The Maid's Diary(4)
Beulah favors this corner window in the mornings because, yes, it captures the morning sun when it does deign to shine. From this window she can also see both the “Glass House” that belongs to her neighbors and the inlet with the graceful green arc of Lions Gate Bridge linking the North Shore to Stanley Park and the city of Vancouver. Traffic is already thick on the bridge. People hustling and bustling to work on this Thursday morning, oblivious to the fact that in the blink of an eye they, too, will be sitting in a chair, waiting to die. Unless something violent and sudden snatches them away first.
Perhaps it might be worth the pain to have a terrible deadly accident, or to be violently murdered, if it meant going quickly. She ponders this as she sips her tea. It’s lukewarm, made by her morning carer and left in a flask by Beulah’s bed. Or is it a caregiver? Nouns these days are such a challenge. Her palliative nurse—the chatty Kathy—told Beulah that a “caregiver” might dislike the person to whom they are giving care, while a “carer” cares about the person, period.
Beulah carefully dips a lemon cream into her milky tea, her thoughts turning to Horton, her son, who occupies the downstairs area of her home now. He moved into her house allegedly to care for her. Beulah knows he’s just after the house. It’s a highly valuable piece of luxury waterfront property now. Horton is a caregiver, not a carer. Sometimes she wonders if he’s trying to hasten her demise. Horton is Beulah’s big regret in life. She bites into the soggy biscuit and wonders what her boy will do with all the family china when she’s gone.
While chewing, she allows her gaze to drift across the Burrard Inlet toward the skulking tankers awaiting entry to the port, but a flash of color catches her eye. She turns her head to watch a little yellow Subaru Crosstrek with a familiar blue logo pulling into the driveway of the Glass House next door. Instantly she brightens. It’s the maid. Beulah checks her watch. On time. Thursday morning. Like clockwork. Dependable help is so hard to get these days.
Beulah sets her cup down and reaches for her birding binoculars and trains her scopes on the neighbor’s house. It’s a modern architectural monstrosity—all windows with some metal and concrete. She can’t detect movement inside yet. The owners must be sleeping late.
The comings and goings of Beulah’s neighbors, the people who stroll their dogs along the seawall in front of her house, or those who sail boats in the bay—they’re her entertainment, her daily reality show. She recently began logging people’s movements just to prove to herself that what she remembers did in fact occur. Horton keeps insisting that her memory is going. He claims she fabricates things and her imagination runs wild and is fueled by far too much streaming of dark Nordic crime and British detective shows. Vera is Beulah’s favorite series. She likes Shetland, too. Mostly just to watch Jimmy Perez. And Wallander. She loves dear, sad Wallander.
With her gnarled and liver-spotted hands, she struggles to adjust the focus on her binoculars. The scopes are new—she’s still getting the hang of them. She zeroes in on the nimble blonde woman with space buns who climbs out of the driver’s door of the little yellow car.
Well, hello, pet.
Beulah channels Vera’s voice. Empowered with her new binoculars, she can now also observe with Vera’s shrewd detective eye, carefully cataloging details.
The maid is in her uniform—a bubblegum-pink golf shirt, practical navy-blue drawstring pants, and sensible white athletic shoes with an orange stripe on each side. She wears a black choker around her neck, and her blonde hair is in the updo: two untidy buns perched like little teddy bear ears atop either side of her head.
The maid opens her trunk, removes her vacuum cleaner. A Dyson. The maid glances up at Beulah’s window, smiles, and waves.
Beulah’s mouth curves slowly. She returns the wave with as much gusto as she can muster. For a brief moment they see each other—the old lady and the maid—then the maid gives a nod and goes about her job, getting the remainder of her cleaning supplies out of her car and ferrying them into the Glass House.
“Morning, Beulah!”
Beulah winces as the perky palliative nurse from the hospital bounces into her living area, lugging her bag of medical paraphernalia.
“How are we today, Beulah? How did we sleep?” the nurse asks as she disappears behind Beulah’s chair and out of her line of sight.
“I slept alone,” Beulah mumbles, struggling to turn her wheelchair around so she can face the nurse. The woman is dressed in cycling gear, for heaven’s sakes. The nurse sets her bike helmet and bag down on Beulah’s hospital bed and begins to unpack the equipment needed to take measure of Beulah’s old heart and blood oxygen levels.
“I beg your pardon?” the nurse says.
“I said there is no we. It’s just me. Alone. I sleep alone.”
The nurse laughs and traps the tip of Beulah’s finger in a clamp. She checks her stopwatch as she takes her readings. “Are you using the oxygen compressor when you sleep?”
“No,” Beulah says.
“You should. It will help increase the levels in your blood. You’ll have more energy. How’s the pain?”
The rest of Thursday dissolves into the sameness of all those days that have come before. A dull routine of meds, another carer visiting to bathe her and to make lunch and set her up with a flask of afternoon tea. More meds. Yet another palliative nurse checks in. More medicine. Then a deep, dead-to-the-world, opioid-induced slumber, followed by a carer who preps her dinner. A heavier dose of meds for the night. But despite the meds, Beulah remains uncomfortable and propped up in her hospital bed so she can breathe.