Mrs. Fletcher(10)

“Dude,” he said, laughing at my sadness. “I’m just fucking with you. My mom’s alive and well. But she is definitely not a MILF.”





Department of Aging


When Eve took inventory of her life, her job stood out as the conspicuous bright spot, the sole arena in which she judged herself a success. She was executive director of the Haddington Senior Center, a thriving facility that provided an impressive array of services to the town’s older residents. The Center was not only a source of companionship, mental stimulation, and age-appropriate exercise for the elderly; it was also a place where low-income seniors could come to eat a federally subsidized meal and then get their blood pressure checked by a nurse and their problem toenails trimmed by a kindhearted podiatrist. The Center ferried a busload of clients to Market Basket twice a week, and also acted as a clearinghouse for handymen, landscapers, home health aides, and the like, referring trusted local businesses to older residents in need of assistance. Eve was proud of the work she did and, unlike a lot of people she knew, never had to ask herself what the point was, or wonder if she should be doing something a little more important with her life.

When she thought about how much she liked her job, she tended to focus on activities like chair yoga, memoir-writing workshops, and Thursday afternoon karaoke. What she didn’t think about were situations like this, when it fell on her to deliver bad news to people who already had enough trouble in their lives.

“Thank you for coming on such short notice,” she began, smiling in spite of herself at George Rafferty, whom she’d clearly interrupted in the middle of some filthy plumbing job. There was a smear of grease on his face, and the knees of his work pants were darkened with what looked like years of shiny, caked-on grime. He’d once come to Eve’s house at six a.m. on Thanksgiving morning to fix an overflowing toilet, which only made the conversation they were about to have that much more difficult. “I know it’s inconvenient.”

George didn’t smile back. He was a stocky, squinty guy with rust-colored hair, a rusty beard flecked with gray, and an air of permanent impatience, as if there was always something more urgent he needed to be attending to. He glanced apprehensively at his eighty-two-year-old father, who was sitting beside him on the couch, making loud smacking noises with his lips.

“What’d he do this time?”

Eve heard the wariness in his voice. The last time George had been summoned to the Center in the middle of the day, his father had somehow managed, by standing on his seat, to urinate out the window of the Elderbus on the way home from the supermarket. It was an impressive feat for a man his age, even if, as eyewitnesses claimed, he’d only been partially successful.

“Mr. Rafferty?” Eve turned to the older man, who was watching her with a vague, placid expression. “Do you mind telling your son what happened after lunch?”

Roy Rafferty snapped to attention.

“Lunch?” he said. “Is it time for lunch?”

“You already had lunch,” Eve reminded him. “We’re talking about what happened when it was over. The reason you got in trouble.”

“Oh.” The old man’s face tightened into a scowl of futile concentration. He was one of Eve’s favorites, a longtime regular at the Center, one of those chatty, friendly guys who moved through life like a politician running for reelection, shaking everyone’s hand, always asking after the grandkids. He’d been healthy and lucid up until about six months ago, when his wife died of a massive stroke. His decline since then had been rapid and alarming.

“What happened?” he asked. “Did I do something wrong?”

“You went in the ladies’ room again.”

“Oh, shit.” George stared at his father with a mix of pity and exasperation. “Jesus Christ, Dad. We talked about this. You have to stay out of the ladies’ room.”

Roy hung his head like a schoolboy. Eve knew his whole life story, or at least the highlights. He’d fought in Korea, and had come home with a Purple Heart and an urge to make up for lost time. Within six months, he’d married his high school sweetheart and taken over the family plumbing business, Rafferty & Son, which he ran for the next forty-five years, before handing it off to George. He and Joan had raised four kids, the eldest of whom—Nick, a high school vice principal—had died in his early fifties of pancreatic cancer. Eve had gone to the funeral.

“Mr. Rafferty,” she said. “Do you remember what happened in the ladies’ room?”

“I’m not supposed to go in there,” he said.

“That’s right,” she told him. “It’s off-limits for men.”

“Okay,” George said briskly. “We’re all agreed on that. Now could you tell me what he did? I gotta get back to work.”

“I’d like you to hear it from your father,” Eve told him.

“My father can’t remember!” George snapped. “He probably doesn’t know what he had for lunch.”

Eve let that hang in the air for a few seconds. It helped to have him say it out loud.

“Your father was exposing himself.” She decided to leave it at that, to not specify that he was masturbating, or that he’d invited poor Evelyn Gerardi, who wheeled an oxygen tank around everywhere she went, to come and get it. At least he’d called her sweetheart.