “A woman I know recently had her benefits eliminated because the department decided twelve years after she got MS that she was not truly disabled after all. They suggested work as a watchperson in an art gallery. She is appealing the decision, but the Legal Aid people are not encouraging,” she added bleakly. “Of course Legal Aid itself may vanish soon.”

“A sign of the times,” D.T. said.

“So it seems. I assume her former benefits will go for bombs and bullets. She can't dress herself, button a button, zip a zipper, anything.” Her words seemed more puzzled than angered, as though she truly wished to understand how such a thing could become the way of the world without anyone stopping it.

“When is your review?” D.T. asked.

“Next month.”

“What day?”

“The tenth.”

“At the Federal Building?”

“Yes.”

“Do you care if I come by and watch?” D.T. asked.

She knew his intent and smiled. “I can't accept your charity, Mr. Jones, but thank you.”

“But you won't make them arrest me if I show up, will you?”

“No. I won't do that. But I hope you won't. The accomplishment I cherish most is that I am not a burden to anyone. At least not yet.”

He had embarrassed them both and wished he hadn't. “Do you rent this house?” he asked, more brusquely than he'd intended.

“Yes.”

“How much?”

“This month it was two seventy-five. Next month it will be three hundred and fifty.”

“A big bump.”

“Yes.”

“Who's the landlord?”

“A real estate corporation.”

“Crescent Development?”

She raised her brows. “How did you know?”

“They own half the rental units in this area. They've raised the rent on all of them.” D.T. sought and failed to come up with an adequate circumlocution for his next question. “Do you need regular medication?”

“Irregular. Valium for spasticity; belladonna for … bodily functions.”

He reddened. “How much does it cost per month?”

“Thirty dollars, perhaps, in the good times. But it goes up quite regularly. I've lost track.”

“Food?”

She laughed. “Do you mean do I eat? Yes, I'm afraid I must.”

“How much?”

“As little as I can.” Her smile was brazen. “One so wants to remain svelte.”

“How much money per month on food?” he insisted.

“Fifty dollars, if I'm careful and if I don't have too many visitors.”

The cookie in D.T.'s belly turned to stone. “I don't mean to grill you, Mrs. Preston,” he said quickly. “It's just that I'm trying to get some idea of what you need to live on.”

“I understand, Mr. Jones. You simply need to know the exact extent of my wretchedness.” She smiled again to help him.

“Utilities?”

“Seventy dollars in winter. Less in summer.”

“Do you have air conditioning?”

“If I had air conditioning I would not require you to remain as uncomfortable as you clearly are, Mr. Jones.”

“It must get a lot hotter than this in here,” D.T. said, loosening his tie and collar.